Ben Linder

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Benjamin Ernest Linder (July 7, 1959 — April 28, 1987), born in California, was a young American engineer who was killed in Nicaragua by anti-Communist Contras while working on a small hydroelectric dam that was to bring electricity and running water to a village in the middle of Nicaragua's war zone. Linder's death made front-page headlines around the world and polarized opinion in the United States.

While in College at the University of Washington, Linder enjoyed juggling and was often seen around Seattle riding a 5-6 foot tall unicycle. He graduated in 1983 with a degree in mechanical engineering. A picture of Linder riding his unicycle, demonstrating against the U.S./Contra war against Nicaragua, is here.

He left his Oregon home that summer and moved to Managua. In 1986, Linder moved from Managua to El Cuá, a village in the Nicaraguan war zone, where he helped form a team to build a hydroplant to bring electricity to the town.

On 28 April, 1987, Linder and two Nicaraguans — Sergio Hernández and Pablo Rosales — were killed in the Contra ambush while working at the construction site for a new dam for the nearby village of San José de Bocay.

The autopsy showed that Linder was first wounded by a grenade, then shot at point-blank range in the head. The two Nicaraguans were also killed at close range, Rosales by a stab wound in the heart.

[edit] Controversy

Linder's death was bitterly debated in the United States, both in the media and in Congress. Opponents of Washington's policy in Nicaragua called him a "national hero" and a martyr of the Left, while supporters of Washington's policy questioned whether he was providing aid to the Sandinista government against the Contras. Critics of Linder alleged that, although often portrayed as a "peaceful" volunteer, Linder was carrying a Russian-made 7.62mm AK-47 assault rifle when he was shot.^{[citation needed]} Linder, according to some, wore a Sandinista uniform while working; there is controversy over whether he was in uniform when he was killed.^{[citation needed]}

U.S. embassy officials in Nicaragua admitted that they never investigated the incident and had no interest in doing so.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater was quoted in The New York Times as saying that US citizens working in Nicaragua "put themselves in harm's way". Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, an ardent defender of the Contra War, said Linder simply should have known better than to be in a combat zone.

During a congressional hearing in May 1987, some defenders of U.S. policy in Nicaragua on the House Western Hemisphere Subcommittee launched personal attacks on Linder's family and other witnesses who came to testify on behalf of Linder and his work. One congresswoman accused Linder's family of turning his death into a political issue. The Village Voice reported one exchange between Linder's mother Elizabeth, who had just given testimony to her son's work and motivations, and Congressman Connie Mack (R) of Florida. Said Mack:

I guess what really has me upset is that I just cannot understand how you can use grief that I know you feel, use it to politicize this situation. Or to allow yourself to be used to politicize this situation.... I guess the reason I find this so difficult is that I don't want to be tough on you, but I really feel you have asked for it.

CBS News correspondent Dan Rather expressed an opposite view of Linder's death and the ongoing war:

Benjamin Linder was no revolutionary firebrand, spewing rhetoric and itching to carry a rifle through the jungles of Central America. He was a slight, soft-spoken, thoughtful young man. When, at 23, he left the comfort and security of the United States for Nicaragua, he wasn't exactly sure what he would find... But he wanted to see Nicaragua first-hand, and so he headed off, armed with a new degree in engineering, and the energy and ideals of youth... This wasn't just another death in a war that has claimed thousands of Nicaraguans. This was an American who was killed with weapons paid for with American tax dollars. The bitter irony of Benjamin Linder's death is that he went to Nicaragua to build-up what his own country's dollars paid to destroy — and ended up a victim of the destruction... The loss of Benjamin Linder is more than fodder in an angry political debate. It is the loss of something that seems rare these days: a man with the courage to put his back behind his beliefs. It would have been very easy for this bright, young man to follow the path to a good job and a comfortable salary. Instead, he chose to follow the lead of his conscience.

The death of Linder, coming as Congressional hearings investigated the Iran-Contra Affair, fueled the debate in the U.S. over the covert war in Nicaragua. The next year, Congress refused to renew aid to the Contras. But the civil war, conscription into the army, the collapse of the economy, and the curtailment of civil liberties in the mid-1980s all combined to cause the landslide defeat of the FSLN government in February 1990 elections.

In July 1996, an American journalist named Paul Berman wrote an article in the The New Yorker ("In search of Ben Linder's killers" The New Yorker. Sep 23, 1996. Vol. 72, Iss. 28; p. 58), which featured an interview with a man who claimed to have killed Linder. Linder's parents and their lawyers publicly denounced the article and disputed the veracity of the man Berman interviewed. In 2001 Joan Kruckewitt, an American journalist who lived in Nicaragua from 1983 to 1991 and covered the war between the Sandinistas and the Contras for ABC Radio wrote a book The Death of Ben Linder (Seven Stories Press 2001) giving a more sympathetic portrait of Linder's life, work, and death.

The song "Fragile" on Sting's 1987 album, ...Nothing Like the Sun, is a tribute to Ben Linder. The 1990 book Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver is dedicated to his memory.

[edit] See also

Bill Stewart, an ABC reporter killed along with his interpreter a decade earlier in Nicaragua.
Rachel Corrie, an American killed in Palestine while protesting against Israel.
Brian Willson, an American injured by a Naval Munitions train while protesting US arms shipments to Central America.