NARRATION: In the late 1950s,
Fidel Castro and his small band of Cuban guerrillas
started a revolution that challenged the desire
of the United States to control the Western hemisphere.
[ explosion ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
We couldn't think about the Cold War at that time,
and besides we were naive.
We really believed there was a certain international order.
We believed in the existence of
certain international principles.
We believed that the sovereignty of nations would be respected.
NARRATION: To the United States,
Castro's nationalism and left-wing policies
were a Trojan Horse for Soviet Communism.
[speaking Russian ]
Up until that time,
we had viewed Latin America as a distant, exotic continent
with which we had virtually no relations.
The Cuban Revolution changed all this.
NARRATION: From its birth in 1776,
the United States had grown and grown.
Where its flag did not fly,
its troops or agents often intervened.
In the 1950s, the Guatemalans dared to challenge an American
business that controlled much of its economy.
The United Fruit Company of Boston owned half a million
acres of land, the rail road, the port and telecommunications.
But most Guatemalan peasants found it difficult to survive.
In 1950, Jacobo Arbenz was voted President -
he wasn't a communist but some of his close allies were.
A former military man,
Arbenz sought to modernize Guatemala's backward society.
Washington was alarmed.
What we faced here was the obvious intervention of
a foreign power.
Because these home-grown parties are not really home-grown,
they're being funded or, er,
advised by a foreign power- I.e. the Soviet Union.
[speaking Russian ]
The Arbenz Government,
which had been in power from 1950,
didn't enjoy any logistical support from the Soviet Union.
We didn't even have diplomatic relations.
There was no Soviet mission in Guatemala.
NARRATION: President Arbenz started a land reform program,
buying up fallow land to distribute to peasants.
In compensation, he offered the landowners the values
they had themselves declared for taxes.
United Fruit was offered just over a million dollars
for its land.
When Arbenz declared nationalization, the company,
backed by the United States, claimed 16 million dollars.
[ Speaking American Spanish ]
He saw that I didn't look very pleased.
He said, "Aren't you happy about the news?"
And I replied, "Now we're going to have to fight on two fronts:
we're going to have to fight internally
against the landowners,
and also against the United States."
My, er, counterpart in Guatemala, chief
Guatemala City chief of station was sending
in reports too about communist infiltration in the Government,
and of course he mentioned Jose Manuel Fortuny
and some of the old-time Stalinist communists who were
gaining favorable positions in the Arbenz regime.
NARRATION: In this impasse the US named John Peurifoy
as its new ambassador.
Peurifoy had had experience of communist
efforts to gain power in Greece.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Peurifoy said to Arbenz,
"Mr. President, we can sort out all this business
of the United Fruit Company
so that you can come to a satisfactory agreement.
The United Fruit Company is not the problem:
the problem is the communists that
you have in your Government.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
No less a figure than John Foster Dulles,
head of the State Department, was part of the firm of lawyers
acting for the United Fruit Company.
His brother Allen was the head of the CIA.
So it didn't take much of an effort on their part
to persuade their President, a military man, Mr. Eisenhower,
to give them the green light to
overthrow Arbenz's Government.
ARCHIVE NARRATION: US Secretary of State Dulles
takes the rostrum to urge united action by the Americas
to outlaw international Communist intervention
in the Western hemisphere.
This conference was shocked by the dastardly attack
on members of the United States Congress
by those who professed to be patriots.
They may not themselves have been communists.
But they had been subjected to the inflammatory influence
of communism which avowedly uses
extreme nationalism as one of its tools.
NARRATION: Arbenz once again put on his colone's uniform as
Guatemala prepared for war.
In Esquipulas,
an important religious shrine in a very catholic country,
the church helped organize the opposition to Arbenz.
A CIA operation, code-named PB Success,
mobilized disaffected exiles and peasants into action.
What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign to terrify
Arbenz particularly, terrify his
his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers
terrified the population of Holland,
Belgium and Poland at the onset of World War ll
and just rendered everybody paralyzed.
NARRATION: The UN met in emergency session.
Guatemala City was strafed from the air.
Rebels invaded from Honduras.
The CIA spread panic.
Washington denied responsibility.
The information available to
the United States thus far strongly suggests
that the situation does not involve aggression,
but is a revolt of Guatemalans against Guatemalans.
