Violinistas

...Under threats from the Sandinistas, the government has gone about its implementation gingerly, to the dismay of potential investors...

...After all, other countries attempting to switch to the free market, like Brazil, are holding the same tripartite negotiations...

...UNO Evangelical assaults young woman...

...Pre-revolutionary entrepreneurs are paying padded prices to get their companies back, and "unclean ownership conditions" leave them entangled with the state sector...

...He thinks the repeal sets a bad precedent, telling foreign investors that "they risk losing their money if the government takes it into its head to eliminate this or that law...

...Daniel Ortega has declared a "war on extremism"—that is, paralyzing strikes whenever the Union of National OpLauren Weiner is a reporter on the foreign desk of the Washington Times...

...But Godoy continues to complain bitterly that Lacayo and his circle have given him no vice-presidential duties, save those of representing Nicaragua in Central America-wide economic and political initiatives...

...To those who are looking at all, Nicaragua is looking pretty hopeless...

...But the U.S...

...There is speculation that the voting for new leadership could reshuffle the power structure even as high as the eight-man National Directorate...

...He said the humble of both sides should get together, because the Chamorro administration is not the natural ally of either...

...General Ortega may be called before the legislature's human rights committee to testify on the discovery of mass graves in remote parts of the country, where peasants executed for not cooperating with the Sandinistas have been buried over the past decade...

...He is frustrated that many UNO officials—except for Francisco Mayorga, head of the Central Bank and architect of the country's privatization plan—are playing politics...

...Matus, like so many contras an ex-Sandinista, calls the recent strikes "important as an expression of the popular will, against what I consider an oligarchic government...

...Garcia's Farm Workers Association has been accused of pushing legal renters off their land, and in at least two cases Sandinista-supported cooperatives near Managua have been taken over by UNO supporters...

...While some have begun forming a political party in the capital, many resistance members appear to be making a living stealing cattle...

...Nonetheless, no one is allowed to have the land back, according to the Sandinistas, because (1) it represents the gains of the revolution, and (2) anyone who would claim it must be a Somocista anyway...

...Inflation, at 64 percent in July, fell in August, but not enough to affect sales...

...The other 10,000 have either returned to their hometowns or attempted illegal land takeovers in the "Areas of Social Property...

...G eneral Humberto Ortega, the government's most important bridge-builder to the Sandinistas, may or may not have reduced the army from 80,000 to 35,000, as he claims...

...UNO officials now dominate the television airwaves, presenting hourlong seminars on the virtues of the free market—virtues the Sandinistas were suddenly converted to when their ouster became a fait accompli...

...Now even the Sandinista rank and file is expressing resentment against the party nomenklatura...

...Retailers suffer as well...

...But although more people have been emboldened to come forward about the secret gravesites, Baltodano doubts her investigations will bear fruit, since currently the army is responsible for prosecuting itself...

...We're not about to go in if the Nicaraguan nationals themselves can't get their things back," says one U.S...

...The Sandinistas' first party congress, to be held in February, promises more fireworks...

...The government argues that since Decree 10-90 was a temporary measure, scrapping it represented no compromise or loss of face...

...He recently proclaimed support for a party of Cuban exiles in Nicaragua bent on destabilizing Castro...

...In one such clash in September in Nueva Segovia department, 150 contras reportedly attacked land defended by 300 cooperative farmers, and four contras and three cooperative members were killed...

...To those who are looking at all, Nicaragua is looking pretty hopeless...

...UNO officials say that in many cases the government does maintain part-ownership of a firm or a share of its profits, as repayment for infrastructural improvements made by the Sandinista government over the last decade...

...The computer executive claims that government officials are making privatization deals while bound by what he calls "undercover agreements with the Sandinistas," but refused to explain his suspicions...

...rr he newspapers in Managua are doing what they can to calm tensions: "Sandinista soldier rapes retarded girl...

...They also own countless radio outlets and plan to establish a private competitor to the state television channel...

...COSEP leader Rosendo Diaz disagrees...

...Antonio Lacayo says he believes the reduction has been achieved, but State Department officials say they cannot confirm it...

...That has yet to be seen, and the salvation committees have receded from the news since the July strike...

