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Most of us took the tortured road of youthful idiotic leftism before we understood that human nation cannot be changed and the only way to enforce leftist-liberal redistribution is through terror.

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It is not as long as Hugh Hefner's pompous opus, but then again, we did not write it in pijamas waited upon hand and foot by All-American beauties. Still, liberal domination of political humor must end.

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Most of these are still funny, as when we had a picture of Fidal Castro bawling because he was scheduled to host the 1990 Dictator's Ball, and so many had fallen the previous two years. Also has the classic, first-ever-in print demand to end Christmas as a legal holdiay, accurately forecasting idiocies of libs 10 years ahead of time.

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It was pretty shocking to try and be a neutral journalist in the Central American civil wars in the 1980s and early 90s.

Most Americans have forgotten how the United States fought a bitter proxy war in the eight tiny nations that lie between Mexico and the beginning of the Soouth American continent in the still mostly roadless lowland jungles of Panama and Columbia.

Just as that incredibly dolt of a president Jimmy Carter thought he was doing the Lord's work in ushering the despotic shah of Iran off his throne to make way for Ayatollah Khomeini, having absolutely no idea of the fierce hatred towards American that burned in that crazy man, Carter also helped pusb out of power Ansastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, which allowed the Marxist Sandinistas to seize the government.

Just as Khomeini imposed a totalitarian regime far worse than the shah's, the Sandinistas allied themselves with Moscow and Cuba, with the Soviets paying for Cuban secret police to train their counterparts in Nicaragua.

I lived in Central America in the late 1970 when right-wing military governments ruled most of the countries on the isthmus. I lived with a local Guatemalan family and lived nearly completely among the Central Americans. They sure hated the military regimes, but they were far too individualistic to ever accept the deadening authority of conforming socialism and Marxism.

The journalists who came in to cover these wars, in which the U.S. backed folks in power in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama while funding the Nicaraguan rebels, with Cuba and the Soviet Union doing the reverse, were all convinced that the leftist guerrillas and the Sandinista government represented the "future" of rational government.

The publisher of this site, F. JJ Kiel, usually uses his nom de guerre El Acuchillador.( And NO, it does not mean 'He of the Pot Stomach'), unlike nearly every other journalist in the region during the 1980s, had come to know Central America well before, having lived in Guatemala for three years, from 1976-78. That means that he met people of all six countries -- Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Cosa Rica and Panama -- when they were relatively at peace, that is, without the distortion of war, especially civil war. He lived with a Guatemalan family and became completely fluent in Spanish, often going for months without speaking English (some say he follows the same practice today back in the States). He traveled extensively in Central America, when every country except Costa Rica was under the rule of rightist military governments. El Acuchillador comments:

"I worked as a news journalist in Central America and Mexico for more than eight years from 1982 to 1990. I had many friends in the journalism contingent for a few years until my views became widely known. No, I did not express sympathy for the military governments. My main sin in their eyes in saying that I believed in U.S. Constitution as written. I still remember the uncomfortable pauses as people heard that.

I also wrote balanced stories on the wars, another sin. Here are some pictures of my best time there.

With a pro-governemnt 'civil parol' in the Guatemalan highlands, 1982. This is my favorite picture because many of the Indians post on one knee holding their rifles just as Gerinomo's Apache band posed 100 years earlier. At this time, guerrillas were thought to control most of the country outside Guatemala City. Residents of the capital wouldn't even drive to the tourist mecca of Antingua, about 20 miles away. I couldn'd find a driver to take me to the highlands no matter how much I offered. The Army gave me a pass to visit the conflicted regions but told me I was crazy to go. Though the signs of battle were everywhere, with destoryed villages and Marxist slogans painted everywhere, I went from one village to the next and discovered that the Indians had recently decided to go with the government.

The first great Marxist rebellion in Guatemala was led by mostly white army officers. They put one of their own in as president and the CIA overthrew him in 1954. The officers then became standard Latin guerrillas but were controlled.

In the late 1970s, a new group of hard-core Marxists appeared in the highlands, which was 95% Indian, and basd their revolution on these peasants, following Mao in China and the Shining Path in Peru.

I spent several weeks in a Nicaraguan rebel camp right on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. These were U.S.-supplied 'Contras.' President Reagan's determination to support them cost much of the political infighting in Washington in the 1980s, including the 'Iran-Contra' scandal.

