NICARAGUA: CAN IT FIND ITS OWN WAY?
Corradi, Juan E.
Placing Central American struggles on the line of East-West conflict is not simply a compass error, to be corrected by a truer NorthSouth heading. It is a basic mistake. It means to ignore the...
...If this be the sorry state of liberal democracy in so much of Latin America, to clamor for its prompt restoration in a revolutionized tropical republic smacks of naivete, or worse...
...The matter is presented in different discourses...
...Since then, however, the country has become the base of U.S...
...Revolution arrived on the Coast like an alien force...
...The regional armies might be surprised when they turn their guns away from their own countries in turmoil...
...that all are bad...
...invasion forced the Sandinistas back into the hills, would it be described as an American victory five, ten, or twenty years later...
...To make work in the fields a condition for receiving land under the agrarian reform would smack too much of an ancient corvee, and it would be so interpreted by the International Labor Organization...
...The initial thrusts and the switch points along the tracks are what counts for these locomotives of development...
...Harassment and censorship exist, but the country remains porous...
...The ensuing crisis of governance often results in a coup from the hitherto "professional" military...
...Their main contenders— there are ten parties in all—represent various fractions of the professional and entrepreneurial classes that stayed in Nicaragua...
...Thus shortages in the countryside go hand in hand with urban unemployment...
...Every bureaucratic tangle seems to produce a new vice-minister or undersecretary...
...This option, however, is only workable within a framework of regional detente and political negotiations...
...Apart from the burdens of leftist sectarianism, such prospects dwindle when war looms large...
...The Sandinista revolution combines strands of national populism, communism, and communitarian socialism...
...The latter turned the suspicion of the Indians into active hostility against the regime...
...The Council of State and the judiciary are the other two, weaker, branches of government...
...For these crops, there seems to be no substitute for live farmhands...
...In New York subways, the unarmed Guardian Angels had a whiff of storm-trooping about them...
...I talked to the man and his wife inside the house, and was served with a litany of complaints (a ration of four bars of soap a month, one chicken per week, very little sugar, and so on...
...Some committees act spontaneously, others follow the FSLN line...
...The Reagan administration is not exclusively responsible for the inclination of the Nicaraguan revolution toward the Soviet camp...
...In some neighborhoods of Managua they don't exist at all...
...Its measures alienate powerful groups...
...The Sandinistas, and from all evidence the Soviets, would prefer that outcome to a repetition of the fate of Cuba in the '60s...
...They can be found in the neighborhoods, and seem to be the work of local CDSs (Sandinist Defense Cornmittees...
...Nobody comes in...
...A crucial question is whether the task of overcoming the old order is so rough as to make subsequent reconciliation and the functioning of an open society impossible...
...Outside lies a no-man's-land recognized as a dangerous mine field...
...70,000 Miskito Indians are the second ethnic group in importance, after the Spanish-speaking mestizos...
...The popular diet is based on gallo pinto—rice and beans...
...It was a pirate haven, a British protectorate, an Indian kingdom, and an independent reservation until it became part of Nicaragua in 1896...
...In the U.S...
...If this weakness is not remedied in the open political arena, more of them will follow the path of those who left the country, while the remaining ones might attempt to regain influence vertically, through bureaucratic alliances...
...In Latin America, however, events usually follow a different scenario...
...Similarly, the messianic streak in socialist ideology—uniquely mixed, in Nicaragua, with nationalism and Christianity— blinds the revolutionaries to real problems...
...The remark confirms the persistence of vertical control and suggests an emerging pattern of manipulated democracy...
...In El Salvador and Guatemala the capacity of the ruling groups to maintain social consensus and to deliver a form of economic development in which ordinary folk can share seems hopelessly exhausted...
...They include the replacement of partisan by more inclusive national symbols in the schools and in the barracks...
...279 a bloody reaction...
...That the point needs to be stressed bespeaks the drabness of political thought today...
...initiatives to isolate Nicaragua...
...And the distinction considerably deflates the claims of both supporters and detractors of sandinismo by making them more anecdotal than structural...
...The shape of the Nicaraguan constitution will be determined by the Constituent Assembly to be elected in November...
...In the end it joined the Contras in Honduras and Costa Rica...
...It makes the revolutionary leadership more intransigent at times and willing to make concessions at other times...
...The result was a bitter surprise for them: not reform of the old bandit state but its destruction...
...Those circles readily acknowledge that the ongoing democratization process is sparked largely by pressures from disenchanted European and regional supporters.' In the longer run, the possibility of an alliance between business groups and the technical intelligentsia in the state sector cannot be excluded...
...another, internal one circulates in the corridors of government...
...Since this trend is, in my view, inevitable, the real question is whether the revolutionaries will pragmatically encourage the businessmen to cooperate in reconstruction—thus making good on the promise of a mixed economy—or whether, still obfuscated by doctrine, they will stumble into an equally inegalitarian command 282 economy that the state could not properly oversee...
...In terms of regional and international politics, the real issue is not the Cuban-Soviet puppeteering of the Sandinistas, but tolerance of a more or less socialist regime, unique and nonaligned...