...They walked out of the first concertacion meeting in September, and Sandinista mobs vandalized the cars of nine foreign diplomats in attendance, as well as that of Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo...

...Unemployment has worsened with the demobilization of the contras and the reduction of the Sandinista army...

...He gives the example of the pharmaceutical firm SoIca, which unlike most confiscated firms did profitable business by selling medicine to Cuba...

...The new government has been loath to give it back, but UNO leaders say the holdup is due to the fact that the firm's original owner was a Somocista and therefore does not deserve to regain possession of his company...

...One Managua lawyer goes so far as to say that the Violeteros who support Chamorro have been in league with the Sandinistas all along...

...Chamorro supporters say concertacion is necessary to pry state holdings out of Sandinista hands, and to dissuade them from striking...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1990 23...

...Ticket-holders for a Miami-bound flight had to scramble out of the way when a refrigerated seafood truck drove up and workers loaded boxes of shrimp onto the ticket counter alongside the luggage...

...But to judge from Editorial Nueva Nicaragua (ENN), the country's only book publisher, the Front is not incapable of making hard-headed business decisions...

...Fissures between the haves and have-nots became public at a Sandinista assembly meeting after the election defeat, with the lower orders denouncing some leaders for corruption...

...Vice President Virgilio Godoy, the prickly ex-Sandinista labor minister, has surprised Nicaraguan conservatives by assigning himself the role of bad cop...

...The private sector was furious when he was chosen for the vice-presi_ dential slot, but he has proved to be thepoint man against the blandengue (wimpy) tendencies of Chamorro and her son-in-law and chief adviser Antonio Lacayo...

...Some 20,000 acres did get rented out before the government pulled the plug, but it was too little to mitigate the setbacks in planting caused by striking farm employees and by exorbitant production costs for farmers...

...Rosario Murillo, Daniel Ortega's common-law wife, who was a de facto chief at the firm when it belonged to the Ministry of Culture and continues to run it today, made the staff leaner and meaner this summer, laying off over half the employees...

...Only a handful of the three hundred or so confiscated companies have been returned thus far...

...Two judges were added in a compromise, and the legislature won a formal share in controlling the size of the court, enabling Chamorro to encroach on Sandinista judicial hegemony without getting her hands dirty...

...And the new currency, the gold cordoba, has not alleviated the Greshamite vertigo of the old cordoba, which circulates at well over a million to the dollar...

...screams La Prensa...

...There was a lot of enthusiasm to invest when the new government came in, but not after these strikes," says Enrique Deshon, manager of a Managua Hyundai dealership...

...Whether or not Godoy is a force to be reckoned with, he clearly likes to be provocative...

...Unknown assailants have bombed a pro-government radio transmitter...

...Marta Patricia Baltodano, the human rights investigator who continues to bring the graves to light, has been told by UNO congressmen that a subpoena of Ortega is "in the works...

...Matus has visionary hopes that a "Nicaraguan model" for ending civil war could be established if ex-resistance fighters were to farm alongside ex-Sandinista soldiers...

...It is said that the lumpen wing of the party is ready to respond if Comandante Tomas Borge, unenthralled with General Ortega's collaboration with the Chamorro administration, wants another general strike...

...And the good cop/bad cop routine can help the government, as when the godoyistas demanded that the Sandinista-controlled Supreme Court be enlarged from seven to fifteen members...

...There is proof of their perfidy, Garcia told a Sandinista agricultural magazine: "Many of these entrepreneurs aren't interested in farming to benefit the vast majority, only in lin22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1990 ing their own pockets," and the tug of war continues...

...In exchange for ending the July strike, the Sandinistas won a repeal of Decree 10-90, under which—in order to encourage desperately needed planting—a limited area of state acreage could be rented back for this season only to those who had had their land expropriated...

...executive counters that a lot of those improvements never got made—Sandinista managers pocketed a good portion of the money intended for the purchase of new equipment...

...Such an eagerness for the Yankeedollar can only stabilize the country when its production increases, but that's not in the cards anytime soon...

...In an interview with Barricada, the Sandinista daily, contra spokesman Pepe Matus virtually admitted that many contras were continuing a practice that had been, he said, "a necessity of war...

...One reason is that people are less able to afford gasoline, since the government's removal of subsidies caused a price rise of 65 cents a gallon...

