This autobiographical novel by a fighter in Nicaragua's revolution is engaging, sometimes funny and very readable. It is the personal tale of his experiences in the revolution, notably in the mountains and thence the title. Don't worry, it is not polemical, he tells it like it was.

I'm a college student and last year I made a Presentation about Nicaragua In my class of Latin America stadies. I had this book over six months, but I never read it. To me it did not had material I need it. This past weekend I started to read and my surprise was, that it's full of so many emotions and information material. It explained the whys and doubts of the people to change the Somaza government and How big part the college students played in this amazing revolution movement to made it come true. It's one of the best bood I had read about the Guerrilla war in Latin America.

This book provides an interesting account of the recent history of the Mosquitia Coast, and helped greatly with my research of the Legendary lost city of Ciudad Blanca. Taken from the autobiography of a missionary, it's an honest account of his families trials and tribulations. A must read for lovers of the Mosquitia.

The book shows the conditions of Honduras C.A. in the early 20th century and how a man with his God changed people's lives and the primitive conditions within the country. It shows how a dedicated man and his family can survive primitive conditions and make a major change on the lives of others.

In letting these former contras speak in their own words, editor/translator Timothy Brown demonstrates the dangers of taking oral history at face value. Brown waxes enthusiastically at the "revelations" of these men concerning Castro's finances in 1950's Mexico, Soviet missiles still secretly in place in Cuba after 1962, abuses by Sandinista cadres who beat peasants and question God, etc.

While these citations above sound authentic, I've caught Mr. Brown's witnesses in one inaccuracy after another. To begin, claiming the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front financed the Sandinistas by the millions in the late '70s, when the FMLN was not founded until 1980 as a coalition of several groups. Another witmess avers that Celia Sanchez, Fidel Castro's personal secretary, committed suicide in 1972 upon learning details of her brother's death in La Cabana prison in 1959. Celia Sanchez in fact died of cancer in 1980. Another has President Arevalo of Guatemala being overthrown by the CIA in the 1950s, when it was President Arbenz who was so "honored." This same witness also states he spent four months in Cuba in 1960, beginning in April, where he helped his father found the Committees in Defense of the Revolution - which were not established until a speech by Castro decreeing their formation in September, 1960, five months after April.

Brown's books clearly demonstrates the dangers of uncorroborated oral testimony. As such this book can be useful as a presentation of how these men think of themselves, or wish others to see them. But their testimonies suffer from lapses here and varnishings there and are not to be accepted as gospel.

I read this book in my college library and just had to get a copy for myself. The book reminds me so much of my parents who were also Marxist who joined the Vietminh to fight against the French and build a better Vietnam, only to be betrayed by the Marxist-Stalinist.

Leftist will not like this book because it contradicts their closed minded view about what happen in Latin America. Some of the leftist complaint about this book seems reasonable at first glance but upon closer examination it falls flat. One complaint about this book is that Celia Sanchez, died of cancer in 1980 and did not commit suicide, that is if you believed in the Cuban government propaganda, the same propaganda that claimed that all the Bay of Pigs leader were killed and then released them to Miami years later, the same propaganda machine that claimed Cuban troops were not fight in Africa.

Another criticism is that it was president Arbenz who was being deposed by the CIA in the 1950's not Arevalo.The person being interviewed did not make that claim, he was merely saying that president Juan Jose Arevalo overthrow Ubico and introduces social-democratic reforms, including setting up a social security system and redistributing land to landless peasants, thereby incurring the wrath of the CIA and the United Fruit company, the CIA plan to deposed Arevalo, but since Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman took over from Arevalo, the plan is then directed at Arevalo.

Another criticism of the book is that the Committees in Defense of the Revolution were founded in September 1960, not April 1960. Again, this same critic extol Cuban propaganda as the ONLY beacon of truth and anything contradict this propaganda is false, the same Cuban propaganda that have been shown to be as truthful as Nazi propaganda. Cuban propaganda and Vietnamese propaganda claimed that in 1960, the North Vietnamese established the National Liberation Front of Vietnam to fight against the Diem government and the Americans, that the NLF was an independent organization and do not receive support from the North Vietnamese. Recently, the Vietnamese government in their official history book called "Duoi Mot Bong Co" [Under the same flag], admits that the formation of the NLF was done in 1959 NOT 1960 as their propaganda have claimed.

