ABSTRACT

"We will win," said the middle-aged woman standing on a street corner in Managua, "and they," she said, shifting her eyes toward a National Guardsman standing across the street, "will lose." The guardsman, Israeli automatic rifle at the ready, was patrolling a barrio (neighborhood) that a few days earlier had been under the control of the Sandinistas and now had been retaken by the National Guard. The modest rows of wood and concrete homes and small stores were pockmarked with bullets. Several had been completely destroyed by the aerial bombardment that preceded the ground attack. Spent 57mm shell casings marked "Made in U.S.A." lay in the gutters—along with discarded U.S. Army combat rations, half-eaten tins of peanut butter and beans and frankfurters. At the next intersection, a pile of corpses still smoldered. As the breeze shifted, people moved to avoid the downwind stench.