Challenger, which requires at least a two mile runway. Yet the Department of Defense has labeled these bases “ provisional”—temporary—to squeeze around budget strictures and avoid further investigation by the U.S. Congress. “ It gives the impression,” said Gautama Fonseca, “ that at some time they’re going to come and roll them up like you roll up a rug, these things of concrete and iron, and take them away to the U.S.” Troops are constantly being shuttled into and out of Honduras, to make U.S. military strength felt while keeping permanently assigned personnel at low levels. Some 60 military exercises have been staged regionally in the 1980s, some offshore but most on Honduran soil, with up to 10,000 U.S. troops on hand at any one time. National Guard units from a majority of the states have worked or trained in Honduras. The Oregon maneuvers, which were held jointly with a unit of Honduran paratroopers, are thus part of a vastly larger strategy. And the Somocista-led contra forces are supplied “ humanitarian aid” in mega-million dollar doses to occupy Honduran soil, if not their own. The strategy behind the buildup is to keep all parties off balance. Currently, the struggle in tiny El Salvador is virtually deadlocked between guerrilla and government forces. U.S. planes fly surveillance missions nightly from Honduras to keep tabs on rebel activity there. Christian Democrat President Jose Napoleon Duarte has twice opened talks with the FMLN guerrilla coalition, but his hands are tied by his military, which prefers to bomb and blitz the insurgents out of existence. The FMLN now operates throughout the country. In Guatemala, newly installed Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo is the first truly civilian president since a 1954 CIA- sponsored coup. Yet his government is largely window dressing, part of the Reagan program to replace martial regimes with elected ones, to keep arms and aid flowing solidly into the region without triggering congressional concern. Cerezo has publicly admitted that real power in Guatemala is still in the hands of a military, whose wholesale human rights vioTn protect its “ interests,” the concept lations kept U.S. aid cut off for nearly 6 years, a legacy of the Carter era. The central focus of all this buildup, Nicaragua, is gritting its teeth and struggling through this hostile period. The U.S. has no desire to cope with young revolutions, preferring to try to derail them in their vulnerable adolescence. The Sandinistas holding positions of authority are themselves young, with most’ cabinet ministers in their twenties and thirties. It seems natural in a nation where the average age is fifteen. It’s become something of a warbetween generations: one powerful, entrenched, and aging; the other inexperienced but fearless. For the Sandinistas know that time, ultimately, is on their side. Nicaragua has been hard hit economically by the 1985 U.S. trade embargo, a form of bloodless warfare, and currently depends on Canadian and European trade to fill in the gaps. Thusfar they’ve beaten the contras militarily, but the need to maintain a substantial military apparatus has forced them to use Eastern bloc assistance in the face of the multi-faceted U.S. efforts at destabilization. It’s a Reagan form of self-fulfilling prophecy. Honduras is also fragile, though there is no currently active insurrection. The National Council of Honduran Workers and Peasants, which includes the AFL- CIO-affiliated unions, in February presented a remarkably thorough proposal to solve the country’s desparate problems through democratic means. The key recommendations include reducing economic dependency, extending national sovereignty and defending the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of neighbor states. The proposal demands the removal of the 8-15,000 contra forces, and the limition and reduction of U.S. economic and military presence. This labor/campesino (peasant) coalition operates throughout Honduras and will not wait end less ly for mean ingfu l change. One critic of current U.S. policy, Manuel “ Meme” Acosta Bonilla, is a member of the traditionally conservative National Party. When I visited his palatial home right across the street from the U.S. Embassy, he lauded the labor/peasant report as a “ challenge to the country. They’ re asking for concrete measures to pull the country out of the bad fix we’re in. . .a shocking m ise ry .. .and to give the country a future.” A nationalist, Acosta Bonilla stated that: “ Reagan’spolitics in Central America have been poorly focussed. Because they’ve radicalized the Central American problem to such a degree that all protest and revolutionary movements in Central America are considered a direct result of Soviet politics, through Cuba, pretending that they put the United States in danger. This, in my opinion, is absurd.” This cultured, worldly gentleman sadly concluded: “ It’s being done without the traditional delicacy of the United States, which has historically been careful to respect the rights of these small nations. Legality has not been very important to the Reagan people.” Whatever their individual attitudes toward Nicaragua might be, Hondurans universally appear to resent having the U.S.-maintained contras illegally in their national territory. In fact, the Honduran government refuses to acknowledge the contra presence rather than admit to the uncontrolled occupation of a considerable chunk of its southern borderlands. This refusal to admit reality causes considerable problems. 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