Comments by the Author

When the AK-47s Fall Silent is a study of the transformation of warriors into participants in peace as told by combatants from several of the armed irregular forces that fought on all sides of Central America's recent wars. It is the product of the first ever face-to-face meeting between Marxist revolutionaries and Nicaraguan Contras, a unique dialogue between fighters. The first section of AK-47s is by revolutionaries, mostly Marxists, the second by former Nicaraguan Contras, the final one by international peacemakers.

Those who speak here are the warriors who actually fought those wars, not politicans who talked or academics who wrote, so even experts may recognize only a few of them. They were to busy making war on the battlefields in Central America to write articles, give speeches, or make the news in Washington, or Havana. These are then the real experts on what actually happened, not spin-doctors. Together they have more than 250 years hands-on experience at war, revolution and peacemaking, and in AK-47s for the very first time they share with the rest of us the wisdom they amassed during those centuries of risking their lives.

Surprisingly, even as they rewrite important passages of history what they have to say carries a message of hope for the future. Hope because these men and women of war who once preferred to speak not in words but out of the barrels of their AK-47 assault rifles have all today abandon the route of armed struggle in favor of participating in the democratic process. And each not only describes in his or her own words their personal passages from war to peace but also invites urges others to follow that path.

Make no mistake. Those who speak here were not bit players. They were at the heart of events that cost a half-million lives. One, a second generation Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, was a key KGB and Cuban Intelligence link to many Central American revolutionary movements, especially the Sandinistas. Another was a National Director of the Sandinista Front educated in Moscow and trained as a guerrilla in Cuba and North Korea. Yet another was the top military commander of El Salvador's Faribundo Marti Liberation Front. Another was both an original 1979 founder of the Contra movement and in 1990 the last Chief of Staff of their biggest Army. Three marginalized groups are also represented. A woman comando [as the Contras called themselves] and Ranger with eight years infantry combat experience explains why women can and do make excellent front line infantry soldiers. A Miskito Indian who led into battle the largest Indian army of the 20th century after Emiliano Zapata explains why indigenous peoples can no longer be ignored. A peasant considered by many as the best natural guerrilla leader of the last century says in the plainwords of a simple farmer why free and independent peasants will always fight to defend their way of life.

Rounding out AK-47s are three major essays on the process of peace itself. I hope many will find these alone worth the price of admission. A former US ambassador to Colombia provides what is possibly the best short essay yet written on the origins of the guerrilla wars there that have suddenly come to be of national interest in the U.S. A United Nations general compares Central America to Africa and the Balkans and tries to apply lessons learned in these places to the worlds current epidemic of ethnic wars. And last but by no means least, a top OAS peacemaker draws on eight years hands-on experience to present to the reader what may be the best ever manual on how to build a real and lasting peace in a war torn land.

And yet there is more. Even as they describe their paths from war to peace, these former hands-on participants also rewrite history. For example, they say it was Jimmy Carter not Ronald Reagan who first involved the United States with the Nicaraguan Contras [pages 86-87, 281-83]; that there were still Russian missiles in Cuba years after the Cuban Missile Crisis [page 76-77]; that Mexican army soldiers fought and died against the US Marines in Nicaragua in the 1920s [pages 13-14, 286]; that Fidel Castro's expenses, training, arms, and even the repair of his boat the Granma in preparation for the Cuban Revolution came not from exiled Cubans but mostly from Mexican labor unions, Communists, and government sources [pages 15-19]; that the Communist guerrillas in El Salvador financed the Sandinista revolution to the tune of more than $15 million from a $184 million treasury they had amassed mostly from kidnappings [pages 116, 294].

My hope is that anyone interested in peace, revolution, guerrilla war, ethnic conflicts, or merely American politics, will find AK-47s a fascinating read, and recommend it to their friends.

Timothy C. Brown author, editor, translator

The major drawback is that the drawings of the birds described in the book are poor so that it is often difficult to use them for identification. The text is fine. However, it is the only book available, so you have no choice.

