Central American Wars 1959–89 (Men-at-Arms, 221)

Nigel Thomas, famous for writing about less known armies and conflicts, teamed with Carlos Caballero Jurado in this overview of the Cold War gone hot in the Central American subcontinent. Overall this is a good addition to the Men-at-Arms series, albeit with some flaws. This book covers the military background and military organization of Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Haiti. The text presents a brief introduction, with every country receiving an overview and a description of their conventional and guerrilla forces at the time.The first problems arise by the choice of countries to be covered. Mexico is generally regarded as part of North America, and not only that, the Mexicans didn't engage in the Central American wars of 1959-89, making its inclusion even more pointless. It has a very short overview of its background and current forces; two pictures, one showing generals with service dress uniforms and the other showing the Mexican cavalry in parade dress. A waste of space that could be used for more information about the Cuban military and the Guatemalan counterinsurgency. On the bright side, El Salvador and Nicaragua received a good deal of coverage in this volume, certainly because of more US involvement in those countries.The pictures range from good to very poor quality, with many blurred ones, and some pictures could be better explored or captioned. Others are just for the sake of showing the uniforms of senior officers, even if the details are impossible to see. The pictures of Mexican generals (pg. 7), Mexican cavalry (pg. 8), the gigantic picture of president and general Kjell Laugurud Garcia (pg. 39), president Somoza (pg. 44) and Col. Hugo Torres, chief of the Sandinista Army (pg. 47) add little to the text. The Mexican pictures shoudn't be there in the first place, as they are taking the space for other pictures from the actual conflicts. The picture of Gen. Garcia takes more than half the page just to show the cerimonial dress of the general officers of the Guatemalan Army, which is way too much in such a short book. The relevance of a blurred picture showing Somoza in civilian clothes, only using a US-made headgear was another poor choice of the authors - a picture of Somoza's National Guard would be way more interesting. The picture of Col. Torres is low quality, you can't see any relevant details in his uniform and 1/4 of its page is in blank; this space, also, could be better utilized. Somoza's National Guard, albeit famous, has no pictures and its only representation is in plate F1.As the text says, the Cuban military is the greatest military power in the Caribbean after the United States; yet, there isn't a single picture showing the Cuban military during the 80's. Only a picture of Castro's victory speech, a low quality picture of 2506 Brigada Asalto badge and another very low quality picture of POW Brigadistas. The Cuban military certainly deserve better coverage. On the bright side, Guatemala has 5 good quality pictures showing the Kaibiles, the Paratroopers with the Israeli OR-201 kevlar helmet, and the army's camouflage and Indian origins, and one blurred picture showing the members of a village Civil Patrol with obsolete rifles for self-defence. El Salvador has good quality pictures of both governamental forces and guerrillas, and Nicaragua's section has 3 good quality pictures depecting the Sandinistas. In page 22 there is a low quality picture of a women from the Sandinista Militia, emulating the Cuban exemple of "equality between the sexes", and in the next page a very blurred picture of FDN Contra guerrillas. The caption says they have a mixture of US-supplied M16s and captured AKMs, but there isn't any M16 in the picture, only AKMs and FN FALs. The FN FAL saw widespread use in Latin America, but isn't mentioned in this book at all. Even the Cuban FAR used the FAL in the Bay of Pigs invasion. There is a good quality picture of Salvatorian infantrymen on parade armed with M16 rifles in page 41. By this book one could easily believe that the AKM faced mainly M16 rifles instead of FN FALs.Personally I didn't like the style of the illustrator, with plates A1-3 looking awkward, but the rest are better drawn. The Kaibil in C1 could be done a little better but I am glad for him in the book. Plates in section B show a Cuban sergeant in Soviet-style olive green battle dress and steel helmet, making it one of the best plates in the book, as it shows how the average Cuban soldier was dressed - and some Cuban advisors were captured by US forces in Grenada wearing this outfit. B2 shows a Cuban marine with the Soviet-style black uniform, beret and the white and blue striped shirt. B3 shows a Mexican Presidential Guard in parade dress and the plate commentary goes into a desproportionately long explanation of uniform and rank of the Mexican Army, which was completely unnecessary in this book; in place of this plate, there could be a Cuban female soldier wearing their characteristic "coffee can" field cap. The plates are quite repetitive in its lengthy explanation of uniform and rank details; the space could be used for tactical considerations and training, but Osprey must keep the model builders interested. The Kaibil in C1 and Somoza's National Guard corporal show that the Israelis managed to introduce a good quantity of their hardware into the region. When the US dropped its assistence to Gautemala, the Israelis filled the gap and brought advisors and equipment to the country. This change of doctrine could have been better explored if not for so much padding for pictures of little value and long uniform minutiae. Another problem with the plates is that the authors decided to use the three Contra guerrillas from section G for the book cover, giving this book a very ugly cover. This may seem trivial, but the cover certainly demoved many potential buyers. The choice is even more odd by the fact that selecting plates from the same section for the cover is not standard practice in the MAA series. A better cover could have plate B1 on the right, E1 on the center and G3 on the left. It would make for a much better cover. Another problem is that no plate shows a soldier or guerrilla armed with the FN FAL, even tough there is a Salvatorean soldier with a G3. But overall the plates are visually satisfying, especially the camouflaged uniforms, notably plates C2 and E1.Overall, this is a good primer for a subject that was still going on when this book was first published. The introduction mentions that analysts predicted that Central America would become "the Middle East of the Year 2000"; it is interesting to read that today because with the unexpected colapse of the Soviet Union, the guerrilla movements would ground to a halt, and the Marxist governament of Nicaragua had to sit on the negotiations table; which it was refusing to do at the time of writing.

The book was ordered and delivered in a timely manner and the text content was as i expected it to be--a good informative narrative on the Central American conflicts 1959-89

I love the book in the visual arts down but I got some problems with this book Mexico is a North American country, and there are some conflicts that this book is not covered but all in all I still great to me

But the description is very accurate pictures and illustrations are very accurate

thank you

This is a snapshot view of all the principal nations of Central America with Haiti, Cuba, and Mexico added for boot. There is enough detail and background of twentieth century events to set the stage for the situation as it was in the eighties. The period covers the victory of Castro and the subsequent events.There is nothing on South America, Venezuela, Colombia, etc. A good subject for another volume in this series. Drug Wars of the Jungle.Quick introduction and good illustrations make a good read.

It was good for cursory research. The short synopses of the era and areas are good for an overview but it was the uniforms, weapons, patches, and equipment, carried by Contras and Sandinistas in that era that was most useful as a refresher. It is so easy to forget some of the details.