America Was Here

The Americans are now leading the war on terror. Not so long ago they were fighting communism on battlegrounds waged on their own doorstep in Central America to the jungles of South East Asia.

Ben Anderson travels to Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama to find out what life is like today in these once strategic countries.

Click here to read an interview with Ben Anderson

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America Was Here: Part I Sunday, 5 September, 2004 2300 BST, BBC Four

Vietnam and Cambodia

Vietnam's tourist trade is booming and one of the biggest attractions is the war itself. Thirty years on, America's war here has left a deep scar but Vietnam's real battle is one between the communist old guard and the new generation of businessmen who remember little of the war.

Ben reports on the effects of the new free market economy - including Vietnamese entrepreneurs and their home crocodile farms, he travels with American veterans to old battle sites to watch them put their ghosts to rest and he also meets some of the survivors of the infamous My Lai massacre.

Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries on this earth, nearly 3 people step on a mine every day. The Khmer Rouge, Vietnamese and the Americans left millions of bombs and UXO here.

Bens meets the all-female de-mining team that is dedicated to the job of clearing this beautiful but scarred land. These women are lucky - their work, though dangerous, is one of the few full-time and regularly paid jobs to be found.

Ben visits Pol Pot's torture chambers, visits the ramshackle mound of earth that marks brother Number One's resting place and finally spends a night with young Cambodian deportees: the children whose families fled the war during the 1960s and 70s; now forcibly returned to a country they cannot recognise.

He also samples a local delicacy... deep fried tarantula.

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America Was Here: Part II Monday, 6 September, 2004 2250 BST, BBC Four

Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama

It is a region struggling to overcome the consequences of dictatorship, civil war and in Nicaragua's case - a large number of natural calamities.

Ben meets heroes of the Sandinista revolution of 1979 in Nicaragua and some of the country's starving coffee farmers who might be saved by the growing global organic market.

The war between left and right in El Salvador cost over 75,000 lives. The village of El Mozote was hit particularly hard and Ben interviews one of only two survivors out of over 500. The country is linked to the new North America Free Trade Zone but Ben meets families who have been reduced to living off a rubbish dump as the free market destroys their social safety nets.

Honduras was a vital training base for the CIA during the Contra war in Nicaragua and the civil war in El Salvador. There is evidence that the US covered up the work of the Honduran death squads in the 1980s. Today the death squads are back - but this time their targets are different.

Panama was also crucial to US interests because it was home to the Panama Canal. It was also home to the infamous School of the Americas (SOAS), where the US trained men who would go on to be some of Latin America's most notorious dictators. Now the SOAS is a five star hotel, Ben takes a look around with a former officer and trainee.

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Reporter: Ben Anderson
Series producer: Frank Smith
Executive producer: Karen O'Connor