Nicaragua Documentary: We Died for Nothing

Oct 6 1991
^BC-AP Arts: Nicaragua
^Documentary Tracks Down People Who Were in Photos of Sandinista Revolution
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
   NEW YORK (AP) _ In 1978, a relatively unknown photojournalist named Susan Meiselas went to Nicaragua and landed in the middle of one of the biggest stories of the day - the opening salvos of the Sandinista revolution.
   Now, 13 years later, Ms. Meiselas and co-producers Richard Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti look back at the revolution that toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza - and which, after fighting off a U.S.-backed insurgency for a decade, was rejected by Nicaraguan voters last year.
   In "Pictures of a Revolution," shown at its world premiere Friday night at the New York Film Festival, the filmmakers tracked down the people who appeared in Ms. Meiselas' war photos more than a dozen years ago and let them tell their story.
   The documentary, received enthusiastically by the packed house at Lincoln Center, conveys the crushed hopes of Nicaraguans and the feeling that the tens of thousands who died in the revolution and ensuing Contra war lost their lives needlessly.
   The film flashes Ms. Meiselas' photos showing urban guerrilla warfare amid footage of the locations as they are now. The photos show danger and acts of heroism - a man with a .22-caliber rifle urging on his comrades against Somoza's National Guard, another hurling a Molotov cocktail.
   The footage of present-day Nicaragua shows only bleak poverty.
   "I thought better things would come (after the revolution), now I don't," says a woman in the film, wiping away her tears. "It's hard to even find food now."
   The filmmakers tracked their subjects down to Miami, Toronto and to shacks lining dirt roads in Managua and other towns. One former National Guard officer and later a Contra commander, Mike Lima, was found in Florida working as a security guard.
   "We killed for nothing, we died for nothing," says Lima, explaining that he now sees the Sandinistas and the Contras were puppets for the Soviet Union and Washington.
   Some of the former Sandinista combatants also expressed frustration that little was gained because of their sacrifices, although one said it was enough that the National Guard was defeated and he would no longer have to fear their knock on the door.
   Another Sandinista says the gains the revolutionaries tried to make were hamstrung by the U.S.-backed Contras and Washington's economic embargo. In her narration, Ms. Meiselas wonders how the Sandinista government would have fared without the intervention.
   Ms. Meiselas told the audience after the 93-minute film that the filmmakers had no idea what they would find when they sought the people she had photographed years ago.
   "You feel the despair, even among the ones who were most loyal (to the Sandinistas), who were most hopeful," she said. "We didn't think that was going to happen."

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