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The Death of Ben Linder: The Story of a North American in Sandinista Nicaragua
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The Death of Ben Linder: The Story of a North American in Sandinista Nicaragua
by Joan Kruckewitt, Seven Stories Press, 1999, 395 pp., $24.95 (cloth).
In 1987, Ben Linden a young engineering graduate, skilled unicyclist and amateur circus clown from Oregon, was shot by a roving band of Contras while planning a small hydroelectric dam in Nicaragua's war zone. He thus became one of two North American victims of Ronald Reagan's bloody crusade to stamp out the Sandinista revolution.
In telling Ben Linder's story, Joan Kruckewitt also provides a valuable retrospective on the Nicaraguan revolution, U.S. opposition to it, and the broad international support enjoyed by the Sandinistas. This support was nowhere more clearly manifest than in the thousands of young activists from around the world who spent weeks, months and even years-as in Ben Linder's casedoing everything from picking coffee beans to providing technical advice.
Ben was one of many who saw the Sandinista's hybrid political experiment as a chance to make a real and lasting contribution towards a more just and rational world. While some-derided as "sandalistas" for their footwear and lifestyle-were revolutionary groupies living out a vicarious political fantasy, many, like Ben Linder, acted on the basis of a genuine moral commitment at considerable personal sacrifice.
The book's greatest strength is a measured biographical narrative woven from the threads of numerous letters (many of them Ben's), journals, interviews and testimonials. The portrait that emerges is one of a complex and caring individual, an unlikely hero struggling with his own shortcomings and fears while keeping faith with a daunting personal, political and professional commitment.
The book also does justice to the complexities and contradictions of the revolution itself. We get a clear sense from Ben's own struggle to find a relevant niche in the National Institute of Energy...