The Real Contra War
Subtitle: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: February 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 321
ISBN-13: 9780806132525
Subjects: American history; Revolutions & coups; Warfare & Defence; World history: c 1750 to c 1900; World history: from c 1900 -; Peasant uprisings; Latin America - Central America; Military History - Modern; Rebellion And Insurgency; History; History - Military / War; Nicaragua; History: World; Milicias Populares Anti-Sandin; Military - Other; Counterrevolutions; Politics and government; 1979-1990; Counterrevolutionaries
First sentence: Iran-Contra, Oliver North, Congressional hearings, campus demonstrations, Contras as archvillains in movies and novels: Nicaragua's Contra War was at the center of a political fire storm second perhaps only to Vietnam in the passions it generated.
Description: "The Contra War and the Iran-Contra affair that shook the Reagan presidency were center stage on the U.S. political scene for nearly a decade. According to most observers, the main Contra army, or the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN), was a mercenary force hired by the CIA to oppose the Sandinista Socialist Revolution.".

"The Real Contra War demonstrates that in reality the vast majority of the FDN's combatants were peasants who had the full support of a mass popular movement consisting of the tough, independent inhabitants of Nicaragua's central highlands. The movement was merely the most recent instance of this peasantry's one-thousand-year history of resistance to those they saw as would-be conquerors."--BOOK JACKET.