Witness For Peace begins with Richard Boren crouching in fright on the floor of a tiny hut. His nostrils are filled with smoke from burning homes, and his ears are bombarded by deafening rocket explosions and machine-gun fire. Using his sleeping bag, he is trying to stem the dreadful flow of blood from a bullet hole in a Nicaraguan girl's knee. Moments later, he is kidnapped by a band of contra guerrillas and led off into the jungle.
As he begins his harrowing eight-day captivity, 30 other long-term volunteers for Witness for Peace are facing the same jeopardy in forgotten rural settlements throughout Nicaragua. At the same time, three groups of short-term delegates, 20 people each, are in the United States, receiving intensive training in nonviolence and Nicaraguan life, preparing for their two-week journey into the war zones.
When the contras finally agree to release Boren, he refuses to go unless Victor Rodriguez, a Nicaraguan taken captive at the same time, is released with him.
Ed Griffin-Nolan's book is the story of these ordinary people--Nicaraguans and North Americans--doing extraordinary things. It tells of those who experienced in their own flesh Ronald Reagan's war against Nicaragua, and who strove to change U.S. policy to one of "justice, peace, and friendship."
"America had never seen quite such a thing," Griffin-Nolan writes. "It is one thing to protest war--it is another to move in with the victims."
THE AUTHOR IS WELL-positioned to document the Witness for Peace story. Until 1988, he lived in Nicaragua as media coordinator for Witness for Peace (WFP). In more than three years in Nicaragua, he traveled throughout the country, interviewing victims of contra raids. More than once he passed through contra ambushes or villages under attack. As a journalist and media staff person for WFP, he became a well-known and frequently quoted source for the press corps as well as visiting congressional delegations. More recently he has served as vice-chair of WFP's board of directors.
Given this background, one might suspect that the author would have nothing but accolades for Witness for Peace. However, his account is detailed, honest, and accurate, documenting the controversies, foibles, and failures of WFP as well as its achievements.
Like the description of Richard Boren's capture, the book is full of deeply moving passages and gripping incidents, most as seen through the eyes of dozens of actual participants. (Griffin-Nolan interviewed more than 200 people in preparing the book.)
Here are dirt-poor Nicaraguan families generously opening their homes to visiting North Americans, and Nicaraguan mothers telling of yet another contra foray of rape and throat-slittings. Here are middle-class North Americans risking travel to the heart of the war, where they confront not only the possibility of injury or death, but also conversion, as they encounter what Henri Nouwen called "the most heartrending suffering and at the same time an incredible hope."
Here are the same people, now back home, on fire with such outrage at U.S. policy that they fight unending battles with Congress to stop all aid to the contras. They tell what they've seen and heard through thousands of stories recorded by newspaper, radio, and television. Many, often for the first time, go to jail in acts of civil disobedience. In the process, some lose their jobs and even their marriages.
For all its serious themes, however, the book is not grim or depressing. It is written by someone who obviously loves Nicaragua and who, while preparing for a dangerous peace mission down an embattled river, stops to comment on herons soaring overhead and royal turkeys flying across the bow of the barge. As those who know Ed would expect, a strong thread of insightful humor also runs through the story.
Long-term volunteer Aynn Setright was washing her clothes in the river bed at Bocana de Paiwas when a friend asked her how people in the United States wash their clothes. "Oh, we just put them in a big machine and push a few buttons," she answered. Her friend was quiet for a few minutes. Then she asked, "How do you get the machine down to the river?"
Finally, the book is comprehensive. It begins in 1983 with the dozen or so people who conceived the idea of a "nonviolent, prayerful, biblically based, politically independent movement" to challenge U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. Then it chronicles nearly every significant development which by 1991 had brought almost 4,000 people to Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. The book makes clear that WFP is an ongoing effort, continuing its work in Nicaragua and developing even today a creative program of nonviolent presence and accompaniment in Guatemala and Southern Mexico.
The WFP experience already has inspired a number of similar movements, from nonviolent interposition efforts between Israelis and Palestinians to "The Crusade," an anti-drug effort in Charlotte, North Carolina. No better handbook for how to start such faith-based, nonviolent movements can be found than Witness For Peace: A Story of Resistance.
IN THE BOOK'S LAST chapter, the author weighs the pros and cons of WFP. His careful evaluation, while being frank about WFP's limitations, makes a good case for its many important achievements as it seeks to be "a visible sign to Latin Americans that there are people who care about their struggle for justice and are willing to accept the consequences of standing with them."
My only quibble with the book is that it made only glancing reference to one of WFP's most controversial stands--"political independence." As a member of the steering committee, I know that we struggled hard before agreeing that, yes, WFP can and should criticize the Sandinista government when it commits some major dereliction, such as human rights violations. This set WFP apart from some other groups, who tended to romanticize the Sandinistas--or at least not to say anything negative about their revolution.
WFP praised the positive in the Sandinista-led government and, as a North American organization, aimed its primary critique at the injustices of U.S. policy. Still, it was not afraid to challenge Sandinista policies and practices, carrying its concerns directly to highly placed Sandinista leaders and even on occasion making its criticisms public through the WFP newsletter and the mass media. For example, when the Sandinista government expelled Nicaraguan religious leaders from the country, closed the opposition press, and allowed its security forces to kill opponents through extra-judicial executions, WFP decried those actions.
No human government is without its shadow side. While some organizations kept silent about this aspect of the Nicaraguan revolution, WFP took the position that, as people of faith, our main concern has to be to tell the truth and to do God's will, not to be "politically correct" or aligned with any political philosophy or movement.
Though far from perfect itself, WFP tried to stand up for the sacred dignity of each human being and to challenge attacks on that dignity, regardless of their source. I hope and trust that it will hold fast to that policy as it continues its work in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Southern Mexico, and is sent forth, it knows not where else in the world, by the God who said, "Seek justice, correct oppression, defend the orphan, plead for the widow."
Richard K. Taylor, one of the founders of Witness for Peace, served for six years as chair of its Philosophy and Strategy Committee.
Witness For Peace: A Story of Resistance. By Ed Griffin-Nolan. Westminster-John Knox Press, 1991. $14.95, paper.
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