4 OPINION Page 4 Wednesday, September 18, 1985 The Michigan Daily k EIII SErb tan 1atI 1 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Trouble to Nicaragua's south By James Ridgeway Vol. XCVI, No. 10 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Unserved populations HILE THE Reagan Ad- ministration is busy cheerily pointing out a recent drop in the number of welfare recipients, there has been a glaring omission in the course of explanation. The number and complexity of bureaucratic barriers facing eligible aid recipients have increased significantly. What Reaganomics has produced among the nation's impoverished is a new low at the bottom end of the socio-economic ladder, those who public assistance advocates call the "unserved populations." In February 1985, 14.8 million eligible persons were not receiving food stamps, three million school children were not receiving the free or reduced price lunches they are entitled to, while 8.87 million of those children receiving lunch were not receiving a subsidized breakfast. The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program assists 3.1 million persons, but as of January 1985, failed to reach 7.3 million potentially eligible recipients. According to testimony recently submitted to the House of Representatives Select Committee on Hunger, the standard 50-page applications for food stamps and Aid for Dependent Children (AF- DC) means gaining access to public assistance can be a highly frustrating maze of paperwork which keeps many needy and eligible persons from receiving The benefits of programs intended assist them. Several Congressional commit- tees are presently working towards social welfare program "coor- dination and simplification," designed to reduce the amount of red tape and bureaucratic tangles which are discouraging or even in- surmountable for many potential recipients. In the early 1980's, the Illinois Department of Public Aid ad- ministered an exemplary and in- novative coordination and sim- plification program which decreased operating expenses and payment overrun costs by $13 million and eliminated 24,000 caseworker hours. Unfortunately, this fine prototype of simplified public aid administration is now defunct, as the Department of Agriculture denied the state's request to extend the experimental program. If there is fat to be trimmed from the social spending budget, Reagan's team is seriously misguided here. Instead of denying those in need, sincere and proven efforts to increase bureaucratic ef- ficiency should be celebrated and rewarded, not discontinued at the expense of the homeless and hungry. With the opening of a major new front in Costa Rica, the war in Nicaragua is taking a dramatic turn - one that could embroil American farmers from the U.S. Midwest who operate along Nicaragua's southern bor- der. After a setback on the northern Honduran front this spring, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (NFD), largest of the "contra" groups fighting the Sandinista regime, has been ferrying troops into Costa Rica to consolidate and expand a southern front under a unified command. The supple lines for this second army, ac- cording to mercenaries arrested at a contra training camp in Costa Rica and currently imprisoned there, run from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. through Ilopango airport in El Salvador to clandestine air strips in Northern Costa Rica. Further confirmation of a growing FDN presence in Costa Rica comes from the San- dinista military commander in the south who recently identified an FDN base five kilometers inside Costa Rica. He also said that mortar attacks on Sandinista positions have come from Costa Rica. Smack in the middle of this new staging area is a sizeable number of American far- mers who grow citrus and raise cattle. The best-known group consists of a dozen or so men who hail from Illinois and Indiana. Bruce Jones, one of the Illinois group, was identified in Life Magazine by former San- dinista-turned-rebel Eden Pastora as a CIA operative, a charge he denies at length in the June issue of Soldier of Fortune. The two jailed mercenaries have identified Jones' Ridgeway is an associate editor with the Pacific News Service, for which he wrote this article. neighbor, John Hull, as the NDF's contact in Costa Rica. Hull, too, denies this charge. According to one estimate, more than 3,000 contra camp on the farmlands owned by the Americans, coming and going on raids into Nicaragua across the nearby San Juan river. According to various reports, certain farmers themselves participate in the raids, use their own planes, and allow their airstrips to be used for dropping weapons to the contras. The son-in-law of one American farmer is a contra captain. The presence of - if not direct involvement by - these American landowners, U.S. citizens, at the edge of a major new front in the war against Nicaragua makes the context far more provocative. Any sort of pre- emptive or retaliatory raid by the Sandinistas on their land could readily be turned into grounds for retaliation by the Reagan Ad- ministration. It raises the potential for a direct invasion by creating a situation like that of Grenada where rescuing American medical students became a catalyst for in- vading the island. While the United States created an in- frastructure for the northern front in Hon- duras by using U.S. National Guard units to construct camps and air strips, in Costa Rica the infrastructure for the war turns out to be an agricultural development program. With the Midwest gripped in a continuing farm recession, the farming in Costa Rica is enticing on economic grounds alone. Land along the Nicaraguan border has gone for as little as $10 an acre, though it now fetches $600-700 an acre. Labor costs 50 cents an hour. There are no unions and taxes and incon- sequential. Moreover, the Overseas Private Invest- ment Corp., the U.S. government agency which protects American investors against many risks - including wars and internal strife - in foreign lands, has underwritten some of these farms. And, finally, farmers can take advantage of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, President Reagan's program to assist developing Caribbean nations, which offers reduced import duties on products grown in Costa Rica. On the Costa Rican border, the farming4 proceeds according to three different stages: first, the jungle is cleared, the hardwoods harvested; next, cattle are introduced; and finally, the land is turned over to higher