Word: pantasma
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Dates: during 1984-1984
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...true character of the Contras was made painfully clear to members of my fact-finding group during a visit to the Nicaraguan village of Pantasma. Our journey began early Sunday morning January '15. The trek from Maltagalpu to the northeast province of Jinotega, took over three hours. As a driven rain fell. Oscar, our driver, skillfully maneuvered the bus along winding mountain roads. Armed peasants waved as we passed, and we questioned the kind of existence where people are forced to shoulder rifles while tending their fields and cattles. The booming voice of our escort--a campesino--explained that...
During a security check at Mancotal--a strategic dam on the road to Pantasma--a boy-FSLN militiaman poked his head in to the doorway of the bus and smiled. In peacetime, he and thousands of other Nicaraguan youths might be playing soccer or baseball, but our government's backing of the Contras, makes this vision of childhood, especially for those who live close to the Honduran border, virtually impossible...
...late morning we emerged from low lying clouds that hung tenaciously to the lush mountain. We began a slow descent into the valley, surrounded by rows of corn, tobacco and coffee fields. Moments later we entered Pantasma. Thick forests stretched boundlessly. Through the lens of a MimiyaZE, it was a breathtaking experience, but for the inhabitants of Pantasma, the fertile forests and mountains of the region are the sites of kidnappings, ambushes and other wartime cruelties...
...first acts of the new Sandinista government following its victory over Somoza in 1979, was to launch a campaign to educate the country's illiterate, who then comprised 51 percent of the nation. A handful of the 185,000 young teaching volunteers from Managus and other cities went to Pantasma. Many of their students became teachers themselves. They were the first to die at the hands of the Contras. Some of them were beheaded, to serve as examples to others. "Their crime? The crime of these teachers is that they were trying to get people out of their illiteracy situation...