NARRATION: The Soviets were warned.
Stay out of this hemisphere.
And don't try to start your plans
and your conspiracies over here.
NARRATION: The American PB Success Campaign brought the government down,
and drove Arbenz and his wife into exile.
Nine thousand of his supporters were arrested.
Many were kept in jail, without trial, for years.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
INTERPRETER: They even set up anti-communist committees,
where anyone could go and give the names of people
who had been loyal to the revolution.
These people would then be mercilessly kidnapped,
killed and so on.
NARRATION: Among those who fled was a young Argentine doctor,
Ernesto Che Guevara,
who went to Mexico and there met Fidel Castro.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
I remember my talks with him.
He was terribly indignant and embittered by these events
which had interrupted ah endeavor
which wasn't even radical.
It was a relatively simple change, land reform,
which was very just and necessary.
NARRATION: Five years later, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had triumphed.
Ninety miles from Florida,
in what the United States considered its own backyard,
Castro established a regime soon to be allied
with the Soviet Union.
Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them
to oppose aggression or
subversion anywhere in the Americas.
And let every other power know that this hemisphere
intends to remain the master of its own house.
NARRATION: In 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy took over the Presidency
and with it a CIA scheme to send in an army of exiles
to overthrow Castro,
as they had earlier overthrown Arbenz in Guatemala.
So I was yanked back from Montevideo,
where I would have been content to spend the rest of my life,
and told: "What we're doing is reassembling
the PB Success team,
that is the Guatemala Operational team,
to take care of Castro."
NARRATION: At the Bay of Pigs, Castro's forces routed
the CIA-sponsored invasion.
HOWARD HUNT: Castro was secure, and he was beloved by millions in Cuba
and so it was a different situation than Guatemala.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Applause ]
NARRATION: Castro, triumphant, was eager to take
armed revolution into Latin America.
To combat the Cuban challenge the US established
in its Panama Canal Zone a sophisticated school.
Here, counter insurgency forces from all over
the sub continent were trained.
[gunfire]
NARRATION: By the early 1960s left-wing revolutionary groups
were fighting the authorities in Guatemala, Venezuela,
Colombia, Peru and the Dominican Republic.
ARCHIVE - NARRATION: Marines are ordered into the revolt-torn small island
country by President Johnson.
Five hundred leathernecks are put ashore by helicopter.
NARRATION: In 1965, US marines went in to crush the Dominicans,
who were trying to restore their elected President.
The American nation, cannot, must not,
and will not permit the establishment of another
communist government in the Western hemisphere.
[speaking Russian ]
The Soviet Union, especially after Brezhnev
came to power in 1964,
adhered to the principle of peaceful co-existence
and détente,
and the relaxation of international tension.
But the Cubans had a theory
which can be described as "let's have a 100 Vietnams".
NARRATION: Che Guevara was behind the call for 100 Vietnams.
In 1965, he went to the Congo and later to the heart of
South America to spread the cause of violent revolution.
By late 1967 US instructors were training
Bolivian troops in guerrilla warfare.
They set a trap for Che Guevara.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
On more than one occasion he said,
"Our last battle is approaching.
We have to prepare for it, and we must be very careful
not to be taken prisoner - especially the Cubans."
NARRATION: Che Guevara was captured alive.
Hours later, he was shot dead.
NARRATION: Five of Guevara's group escaped to the Bolivian capital, La Paz.
DARIEL ALARCON: [speaking Spanish]
When we arrived in La Paz we managed to make contact
with Salvador Allende in Chile.
He gave us every kind of help.
He mobilized his whole party in order to rescue us.
NARRATION: Chile had been calm in the 1960s.
Washington's Alliance for Progress program
spent millions of dollars backing Chile's
Christian Democrat Government.
But in 1970 a coalition of the left
and the centre sought electoral victory.
Unidad Popular was led by a doctor,
freemason and Marxist bon vivant,
Senator Salvador Allende.
Allende was, er, depicted and.Hand.Hand
identified with the socialist-communist parties,
the Left, er, in the midst of the Cold War,
and he represented of course socialism and Marxism.
NARRATION: Worried that a Marxist would come to power in
legitimate elections, US business made its move.
