Books, Arts & Manners

With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua, by Christopher Dickey (Simon & Schuster, 327 pp., $18.95)

This story, “the odyssey of the men who love to kill,” begins in 1979, with the Rattlesnake unit of the Guardia Nacional—commanded by a very tough hombre called El Suicida—escaping from Sandinista rebels. We follow the soldiers’ desperate flight from Nicaragua to El Salvador, where we leave them briefly for a discussion of parallel events in the United States. But when we return they are no longer the Guardia; they are the original Contras, “beginning their own war.”

About the Author

Michael Fumento

Michael Fumento is a journalist, author, and attorney who until recently lived in the Philippines.

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With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua, by Christopher Dickey (Simon & Schuster, 327 pp., $18.95)

This story, “the odyssey of the men who love to kill,” begins in 1979, with the Rattlesnake unit of the Guardia Nacional—commanded by a very tough hombre called El Suicida—escaping from Sandinista rebels. We follow the soldiers’ desperate flight from Nicaragua to El Salvador, where we leave them briefly for a discussion of parallel events in the United States. But when we return they are no longer the Guardia; they are the original Contras, “beginning their own war.”