Rafaga Miskito Comandante (Book Review)

“Rafaga: The Life Story of a Nicaraguan Miskito Comandante”.  By Renaldo Reyes [a.k.a., Rafaga] & J.K. Wilson; edited by Todd Stratton Sloan; The University of Oklahoma Press; c1992; 232 pages; #0806124539; $28.

The seemingly autobiography work is basically an elaborate re-edit of 20 months of interviews anthropologist J. K. Wilson had done with Rafaga, the nom de guerre of Ronaldo Reyes Davis. Reyes is, as are many people on the Eastern coast of Central America, a character - in the unoffensive and interesting sense of "character". Reyes is a Miskito Indian known for an array of revolutionary activities, first against Somoza, then later against the Sandinistas, though his lifelong overriding goal was Miskito autonomy.  This work covers his life as a whole, not just the Nicaraguan revolution. This is necessary, partly because without it many of his actions, beliefs and claims would make little sense to readers.

Reyes briefly recounts his earliest years, including his seduction, at age 11, by his elementary school teacher - and event he later viewed as shameful, one that helped prompt him to leave Awastara for the first time (one of several religious-based life changes he would make). Early in life he became an Evangelical Christian. At 18 he had completed his 3 years of biblical training in the Cleveland, Tennessee-based Church of God's seminary (Instituto Biblico Centro Americano) in El Salvador. Later, at only 19, he was assigned to Sandy Bay where his charge was to create a church, school, parish, and much more (then, almost no young person there knew how to read or write). It is at this time that his sense of shame would again rule his life as he committed adultery with a then 14-year-old girl. Reyes viewed this sin as confirmation that he was unqualified and unworthy of the Christian ministry. He again fled, this time to Managua to further studies. At this time he first began to view the world in much larger political terms.

He later ended up an inspector for rural health clinics. He met a young woman and started a family, c1970. He later graduated from the Colegio El Maestro, at the age of 30. He then started a program to bring Miskito boys to Managua for studies, while at the same time creating a business via Olympic Shoe Company, where he was distributor and salesman. Through his growing political interests he entered Sandinista circles, received guerilla training in Cuba, and eventually served under Luis Carrion on the Eastern Front.

In 1979 he was sent to the Bluefields to disarm Anti-Sandinistas, and was a force in the legacy of MISURASATA [Miskito, Sumo, Rama, Sandinista, Takan United Together]. He would develop a long-running dispute with part-German, part-Miskito leader Steadman Fagoth (and later also with rival Brooklyn Riveira), who would later create a rebel youth army based in Honduras [MISURA]. He had already joined the fight against the Sandinistas, and in these interviews recounts attacks, infiltrations, forced relocations, etc. These stories, though they clearly reveal hardship and self-sacrifice -not to mention the use and reliance on primitive weapons- are not terribly insightful.

Partly based on reputation and partly perhaps on happenstance, he ended up training Miskito rebels in the transition from nets and bows & arrows to Molotov Coctails and explosives. Fagoth would later make him "Comandante", in charge of nearly 500 Miskitos based at Twibila, Honduras. In leading these men, often personally in small sub-units, he earned the war name "Rafaga", and here he recounts these and other ventures. In doing so he devotes mention to what it means to kill and what it does to the people who do it. He is reflective, though the shame described, much like that with adultery and other events, seems at times to be far less persuasive than he lets on or describes.

In 1983, at the Old Cape battle, Rafaga was seriously wounded in the leg, and eventually landed himself in Hospital Escuela, Tegucigalpa, Honduras (where every nurse, allegedly, fell in love with him). Later, called out of recovery while in Puerto Lempira [Honduras], he was asked to lead the Alpha Uno Mission (a Fagoth-CIA political project, a massive 3000-person Sandinista protest march to Honduras, a trek for which he made some not-so-obvious religious connections to Moses and the promised land)- where, as he recounts, he was assisted in success by various Indian Spirits. These experiences, as he recounts them, were not something he was then capable of reconciling with his Christian upbringing and formal studies.

His later dismay that those who had completed the deadly journey were not supported and faced lives far worse than they had back in Nicaragua -and that Fagoth was answerable for this fate- was more ammunition in his long-standing dispute with the Honduran-CIA-backed Miskito leadership. Fagoth, according to Rafaga (and others) was an embezzler and traitor to the Miskito people. He, KISAN, and Wycliffe Diego, later would attempt to kill the Tomas Borge-initiated peace process, as well as Rafaga himself. Per Rafaga's account, Fagoth and Diego had no military ethic, no just-war framework for the use of violence, and this would ultimately undermine any legitimate authority they wielded. Once the peace process was initiated, the only response from Rafaga was peace -- the goal being Miskito autonomy (the book reproduces a 1985 song composed in Honduras: "Rafaga Bara Klaunalaka", translated as, "Rafaga and Autonomy").

Though many of Rafag's claims ring true, other seem more than a little odd. For example, he maintains that the worst loss to Miskito diginity is the use of the term "Miskito" (the people, we are told, view the insect-based term as the ultimate insult - as they refer to themselves as, "Miskuyo" - though readers are not informed of this at the outset and he used the offensive term throughout most of the autobiographical book) and their territory not as Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, but as, "Tawaswalpa". Given the account he offers of Miskito history, it is hard to believe the biggest blow to dignity is this word.

It is a common tale that the downtrodden were failed by their own leaders, and it is one Rafaga recounts as he describes Brooklyn Rivera, Steadman Fagoth, and Wycliffe Diego as always being answerable to outside forces, and that none represented the true interests of the Miskito peoples. While many criticisms are too simple to account for the facts, what Rafaga does have on his side is the simple fact that Miskitos were not fighting Somoza or Sandinistas for political power in Managua or to recover lost assets or for promised bribes, but for regional, communal reasons and goals. A portion of the proceeds (he doesn't specify a figure) from book sales go toward children's health and nutrition programs in the Miskitia. It is a book, at least the conclusion, of its time; published shortly after Chomorro's surprise election win in 1990, it is optimistic for Miskitos and Nicaragua - a view far less common a decade or more later. His final goal, beyond autonomy, would be to see his book published in the Miskito language.

The table of contents are not completely descriptive of the book as a whole, but are worth repeating here: "No One to Protect Us --  Awastara -- With a Pain in My Heart -- 1980-1981: A New Leader for the Miskitos -- 1981-1982: I Start to Fight --  The War Name "Rafaga": A Gift from the Boys -- Annealing of a Comandante -- Alpha Uno: The Bishop, Moses, and Me --  MISURA Lost / KISAN Found --  The Splitting of KISAN – Autonomy --  Legacy of a Guerrillero/Peacemaker – Epilogue -- Further Reading".