I directed that an approach be made
to both the State Department and Mr. Kissinger's office
to tell them that we have grave concern
over the outlook for ITT's investment,
and we were desirous of discussing our thoughts
in Washington
and willing to assist financially in any Government plan
to help protect private American investment in Chile.
NARRATION: The CIA was not far behind.
General Rene Schneider,
the popular army commander who defended
Allende's constitutional rights,
had to be removed from his post.
[speaking English]
NARRATION: The CIA money dispatched to oust General Schneider
wasn't needed -
other plotters assassinated him.
The murder shocked the nation.
Moderate politicians rallied to Allende,
and consolidated his election victory.
In the shanty towns of Chile there were high hopes as the
newly elected President set out on reform -
without, he hoped, outside interference.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
NARRATION: Allende's first big step, supported by all Chilean
political parties,
was the nationalization of copper,
Chile's biggest industry,
still under effective US control.
HORTENSIA ALLENDE: [speaking Spanish]
When Salvador Allende nationalized copper,
it wasn't an arbitrary measure.
He did it to obtain the resources to alleviate
the great poverty in our country.
NARRATION: Allende pressed on with what he called his
"Social Revolution".
School children were given a daily glass of milk.
The middle classes were on edge.
The fear was basically what would happen to people,
to the families, er, to the property to your farms.
[ Chanting ]
NARRATION: In the Chilean countryside, peasants,
chanting pro-Cuban slogans, began seizing the land.
ARTURO ALESSANDRI: What happened afterwards confirmed the fears,
because the Government, on the one hand,
started to expropriate land, started to expropriate industry.
NARRATION: Chile's economy was increasingly put
under state control.
This upset foreign financiers
and the World Bank in Washington,
which out off credits.
Chile of course is interested in obtaining
loans from international organizations
where we have a vote
and I indicated that wherever we had a vote-
where Chile was involved-
that unless there were strong considerations
on the other side that we would vote against them.
NARRATION: In November 1971 ,
Fidel Castro arrived to support Allende's policy of change,
through the ballot box.
FIDEL CASTRO: [speaking Spanish]
We fully supported his policy.
We trained people for his personal security.
We were experienced in this
because we had had to defend ourselves against those
who had wanted to destroy us.
We told him about this because we thought he had enemies,
who might try to take his life.
NARRATION: The dangers didn't just come from the Right.
Castro's Cuban policy of armed revolution found favor
with Chile's extreme Left,
who were hostile to Allende's methods.
But most Chileans ignored the call to armed struggle.
As inflation mounted, the Right attacked economically.
CIA money helped pay for Chilean
truck owners to bring the country to a standstill.
At the UN, Allende accused ITT
of trying to provoke a civil war.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
NARRATION: Moscow was the next stop.
There Allende sought the money he needed
to stave off bankruptcy.
But the Russians, already spending a fortune
to support Cuba, were unimpressed.
NIKOLAI LEONOV: [speaking Russian ]
We had come to a conclusion.
This regime would soon be toppled,
because they were trying through very democratic means -
without the use of arms,
to break the resistance of stronger opposition forces.
NARRATION: Santiago, Chile's capital.
June 1973.
With the Government's popularity actually increasing,
some frustrated right-wing military officers
took to the streets in an attempted coup.
As the world's press recorded the failed takeover,
Swedish cameraman Leonardo Hendricksen,
his camera still running, was gunned down and killed.
[ Projector sound abruptly stops ]
Allende responded by placing greater reliance
on the military.
General Augusto Pinochet was appointed
as his loyal chief of the army.
Once again the truck owners paralyzed the world's longest
and thinnest country.
Shops closed for lack of goods.
Hunger stalked the streets.
[pots & pans being hit]
Middle-class housewives came out to bang their
pots and pans in protest.
The violent Right laid their plots.
Certainly the situation was getting more and more ominous
and then we did have the possibility
of learning something about it.
Not because we were in touch with the plotters -
we were not.
[ Manes ]
NARRATION: Just after midday on Tuesday 11th September,
under orders from General Pinochet,
British-made Hunter jets swooped over the Moneda
presidential palace starting fires which
were to burn for weeks.
NATHANIEL DAVIS: My wife and our children were at the house
and they had a marvelous view of the,
er, of these planes, er, winging over and then dipping
down and sending their bombs in to the Moneda.
