Perspectives on Nicaragua - III: The Sandinista case:
Pulley, Van
THE SANDINISTA CASE PERSPECTIVES ON NICARAGUA-III VAN PULLEY SKIRMISHES BETWEEN the volunteer "People's Militia" and opposition forces led by the exiled Somoza National Guard were common between...
...The state confiscated over two million acres of prime agricultural land from the Somoza family and close associates...
...The school has become a real source of pride for the village and is changing the quality of life here...
...This represents about seventy percent of all estimated export receipts for last year...
...At one CDS meeting I attended in a poor neighborhood in Esteli, families gathered to decide what to do about several bars and cafes that had opened up recently near the new school...
...Eliminating filters on cigarettes is part of the economic austerity plan to halt all "luxury" imports...
...The local union was in the process of organizing a school for their children...
...THE SANDINISTA CASE PERSPECTIVES ON NICARAGUA-III VAN PULLEY SKIRMISHES BETWEEN the volunteer "People's Militia" and opposition forces led by the exiled Somoza National Guard were common between August 1981 and July 1982 when I did agricultural work in Nicaragua with a team of recent graduates sent by Georgetown University...
...Nicaraguan First Secretary for Political Affairs Francisco Campbell explains that it takes time to create a new political system from the ground up...
...Elections have been promised for 1985, but so far the Sandinistas have not defined the form these elections will take...
...Nicaragua has tried American 'liberal democracy.' What we got were many years of occupation by the U.S...
...The Sandinistas have used several methods to organize the populace, allowing for grass-roots participation in the reform process and creating a base of political support...
...Before the revolution workers had slept in typical galeras, coffin-like boxes stacked one on top of each other...
...Somoza didn't give a damn about us [the poor...
...The owners of the bars had chosen not to attend...
...it is a state of producers...
...A Nicara-guan carrying five cartons of Salvadoran cigarettes warned me, "You'd better stock up here because they've stopped making filtered cigarettes in my country...
...At one peasant cooperative near Santa Cruz that had just received land under the agrarian reform, five heads of families were serving in the militia, leaving only four to work the land...
...When you build a house, don't you plan carefully so that it will be sturdy and resist weathering...
...As of January, 400,000 acres of land in the category of "idle and under-utilized" large estates have been expropriated...
...It was many more years before the American people were allowed to vote directly for a president since it was felt they were not well enough informed...
...State farms now represent about nineteen percent of farm gross domestic product...
...Over seventy-eight thousand volunteers have participated in national campaigns to eradicate malaria, measles, and polio...
...Adult illiteracy was reduced from 50.3 percent to 12.9 percent during the literacy campaign, according to the government...
...My first indication of Nicaragua's economic deterioration came in El Salvador's international airport...
...Rent ceilings have also been set, and rural credit has been expanded enormously...
...This is double the number enrolled in 1978...
...MIDINRA Minister Jaime Wheelock replies, "Those who make this claim have failed absolutely to understand the significance of this revolution: that the state is not now the same state...
...Public schools generally have three shifts per day in order both to handle the burgeoning student bodies and to allow students to continue work...
...Quainton, at a party recently and asked him frankly, "When is the U.S...
...The foreign exchange shortage has forced cutbacks on some drug imports...
...We elect our local leader...
...This government is trying to help us...
...So many poor have begun to take advantage of the new medical services that the system is badly overloaded...
...Most cam-pesino families are still dependent on the labor and income provided by their children...
...The consensus was that the bars were a bad influence on their children and the vote was unanimous to ask them to move...
...We may disagree with the Sandinista leadership at times," said Rosa, a first-grade schoolteacher from Esteli...
...There were no sanitary facilities or electricity...
...Although production in the state sector has not been as high as expected, social achievements in the state farm sector are impressive...
...The Sandinistas claim that their goal is to transform the system to one satisfying the basic needs of the poor through "democratic" channels...
...It took a dozen Managua pharmacies last January to produce five bottles of glucose for a friend with hepatitis...
...But we will never allow the National Guard to return...
...The mobilization was a success...
...and infant mortality has declined 28.7 percent, according to government figures...
...we organize production and place it at the disposal of the people...
...The Ministry of Health now provides free medical and dental care for anyone needing it...