Ridgely's guide is the best - and really the only - available field guide covering all the species of birds in the nation of Panama. While it is useful and serves most purposes, it has been over a decade since the second edition was released, and it is more than due for an overhaul and expansion. The most necessary would be the addition of range maps, that would make the book infinitely more useful in planning a trip. At the very least, there should be a single, detailed map of Panama, indicating the locations mentioned in the range descriptions! Also, it would be better to limit the scope of the book entirely to Panama, as Costa Rica and other areas to the north are covered by other guides, and the pertinent information for those areas in this book are scant, at best. Then, the isolated plates in the back need to be intergrated, as do the plates of Darien specialties, etc. Many species have been recently added to the Panama list, or split, etc, and those species need to be added. But, all this aside, this book should enable the identification of most Panama birds, and remains an indispensible resource for any birder traveling to that country.

A nicely done guide. Well-illustrated, easy to use. Worked for me in Costa Rica...

An interesting analysis of women in Managua during the Sandinista era takes up most of the book. Lancaster does much to explain how the combination of US aggression and Sandinista ineptitude wearied Nicaraguans and standed many women.

The book is padded with two academic articles. These not only clash in style with the rest of the book, but are based almost entirely on conjecture rather than ethnography. One is on race, the other on homosexuality. Astonishingly, Lancaster who eventually admits (that is the most accurate verb for how HE presents it) he is gay, did not study males who have sex with males in Nicaragua. Joseph Carrier, Don Kulick, Annick Prieur, and others have done ethnographic work with males who have sex with males, while Lancaster just recycles dubious majority culture conceptions of shame and honor.The data on racial conceptions are also very thin.

In sum, good on women and how the revolution was lived in a Managua barrio, but the last part of the book is marred by stereotyped fantases about race and homosexuality.

When people want to know what everyday life in Nicaragua was like during what Eduardo Galeano has called "the time of beautiful madness," they invariably turn to Lancaster's book. Life is Hard gives an up-close, personal, and often poignant accounting of the experiences of three working-class families during the Sandinista period. But this accessible, engaging book is also more than a classic ethnography. The latter chapters (whose theoretical arguments ineluctably flow from the more descriptive chapters) provide a highly readable short course on much of what is most exciting in twentieth century cultural theory: semiotics, deconstruction, neomarxism, and the origins of queer theory.

Over the course of the book, the author takes the reader through various vignettes, life stories, and analyses. At the same time, Lancaster reveals different facets of himself, in context-appropriate passages: socialist, Southern working-class origins, white, gay... The result is an implicit argument about how complex, compound, and contingent identities are. The result is also that alert readers get a very good sense of how the author's experiences shaped his research questions- and how they affected his interactions with Nicaraguan informants spanning a broad social gamut: single mothers, soldiers, adolescent boys and girls, "macho" men, and a number of gay men (clearly quoted, sometimes at length, in the chapter on same-sex relations).

Lancaster's overarching analysis is complex. In a feminist vein, he argues that the Sandinista revolution failed, in part, because its leadership failed to undertake an effective renovation of gender relations and family life. In a gay studies vein, the author shows how the everyday stigmatization of male same-sex relations regulates and supports conceptions of "appropriate" manhood (nobody wants to be called a "queer"!)-- and how, in no small part, it was this quotidian homophobia that undermined Sandinista efforts at changing family life.

The nuanced picture Lancaster draws of family life in a culture of machismo, and the innovative analysis he develops of how same-sex relations function in that culture, have been corroborated by a host of scholars working in different fields: Tomas Almaguer, Ana Alonso, Annick Prieuer, Don Kulick, David Whisnant, Richard Parker, and many others. With good reason, this important book received both the Society for the Study of Social Problems' C. Wright Mills Award, and the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists' Ruth Benedict Prize. I should add: this book has been used in several undergraduate and graduate courses I've taken. Invariably, students vote this the best-realized ethnography in the class.

