The Seeds of Fiction

by Bernard Diederich

  I often wondered what the Sandinistas thought of the recording on my tape of Graham’s expounding his theory on why high-rise apartment buildings for the poor breed crime, which I had recorded during a drive in Panama City. We had spied several high-rise buildings that had replaced the old tin-and-wood dwellings of the poor and recorded his views on the topic. I also wondered whether Borge thought we were spying for Omar. It was no secret that Torrijos had his own intelligence-gathering methods in Central America and that he was known to prefer that his agents used tape-recorders in place of long-winded typed reports, the authenticity of which were not always verifiable. Borge left us, and we set out on a sightseeing tour of war-torn Nicaragua. During the testy morning only Graham was happy. His room had a clear view of the Momotombo volcano across Lake Managua.

  I drove Graham around and pointed out areas of combat in the countryside during the rebellion against Somoza. Graham was interested, but Chuchu, who accompanied us, was obviously still fretting over letting Tomás Borge down. We motored on to Masaya and then to Monimbó, where in October 1977 the flames of revolution and popular insurrection against the Somozas had been further ignited by Indians living in the poor neglected barrio. Those places all brought back memories of mangled corpses and shallow graves. The damage inflicted by the war was still evident.

  I reflected on how miraculous it was that more journalists were not killed during the war. ABC News television correspondent Bill Stewart was one of the unlucky ones. He had been forced to lie down and had been executed in the middle of a public street in Managua by a Somoza National Guardsman. His gutsy crew had managed to film the cold-blooded killing, which was broadcast across the United States and brought home to the American people the ruthlessness of Somoza’s troops. President Carter called the killing of the newsman ‘an act of barbarism that all civilized people condemn’. Those few minutes of videotape helped seal Somoza’s fate.

  In the beautiful town of Granada, the one-time capital of Nicaragua and the site of American mercenary William Walker’s brief presidency (1856—7), Chuchu completely lost his cool. Unlike many Nicaraguan cities Granada had witnessed hardly any fighting during the Sandinista revolution. Chuchu picked an argument with the local correspondent of La Prensa. The newspaper was anti-Sandinista, and Chuchu cursed the reporter for his politics and working for such a ‘load of shit as La Prensa’.

  It was easy to lose your good humour, Chuchu later complained, because ‘assassin and rapist counter-revolutionaries were becoming more and more bold’. Only a week earlier, he noted, the counter-revolutionaries had crossed the Honduras border to strike at a Sandinista army post in Nicaragua’s north. He worried that thousands of Somoza National Guardsmen who had fled into exile in Honduras would become counter-revolutionaries.

  Graham was sympathetic, saying it was frightful to think of more fighting. Chuchu said the Sandinista leadership had no illusions that if then Governor Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate for the presidency, won the November election that year they would be in deep trouble. The Sandinistas had read the Republican platform, which described them as Marxist and deplored their takeover of Nicaragua, accusing them of attempting to destabilize El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

  ‘The old Indochina domino theory,’ Graham observed.

  Storm clouds were gathering, Chuchu went on, quoting Fidel Castro as charging that the Republican Party platform ‘threatens again to apply the big stick to Latin America’.

  The following day Graham and I were left alone. We paid a visit to our priest friend, Ernesto Cardenal, the new Minister of Culture who was full of plans. Culture, he said, had been neglected under the dictatorship. His government ministry was located in Tacho II Somoza’s Spanish-style former home, El Retiro. We visited the city of León and the tomb, in the ancient Catholic cathedral, of Rubén Darío, the modernist Nicaraguan poet who brought recognition to his country at the beginning of the century by promoting Latin Americanism and wresting the Spanish language from its academic subservience to Spain. Dario had also warned against the ‘terrible rifleman’ Teddy Roosevelt who then symbolized to Latin Americans the dangers threatened by the ‘Colossus of the North’. On a more contemporary note, the local Sandinistas in León showed off their ingenious arms caches that had been used during the war — false walls, floors and underground rooms.

