You recall the uproar in the 1980s about how the Sandinistas were abusing the Miskito Indians on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. president Reagan, in his inimitable, understated style, said it was "a campaign of virtual genocide." UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick was a bit more restrained; she called it the "most massive human rights violation in Central America." What's happening now with the Miskitos?

Reagan and Kirkpatrick were talking about an incident in which, according to Americas Watch, several dozen Miskitos were killed and a lot of people were forcefully moved in a rather ugly way in the course of the contra war. The US terrorist forces were moving into the area and this was the Sandinista's reaction.

It was certainly an atrocity, but it's not even visible compared to the ones Jeane Kirkpatrick was celebrating in the neighboring countries at the time -- and in Nicaragua, where the overwhelming mass of the atrocities were committed by the so-called "freedom fighters."

What's happening to the Miskitos now? When I was in Nicaragua in October 1993, church sources -- the Christian Evangelical Church, primarily, which works in the Atlantic coast -- were reporting that 100,000 Miskitos were starving to death as a result of the policies we were imposing on Nicaragua. Not a word about it in the media here. (More recently, it did get some slight reporting.)

People here are worrying about the fact that one typical consequence of US victories in the Third World is that the countries where we win immediately become big centers for drug flow. There are good reasons for that -- it's part of the market system we impose on them.

Nicaragua has become a major drug transshipment center. A lot of the drugs go through the Atlantic coast, now that Nicaragua's whole governmental system has collapsed. Drug transhipment areas usually breed major drug epidemics, and there's one among the Miskitos, primarily among the men who dive for lobsters and other shellfish.

Both in Nicaragua and Honduras, these Miskito Indian divers are compelled by economic circumstances to do very deep diving without equipment. Their brains get smashed and they quickly die. In order to try to maintain their work rate, the divers stuff themselves with cocaine. It helps them bear the pain.

There's concern about drugs here, so that story got into the press. But of course nobody cares much about the working conditions. After all, it's a standard free-market technique. You've got plenty of superfluous people, so you make them work under horrendous conditions; when they die, you just bring in others.