...Critics charge that the state has simply become another old-fashioned landowner only bigger...
...In this neighborhood, the people have direct control over what goes on," said one mother after the meeting broke up...
...Many carried rifles in the fields to defend against attacks...
...Laborers claimed they were now given better/ food, including meat once or twice each week, something unheard of during the Somoza era...
...Other results of the counter-revolutionary activity were also evident...
...Changes there after two-and-a-half years of the revolution were apparent...
...In an attempt to scare off workers and disrupt the harvest, rebel bands had been kidnapping or killing coffee-pickers and their families...
...I returned to Nicaragua last January and found the counter-revolutionary attacks greatly stepped up and the economy in serious trouble...
...Marines to prop this system up and then forty years of exploitation of the poor by the Somoza family...
...There are currently over one million students in Nicaragua in a population of 2.7 million...
...Can you blame us for looking for an alternative...
...going to stop all the rhetoric and really stick it to the Sandinistas...
...Despite the emergency situation, the Sandinistas continue to emphasize social reform...
...Nicaragua owes $315 million in interest payments in 1983 alone on their external debt of $3 billion...
...Government expenditures on public health have increased fourfold since 1978...
...Isn't this participation and democracy...
...Workers and their families now sleep on simple wooden bunks in new, lighted cinderblock buildings...
...I spent ten days last year working on a state coffee plantation near the Honduran border...
...The responsibilities of the CDS increased recently when the groups were given the task of distributing sugar ration coupons, causing some complaints that you have to attend CDS meetings if you want your ration...
...With reports of American aggression increasing, more people seemed to be tolerant toward the difficult political and economic choices the government was making...
...groundwork deliberately...
...The initial expansion was greater than the sector could productively absorb or the state could administer, causing subsequent amounts to be cut somewhat...
...Many farms have their own clinics, schools, child-care facilities, and unions...
...Nicaragua is only asking for six years to prepare our people for elections...
...This is one thing that prompted the law expropriating inefficiently cultivated land...
...Another Georgetown volunteer who helped an isolated community of twenty-two families build their own schoolhouse writes this: "The school has 40 seven-to-ten-year-olds in the mornings, 35 eleven-to-seventeen-year-olds in the afternoon, and 30 adults at night...
...We vote on matters that really concern our families...
...the harvest was one of the largest in history...
...Decreasing production and thus damaging the economy is a way many large landowners oppose Sandinista reforms...
...Seventy-thousand campesino families received loans for the first time in 1979-80 from the nationalized banking system...
...One wealthy dairy farmer from Managua said this, "I met the American ambassador, Mr...
...A quarter of the student population are adults taking evening classes...
...According to the Ministry of Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA), 170,000 acres have been redistributed to 7,733 families...
...Coupons allow families to purchase one pound of sugar per week for each family member...
...I'd rather do anything than go pick coffee," said Maria, a young cam-pesina woman who usually works at one of the northern plantations...
...Your system has withstood all challenges of time and is viable today...
...The American Founding Fathers laid the U.S...
...Total expenditure on education went from 1.3 percent of GNP in 1978 to 4.2 percent in 1981...
...Six years elapsed between the American Revolution and the selection of your first president...
...Some of the large landowners are supporting the counter-revolutionaries and even welcome American intervention...
...The government mobilized thousand., of students, government workers, and others in coffee-picking brigades to harvest the crop...
...Manuel Cordero, the Nicaraguan Charge d'Affaires in Washington, states that the outcome will certainly not be a system exactly like that of the United States...
...I found that the Sandinistas had not lost notable support as a result of such economic and military problems...
...Real money wages had been maintained or improved slightly in spite of inflation and wage restraint by the government...
...Many Nicaraguans I've talked with said they would like to have a better relationship with the United States, but their perception is that the Reagan administration is doing everything possible to sabotage what they see as a new Nicaragua.y see as a new Nicaragua...
...Last January the system seemed to be functioning smoothly in most areas...
...We also watch out for unfair prices by unpatriotic storekeepers, and organize voluntary watches at night to keep our neighborhood safe...
...The most important are the neighborhood Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), made up of families who live in the neighborhoods and participate in activities on a voluntary basis...
Vol. 110 • April 1983 • No. 8
