A Letter From the Publisher

By Richard B. Thomas

TIME's continuing concern about events in Nicaragua is reflected once again in this week's cover stories on the controversy over U.S. aid to the contra rebels fighting the Marxist-leaning Sandinista regime. That interest prompted the magazine to station a full-time correspondent in Managua, Nicaragua's capital, more than half a year ago to maintain a firsthand perspective on the country's policies and problems. -

Our correspondent is Laura Lopez, who spent 3 1/2 years as a TIME reporter in Mexico City, then eagerly moved to Nicaragua after 18 months as a staff writer and correspondent in New York City. "When TIME asked me to open a sub- bureau in Managua, I jumped at the chance," says Lopez. "During short, dark midwinter Manhattan afternoons, reading reports from my colleagues in Central America, I missed the sun, the unpredictability, the adventure, even the chaos."

She has experienced all those things in her seven months in Nicaragua. She has followed the war by accompanying army troops on patrol, wading rivers and riding horseback into remote areas. Sharing the soldiers' lot, Lopez has slept on the ground, in the back of an East German military truck and in insect- infested peasant huts. "Most recently," she says, "I stayed in a hotel with walls so thin you could see through them. That didn't bother the bats, which squeaked and dive-bombed my cot from the rafters all night long." Other TIME correspondents and editors have reported on Nicaragua's civil war from both sides. For this week's stories, Mexico City Bureau Chief Harry Kelly and Washington Correspondent David Halevy visited with both the Sandinistas and the contras. Last month, Lopez was joined in Managua for several days by Staff Writer Jill Smolowe, who has been the author of many stories on Central America since she came to TIME ten months ago. She too was seeking a firsthand look, which helped her in writing this week's major story on Nicaragua under the Sandinistas. "The war did not seem close by or imminent," Smolowe observes, "but there were lots of uniforms and weapons. They sling those Kalashnikovs around rather casually. I saw one young soldier using his to hit a volleyball."

No matter the nature of Nicaragua's government, both writer and correspondent are impressed with the Nicaraguan people, who are enduring great adversity without necessarily understanding the causes, and steeling themselves for an outcome that is largely beyond their control. Smolowe's and Lopez's informed concern, and TIME's, is revealed in their story.