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Too Much Global?

• By pairing the global and the local with the national and the personal, we introduce a more perfect union of inquiry into a world caught in the throes of globalization and confronting a loss of communal meaning and values

Nicaragua's American butcher

Special Feature: Won for the Gipper?

The following is an excerpt from a recent interview by Democracy Now, the US-based radio program, in Nicaragua with Fr. Miguel D'Escoto, a Catholic priest in Managua who was the Foreign Minister of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead. And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him. I'm not insensitive to the feelings of many US people mourning President Reagan, but as I pray that God in his infinite mercy and goodness forgives him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not, ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled “freedom and democracy.”

More perhaps than any other US President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the US is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but, in fact, the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples. Reagan was known as the “great communicator” and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent synagogues, I was led to believe really that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.

Of course, as I say this, I'm quite aware that to the people of the Project for a New American Century, that is counted as a big loss. Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the world today is far less safe and secure than it has ever been. Reagan in fact was an international outlaw. He came to the Presidency of the United States shortly after Somoza, a dictator that the US had imposed over Nicaragua for practically half a century, had been deposed by Nicaraguan Nationalists under the leadership of the Sandinista Liberation Front. To Reagan, Nicaragua had to be re-conquered. He blamed Carter for having lost Nicaragua, as if Nicaragua ever belonged to anyone else other than the Nicaraguan people. That was then the beginning of this war that Reagan invented, and mounted and financed and directed: the Contra War. About which he continually lied to the People, helping the United States people to be the most ignorant people around the world. I said ignorant, I don't say not intelligent. But the most ignorant people around the world about what the United States does abroad.

People don't even begin to see; if they did, they would rebel. And so, he lied to the people, as Bush lies to the people today and as they push on, thinking that the United States is above every law, human or divine…. Reagan did damage to Nicaragua beyond the imaginations of the people who are hearing me now. The ripple effects of that criminal murderous intervention in my country will go on for 50 years or more.