Copyright 2006 - 2007 Susan Sleeman
Interview with Latin American Expert Jeanette Windle
Q: What do you do for a living? A: Writer/Journalist/Editor. I also work training indigenous writers in a number of developing nations as well as heading up media services with BCM International, a nondenominational Christian mission with 750 missionaries in 50 countries across five continents (my husband is currently president).
Q: Other than perhaps having written a book, what qualifies you to talk about this topic?
A: I grew up as an American citizen, daughter of American missionaries, in the rural jungle areas that are now the guerrilla hot spots of Colombia, spent most of the last two decades in Bolivia, watching first-hand as that country developed into Latin America's first true narco-democracy, and have come through life experience as well as meticulous research to have an inside and intimate acquaintance with these subjects.
Q: One thing that many great guests often have is a strong personal story about what led them to do what they're doing now. What's your personal story?
A: I grew up in the rural hot zones of Colombia, daughter of missionaries who were also the only Americans in the zone. I watched firsthand a beautiful country and people become a hotbed of drug trafficking and terrorism. The scrub jungle town in which I spent my teen years, now a guerrilla hot zone, is the town into which our military has sent Special Forces to train Colombian military to fight the guerrillas, the airstrip on which they landed the very gravel strip on which I used to jog in the mornings, now paved and pocked with bomb craters, the town filled with the debris of bombings. Later in Bolivia I watched firsthand as that country moved from dabbling in the drug trade to a full-fledged narcodemocracy. There were stories I was privileged to be in a unique position to write from an inside understanding that no one else could. I wanted to share those stories, that world, with people who would never otherwise be able to understand them.
Q: What do you hope people glean from your books?
A: A better understanding of the world outside their own suburban neighborhood and how what is happening there can affect their own security and future.
Q: Why should Americans trouble themselves to understand Latin America?
A: The next threat to America may not filter through our international airports carrying Middle Eastern passports, but up across the Rio Grande with Latin American travel documents.
Q: Assume that there are a lot of other people whom the media could find to discuss this topic. What makes you different? What, if anything, are you willing to discuss that others are not?
A: The truth. My life experience has left me far better acquainted with all of these issues than any media personnel or consultants I have heard on the air to this point. Most have their knowledge through reading an intelligence brief. Even many State Department and even military intelligence personnel whohave been on the spot come as outsiders with a superficial understanding of the what and why. They do not have an intimate knowledge of local culture, language, or politics. can discuss the whys as well as the whats.
Q: What opinion, belief, advice, or information do you have which is 'counter-intuitive'?
A: Two which jump to mind are: 1) America is hated most abroad for what she is doing right, not wrong. 2) Poverty does not breed corruption; corruption breeds poverty.
Q: If you had to make people feel angry or uncomfortable by talking about some aspect of your topic, what would you talk about?
A: I would talk about the ordinary people in their millions caught in the crossfire of these conflicts: the peasant farmer who doesn't want to choose sides but just feed his family, the refugees driven from their lands, the boy soldiers with their dead eyes and lost dreams who should be in school but instead are looking down the barrel of a gun to kill, the paramilitaries and guerrillas themselves who began with worthy enough motives but whose methods have turned them into the very evil they pledged themselves to fight-and of course the Islamic fundamentalist movements who are taking advantage of the chaos in Latin American for their own benefit.
Q: If you had to raise a controversial question that relates to this topic in some way, what would that question be?
A: Is democracy enough? Is the simple act of casting a majority vote the value that America should concern itself to export, the value that brought about its own freedom? Or are there values of justice and human rights and liberties without which all our attempts at democracy abroad will be doomed to failure?
Read more about Jeanette at: http://www.jeanettewindle.com
Books By Jeanette
| Betrayed Click title to read excerpt or buy from CBD.com By Jeanette Windle / Tyndale House When Duke University anthropologist Vicki Andrews learns that her sister has been murdered in Guatemala, she's determined to find the truth. Government authorities dismiss the death as just another mugging or kidnap-for-ransom---but she refuses to accept their verdict and launches her own investigation. Will what she discovers cost Vicki her ownlife? 350 pages, softcover from Tyndale. |
| FireStorm Click title to read excerpt or buy from CBD.com By Jeanette Windle / Kregel Publications Fleeing the ruins of her late husband's Bolivian drug empire, Sara Connor finds sanctuary in Miami with the help of special agent Doug Bradford. But her past catches up with her when old enemies resurface. A drug raid catapults Sara and Doug into a terrorist conspiracy that reaches deep into South America's lawless Tri-Frontier region. Can they stop the criminals before thousands of lives are lost? 560 pages, softcover from Kregel. |
Christian Suspense
To Die For
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