Circus

About the Book

Brian Stephens, a young geography graduate student receives his PhD after research in Guatemala. The Agency for International Development there hires him to direct some programs, and within a few years he is named a Reserve Foreign Service Officer but after a few years leaves to work directly for the Government of Guatemala. Traveling in the high mountains with a group of local university students, he sees the Guatemalan Military loading marijuana onto helicopters. Everyone in the country, including those in his own embassy, seem to know that this is one of the war against Communism when is funded when U.S. military aid is cut off for human rights abuses. Trying to tell the story, he is put in jail, and forgotten. When he escapes and makes it back to his wife and family in the United States, he finds he is not totally welcome. Desperate to find a job and support his family, he eventually accepts a job with an "unknown" agency which wants him to report on drug money in Latin America going to fund revolutions. Over the next three years he becomes a money launderer working out of the Cayman Islands and Lima, Peru. He finds that his job has been, in reality, the channeling of funds to the Contra effort in Nicaragua. His research project has been nothing more than a Sideshow (Book I), which eventually leads him to the center of U.S. efforts to stop Communism, El Salvador, which is The Center Ring (Book II).

About the Author

Beginning in the 1960Õs, Mel Droubay traveled and worked in several Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Guatemala. In 1972 he received his PhD in Geography after several years of research work in Guatemala. He received various scholarships, then contracts with the U.S. Agency for International Development, eventually becoming a Foreign Service Reserve Officer. After leaving Guatemala in the early 1980Õs he has taught at several universities in the United States, including the last twelve years at the University of West Florida. He now is a Senior Project Manager for an Environmental Consulting Firm.