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Ben Linder is regarded by many involved in political activism as an exemplar of revolutionary idealism and hardworking goodwill who was able to effect practical change for the Nicaraguan people. His tragic death at the age of 27 symbolizes the violence and contradictions of American foreign policy.

Benjamin Ernest Linder was born July 7, 1959, in San Francisco, California. He died just outside of El Cua, Nicaragua, on April 28, 1987. His parents were Elisabeth Linder and the late David Linder. He had one sister, Miriam, and one brother, John. Linder was enrolled in elementary school in San Francisco until 1970, when his family moved to Portland, Oregon. While in San Francisco, the young Ben Linder protested against the Vietnam War, and his parents regularly discussed political and social issues around the dinner table. Linder's mother, Elisabeth, is a member of the progressive organization the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), founded in 1915 by feminist Jane Addams.

Linder graduated from Adams High School in 1976 and attended the University of Washington in Seattle. He received a B. S. in mechanical engineering in 1983. The previous summer, Linder had traveled to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. After his university graduation, Linder traveled to Nicaragua and was hired by the Nicaraguan public utility agency the National Energy Institute (INE), with whom he worked until October 1986. Linder focused initially on geothermal power; later, in 1984, he started working to develop a 100-kilowatt hydro-electric plant. The plant was to be situated four kilometers from the rural northern village of El Cua.

Linder was active in the unicycle and clowning community both in Washington State and in Nicaragua. He was also politically active, and participated in several anti-nuclear demonstrations against the Trojan nuclear power plant while in high school in Portland, Oregon. He was involved in various health care campaigns in Nicaragua, and often rode his unicycle and performed as a clown in the Nicaraguan circus. Upon his graduation from the University of Washington, Linder rode his unicycle down the coast to Nicaragua.

In October of 1986 Linder stopped work at the INE and began working on a small 200-kilowatt hydro-electric plant in order to bring electricity to the town of San Jose de Bocay, in northern Nicaragua. Linder was appointed the project's engineer. On April 28, 1987, Linder was working at the hydro-electric dam site roughly one mile away from San Jose de Bocay. Linder and six other workers had been working at the site for four days, attempting to construct a weir (used to measure water flow). In the early morning hours of April 28, Linder and his co-workers were attacked by approximately 10-20 Contras. Survivor reports indicate that the Contras were camouflaged and awaiting the arrival of the engineers. Linder and two co-workers, Pablo Rosales and Sergio Fernandez, were killed—Rosales by a stab wound to the chest and Fernandez by a bullet wound through the ear. David Linder, a pathologist, and Dr. Francisco Valladares concur that Linder was "killed by a bullet which entered his right temple and exited in the left and posterior aspect of his head. The entry site was marginated (surrounded) with gunpowder burn marks" (testimony, page 3).

Linder, they argue, was first "immobilized" by shrapnel from the contras' grenades and then killed by a gunshot fired at point-blank range (page 3). The testimony from eyewitnesses indicates that there was no exchange of fire between the contras and the workers: the ambush took place so quickly that there was little time to react. According to eyewitnesses and colleagues, Linder was not affiliated with the Sandinista army, and he was killed while wearing civilian clothes. The Reagan administration maintained that Linder was carrying a Soviet-made rifle, and that he was killed in a firefight with the contras. Elliot Abrams, the Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, added that Linder should have known the risks of working in a war zone. David Linder, in his testimony to members of Congress, stated: "Ben and the others had been there long enough for the contras to know what they were doing. This was an ambush, not a chance encounter. This is murder. I consider the United States government and its effectors—the contras—guilty of this crime. This was not an accidental result of U. S. policy; it is the essence of U. S. policy" (testimony page 3).

After Linder's death, his family and friends traveled to Nicaragua to mourn his passing, express their outrage at U.S. policy, and meet Ben's friends and co-workers. Linder's funeral was held on April 30 in Matagalpa. Several hundred people, including Nicaragua's President, Daniel Ortega, attended.

Linder's death sparked debate within the United States on the Reagan administration's support of the Contras. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that United States citizens working in Nicaragua had "put themselves in harm's way" (Wikipedia). Another supporter of the Contra war, Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, held that Linder exercised bad judgment in entering a combat zone. Those opposed to U. S. foreign policy were furious that an American citizen was killed by American proxy forces using taxpayers' dollars, and that thousands of Nicaraguan civilians continued to be killed. Reporting on his death, CBS news anchor Dan Rather commented: "the loss of Benjamin Linder is more than fodder in an angry political debate. It is the loss of something that seems rare these days: a man with the courage to put his back behind his beliefs [...] he chose to follow the lead of his conscience."

Upon return from Nicaragua, the Linders were called upon to testify at a House hearing concerned with Linder's death. Republican Congressman Connie Mack declared that Elisabeth Linder's grief served merely to "politicize this situation," and added that "I don't want to be tough on you, but I really feel you have asked for it" (Wikipedia). Elisabeth Linder responded, "That was the most cruel thing you could have said." Linder's death, and the Congressional investigation concerning the Iran-Contra affair, added to the growing outrage and controversy over the United States' support of the Contras. Congress declined to renew Contra aid in 1989.

In order to attempt completion of the Cua-Bocay hydro-electric project, and to decry the murder of their son, the Linders went on a Peace Tour across the United States from 1987 to 1988. They traveled and gave speeches and slideshows about Linder's engineering work in El Cua, the nature of the Sandinista Revolution, and the Contra's destruction of schools, hospitals, and other civilian areas. At her son's funeral, Elisabeth Linder said "My son was brutally murdered for bringing electricity to a few poor people in northern Nicaragua. He was murdered because he had a dream and he had the courage to make that dream come true […] Ben told me the first year that he was there, and this is a quote, 'It's a wonderful feeling to work in a country where the government's first concern is for its people, for all of its people.'" (Wikipedia)

Sources:

Harris, Richard, and Vilas, Carlos M., eds. Nicaragua: A Revolution Under Siege. Zed Books Limited: London, 1985. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Linder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nicaragua#Sandinista_period_.281979_-_1990.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardia_Nacional_%28Nicaragua%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandino