NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION A FAMILIAR TUNE TO PETE SEEGER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100500049-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 49
• Publication Date: May 3, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100500049-2
STAT
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
3 May 1983
Nicaraguan revolution a fa m4i r,
tune to Pete Seeger
ARTICLE !-EPEAA,RED
Din PA Y i~ f
By George.de Lama
Chicago Tribune
MANAGUA, Nicaragua-An old
fighter of wrongs, a singer of
hopeful songs, is standing up to
be counted in yet another corner
of confrontation:
"Too many rectangles in the world,"
said Pete Seeger, admiring the stark
revolutionary murals that adorn some of
the crumbling -walls of bombed-out build-
ings here. What we need is more
murals " :.. .
his trusty banjo beside one.';
,large and colorful depiction of trium-
_pbant guarr las leading women and chit- .
dren into liberation, he smiled broadly.
"Yes, sir, that's a nice one," he -said.
"If I hadn't become a musician, I often
think I would have been a muralist. Yep,
..a muralist.,'
Seeger. of course, became a folk star
and a prince of protest. Civil rights,
Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate. 'His has sung
his songs, lent his presence, taken a
stand on all of them.
LAST WEEK he found himself in an
unfamiliar place but a familiar setting,
joining more than 80 Latin American
musicians from 16 countries here to lend
their support to the leftist Sandinista
government and to denounce a guerrilla
war armed and directed by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency.
If the issue sounds familiar, to Seeger
it is. He recalls the CIA-sponsored coup
that deposed President Salvador Allende
in Chile in 1973, and he often has opposed
U.S. hostility to leftist regimes in his
ballads. Latin American politics, howev-
er, is something new, said Seeger, who
will be 64 next week. "I'm really learn.
ing, most of all."
Seeger was the most prominent North
American musician to answer the San-
dinista's invitation to the International
Festival of New Latin American Song, a
musical extravaganza that is billed here
as, a cultural and political rebuke to
"Yanquis and imperialism."
"We know so -many others who would
have come if they could have but didn't
have'the money," said Seeger, graying
.but tall and trim and still lighthearted
enough to break into song in a hotel lobby
at 8 a.m., to the delight of onlookers.
JOAN BAEZ was supposed to come,
according to some posters advertising the
event in Costa Rica, but the only other
U.S.-based musicians to attend were
those of Grupo Rica, a jazz and salsa
group mostly made up of Chilean exiles
wuv uve in tberKeiey, Calif.
See emphasized in an interview that the festival
was also a forum, with tightly scheduled discussion
sessions and a firm political stance. To him, "la nueva
cancion" ["the new song") being promoted here is a
throwback to the days of black music during the
freedom movement in the South.
Them .are differences, though. In today's Nicaragua,
the `stage for musicians' performances is draped with a
banner reading "The [armed]struggle is the highest of
all songs." Armed -revolutionary movements, not the
nonviolence preached by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and
other civil rights activists, are being championed .here.
Seeger sees Nicaragua--and all of Latin America-was
the Sandinista government does: As a small, poor place
under attack from a hostile, overbearing United States.
HE HAS a daughter, Mika, 35, and a'.grandson, 10, who
have lived here more than two years. [Asked how -old
Mika is, Seeger's wife, Toshi, replied: "Let's see, she
was born during the [Henry] Wallace campaign, in 1948. .
We do everything by campaigns back home.']
"When I was my grandson's age, I remember growing
up in Connecticut and seeing a picture of . a stoo
shouldered peasant with a big sombrero who ha. fought
U.S. marines in Nicaragua " said Seeger. "Later. I found
out be was Sandino and that he was a poet who became
a freedom fighter, like so many poets.
Agusto Sandino is the Nicaraguan peasant for whom
the revolution that overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza
in 1979 is named.
"I consider it an honor to be invited here," Seeger
said. "We welcome the chance to express our solidarity
w i t h this heroic people at a time when criminals of the
CIA are trying to organize an invasion. One wonders how
the beck you keep the CIA from doing things like this,
Do we have to abolish the agency?" ;
FOR ALL his commitment and solidarity, Seeger
admits he doesn't know much about what is happening
around here.
"I'm really sorry I don't know Spanish," he said. "I
feel like I'm a rig half of it." But as he watches and
learns, he said, the that comes over is an old one.
"This is nothing new tows," said Toshi. "We feel right
at home here."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100500049-2