Once upon a time, as I remember, there was a country called Nicaragua. It was in the news every day. Revolutionaries had taken it over. This was perceived as a great threat to our nation, (the USA)---a well-known military pushover with a decrepit economy which could easily have been totally destroyed by this Central American Marxist powerhouse. We armed the opposition and a war ensued in which the poor killed the poor. Russians, Bulgarians, and even Libyans appeared in Central America. People came visiting from everywhere who dreamed that Latin American countries could develop without being dominated by Uncle Sam. Even Salman Rushdie wrote a book about it. Suddenly, an election was held---hey, I thought Nicaragua was totalitarian---and the revolutionaries lost. Nicaragua faded from the news immediately and nothing more has ever been heard of the place. That's the media biz.

MY CAR IN MANAGUA stands out like a lighthouse on a dark stormy night. An eminently reasonable man spent a lot of time there and wrote an academic study of the place. This is not it. Colburn captures the flavor of Nicaragua in those tumultuous years here, describing daily life and survival tactics in easily-flowing prose. No cant, no rhetoric, no animosity. In a brief book he covers a vast variety of subjects; from car purchase and maintenance to accounting and management techniques on "revolutionary" cattle ranches. You can find out what kind of toothpaste was available in Sandinista Nicaragua (Bulgarian) or how to tell a middle class home in Managua (it had cement floors). Everything is described with understanding and with a sense of humor. The book is illustrated with drawings by a famous Nicaraguan cartoonist of the time, Róger Sánchez Flores, though I did not find them exceptional. We plainly see the economic mess created by a revolution that was far more successful in breaking down old social barriers and empowering the common man. Colburn never harps on this, just notes various unvarnished facts. The affection that the author feels for this impoverished, exhausted country is obvious. For a commonsense view of 1980s Nicaragua that is enjoyable, well-written and insightful, you cannot do better than this book. And it makes you wonder, not for the first time perhaps, if the USA's style of foreign policy will ever change.

For those familiar with Colburn's Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy, this slim volume will come as a pleasnt surprise indeed. Void of academic pedantry, My Car in Managua delivers us from economic tables and shows us the life of everyday Nicaraguans. Colburn does this with splendid humor and tight, concise writing. Illustrated by noted Nicaraguan cartoonist Roger Sanchez Flores, the entire text charms from beginning to end. Without saying so directly, Colburn exposes the void that was U.S. foregin policy throughout the 1980s-a goal easily enough achieved, but seldom with such humble grace.

This is probably the best book I've seen about Nicaragua and the Cold War during the 1980's. I did a research project there for several months and found Kagan's book to be very helpful and very accurate. Too bad it's out of print.

A very describetive account of USA intervention in Nicaragua begginning with The Knox Letter ending with the closing of the Iran-Contra scandal. Before picking up this book you should relize that it is very long and VERY detailed; however, it is very interesting if you are at all interested in the cold war. (note: also helped raised my SAT vocabulary score to a 700)

Well researched and full of lively detail that only ten years plus worth of in-the-field experience could command, Disparate Diasporas is a thoroughly satisfying ethnography of one of Nicaragua's least understood ethnic groups.

The book is valuable not only for its insightful ethnographic and political observations, but also for its compilation and consolidation of useful and hard to find ethnohistorical information about Nicaragua's coastal Creole populations.

Activists, scholars, and others familiar with the turbulent Nicaragua of the 1980's will find the perspective presented in this volume to be useful. While the book is not a political analysis, its description of events, and, more importantly, Creole interpretation of those events, should provide many "lessons learned" for those interested in re-evaluating what went right and what went wrong in 1980's Nicaragua.

For folks interested in this relatively unexplored portion of Central American, this account is a thorough examination of the flora, fauna, peoples and customs of the region. I'm still curious about his straighforward description of the legendary "chupacabra".

In 1986, the seventh year of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and three years before he got a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini, Salman Rushdie visited Nicaragua, travelling to Managua, Camaopa, celebrating the seventh anniversary of the revolution, and the Blue Fields area near the Atlantic Coast. I originally bought this book when I was interested in finding any of Salman Rushdie's books. I found it mildly interesting. This past winter, I took an upper division History of Central America at Fort Lewis College and after learning more about the Somozas and the Nicaraguan Revolution, I dug up Rushdie's book and one, it made more sense, two, I was more intrigued than merely interested.

Rushdie introduces the background to the Nicaraguan revolution that forced Anastasio Somoza Debayle's resignation in 1979 and even goes into the background of Augusto Sandino, the nationalist rebel leader executed by Anastasio Somoza Garcia's Guardia Nacional, and the Somoza dynasty that lasted forty years.