  Following our return to Managua Graham and I had accompanied Maríneza Isabel home so she could freshen up. She was no longer living with Ramiro. Left in the living-room with a Mickey Mouse cartoon blaring on the television, I moved across the room to lower the volume. There slumped in an easy chair, half hidden and hypnotized by the antics of capitalist America’s most famous rodent, was a Sandinista officer. He offered Graham and me only a grunt of recognition and remained glued to the Spanish-speaking Mickey.

  ‘One must get terribly bored in the mountains year after year,’ Graham shouted to me. We broke into a fit of laughter. Mickey Mouse even robbed the beautiful Maríneza Isabel of a goodbye wave from her new beau.

  That night, at Los Ranchos restaurant, Graham concluded we were surrounded by counter-revolutionaries, and he did not enjoy his meal featuring typical Nicaraguan dishes. I told Graham the bourgeois types in the restaurant could have well been anti-Somoza and even pro-Sandinista, such were the complexities of this revolution. Many Nicaraguans in the business sector had contributed to the overthrow of Somoza. Graham still felt they were too well dressed for our restaurant setting and that they eyed us suspiciously. He pronounced it enemy territory and was happy only when we left.

  Whether it was the stress of her new job in the Interior Ministry or the distraction of the Mickey Mouse fan, Maríneza Isabel, as helpful as she tried to be, made a logistical mess of Graham’s and Chuchu’s departure. She booked a reservation for them on a non-existent flight. I flew back to Mexico while Graham and Chuchu suffered more delays. Graham told me as we parted that it was time for him to go home; he was missing Yvonne and was anxious about his own ‘war’ with her daughter’s former husband.

  Graham later recounted that when Omar asked him his opinion of Borge, Graham said he had been sceptical of the man at first but gradually came to appreciate him. Omar had agreed. ‘For the first few minutes you dislike him.’ For all his personality faults Borge was a fine poet. Daniel Ortega, dour and distant, also a poet, likewise grew on Graham. On the other hand, Ortega’s companion, the poet Rosario Murillo, was an instant hit. This handsome, vivacious woman, a grand-niece of Sandino, had once worked for La Prensa publisher Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and spoke excellent English. She had attended secondary school in England and finishing school in Switzerland and was an immediate favourite of Graham’s when they first met in Costa Rica. In the new government she was Vice-Minister of Culture.

  The following month, in Asunción, Paraguay — where he was living in exile with his mistress — Tacho II was killed when his white Mercedes was blown apart by a rocket-propelled grenade in an ambush by an Argentine guerrilla group. Argentine army specialists skilled in the art of clandestine operations were already moving into Honduras to shape the ragged bands of anti-Somoza border raiders into a fighting force. The Argentines eventually worked with the CIA in launching the not-so-secret war to overthrow the Sandinistas. With Ronald Reagan now occupying the White House, Ortega and the Sandinistas were indeed in deep trouble, as Chuchu had predicted. Tacho II Somoza was buried in Miami, Florida.

  When I returned to Managua several weeks later I learned from the Foreign Minister, Father Miguel D’Escoto (a Roman Catholic priest), that he had been expecting Graham and me for dinner and had assembled the rest of the governing junta. No one had advised us, not even our friend Borge. We had unintentionally stood up the Reverend Father of the Maryknoll Order and the junta. So much for communications within the Sandinista leadership.

  Around that time I received encouraging news from Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico City. I passed the news on to Graham in Antibes: the guerrillas were ready to release Amb
assador Dunn. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the Ambassador’s friends in South Africa, the United States, Chile (where he had also served) and El Salvador had quietly been collecting ransom money. They were equally ignorant of Graham’s efforts to save Dunn. By mid-September they had collected more than $1 million and the money was transferred to the US Embassy in San Salvador for safekeeping. By early October the guerrillas were demanding that the money be handed over. The negotiators first wanted proof that Dunn was alive.