...The opposition has insistently demanded the depoliticization of the state apparatus, now largely penetrated by the FSLN...
...The political challenge for the region lies in composing these various forces: making defeat less painful for the recalcitrant, encouraging the reformers, and inducing the revolutionaries toward pragmatism and moderation...
...Most are young, work-oriented, and love the country...
...The social and political system—if one can speak of a system at all—is far from set...
...Shortages are noticeable, and rationing generates complaints...
...Incidentally, the "air force" is puny, composed of a few helicopters, trainers, and little Cessna planes...
...Topdown control exists, but it is rudimentary...
...At present, the state is headed by a revolutionary triumvirate that, with the National Directorate of the FSLN behind it, runs the country...
...The earthquake was as much an economic and political shake-up as a seismic movement...
...this measure...
...The complaints are valid, but those who make them refuse to recognize that many Sandinista actions are responses to genuine threats of destabilization...
...In the cities they hope for a better living, or for the same living with less work...
...The opposition objects to encroachments on their freedom of action and organization: to censorship of the press, the ban on their public meetings, preferential treatment of state over private enterprise...
...The state intervenes, and the state is often clumsy...
...It restricts the parties' room for maneuver—hemming them in from above, from below, and on all sides...
...It would still be a sham democracy, but one with some chance of improving over time...
...The odds against this combination were always great, and they have increased...
...it also enjoys popular support...
...At this point, we can only venture a guess that the system will be presidential, with strong executive powers...
...Unemployment, profiteering, penny capitalism, and begging are common sights on the streets...
...Land and Labor FOREIGN RESIDENTS, many of them involved in the technical aspects of social change, are usually a source of balanced information...
...Today there are six ethnic groups that speak six different languages...
...This demand touches the nerve of Sandinista power and claims to legitimacy, and it triggers vehement refusals...
...Reagan's policy of harassment follows the old French verse to the letter: Cet animal est tres mechant, Quand on l'attaque, it se defend...
...The annual GNP of Nicaragua is equivalent to the price tag of a single warship patrolling its coasts...
...The bargain proposed is simple: to rule out the possibility of Nicaragua becoming a 278 Soviet base in exchange for the right of the Sandinist regime to survive within its borders...
...A hotel worker was grateful for my gift of toothpaste...
...One is for the masses...
...It is startling at first to see teen-agers toting submachine guns—girls and boys in the militia, hardly more than fifteen...
...It is difficult to organize an effective play of checks and balances in a frame of mind fearing that the discussion of crucial public matters might produce false rumors and threaten the security of the state...
...In the countryside, the situation is even more anarchic...
...The Sandinista revolution has already gone further...
...Below, the landscape of Guatemala and El Salvador seems primeval...
...A bemused Gregor Samsa of revolution, I fastened my seat belt...
...It may be that the process of state-building will outrun everything else, but at the moment there are no more than sketches of economic, administrative, and constitutional models...
...People of different persuasions coexist in them...
...Afternoon discussions linger into evening...
...They had to find their basic supplies in the black market, at exorbitant prices...
...Some of the opposition leaders I interviewed were articulate but basked in a borrowed, Americanized discourse...
...Somoza used relief aid as a direct tool of capital accumulation for himself and his retinue...
...The visitor walks on half-erased streets that lead nowhere, past skeletons of what once were buildings, crossing empty lots still strewn with rubble from the great quake of '72...
...Tree shade is scarce in Managua, and when one finds it, one is likely to meet other refugees from the sun—usually children and couples, or street vendors...
...official, Swiss brigadistas off on a final bout of cotton-picking in the area of Chinandega,3 a Boston journalist, members of a Canadian Lutheran group that provides aid for agricultural projects...
...The opposition is divided, relatively weak, and without political experience...
...Reliance on volunteers easily turns into its opposite: a system of draft labor...
...Really existing socialism" Soviet style— developmental or advanced—has fared even worse...
...The long-term solution hinges on higher wages in the rural areas and on regional economic coordination—which presupposes peace...
...They have allowed themselves to be outmaneuvered in the government and they are now camping outside in a limited space...
...Hopeful eyes and broad smiles prevail over signs of fear or dismay...
...written in red on the door of a taxi driver's house—a shack in a slum...
...It means to ignore the simultaneous ferment of three processes that have proceeded elsewhere in gradual stages: nation-building, modernization, and class conflict...
...Revolutionary abertura ("opening") means a series of protracted negotiations over participation in the government...
...There is as yet no overall imperative coordination of society, economy, and politics...
...It is the nonnegotiable power base of sandinismo...
...Whether the resulting combination is hard (dictatorial) or soft (contractual) depends as much on geopolitical factors and international politics as on the internal settling of accounts...
...There are occasional pockets of democracy and some traditionalist curios...
...Each of them exacts its price from the assailants and the besieged...
...The present re' See the papers presented at the Policy Workshop held at The Hague, Institute of Social Studies, June 6-25, 1983, and those presented at the Conference on Democracy and the Third World, Amsterdam, Transnational Institute, January 1984...
