The
World Stopped Watching
by Peter
Raymont, Director
White Pine Pictures, 2003
Video, 52 mins., col.
Sales:
$390; rental, $75
Distributed by First Run/Icarus Films
Distributors website: http://www.frif.com
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University, USA
mosher@svsu.edu
As the United States' bloody occupation
of Iraq continues, and Americans get little
but the imbedded press reports that consist
of what the U.S. military wishes reported,
it is a good time to reflect on media
representations of the war two decades
ago in Nicaragua. "The World Is Watching"
was Peter Raymont's 1988 documentary of
press coverage of Nicaragua during that
turmoil. "The World Stopped Watching"
is its sequel, and asks where all the
global media attention to this small country
went. That question is investigated by
several seasoned journalists including
Bill Gentile, photographer for Newsweek
magazine; Gilles Paquin of La Presse,
Montreal; and Ry Ryman, columnist for
the Boston Globe who died in 2003
before the film was completed. All covered
Nicaragua at time of the Sandinista revolution
of 1979 that overthrew dictator Anastasio
Somoza, and the ensuing Contra war for
the next five years. Thirty to thirty-five
thousand Nicaraguans died in this struggle.
In 1990 the Sandinistas lost the election,
and there have been three elected governments
since the Sandinistas, rolling back many
of their gains. One former President,
the rotund Arnoldo Aleman, supporter of
the former dictator Antonio Somoza (and
obliterator of the many murals painted
by international volunteers in the Sandinista
era) voted himself a salary greater than
that of the President of the United States.
He was indicted in 2003 for looting $10
million from national treasury. Gentile
and Ryman's request for an interview is
stopped at the gates of his ranch, but
we hear from both Mrs. Aleman and Judge
Judith Mendoza, a gun-carrying former
Sandinista official who will be hearing
Aleman's case.
There is a meeting with the elderly survivor
of a Contra massacre whom Gentile photographed
immediately afterwards. Other journalists
speak, including Edith Caron of the Paris
paper Liberation and Carlos Chamorro,
Nicaraguan television reporter whose father
was a newspaper publisher killed on Somoza's
orders. We hear from Alejandro Bendama,
former Sandinista foreign affairs secretary,
much quoted in the American press during
the Contra war, and from the top Sandinista
party official, former President Daniel
Ortega.
Eleven of ninety-three members of the
Assembly are former Contras, including
the former commandant "Jimmy Leo" Altimirano.
Though his talk of reconciliation seems
hollow, it is when we meet former Sandinista
revolutionary commander Julio Ochoa of
the Simon Bolivar Brigade that we realize
a reconciliation or "convergence" is actually
occurring in Nicaragua. Ochoa's neighbors
and drinking buddies are former Contras.
As these rural countrymen jokingly brandish
their guns, there are apparently no hard
feelings. One Contra sports a Daniel Ortega
t-shirt, perhaps handed out free to him
during a Presidential campaign.
The journalists struggle to reconcile
the great revolutionary optimism they
found in 1979, and the peoples' resolve
in the face of U.S.-backed Contra attackers
in the early 1980s, with what they find
today. Gilles Paquin uses Managua's vast
garbage dump as a metaphor for the society.
Within sight of the National Assembly
people barely survive by rummaging for
scraps of food or pieces of metal to recycle.
Gentile is at odds with today's ethic
of jingoistic and feel-good news, for
he believes that journalists "have to
set the agenda, not pander to the lowest
common denominator". Their failure to
do so doesn't surprise Daniel Ortega,
who comments, "The media are part of the
American empire. If they have to choose
between justice and empire, they will
choose empire."