We did venture into Nicaragua a few times for short distances as we awaited to go in on a major offensive. The CIA got word of a major Sandinista offensive instead, and ordered all reporters out. Sandinistas did attack this camp and killed several in pictures.

Picture to Right. This is one of the armed patrols in which another reporter and I accompanied Contras on the river that separated Honduras from Nicaragua.

The boat's crew chief said when he was ambushed one time on such a patrol, the dived into the river and a bullet skipped along the edge of his back, from bottom to top, as he was in mid-air. He showed us the scar.

If we were ambushed, we had to try and swim to the Honduran side of the river.

In this obviously posed picture at our request, one Contra holds an AK-47. Both sides used the Soviet-designed assault rifle, which made it esy for either side to resupply themselves with bullets if they captured enemy supplies.

The guy at the controls is the one who was shot up his back as he dived off a boat.

Your U.S.Tax Dollars at Work

The commander told us we were going to pull over to the Honduran 'safe' side of the river and fish for lunch. He found a small eddy and he and antoher officer lobbed a few U.S.-supplied grenades into the quiet water, stunning several dozen fish. After snapping a few pictures, I jumped into the river to catch a few myself.

We cooked them immediately. Delicious.

This was the base camp at which the Contras planned to stage their offensive. It was situatied at the top of a very steep hill, so that it was difficult for Sandinistas to mount a surprise attack on it.

The commander on the right, not talking into the field radio, was killed within a week of this picture in the Sandinista offensive.

The Contra who took this picture failed to make me the center of it, darn him.

It is said that soldiers in war zones are exactly like cats when they are outside, all of their senes totally alive. I found this to be true for the Marxist as well as the democratic fighters.

When I returned to Central America several times after the wars had ended, most people had sunk back into their sleepy morass, many missing the old days of generous U.S. aid, the inflow of dollars and jobs and the excitment of life and death.

Although I admit I look like a full-time dork in this picture with my ridiculous glasses and had above a rain parka hood, it had rained heavily. We had to walk through the jungle several miles after going up river in a small boat to cross into Nicaragua from Costa Rica. The parka hood kept me dry and the hat kept water off my glasses. One of my exclusives, shared with a Barcelona journalist. The fella at the left was Commandante Zero, the most colorful character, had launched his southern offensive, and we found him to get the first word that he had retreated. I have pixures somewhere of a stunned anti-aircraft crew, with thousands of shells littering the ground around them, only hours after Sandinista planes attacked their camp.

Zero had been a Sandinista commander. He led a spectacular raid that seized a major Nicaraguan government building and took hundreds of hostages, including the brother of the dictator, Somoza. He negotiated the release of several hundred imprisoned Sandinistas, including the guy who would go on to be president, and was recently elected, Daniel Ortega.

I think Zero went over to the guerrillas because he didn't feel he had been given sufficient spoils once the Sandinistas took power.

Portrait of the Contra as a young man. The Spanish journalist took this picture of me during our walk into the jungle to find Zero.

We scooped AP, our main opposition. A few weeks later, Zero called a news conference in his jungle headquarters. I sent my local Costa Rican reporter William. They were at a table inside a tent, with William in front. A TV camera asked W. to move back to give hm a shot. As W. stepped behind his friend, a bomb brought by assassins hired by the Sandinistas went off, killing W's friend as well as a n American woman for AP,

Child soldiers for the Salvadoran Marxist guerrillas. This was a tense time. The rebels took this town as we sat there and began destroying voter ID cards in an attempt to disrupt a coming election. The commander hated me because I was an American and I coud just feel he was itchy to shoot me, despite the soothing words of Joaquin, the Barcelona report.

We had left the motor running and both front doors wide open of our rented car for a quick getaway.

The rebels and government troops did fight a big battle this day after we escaped.

Ah, how slim I once was.

In El Salvador, all news operations had offices on the second floor of one of the few luxury hotels, El Camino Royal. People partied hard, and then went on 'dawn patrols.' We put masing tape on cars identifying ourselves as reporters, usually 'TV' and attached white flags to antennas, drove a few hours to where activity had been reported and ofen stumbled across guerrillas, such as these two. Usually they were friendly enough and eager to talk.

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