  But less than two months after Graham’s meeting in Panama with Marcial the FMLN announced to the media on Thursday 9 October 1980 that a final deadline had expired and that they had executed Ambassador Dunn for non-compliance with their demands. ‘The Salvadorean government, the racist government of South Africa and the Dunn family are responsible for the justifiable execution of the criminal ambassador Dunn,’ the guerrillas declared. They presented no proof that Dunn had in fact been executed. However, it was later confirmed that Dunn had cheated his captors. The FMLN had actually been prepared to accede to Graham’s plea and to collect the ransom money, but the Ambassador had deprived them of the deal by dying and leaving them to dig his grave.

  ‘I have got nothing further to write you about poor Mr Dunn. I wish you could write a piece about the forgotten hostage, quoting from that abominable article in Granma,’ Graham wrote in a letter dated 5 January 1981. ‘You’ll be amused to hear that the Red Brigade [West Germány’s terrorist group] were on the telephone to me the other day but I refused to play. [Graham did not elaborate.] Don’t mention this in TimeV The late Ambassador Dunn would not turn out to be a character in Graham’s unwritten novel. The Dunns of the world, caught up in human tragedy, already peopled his books.

  My dateline had shifted back and forth between Nicaragua and El Salvador. The year 1980 had been a particularly bloody one for the Catholic Church in Central America. It had begun with the assassination in San Salvador of Monsignor Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, a saintly man whom I had interviewed a number of times. He had been shot dead as he said Mass on 24 March, during the consecration of the Eucharist. More were to die at the archbishop’s funeral service when a noise bomb exploded and the crowd panicked. The year was to end with the torture, rape and killing of three American nuns and a female lay worker in El Salavador by members of the government security forces.

  The following year, in the summer of 1981, Time decided to reopen its Miami/ Caribbean bureau. I was transferred with my family from Mexico City to Miami, from where I continued to cover Central America.

  The move shocked Graham. ‘Your letter was a complete surprise! I never expected to find you living in Miami but of course I understand very well the reasons,’ he wrote in a letter dated 9 June 1981. In early April Graham had gone to Jerusalem, where he received the $2,000 ‘Jerusalem Prize’ award from Mayor Teddy Kollek.

  ‘I have just finished reading the proofs of your Somoza,’ Graham added and went on to critique my new book on Nicaragua. His critical response was another rare reflection of his personal literary standards and acumen.

  I know you want me to be frank and I shall be frank. I think it is an excellent book of research which will be invaluable to future historians. I found that you went into too great detail and there were too many quotations from speeches etc., which were repeated over and over again. You wanted to cover every moment on the ground. I felt you should have got up in a mountainside and looked down and seen the main points before writing. My fear is that only people like myself who have a particular interest in Central America will appreciate the work you have done. The last chapters were excellent because you were dealing with actions and not words. If I was your editor I would advise you to cut out the notes. Notes in a book of this kind are only useful if they really cover all references, which you don’t, or add something to what has been written in the text. Over and over again I looked for the source of a story and found it was not there, although many more trivial points were attributed to some newspaperman or other. I would be bold and eliminate the notes. A little point on p. 223. You say that Somoza threw an evening cocktail party for 40 foreign correspondents and make a point that he served a 34-dollar bottle of Russian vodka. The bottle wouldn’t have gone very far among 40 people! Somewhere else I think you emphasized the point that Somoza tossed down his vodka neat but that is the usual way of drinking it. Oh yes, that’s on p. 235. I would have been horrified if he had mixed it with orange juice or some awful concoction.

  Please don’t be discouraged by my criticisms. The book is of value, but I’m afraid it will be very heavy reading for the ordinary public. You have been too anxious I think to put in all the information which you have gathered without thinking of it as a book which must have a shape and appeal to a reader who is not necessarily deeply interested in the subject.

  P.S. I don’t know what my summer plans are yet. My Spanish priest [friend] is having an operation on his throat and we may not be able to go off on our usual tour before August. I have only heard one word in recent months from Chuchu and I don’t really expect to be invited for the fifth time to Panama! If I am I will try and fit it in. Otherwise I must find some other escape route. PPS. If your publisher want a quote which is an honest quote I suggest: ‘Bernard Diederich with his books on Somoza proves himself an indispensable historian for Central America.’

