“Keystone” War in Central America

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 74, 18 June 1927, Page 17

“Keystone” War in Central America

What 1 car is like in the "banana belt is told in the following interesting dispatch from Carroll Binder. It was prepared after the writer had seen some of the Nicaraguan fighting and had investigated conditions in that troubled country.

HLD-TIMERS in the tropics rub their eyes in astonishment when they open the papers from the States and note the publicity given the fervid ef-

forts at mutual extermination now being indulged in by the Ins and Outs in Nicaragua. For war and revolution are mere routine in the banana belt. Little Nicaragua, among others, has been revolting with unrelieved constancy for more than a century. The notoriety achieved by the Sacasa-Diaz war is in part due to resort to a weapon hitherto unused by Central American warriors—the radio. Voluminous statements to the outside Wor ld—the Diaz ones couched in such excellent English that their author flight have been writing in his native tongue—give the struggle and impressiveness hitherto unachieved by Cental American Guelphs and Ghibellines. Has Share of Blood I* 1 other respects, however, war in Nicaragua qualifies for General Sherman's category quite as readily as do ® tr uggles taking in whole continents boasting ancient civilisation. Smaller ln scale and without the gas masks, morale officers, Y.M.C.A. canteens and other features of “civilised” warfare, the Nicaraguan war manages to generate its share of blood and tears. But the blood and tears are more unevenly divided in Nicaragua than 111 most modern wars. There is no middle class in Nicaragua—just aristocracy and professional classes at the top and propertyless illiterate mozos ut the bottom with a few skilled and B emi-skilled workmen in between who are too few to affect the balance. 1’ rom the top come the innumerable Kenerals and colonels—most of them innocent as a babe of everything miliai*y from "squad right” to barrages, ®ut formidable at a table where champagne corks are popping. Those tables well to the rear—groan as the ferocious generals drink toasts to the ictory which they assure you their mozo troops will wiu shortly.

Fighting is the task of the hapless mozos—barefooted, sombreroed peasants who seldom have any idea what it is all about.

Recruiting in Nicaragua smacks of the old-time sailor’s press gang. Bands of strong-arm boys well equipped with guns and bayonets rove about the countryside searching for victims. They tend to steer clear of men prosperous enough to wear shoes and coats. It is the barefooted mozo, dressed in tattered shirt and trousers, who is pounced upon and marched away to combat duty. The penitentiary is one of the best recruiting grounds for machete fodder in Nicaragua. •There is not much ceremony connected with induction into a Nicaraguan army. Juan Frijole gets just two items of equipment from his chief — a blue and white ribbon if he is a Government conscript, and a red and write ribbon if he is a liberal conscript, and a gun. Juan is more afraid of the gun than he is of the plague, and his officers do little to break down his fear by instructing him in its use. If Juan is permitted to retain his machete he feels that he has an even break —probably the fellow on the other side knows as little about the gun as he does. If Juan can get hold of a red and white ribbon for emergency use in case hi#mvn blues seem

to he getting the worse of the combat, he counts himself fortunate. Buzzards Get Dead Particularly when one is wounded is such alternate ribbon of service. Neither faction troubles to send stretcher-bearers along with its combat groups. The dead warriors are cared for by the omnipresent buzzards and the seriously wounded are left to difc in the sun if they escape the machetes of the victorious host. Government troops are supposed to receive 25 cents a day, but the money seldom filters down through the disbursing officers to the fighting men. Inasmuch as there is no commissary the soldiers are obliged to collect their food from the countryside. The writer found them swapping cartridges for food —cartridges which promptly found their way to the troops of the other side. Military science has never been heard of by most Nicaraguans. The colonels, who make up most of the shoe-wearing personnel of the army which lias not been sufficiently strong politically to qualify as generals, think a barrage is Something to keep your automobile in—if you have an automobile. As for strategy in a battle —the liberal forces on the west coast have done fairly well at ambushing the conservative troops sent out to capture them, and there the strategy ends. Do Decisive Battles The rest of the warfare is a series of clashes between two poorly led mobs of several hundred men each, hacking away at one another until one side runs. It is a great deal more ferocious but not a whit more decisive than the battle of words staged in the American press. When it is all over the mozos will go back to their little straw shelters, their jobs in the coffee fields and mahogany logging operations to produce the wealth which can be taxed for payment of the 5,000,000 dollars’ worth of war claims saddled on the Nicaraguan Government by the civil war. And there will be nothing left to pay for schools for the children of Juan Frijole and his comrades, or for doctors to free Juan of the tropical diseases which wreck his body, or anything that will make life better for his children than it is for Juan or was for his great grandfather.