This journey through the Central American wars of the 1980s is seen through the eyes of a young American who worked on both sides of insurgency in the region: in El Salvador he supported efforts to defeat insurgents; with Nicaraguans he worked to keep an insurgency alive. Bill Meara started out as a teacher at a Catholic school in Guatemala, but went on to become one of the fifty-five U.S. military advisors assisting the Salvadorans in their fight against communism. By the end of the decade, he was in the U.S. Foreign Service working as a liaison officer to the Nicaraguan contras. One of very few Americans to see both sides up close, he takes readers into his world as an advisor struggling with cultural differences and human rights violations while trying to stay alive in murderous El Salvador. We join him on dangerous helicopter rides into contra base camps on the Honduran-Nicaraguan border and into a U.S. Embassy under attack. From Special Forces school at Ft. Bragg to Joan Baez's back-stage party in Managua to a contra POW camp deep in the jungle, we get a taste of Meara's world up close. But this book is more than a collection of war stories. Meara explores the difficult moral, philosophical, and ideological issues of the Central American wars. Meara's experiences with insurgency and counterinsurgency allow him to provide critically important insights on why the United States has such difficulty dealing with ragtag armies of third-world rebels.
About the Author: THE SON OF A NEW YORK CITY POLICEMAN, William R. Meara studied international affairs and economics at Manhattan College. While a student, he worked as a volunteer English teacher at a Catholic mission school in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. As an army officer, he graduated from Ft. Bragg's Special Forces and Foreign Area Officer courses and served in Honduras, El Salvador, and Panama. In El Salvador, Bill was one of fifty-five American trainer/advisers assisting in the struggle against the Communist FMLN. After leaving the army, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service and was sent back to Honduras as special assistant to the U.S. ambassador, serving as one of the embassy's liaison officers to the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance (the contras). A career diplomat, Bill went on to serve in Spain's Basque country, in the Dominican Republic, in the United Kingdom and in Italy. From 2000-2003 he was principal officer and American consul in the Azores islands of Portugal. He can be reached at bill.meara@gmail.com.