value citrus crops. The FDN buildup is making Costa Rica's professed neutrality somewhat irrelevant. Under the Rio Treaty, the United States is pledged to defend Costa Rica, which has no army of own. More to the point, over the last few years, U.S. assistance has been used steadily to build facilities on the border There have been Navy Civic Action Programs, aimed at developing Costa Rican ports. The Agency for International Development has constructed roads in the Northwest, and there are plans for U.S. National Guard engineering units to build even more roads. The Israelis also have been involved in vaious border development schemes, in- cluding electronic surveillance. In May, 18 Green Beret instructors arrived in Costa Rica to train 750 of the nation's civil guard - bringing with them machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank weapons, all part of a two-year, $18.3 million U.S. military aid package. Costa Rica refused U.S. military aid from 1957 until 1981, when it accepted funding that included training some of its guardsmen at the U.S. school of the Americas in the Canal Zone. Recently, the Voice of America set up shop in Costa Rica for broadcasts into Nicaragua.4 And reliable sources have reported that the Salvadoran Air Force has flown support missions for Contras raiding into Nicaragua from Costa Rica. Wasserman PRESIDEAPNT of CoLoMBIi BAWCS OUR ?oL1CY IN CeNTRAL AK\Mc ICA. ACThIayL s 1 KSENT A SPAY/IN& r-OEDOESN'T ME.SSME ip Nicaragua: Strike Two g° -s - j I T WO DISTINCT declarations on Monday come together to sub- tly attack the Reagan Ad- ministration's policy toward Nicaragua. In the World Court at The Hague, David MacMichael, a former CIA analyst, testified that the United States had uncovered "no credible evidence" of Nicaragua attem- pting to "export" its revolution to civil war torn El Salvador. In Managua, officials of the ruling Sandinista government an- nounced a new and unprecedented land reform program. That plan calls for the government to give 50 dispossessed Americans farmers 25,000 acres of farmland on the condition that they work to train Nicaraguan peasants there in modern methods of farming. Neither announcement is par- ticularly shattering. In a state as plagued by violence as Nicaragua, few government pronouncements can significantly alter the situation. It is ironic, though, that the two unrelated events would be hard evidence against the chief claims the Reagan Administration makes against the Sandinistas. The Reagan Administration has long claimed that it is supporting groups of Nicaraguan rebels known as Contras because on the inter- national front Nicaragua poses a threat to the region's stability and on a national front it is slowly increasing its control of the coun- try's resources. The report that top U.S. policy makers had no evidence of Nicaragua's involvement in El Salvador as of April of 1982 directly contradicts the Reagan Ad- ministration position. The report confirms what is already apparent, however. Nicaragua is struggling with a weak economy, and already has its hands full in combattingthe Con- tras. With barely the gasoline it needs for its own military and domestic uses, it is in no position to supply military aid to rebel organizations. The plan to distribute land to Americans to train Nicaraguans peasants is a tangible example of the Sandinista's acting on their ideological principles. In giving farming rights to Americans and Nicaraguan peasants, they are ac- ting on the promise they made to redistribute the farm land that on- ce belonged -to deposed President Anastazio Somoza and his family to landless peasants. Linking the project to American citizens provides the dual advan- tages of obtaining the most advan- ced agricultural technology as well as putting up a human barrier in areas where the U.S. backed Con- tras have been challenging San- dinista troops. The two announcements hardly alter the overall situation in Nicaragua. The Reagan Ad- ministration will surely slough off the World Court testimony, and the cooperative farming plan will af- fect only a very small part of the population. Nevertheless, the two announcements indicate again the misguided direction of the Reagan policies in Nicaragua and reaffirm the need for the Administration to reconsider those policies. \W ELL, AC 0 TRC POE 2T ' US UN, SIR-'tHE VATICAN vN IES T}lNT \N LL, V dub, "T AT LEAT DON QU.y I- -_- 0 " _.................... Y r ,,, _ LETTERS Daily film reviewer in the dark . 0 To the Daily: As the price of a movie ticket reaches four and five dollars the power of the movie critic grows. A person may await the publishing of several reviews before deciding to spend so much money on entertainment. What is unforgivable is when a paper (for example, The Michigan Daily) prints a review such as "'Spider Woman' rests on power of one" (Daily, Sept. 16) for Kiss of the Spider Woman which totally lacks insight, coherence, and taste. Byron Bull's confused review does great damage, perhaps without in- tending tn lander the film. define a 'queen" as you have made use of the word. There were also errors in plot description. Were Valentin's con- tributions to the cause minor? If so, why were so many people willing to kill for the information he possessed? Both his peers and his captors would take a life for his knowledge. Also, Molina recollects but one film for the majority of the movie. All the film scenes are in- terconnected except for the final one dealing with the Spider Woman. Finally, the headline reads that the movie rests on the, "power of one," but the story says the per- formance of Hurt is complemen- ted by the excellent acting of Julia. To me, that adds up to two. And where does this writer find the courage to so much as use the word pretentious to define the film and then have the gall to refer to it as Kiss in the article. And it is never fair to compare a book and a film. They are two completely different mediums and should be judged solely on their own merit. This writer was not insightful enough to sense the themes of honor, respect, responsibility, and love; he could not look past the "queen" and his reminiscent film. Considering the previously mentioned errors I wonder if he had any understanding of the film. If these are the sort of review@ we can expect from the Daily then I beg you to limit them to films like Porky's. These are the films your "critic" would rather see and he cannot possibly do them any harm. -Steven L. Franks September 17 1.. v-maz1 r mma d m 1 t!T M1t fdw t*tTY