[explosions]
NARRATION: That morning from the Moneda,
Allende had broadcast to the nation.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
NARRATION: Hours later, Allende was dead.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
He always said that he wouldn't be taken alive -
that he would die defending the Constitution.
He kept his word.
NARRATION: General Pinochet,
immediately stamped his mark on the country.
In the capital,
suspects were rounded up into the National Stadium.
Many, like folk singer Victor Jara,
were never seen alive again.
I know that he behaved with great moral courage.
I know that he was a sort of a source of strength
to his fellow prisoners.
I know that he sang there.
I know that they beat him down.
I know that they broke his hands and his wrists.
And I know that after two days, they killed him off.
[speaking English]
NARRATION: When he entered the White House in January 1977,
Jimmy Carter promised a new US attitude
to the rest of the world.
I announced that human rights would be a cornerstone
or foundation of our entire foreign policy.
So I officially designated every US ambassador
on earth to be my personal human rights representative.
NARRATION: In Nicaragua, US ambassadors were used to a different role.
In the 1930s, US marines had put the tyrant
Tacho Somoza in power.
More than forty years later,
Nicaragua was still ruled by a Somoza.
NARRATION: A politically moderate newspaper owner,
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro,
dared to challenge the dictatorship.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
So what happened to this person who wanted freedom?
Well, they murdered him.
Who murdered him?
The Somoza forces.
[ Sirens ]
NARRATION: Chamorro's murder electrified the cowed people of Nicaragua.
[ Shouts ]
NARRATION: Somoza declared a state of siege.
The US woke up to popular anger against the super-rich
family which had been its ally for more than four decades.
I have been fighting the east west ideological war
since the inception of Fidel Castro
so we've been under the attack of
that Cuban Government for almost eighteen years.
NARRATION: From the hills where they had been
secretly training for years, guerrillas emerged
who proudly bore the name of the 1930s
anti-Yankee rebel, 'Sandino'.
[ Gunfire/aircraft ]
NARRATION: But in the town of Esteli, Somoza's World War ll
US tanks carried the day.
Two thousand people died, in what became a dead city.
The Sandinistas regrouped, pitting their rifles
against Somoza's might.
DANIEL ORTEGA: [speaking Spanish]
The front now entered the cities
and knocked on the door of the capital
for the first time in its history.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
NARRATION: The Sandinistas' will to win triumphed;
Managua went mad with joy.
Jimmy Carter had left it very late before
abandoning the Somozas
and accepting the new Sandinista Government.
DANIEL ORTEGA: [speaking Spanish]
I said to Carter the United States had to make good
the historical damage they had inflicted on our country.
Our party hymn still includes the words, "Yankee -
the enemy of humanity".
We said to him that the only way to
abolish that line would be for the attitude
of the imperialist powers to change throughout the world.
NARRATION: The US would not be lectured to.
The tide of conservatism,
which was to bring Ronald Reagan to power,
was rising.
In Nicaragua, Somoza's land was shared out
and the family's business monopolies were taken over.
Education and health care became widely available.
But not everyone was happy with the revolution.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
All those who didn't agree
with the Sandinista policies
were subjected to confiscations and imprisonment.
Their lives were threatened.
Many were murdered just for disagreeing with the
Sandinista Front.
This sort of thing turned many Nicaraguan
peasants against the Sandinistas.
NARRATION: In the shadows, opponents of the revolution
plotted their revenge.
In experienced Sandinista guerrillas struggled
to run a war-torn country.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
What we asked for was weapons
so that we could defend ourselves-
that's what we asked of the Soviet Union,
of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe,
of the Algerians, of the Vietnamese.
[speaking Russian ]
We sent light weapons, helicopters,
armored cars
and other military equipment.
There wasn't a large Soviet military presence
but they did have Cuban advisers.
NARRATION: Throughout Central America protest mounted against
right-wing military rule.
In El Salvador the Catholic Church had become
a haven for the oppressed.
[gunfire]
NARRATION: On the concrete steps of the cathedral in San Salvador
the military decreed that demonstrators
for human rights should be discouraged -
nothing very new for El Salvador.
In a massacre in 1932,
the military had killed up to 40,000 people.
In 1979, the cameras were
on hand to record the color of the blood.
