Storm reconstruction overshadows Sandinista-era enmity

             By GLENN GARVIN
             Herald Staff Writer

             LOS JOBOS, Nicaragua -- The column of U.S. Army engineers was rolling down
             a highway here, smiling and waving back at the throng of Nicaraguan peasants
             cheering from the side of the road, when a sour note sounded: One scowling man
             in the middle of the crowd saluted the Americans with an upraised middle finger.
             ``But the funny thing was, everybody all around him started yelling at him and
             shoving him,'' recounted Spec. Steve Jenkins of Rising Sun, Md. ``The other
             Nicaraguans were madder at him than we were. I've probably spoken with 500
             people since I've been here, and he was the only one with a problem.''

             The topsy-turvy course of geopolitics since the end of the Cold War has produced
             no end of ironic twists, but few stranger than the one unfolding here: Barely eight
             years since the two countries were nearly at war, U.S. troops are being greeted as
             heroes as they help rebuild Nicaragua in the dismal aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.

             ``Every time you go out, the old people and the children and the adults are waving
             at you and blowing their horns and cheering,'' said Spec. Esther Elliott of
             Alexandria, Va. ``I feel like I'm in the Rose Parade.''

             Elliott and Jenkins are among 1,700 U.S. soldiers and sailors, mostly engineers
             and medical personnel, who arrived here in mid-November on a three-month
             reconstruction mission. Joint Task Force Build Hope is helping to put Nicaragua's
             shattered road network back together and offering medical aid to peasants in
             remote rural areas where there are few doctors.

             President Arnoldo Aleman's plea for help from U.S. troops has generated intense
             criticism from the leftist opposition Sandinista Party, which governed Nicaragua
             during the 1980s when the Reagan administration was aiding the anti-communist
             contra rebels.

             Ortega looks for the catch

             ``I'm convinced that this is an intelligence operation,'' said former President Daniel
             Ortega, who remains the Sandinista leader. ``They're looking around our terrain,
             trying to get to know it better,'' with an eye toward future hostilities. Ortega also
             warned that the U.S. soldiers would touch off an AIDS epidemic in Nicaragua.

             But his words seem to have fallen mostly on deaf ears, even among his own party's
             sympathizers. Nicaraguan army commander Joaquin Cuadra, a Sandinista since
             their days as a guerrilla insurgency, said ``Nicaraguans should be grateful'' for the
             presence of the U.S. troops. Cuadra added that he hoped that the Americans
             would double their planned stay of three months.

             Out here in the rugged countryside of northern Nicaragua, where the U.S. troops
             are actually working, peasants said they had no idea what Ortega was talking
             about.

             ``I don't think that way for a minute,'' said Lorenzo Gutierrez, a 37-year-old
             farmworker, watching as troops from the U.S. Army's 55th Engineering Company
             and the 63rd Combat Support Equipment Company maneuvered bulldozers on a
             washed-out road, filling in ravines and pits carved by the hurricane's floodwaters.
             ``Look at them -- they're working on the road, not spying on us.''

             His neighbor, Juana Lazlo Castillo, agreed. Her five children run outside to wave
             hello to the Americans each morning when they arrive to work on the road, then
             again to say goodbye when they leave in the evening.

             ``Everybody around here appreciates the work they're doing for Nicaragua,''
             Castillo said. ``It's magnificent to have them here.''

             The American soldiers say Castillo's reaction has been a pretty typical one. And
             the Americans know a hostile population when they see one.

             ``My first day in Bosnia, as we rolled away from the airstrip, people were giving us
             the finger,'' said Lt. Steve Grass, of Carlisle, Pa. ``The Serbs didn't want us in
             there, because we were stopping them from taking over the whole country, and
             they let us know it. But Nicaragua has been totally different.''

             Most of the soldiers, in their early- to mid-20s, are too young to remember the
             tension between the United States and Nicaragua in the 1980s, much less the long
             history of American military intervention earlier in the century.

             Marines hunted Sandino

             U.S. Marines were present in Nicaragua almost constantly between 1910 and
             1933, trying to keep order between warring political factions.

             The most famous -- or infamous -- of the Marine operations took place in the
             same mountains where the American soldiers are working today: the pursuit of
             guerrilla chieftain Augusto Sandino, who was resisting a U.S.-brokered peace
             agreement between Nicaraguan political factions. Sandino, the ideological patron
             saint of the leftist party that would later bear his name, hated the Americans so
             much that he made his official seal a crudely drawn cartoon of a guerrilla
             brandishing a machete over a postrate Marine.

             Sandino often sent taunting messages to Marine commanders, including one signed
             ``your obedient servant, who wishes to put you in a handsome tomb with flowers.''
             Retorted the Marine commander: ``If words were bullets and phrases were
             soldiers, you would be a field marshal instead of a mule thief.'' More than 100
             Marines died before Sandino signed a peace treaty.

             The U.S. troops who came here as part of Joint Task Force Build Hope got
             briefings on Nicaraguan culture and history, but if anyone mentioned Sandino and
             the Marines, it doesn't seem to have stuck.

             ``Sandino?'' said Lt. Kevin Moyer of Memphis. ``That name sounds familiar. Isn't
             that a town?''

             Not that the briefings didn't have their scary moments.

             ``From what they told us, I thought the bugs were going to be bigger,'' said Lt.
             Amy Wallace of Ekalaka, Mont.