Tuesday, March 9, 1999 | 11:40 a.m.
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton arrived in Central America Monday and will return home late this week. His visit is timed perfectly and his message will be important to the little countries grasping for democratic principles and economic survival.
Last fall, following the vast destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch, wasn't the time for a presidential visit. Tipper Gore's visit to bring personal comfort to the victims was exactly the right medicine. She arrived with a large dose of government and private aid contributions. Her conduct and ability to give warm comfort made a deep impression on the people she touched and her presence didn't create an overload on transportation and security services.
The damage of Mitch is still there and now the nations are past the emergency era and into the struggle for recovery. Nothing can be more upsetting than the demand for helicopter and personnel to move very important people into areas where a load of medicine and food would do much more good during the days and weeks following a natural disaster.
In early November, when hauling food and medicine into northern Nicaragua, I was told of the frustrations some observers had created. "Two big helicopters landed in our town and several people got out and looked around. They took pictures and talked but brought no food," one young leader told me. More than half of his town no longer existed and he was attempting to cross a stream where a bridge had fallen a few days earlier. A couple of days later I saw him with a load of food in Managua and starting back up north toward his town.
Those days of fear and desperation interrupted by numerous funerals have been replaced with the frustration of being unable to see what is ahead for them and their families. I've worked in disaster care and relief in several parts of the world. The only country where rapid progress is made in meeting the recovery and reconstruction needs following a disaster is right here in the United States. We have the heavy equipment, engineering skills and supplies needed to rebuild and even improve upon the quality of facilities, roads and buildings damaged and destroyed. Poor countries, like those of Central America, just can't respond in this efficient manner.
The damage is still visible and so are the thousands of fresh graves in Honduras and Nicaragua. It won't take the president long to see the need for additional financial and technical aid. What his staff and accompanying members of Congress should be especially aware of is the loss of agricultural jobs. Mitch ruined several crops that will take years to replace. Banana trees aren't planted in the spring to produce fruit later in the year.
During my trips into Nicaragua and Honduras when the war was going on between the Contras and Daniel Ortega's communist Sandinistas, some problems overrode all others. The dark-skinned Miskito Indians and small farmers were fighting because the Sandinistas had taken their land, belittled their religious beliefs and showed no respect for their families as they drafted their boys into the army. Story after story told to me in the jungles during those days always came back to those basic issues of land, church and family.
Well, today it is Mitch, not Ortega, who has ruined their land and crops. This time there is nobody they can fight to regain their land, homes and jobs.
Desperate people by the hundreds have already started up the dangerous trails that eventually lead the lucky survivors to the United States. Unless we give them some hope back home, these numbers will soon swell by many thousands.
If given the badly needed recovery aid and encouragement to continue down the road to democracy, life can only become better for the people of Central America. In the long run, because of the quality of people and land, these small nations can become valuable trading partners and friends during the coming decade.
President Clinton's presence in Central America this week can become the fulfillment of President John F. Kennedy's dream for a friendly and prosperous relationship between our country and our neighbors to the south. Peace and prosperity are so much better than continual conflict that unsettles the hemisphere. Recent history has taught us this lesson and we don't need it repeated.
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