Archbishop Oscar Romero was the cautious leader
of Salvadorian Catholics.
When he spoke out, the reaction from the Right was immediate.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
During the last months, the letterbox at the seminary
where he had his office was full of anonymous letters
practically every day,
with death squad emblems oh them.
There was one death squad called The White Hand.
There were many letters written on
black paper with a white hand saying:
"We're going to kill you. We're going to tear you apart".
[ Speaking Spanish ]
NARRATION: In March 1980, as he was saying mass in private chapel,
the Archbishop was murdered by a single assassin's bullet.
At his funeral the military struck again.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
I only remember a bomb exploding,
and then many shots being fired,
and people running in all directions.
It was a disaster:
people running, knocking each other down,
being hit by bullets.
Many, many people were killed.
[ Shouts ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
The fact that they had murdered
the Archbishop of San Salvador,
who was the highest Church representative,
and that they had no qualms about killing him,
made us all feel practically defenseless.
We said "Either we take the struggle into the
open to the mountains,
or they will kill us all here in the city."
NARRATION: On December 3rd 1980, three US nuns and a woman lay-worker
started the long drive into town from
San Salvador's international airport.
On the way they were raped and killed.
Their corpses were discovered in a shallow grave.
The killings, by El Salvador's National Guard,
prompted President Carter to withdraw aid to the
Salvadorian military.
But within six weeks Carter had resumed
funding an army whose atrocities continued.
[ Speaking American Spanish ]
Everything consisted of beatings, electric shocks
and rape, and in keeping me naked.
As soon as I was taken to the headquarters I was undressed.
My hands and legs were handcuffed.
I was blindfolded so that I could not see the
faces of my interrogators.
NARRATION: In town, those suspected of being sympathetic to the
guerrillas were easy prey for government forces.
At night, bodies were dumped on waste ground
or left on city streets.
Like the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua,
the Salvadorian guerrillas wouldn't give up.
The war damage was immense.
In the United States, the new Reagan administration
blamed Cuba and Moscow.
GENERAL ALEXANDER HAIG: What we're watching is a four-phased operation.
Phase one has been completed - the seizure of Nicaragua.
Next is El Salvador,
to be followed by Honduras and Guatemala -
it's clear and explicit.
OTHER: "There is a Caribbean domino theory that's unfolding?"
Of course.
I wouldn't call it necessarily a domino theory.
I would call it a priority target list -
a hit list if you will -
for the ultimate takeover of Central America.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Look, if a Soviet-Cuban master plan actually existed
we would have won the Cold War.
[ Laughs 1
If there had been a master plan.
But unfortunately there was no such plan, quite the opposite.
Cuba's actions conflicted with Soviet interests at that time.
[military orders]
NARRATION: in El Salvador, US military advisers were hard at work
bolstering the army against the guerrillas.
The Atlacatl Brigade was the crack unit.
In 1981, it went on a search and destroy mission
in the guerrilla-controlled Morazan Province.
At about 5 o'clock in the morning of December 11th,
it would go into action near the village of El Mozote.
Hundreds of civilians were slaughtered.
The US State Department said it could find no evidence
of a massacre.
RUFINA AMAYA: [speaking Spanish]
I saw the women clinging to each other,
crying and screaming at them not to kill them.
I fought for my children.
I didn't want to let them go.
I said I would die with them but they wrenched them from my arms.
We heard them killing the children -
they killed them at night-
you could hear the screams for their mamas and papas.
[ Helicopters]
NARRATION: As the Reagan administration moved to shore up the Right
in El Salvador and bring down the Left in Nicaragua,
neighboring Honduras became a base
for all sorts of US activity.
Honduras was the main place where a force was being
trained to over throw the Government of Nicaragua.
[ Whistle ]
NARRATION: That force was the Contras.
DUANE CLARRIDGE: Some of them were former members of
the National Guard of Nicaragua.
A lot of them were just, you know,
peasants from the mountainous areas between
Honduras and Nicaragua,
who'd been at war with somebody forever,
and in many respects they were like a bunch of cattle rustlers.
NARRATION: The Contras were funded from Washington.
This undeclared war upset the US Congress.
An Amendment by Representative Boland of Massachusetts
curtailed Reagan's funds for arming the Contras.
