Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz booklaunch

In this long-awaited book, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz vividly recounts on-the-ground memories of the contra war in Nicaragua, chronicling the US-sponsored terror inflicted on the people of Nicaragua following their 1981 election of the Socialist Sandinistas that ousted Reagan darling and vicious dictator Somoza.

Dunbar-Ortiz seamlessly connects the dots not only between the personal and the political, but between recent history and our present moment. Unlike the many commentators who view the September 11, 2001 attacks as the start of the so-called War on Terror, Dunbar-Ortiz offers firsthand testimony on battles waged much earlier. While her rich political analysis of this history bears the mark of a trained historian, her perspective is also that of an intrepid activist who spent months at a time throughout the 1980s in the war-torn country, especially in the remote Mosquitia region where the indigenous Miskitu people were viciously assailed and nearly wiped out by CIA-trained contra mercenaries. This book makes painfully clear the connections between what many US Americans only remember vaguely as the Iran-Contra "affair" and current US aggression in the Americas, the Middle East, and around the world.

Anyone interested in Latin American history, or in better understanding the violent turmoil of our world today should relish this chance to hear Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz speak.