  Graham’s editorial suggestions were of immeasurable value. He was correct. Published in the United States by E.P. Dutton, my book was the first of many to appear on Nicaragua after the fall of the Somoza dynasty. It did well, even in the United Kingdom.

  21 | THE GENERAL IS DEAD!

  A macho gambles with destiny, ready to win or lose. He gambles with death, he gambles with God. A burning love affair is a victory over Destiny; a revolution, a victory over death; sin a victory over God. When the three come together, man has accomplished his fulfilment.

  Julius Rivera, Latin America: A Sociocultural Interpretation

  A cable from Graham arrived on Saturday 1 August 1981 at our new home in Miami. He hoped I would be joining him for yet another trip to Panama. ‘I don’t think I’ll go this time,’ I told my wife Ginette. Call it a premonition, but I had strange, unsettling feeling that something disastrous was about to happen. My thoughts were that Chuchu’s little plane might not make it through the rainy season, and I didn’t want to be in it when it went crashing down into the Panamanian jungle. I was about to call Chuchu in Panama and advise him of my decision not to travel to Panama to join Graham, who was due to arrive in Panama City on 6 August, when the phone rang. It was one of my colleagues at the Miami Herald asking whether I had any information about what was happening in Panama. According to a brief news agency bulletin out of Panama City General Torrijos was missing.

  There were no details. I called Chuchu. ‘Chuchu is not here.’ His Italian wife sounded as if she was crying. ‘He believes something terrible has happened to the General … He thinks there has been an attempted coup.’

  It was the same with all my other sources in Panama. All that was known was that the General was missing. There was nothing to do but wait. My thoughts went back to our 1972 helicopter ride, when were lost in a rainstorm and Omar had told me, his eyes merry with laughter, that he could get us out of the jungle if we went down because he had graduated from the US Army’s jungle survival course.

  Panama’s terrain is no joke. Its formidable rainforests, steep mountains, tidal mud flats, mangrove swamps and rolling savannah blanketed with towering elephant grass are quite capable of hiding secrets. The General was famous for changing his flight plan in mid-flight. This might have been good for his personal security, but it also made it difficult for his headquarters to keep track of his whereabouts. No one ever seemed to know where he was at any given time. Travelling with Omar, one never knew one’s real destination.

  It was a Saturday filled with anxiety. News out of Panama was a long time in coming. Even its National Guard seemed unsure of where the General was headed or w
hat had happened. Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, the secretary-general of the National Guard, later claimed that he had been informed by intelligence chief Noriega at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning, more than eighteen hours after the General was first reported missing.

  ‘My father had trouble with a crown on one of his teeth,’ Carmen Alicia, Torrijos’s eldest daughter, recalled. She was the last member of the family to have seen Omar alive. ‘He had insisted on driving over from Farallon to our dental clinic that Friday [31 July], even though we were little better than a rural clinic. This was his third trip to our clinic in Penonomé in seven days. He was challenging us to fix his tooth, even though I told him he should go to the dentist in Panama City who had made the crown in the first place.’

  Carmen Alicia was doing her odontology studies social service work at the time in Penonomé in the province of Coclé, a 25-minute drive from Farallon and some sixty miles from Panama City.

  Following his dental work that Friday morning Omar invited his daughter to accompany him. A plane was waiting at a nearby airstrip. ‘I told him, “No, Papi, I have my work to do,”‘ Carmen Alicia told me. She said she had earlier admonished her father, saying he shouldn’t go around disrupting the country’s health services. Not long before, the General had taken the entire medical staff from a Chiriquí clinic with him to see at first hand the conditions in a rural area. ‘I told him such things were disruptive to our work. He understood, but that was how he was, he often made decisions on the spur of the moment. When he left for his plane he told me, “I’ll see you in Farallon in the afternoon when you have finished your work.” Those were, for me, his last words. The weather was fine at Penonomé when he left,’ she recounted. ‘When we had finished working we went to Farallon and waited and waited. When my father didn’t show up we thought he had stood us up. He had a habit of changing his destination even when we flew with him. “Didn’t you see we changed course and crossed the canal? You must always keep your wits about you,” he instructed us.’