...They partially privatized the television station before leaving power, allowing them to rent a nightly half-hour for their own news program...

...Between Violeta Chamorro's election and her inauguration, Daniel Ortega used his "savings" to import hundreds of cars from Japan and Eastern Europe without paying duties, and stands ready to make a killing selling them off...

...And other stuff that's good for business...

...The real test of privatization will be Decree 11-90, which permanently returns some lands and other assets confiscated by the Sandinistas...

...And where do the contras fit in in the new Nicaragua...

...The replaceable ones often have the support of Sandinista unions, who threaten work stoppages if a plant's administration is changed...

...Friction between the vice president and president has eased in recent months, but the Sandinistas still accuse him of having his own "right-wing" coup in mind...

...Sandinistas and pro-government farmers have been locked in land disputes since the Sandinistas' violent general strike in July, when peasant supporters of the FSLN were mobilized to occupy abandoned lands and "impede the abolition of agrarian reform...

...If the Sandinista unions can be persuaded to attend, that is...

...Edgardo Garcia of the Sandinista-affiliated Farm Workers Association admits what all have long known: that huge tracts of the "Area of Social Property" have been lying fallow for years...

...Plans to "privatize" the economy are stuck...

...The new Nicaragua trades with the United States, a development that was brought home to me as I stood in line at Sandino Airport recently...

...For some reason, the fired ENN employees got zero support from the Sandinista labor leaders of July's general strike, but President Chamorro's La Prensa cynically piped up on their behalf...

...Beset by wild cost fluctuations, high interest rates, and a politically polarized labor force, the growers say they are in no position to plant ambitiously...

...T he Superior Council for Private 1 Enterprise (COSEP) continues to criticize concessions that slow privatization and the return of confiscated property...

...computer executive...

...Government officials explain that there is a shortage of skilled managers to take over privatized firms, making some Sandinistas irreplaceable...

...position (UNO) government makes another stab at firing Sandinistas from bloated state payrolls...

...This year's harvest has been disappointing...

...Sandinista bigshot Herty Lewites is THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1990 21 even planning to start a commercial airline, Central American Airlines, though it is hard to see how it will get off the ground if Lewites uses traditionally bad Sandinista management techniques, like providing legions of one's pals in the party with no-heavylifting jobs...

...others burned down a Sandinista one...

...The new Nicaragua's wealthiest entrepreneurs also include Comandante Jaime Wheelock, former minister of agriculture, who is well set up with sugar mills and dairies liberated from the state sector before the change in government...

...now he is lucky to sell ten...

...Godoy went freelance during the July strike, forming ad hoc National Salvation committees to defend against a feared Sandinista takeover of the government...

...Lacayo also claims that the Salvadoran FMLN guerrillas, long based in Managua, are permitted only political activity, but two Salvadoran weapons couriers were arrested in Managua in July, and in August a French woman was caught driving a van full of ammunition across the Honduras/El Salvador border...

...Elements of UNO and the private sector say that, as formal talks hobble along, the real concertacion has been going on without them—that it is a blind for power-sharing with the Sandinistas...

...Back in February, when the Sandinistas lost the election, Deshon was selling thirty cars a month...

...rivate sector leaders and rightish 1- members of Chamorro's fourteen-party UNO coalition are chafing at her conciliation with the Sandinistas, typified by concertacion, a series of negotiations in which the government will submit its austerity measures to labor and business interests...

...And even if the culprits were identified, the country's new amnesty law—Chamorro's revision of one the Sandinistas granted themselves before leaving power—may extend to such crimes...

...she has dubbed them Violinistas...

...About 5,000 are inhabiting the godforsaken development zones the government awarded them to make a new postwar life...

...Cotton growers will be lucky to equal last year's pathetic planting of 100,000 acres, and coffee farmers ask how they are expected to increase planting when the government offers credit at a usurious 140,000 cordobas to the dollar...

...El Nuevo Diario shoots back three days later...

...The contras have long decried the class affinities that exist between the Sandinistas and Chamorro administration elites...

...If and when the car market improves, one person in a position to take advantage will be the former president...

...Ironically, chief among Sandinistas opposed to another strike are General Ortega and the party moguls, whose ill-gotten gains put them on the side of peace and stability...