Rushdie got to meet some of the big nine Sandinista leaders, including President Daniel Ortega, vice president Sergio Ramirez, and agriculture minister Jaime Wheelock. However, they justify press censorship because they are at war with the Contras and America, and any press sympathetic to the US will undermine the regime. Seems reasonable, as the U.S. funding of Contras and the mining of Managua's harbours were acts of war by the U.S.

Not only are the Contras portrayed as terrorists, but Reagan isn't seen in a favourable light, understandably. Rushdie writes "Scarecrow Ronald Reagans hung--by the neck--from roadside trees." And in Ortega's speech to the people of Esteli, "Quien es culpabile?" the people roar back: "Reagan!" Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto even recalls a conversation with a Reagan administration official who tells him "Just do as we (the U.S.) say," serving as a reminder of U.S. hegemony in Central America and its refusal to abide by the Hague judgment, which ruled that the U.S. contra aid and force was a violation of international law.

Rushdie also visits Bluefields, where there are Miskito, Sumo, and Rama indigenes alienated by first the Somozas and the Sandinistas. One tragedy is that there are only 23 Ramas left and any attempt to preserve their language is hampered by the fact that many of them have few teeth, putting the mockers on proper enunciation. One of the people he meets is Mary Ellsberg, daughter of Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers, who is totally sympathetic to the plight of the indigenes there.

Rushdie's interview with Violeta Chamorro, widow of La Prensa editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, and later to be elected president, reveals Ms. Chamorro as someone who tries to manipulate a few facts and is biased against Ortega--she claims that Ortega was not elected democratically and yet according to foreign observers and an 80% voter turnout, he was. Rushdie agrees that yes, it was wrong for the Sandinistas to shut down La Prensa, but he questions Chamorro's candour.

As in his books, Rushdie writes with a wry, sometimes humorous style prevalent in his best novels. e.g. "my breakfast of rice and beans--'gayo pinto,' it was called 'painted rooster'--began to crow noisily in my stomach." Or when joining the foreign volunteer workers in singing "we shall overcome," he says "Like so many people who absolutely can't sing, I get sentimental about old tunes; the lump in the throat provides an excuse for the painful fractured noises emerging from the mouth." But his lyrical writing found in Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children also shines through.

This book is definitely critical of the Reagan administration's policies, but it paints an even-handed view of the Sandinistas, listing their ideals while at the same time detailing repressive measures that would not have been implemented had U.S. anti-communist paranoia not led to funding the Contras.

This is a good book with a original perspective of the story of Nicaragua. Even though Rushdie is a notable critic of the Sandinista government, he feels attracted by the Sandinista's fight and ideas. He manages throughout the story to mention thoughts and points of view from other local thinkers and poets.

"The Jaguar Smile," Salman Rushdie's record of his 1986 visit to Nicaragua, is a fascinating work with great value as an intellectual and historical document. The book is divided up into chapters, each of which stands alone as a unified and satisfying essay. The book as a whole paints an ironic portrait of Nicaraguan life during the Sandinista revolution.

Rushdie makes no claim to be objective; he is sympathetic to the Sandinista government and recalls being given cordial official greetings by some of the major Sandinista figures. But despite this affinity, Rushdie doesn't hesitate to cast a critical, and even satirical, eye on what he sees. In particular, he is wary of the Sandinista policy of press censorship: "[W]hat worries me is that censorship is very seductive. It's so much easier than the alternative."

Rushdie's keen powers of observation take in many of the institutions and personalities of Nicaragua, and he offers pungent insights on some of the racial, linguistic, political, and aesthetic issues facing the nation. "The Jaguar Smile" is particularly fascinating when Rushdie writes of his encounters with such eminent Nicaraguan authors as Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramirez; reading Rushdie's accounts made me eager to seek out books by these writers.

Rushdie's prose--often amiable, occasionally cynical--is a pleasure to read. "The Jaguar Smile" is neither a comprehensive history of Nicaragua nor an unambiguous political manifesto, and should not be viewed as such. But as a skilled writer's record of his impressions of a nation at a crossroads in its history, this book is an impressive achievement.