We are complying with the law -
the Boland Amendment, which is the law.
We are complying with that fully and
WOMAN REPORTER: Does that mean we are not arming
or supplying any of the dissidents along the border
the Honduran border?
I am not going to get in I could not and would not
possibly talk about such things
NARRATION: Washington was planning another small war.
On the Caribbean island of Grenada,
where the British Queen Elizabeth was still
Head of State, a left-wing Government was using Cuban
contractors to build a new tourist airport.
The US suspected a strategic motive.
NARRATION: in October 1983, when left-wing Prime Minister Maurice Bishop
was assassinated by more extreme Marxists,
Washington had an invasion plan ready for Reagan's approval.
ARCHIVE - PRESIDENT REAGAN: At 5:15, this morning the joint
force landed at two spots on Grenada.
There is now firing and combat going on.
There have been casualties.
NARRATION: The United States hadn't bothered to consult the
British Queen, or Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
It was all over in a few days.
JOHN NEGROPONTE: I basically learned about the invasion of Grenada
from the President of Honduras, who called me up to say,
"Do you know what's going on? "
and I said, "Well I have an idea but I don't know for sure".
And he said, "Well you're invading Grenada",
and he said, "Please tell the troops that when they're
finished there to just keep on coming to Nicaragua."
[ Laughs 1
NARRATION: Many welcomed the Americans.
Within six weeks, their work done
and President Reagan's image enhanced,
the US troops left.
In Nicaragua, Reagan's crusade against
the Sandinistas was stepped up.
The Sandinistas desperately needed to get hard currency for
their exports to pay off their bank loans.
So this was a time to put the mines into Corinto-
they've only got one harbor that counts
and at the same time make sure we notified Lioyds of London
the mines have gone in, so hopefully they put pressure
on the shipping companies well to stay out of there.
Well it worked.
NARRATION: Nicaragua's precious stock of oil went up in smoke;
the economy was reeling.
And, all the while, ways had to be found to contain the US -
backed Contra invasion.
The Sandinistas asked the Soviets for help.
The leaders in Moscow did not want to provoke the
United States into giving more military aid
to the Contras and to the Honduran Government.
Therefore these requests were politely denied every time
the Sandinistas brought it up in Moscow.
NARRATION: The Sandinistas, with help from Cuba,
vowed to defend their borders and the Revolution.
The success of communism in Central America poses the threat
that a hundred million people from Panama to the open border
on our south, could come under the control
of pro-Soviet regimes.
NARRATION: Angry at Reagan's continued support for the Contra War,
the US Congress, again led by Representative Boland,
voted in October 1984 to deny them any further assistance.
JOHN NEGROPONTE: With the passage of the Boland Amendments which ultimately
prohibited assistance to the Contras,
there was nothing more we could do than to bide our time.
NARRATION: To help pay for the continuing bloodshed in Nicaragua,
Reagan's men secretly sold arms to Iran.
The American dollar,
and the failures of the armed Left,
crushed Latin American revolutionary dreams.
[ Speaking American Spanish ]
The United States saw a threat to their interests,
because they thought it was a communist struggle.
They didn't see us as citizens who wanted a democratic country
where there was social justice
and which offered opportunities to the majority.
[speaking Russian ]
The Cold War cost Latin America the lives
of hundreds of thousands of people.
In Nicaragua alone,
50,000 died in the Sandinista Revolution
and another 50,000 died in the civil war.
It was atrocious.
There were a lot of deaths, a lot of suffering,
a lot of refugees, a lot of population movements.
On the other hand, I think an equally if not more compelling
case can be made than had we not done something to
stop communist regimes from being established
in the other central American countries,
other than Nicaragua,
say that they had been established in El Salvador
and then in Guatemala
and possibly even Honduras during the 1980s,
if we hadn't taken the steps that we took,
I think the immediate suffering
could have even been considerably greater.
[ Roar of crowds ]
NARRATION: 1990.
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega asks the Nicaraguan people
to vote him President.
Former US President Jimmy Carter was there to see fair play.
Violeta Chamorro, Ortega's opponent,
narrowly won a surprise victory.
Washington spent nearly ten million dollars
backing her campaign.
Subtitles ripped and converted by Juan Claudio Epsteyn
E-mail: epsteyn@hotmail.com