Subject: Re: Putin's Christmas List
Standing in a field of coffee beans in Coyolar, several miles from the provincial capital of Matagalpa, I listened to a campesino coffee farmer as he pointed to a point higher on the mountainside, the point from where the Contras launched their attack on his village ten years before. He swept his hand from the mountainside to the village, describing where they had burned the clinic, shot some of the men and destroyed the school.

I remember Managua, and the lake down there that has freshwater sharks because it was underwater in the ocean and slowly rose, trapping them and they evolved. And of course the bank up a flight of steps off a central square with doors flanked by armed to the teeth soldiers. I was 16 and this was a great adventure. The soldiers stuck with me, later I learned our history there.