No, the song is not about an individual. No, Guatemala is not "name-dropped". No, it's not about Nicaragua.
In early 1983 at the invitation of the world hunger organization OXFAM he toured two Guatemalan refugee camps on the border with Mexico. "I was in this refugee camp, hearing these unbelievable stories of the atrocities these people had fled from, stories that were beyond anything the grossest slasher movie could come up with, and in the background was this helicopter going back and forth along the border. The Guatemalan flyers had a recent history of having strafed the camps from the air, even though the camps were in Mexico. The desperate condition these people were in, and their dignity in the face of that desperation, all this horror made me feel the people in those helicopters had surrendered their humanity long since. When I wrote 'Rocket Launcher', I was in San Cristobal de Los Casas in Mexico. I was in a hotel drinking a bottle of Scotch the day after I came out of the refugee camps, and I was in tears thinking about it and wrote the song."
No, the song is not about an individual. No, Guatemala is not "name-dropped". No, it's not about Nicaragua.
In early 1983 at the invitation of the world hunger organization OXFAM he toured two Guatemalan refugee camps on the border with Mexico. "I was in this refugee camp, hearing these unbelievable stories of the atrocities these people had fled from, stories that were beyond anything the grossest slasher movie could come up with, and in the background was this helicopter going back and forth along the border. The Guatemalan flyers had a recent history of having strafed the camps from the air, even though the camps were in Mexico. The desperate condition these people were in, and their dignity in the face of that desperation, all this horror made me feel the people in those helicopters had surrendered their humanity long since. When I wrote 'Rocket Launcher', I was in San Cristobal de Los Casas in Mexico. I was in a hotel drinking a bottle of Scotch the day after I came out of the refugee camps, and I was in tears thinking about it and wrote the song."