LEST WE FORGETÖ
And so the canonisation of Ronald Reagan draws to a close. Amongst the eulogies, there was, of course, a threnody from Margaret Thatcher, delivered in a curious, halting style, as if by a poor impressionist practising into a tape recorder. Lesser mortals may simply have shed a manly tear & spent some time wondering why Regan hadnít risen on the third day.
Others have noted Reaganís parting with less approbation. I came across an excellent lest-we-forget testimonial in The Independent. Not a leader article or a regular columnistís reflections, but a letter to the editor. Here it is in full.
MEMORIES OF REAGAN: FUNDING THE TORTURE IN NICARAGUA
Sir: I too have my favourite memories of the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan. Since I was based in Managua, Nicaragua, working for a human rights organisation, I particularly appreciated the manís genius for persuasion when he declared Nicaragua ñ then with a population of 3 million - to be a major security threat to the United States. After all, it was only ìtwo dayís march from Texasî.
It also brought to mind my first funeral in a town called Esteli: an eight-year-old boy on a yellow plastic seat, shaking and inconsolable, as deep sobs racked his tiny body. He then rushed to grasp the coffin which held his favourite uncle, just 18-years-old. I remember the day a human rights report came in from the North. The Contra forces attacked a co-operative. In the chaos a mother heard them torturing her daughter in the darkness. In the morning they found mutilated corpse in a ditch with her breasts cut off. The bodies mounted up faster than the human rights reports. This went on and on.
On each occasion before a vote in the US Congress seeking further financial support for the Contras, major human rights organisations, including Amnesty and Americas Watch, provided detailed and corroborated evidence of systematic murder and torture by the US0-funded Contras against the civilian population. That young womanís fate was not some isolated aberration, but the fine detail of a campaign of terror.
I remember interviewing a teenage Contra arrested by the Sandanistas. He told me how he finished of the survivors of an ambush with his knife, mutilating them beyond recognition. President Reagan invited the boyís leaders into the White House and in a cordial press conference declared them to be ìfreedom fighters ì and ì the equivalent of our founding fathersî.
As Ronald Reagan lies in state I canít help but remember the child in the ditch.
PAUL LAVERY, London W1
11:30:45 PM 
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