Around the latter part of 1984, I was well immersed in the Nicaraguan farming cooperative “La Quinta”. I had passed most of the tests that had come my way: bathing in a cold river; gratefully eating a never changing diet of tortilla, bean and/or rice dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, served with cup after cup of overly sweet coffee; hauling hundred pound sacks of potatoes out of the fields and generally working side by side with the cooperative members in whatever task was at hand. I had learned enough Spanish to fend off the majority of jokes about my mispronunciation of fairly common words. I had even been congratulated for how easily and quickly the words hijo de puta! (‘son of a whore’) rolled off my tongue at any injury or minor mishap. I was known by all as “Guillermo” – the more easily remembered Spanish translation of William. I had been accepted, in all my quirky gringo ways, as a member of the cooperative. One evening, in the darkening space of an old cat