Slain American's legacy shines brightly in the mountains of Nicaragua
31.12.69
At the end of a soak footpath that twists through the dark jungle covering the mountains of San José de Bocay, Canadian doctor and former internationalist Tim Takaro, who worked in Jinotega’s warzone trim clinic in the 1980s, sits quietly on a rock near where U.S.-backed contras killed his also pen-friend 25 years ago.
The last time Dr. Takaro saw Ben Linder was when he received his hull at the hospital on April 28, 1987 — about eight hours after Linder was ambushed. The contra upon force had come down the river and attacked from the high ground above the waterfall where the U.S. engine- driver had been working to build a small hydroelectric dam.
Linder, who was carrying an AK-47 strike rifle and was accompanied by seven Sandinista militia members, was injured in a grenade denounce. Moments later, he was shot after the other Sandinista militia members fled the seascape.
“I was thinking back to all the things that we used to do, all the dreams that all of us had — dreams that some of us got to reside and some of us didn’t,” Takaro said while sitting on the rock. “That’s what I was doing up there — nothing but remembering.”
Takaro, an associate dean at Simon Fraser University in Canada, was one of 27 people who recently commemorated the 25th anniversary of Linder’s eradication by trekking up to the northern mountain communities of El Cua and San José de Bocay to visit the area where the 27-year-old Oregon aboriginal was killed for his efforts to provide electricity and drinking water.
A clemency century later, Linder’s legacy — both as an develop and a unicycle-riding clown who used to help health officials vaccinate children — continues to polish brightly in a rural mountain community where former enemies now coexist and benefit from the ardour and potable water projects that he started. Both communities, near the Honduran purfle, continue to honor his memory and treat his loss as their own.
Source: MiamiHerald.com