Well in Managua, I remember there were constant power outages and water shortages. People fled the north where contras attacked villages and assaulted people. Generally everyone knew Reagan was behind it and the goal was to destabilize countries who were not willing to be US puppets. Most people do not want to hear how Coca Cola polluted the lakes and poisoned people...they just think that socialist governments who tried to set up literacy and affordable medicine to stop deadly dysentery..things like that were all evil. I sat in the US Embassy listening to a guy say that the nearly destitute squatters living in dumps were dangerous communists. So my memory of the contras was that they were a veiled attempt to harass and terrorize where US corporations had already decimated much of the resources...and fledgling governments were undermined. Those were scary days.
Not very much; I didn't care much about it when it was broadcast in the media about 25 years ago.
