Hurricane in Nicaragua: A Journey in Search of Revolution

West, a British journalist, has interesting things to say about U.S. influence in Nicaragua, the cultural divide between Anglo-Saxon and Spanish-Indian, and the increasing rift in the Catholic church between traditionalists and liberation theologians. The result of February elections does not mitigate the highly informative sections concerning four men whose lives are closely intertwined with the country's history: William Walker, American soldier of fortune who made himself president of Nicaragua in 1856; Ruben Dario (1867-1916), whose poems about the cultural threat from the U.S. are especially relevant today; Augusto Sandino, guerrilla leader of the 1920s whose violent career was of a different character from the version publicized by the modern Sandinistas; and author Graham Greene, whose books West considers indispensible to an understanding of Nicaragua. In a study that comprises travelogue, history and personal anecdote, West's reflections are often controversial, as when he remarks that neither the Sandinistas nor the contras ``go in for violence,'' a self-restraint he attributes to the influence of Pope John Paul II. (May)