Mural of Ben Linder in Esteli, Nicaragua by Mike Alewitz. Painted in 1989.
Thirty years ago, on April 28th, a young American was killed in Nicaragua. His name was Ben Linder and he was twenty-seven years old.
Because Ben Linder studied circus arts, he was almost certainly knowledgable about the archetype of the holy fool. While a fool is someone who behaves in ways that invite ridicule, the holy fool is someone who uses foolish behavior to reveal deeper truths and show a better way. The holy fool has taken many forms in different times and places. In early Christianity fools for Christ, sometimes naked, roamed from town to town testing the populace’s capacity for compassion. Shakespeare's plays are full of fools who make king’s laugh only to realize mid-guffaw that the laugh is on them. The holy fool is prominent in Native American cultures tweaking vanity and self-importance at every turn. Circus clowns come on like buffoons , but by the end of the show the audience realizes they are the smartest ones under the big top.
Ben Linder dressed up as a clown, peddled his unicycle, and juggled in the Nicaraguan countryside while a US funded war was raging. He was assassinated by Contra troops. The term “assassinated” is the correct one to use. The Contras were funded, trained, and supervised by the CIA in order to overthrow the Sandinista revolution. It strains credibility to think that these mercenaries would have killed a well known American Citizen on their own. You can bet someone gave the nod to take out Ben Linder.
It is apparent that Linder was also a hell of an engineer, since in the middle of a war, he managed to get a damn constructed that brought electricity to El Cuá, the village where he had settled. However it was his clowning that caught the imagination of people in Nicaragua and the US. He is depicted on murals across Nicaragua and he is always shown on his unicycle, made up, red nose in place, objects flying from his hands into the air. He performed for children during vaccination campaigns, distracting them, making them laugh, filling them with wonder while they waited for their drops and injections. However, as a holy fool, his true audience was the US and the world. He modeled that the US could relate to Nicaragua in a better way. It was possible to be loving, helpful, collaborative, and delightful. Instead of hateful, destructive, imperialistic and brutal. This example was more threatening and enraging to then president Ronald Reagan and his cronies than building damns.
The CIA set the policy during the Contra war of killing non-combatants who were working to make Nicaragua a better place. They kill teachers, literacy workers, farmers, medical personnel, and a holy fool; a sweet, decent, American kid.
On the anniversary of Ben Linder's assassination I visited his grave with a group organized by Casa Ben Linder. Several people on the trip had known him well and they shared personal stories. One man told me they had been friends as young men and that his first child had been born two days after Ben's death. Another woman said that he had lived with her family for an extended period. Later, I heard these two people talking and the woman said to the man, I remember you. You use to come over to play pingpong with Ben on my grandfather's table. Many people spoke of Ben in political, anti-imperialistic terms, but what came across more clearly for me was the personal connection that he had with his friends in his adopted country. His grave is in a cemetery on a hillside on the outskirts of Matagalpa. The grave is not easy to find and it is a steep climb to get to it. On this day, there was a large, beautiful arrangement of roses provided by the Sandinistas in recognition of his status as a national hero and martyr.
"He was the sunrise in the smile of the children who saw him in his clown suit, illuminating the future we are constructing together in the new Nicaragua", Daniel Ortega.
Now it is 2017, and thirty years later, the US continues to meddle in the internal affairs of this tiny, impoverished country. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida and Albio Sires, Democrat of New Jersey, recently introduced, for the second year in a row, the NICA Act. This bill would block international credit to Nicaragua unless it complied with the US’s wishes about how it runs itself. Nicaragua is not perfect. We know this because no country in the world is. However, sovereign states, especially those like Nicaragua who are not a threat to anyone, have the right to struggle with their own imperfections without outside interference.
The anniversary of Ben Linder’s assassination would be an appropriate time for for us to swear off imperialism toward Nicaragua or any other country.
