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Blood on the Border | Advance Praise
"Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is clearly a memoirist of great skills and even greater heart. She’s a force of nature on the page and off."
—Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
“American foreign policy today is being shaped by veterans of the savage
Washington-backed Contra war of the 1980s. In the third volume of her
extraordinary memoir, Dunbar-Ortiz recounts the secret history of that
intervention, as well as her own courageous solidarity with the embattled
Nicaraguan revolution.”
—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear
“Here is the real life of a brilliant activist, the personal woes and conflicts,
the roles of friendship, character and gender, as well as the big issues and
shining moments; and here is a rousing account of the 1980s, so relevant
and so seldom discussed. Yet the 1980s seem very close these days, as a
right-wing administration once again sponsors torture, war, and other
crimes in the name of freedom—and as Latin America once again is on fire
with liberation movements. Of particular importance is Dunbar-Ortiz’s
exploration of the gray zones between the indigenous Miskitus in Nicaragua
and the Sandinistas. An important book, and a gripping one.”
—Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark and Rivers of Shadows
“This third volume of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s important memoir combines
deep self-reflection with an extraordinary political overview of times
that are mostly forgotten because the current owners of history have succeeded
in erasing them from our collective consciousness. ‘History itself is
the issue,’ this author writes, and goes on to expose and deconstruct that
which she has so courageously lived. From a quarter-century of international
indigenous rights work to a run-in with Oliver North and a narrow
escape from death on a sabotaged Mexico–Managua flight, Dunbar-Ortiz’s
story is an exciting and sobering read that holds valuable lessons for today’s
ongoing struggles for justice.”
—Margaret Randall, author of When I Look Into the Mirror and See You: Women, Terror and Resistance
“This is an impressive, astounding, and truthful historical document. Every
American should read it to understand the shady and dubious role
played in Central America by the men who are forging US foreign policy in
the world today. A passionate and engaged protagonist of historical times,
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz tells a story that is moving, profoundly human,
and enlightening.”
—Gioconda Belli, author of The Country Under My Skin
“Terrorism was planted in the Western Hemisphere, or Indian Country,
when the first immigrant stole in the name of greed, racism, or on the basis
of a political or religious system that placed themselves above all living
beings, placed males above females in power—then strove to keep in place
this tenuous and terrible system with laws, with gun power. This book is
the story of a particular rupture, in Central America, at the heart of the
Americas. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz speaks on behalf of justice. It’s never
simple. And there is no clean, perfect ending. What is sure here is the brilliant,
fearless storytelling by Dunbar-Ortiz of the devastation wreaked by
a ruthless corrupt power. What is sure is the ongoing drama of the story:
it entangles all of us.”
—Joy Harjo, Mvskoke Nation poet and musician
“September 11, 1973—the date of the CIA-sponsored coup against the
government of Salvador Allende in Chile—marks the beginning of a long
period of conservative hegemony in the Americas, though the aftermath
of September 11, 2001, has witnessed in Latin America at least a gradual
shift to the left. In that context, it is urgent to take a new look at the revolutionary
upsurge from the 1960s through the 1980s. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
was a North American activist personally involved in the revolutionary
process, above all in Central America. Her memoir, which deals with the
Contra war against the Nicaraguan revolution, is an essential book in this
regard, and at the same an engrossing, eminently readable example of the
feminist idea that ‘the personal is the political.’”
—John Beverley, University of Pittsburgh, author of
Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth
“This is a comprehensive and powerful account of the development of
the Contra war of the 1980s, which destroyed many lives and changed the
course of Central American history.… All the gears of Reagan-era political
manipulation are exposed here, including the Iran-Contra scandal, and the
countless ways in which Reagan’s propaganda machine created monstrous
lies about the situation of the Miskitu people during the Sandinista Revolution.… Vividly written with the authoritative voice of a fearless witness,
this book is a required reading for anyone interested in the truth.”
—Daisy Zamora, poet, author of Riverbed of Memory
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s new book … captures a messy snapshot of our
country and her own life. A living embodiment of the philosophy ‘the
personal is political,’ she navigates a dense narrative river through her
early, youthful enthusiasm for social change, moving upstream toward a
hard-edged and realistic perception of the undertows of political waters.
Along the route she spares no politician—Left or Right—who has pushed
antipopulist agendas or pushed indigenous people around. Dunbar-Ortiz
takes every political betrayal, accommodation and broken treaty personally;
yet always she reveals an unbowed human spirit—a major ingredient
in victory.”
—Jewell Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories
“Rarely do the personal and the political blend so seamlessly as Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz recounts her tireless efforts to oppose US imperialism during
and after Nicaragua’s Contra war of the 1980s. [Her] life and work in
this period foreshadow today’s struggles over issues as diverse as terrorism,
governmental press manipulation, engaged scholarship, activism, alcoholism,
and even identity politics. This captivating blend of personal memoir
and political/intellectual history could not be more timely.”
—Baron Pineda, author of Shipwrecked Identities:
Navigating Race on the Mosquito Coast
“To academics, history is an exercise in juxtaposing public facts to create a
believable narrative. To the activist struggling within those facts, history is
the personal memory of the suffering of the ordinary folks who have been
condemned by their history to be, at best, merely a footnote in those facts.
As a scholar, she told their story. As an activist, she told her own. In combination,
Dunbar-Ortiz has produced some formidable historical memoirs,
which end up being autobiographical people’s histories. In Red Dirt: Growing
Up Okie, by describing her upbringing in rural Oklahoma, she made
her readers understand what life was like to the repressed, often off-white,
sharecroppers (she herself is part Native American). In Outlaw Woman: A
Memoir of the War Years, 1960–75, she made us feel what it was like to be an
independent woman who became a human rights standard bearer at the
UN. Now, in Blood on the Border, she makes us live through the horrors of
Reagan’s bloody war against the first decent government in Central America,
while at the same time bringing to life the ordeal of the northeastern
Nicaraguan tribes caught between Oliver North’s vicious and illegal
crusade and the ill-conceived nationalism of the Sandinistas, who refused
to give those tribes autonomy. In the process, Dunbar-Ortiz, a ferocious
feminist who spent years in Nicaragua living through that schizophrenic
situation, makes us experience the rise and fall of the anti-war, leftist and
especially the women’s liberation movements, here at home and its consequences
abroad.”
—John Gerassi, author of The Great Fear in Latin America
“What can I say but thank you, Roxanne, for keeping such detailed memories
of a time of turmoil and growth of indigenous people to the south. As
an early founder of the feminist movement, Roxanne assumed a position
in the forefront of international nation building, the realm of male domination,
to just basically get the job done. And what a job she did!”
—Madonna Gilbert Thunderhawk, Lakota activist and
AIM leader at Alcatraz and Wounded Knee
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