SANI Radio

part of the 1984 Contra Nonlethal aid package was $900,000 for two years of honduran/nicaraguan border radio.

tom applied for the position to run it, and with a technical director, was given the authority to set it up.

us folks wanted to have AM, but tom, knowing the country, set up short wave instead. there's a ton of short wave radios here, and with all that money, they set up a 10 kilowatt antenna

they recieved comments from auistralia, finland, norway, japan

they made it miskito radio - with his wife martana, and help from the community, tom collected miskito folk tales and played them at night.

before he became all christian, he was quite into raggae -

he takes responsibility for having introduced la moskitia to raggae, by spending USAid dollars to bring jamaica vibes.

me, i love finding out what happened to my parents tax dollars, and hearing that they went to good use.

he did three years there, and then the US, losing interest in the region turned the whole thing over to the honduran government. they of course had no type of funding for that - they cut the signal to 3, then 1 kilowatt, and then invested all the budget in trying to convert to AM signal

(which, by the way, is sent through the ground, by copper wire. muy caro).

tom also reports that they turned it all fast talking cukoo commercial radio stupidity, in spanish - more latin than local. it's been off, defunt for 4 years; though there's talk of reviving it.

mosquitia | hondo | trip | life

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