...A spokesman for these groups angrily told me how he had been trained to govern, only to have his birthright taken away by the "march of the riff-raff...
...Today, the insignia on army trucks and airplanes still do not read "Nicaraguan" but "Sandinist Popular Army" and "Sandinist Air Force...
...Speculation is rampant and made worse by an arbitrary rate of exchange...
...In the past, migrant laborers used to come from El Salvador for the Nicaraguan harvest, but the flow has stopped, because of the tensions between the two countries...
...It has helped harden the Nicaraguan revolution, has warped the gradual progress toward democracy in Honduras,' and it has injected militarism into formerly unarmed Costa Rica.' Because the U.S...
...And this precisely was the promise of the Sandinista revolution: the removal of tyranny, the increase in popular participation, and the use of the " The Atlantic Coast covers 56 percent of Nicaragua's territory and houses only 10 percent of its population...
...Yet all this happened during a short visit...
...Such an alliance would constitute the core of a "bureaucratic bourgeoisie...
...Those societies have received a disproportionate share of the world's attention and the wrong kind of aid, more destructive than productive by far...
...The quality of machine-picked cotton is low, and the method creates new dependency on mechanical parts and skills and on chemicals...
...Heat, dust, crowds: one could as well be driving along the Nile...
...Dollars are traded in the black market at 5 times the legal commercial rate and at 14 times the official rate...
...Political wall paintings are neat, by Latin standards...
...Paradoxical alliances, non- and re-alignments abound...
...Dilemmas of Revolution THE SANDINISTAS MAINTAIN that Nicaragua is in a process of transition to socialism...
...The Sandinistas first sponsored, then mistrusted, and finally repressed an Indian leadership that was recruited in Managua...
...It is hard for them to summarize their experience...
...Work discipline is slack: increased participation has eroded old patterns of compliance in the workplace, and productivity has declined in the economy as a whole...
...I respect their insistence on looking at things from the bottom up...
...Whatever one thinks of the newly acquired Sandinista taste for sham democracy, the lack of challenging interlocutors represents a problem for any future system...
...Until now, sandinismo has displayed a style, not a model, of change...
...Meanwhile, as many as 20 different state organizations all are in charge of housing and construction, without much coordination...
...The rapid ascent of the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberaciem Nacional— Sandinista National Liberation Front) 275 as a "vanguard party" and its entrenchment within the state apparatus are clear indications of the second...
...On the other, critics are more than justified in casting serious doubts on the chances that freedom may blossom out of a successful revolution in a backward society...
...This time it would be in reverse— launched against the very site from which the Cuban expedition was dispatched...
...The booth where passports are examined is a replica of control posts into East Berlin, as is the requirement of exchanging a fixed sum of dollars at an artificially low rate...
...By bias and conviction I prefer social to military issues...
...On a visit like mine, even eating was political...
...Third World states are invested by social movements—the rainbow of the poor and the displaced, more a mass of "people" than a class or coalition—to which, in turn, they give expression...
...The illusion of military expediency and mechanical solidarity— including sloganeering—prevails over the much more interesting challenges of economic management, political compromise, and civil conviviality...
...Nicaragua is in a distinct time zone: the time of speedy progress, the timelessness of abeyance, the countdown toward destruction, and they all mix and intersect...
...Only some of these committees are watchdogs like the Cuban CDRs (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution...
...In practice, the system has worked to strengthen the power of the revolutionary leadership and to limit the articulation of various interests through other political parties...
...It does not consist of real blocks and true buildings...
...There is considerable divergence among the comandantes on both the goal and pace...
...Even in its most progressive phase, the Mexican revolution was not seeking to do away with capitalism but to moderate and modernize it, creating the basis for national control of the economy...
...Graffiti are abundant...
...Neither the civic virtue of the Sandinista leaders nor protestations of foul play by their opponents can mitigate the excessive accumulation of power...
...High school students must spend time at harvest work...
...The need to overcome them jointly and quickly makes the state a crucial agency of development...
...The legend of Sandino and the forces that overthrew Somoza express the first component...
...It displayed insensitivity and ethnocentric prejudice...
...Meanwhile, everyone cries wolf...
...Doctrinal cohesion at the posts of command is stronger...
...The debate around democratization brings into focus other structural dilemmas of Nicaragua's society...
...The substance of the "mixed economy" and the direction of society will depend not on rhetoric but on a series of concrete deals between the state, foreign capital, and some elements of the local bourgeoisie...
...But American policies are responsible for pushing the Sandinistas to extremes, after their initial arrogance was tempered by the magnitude of the economic crisis and the insufficiency of Western and Soviet aid.' All that can be expected from current policies is a catastrophic symbiosis between extremists on both sides, at the expense of everybody else...
...The Sandinistas have erred in predictable ways: they have been charged with revolutionary arrogance, bureaucratic indifference, and managerial ineptness...
...It is also a country under siege...
...It is remarkable that they have not buried the promise altogether...
...Bulldozers bear the inscription: "Propiedad del pueblo...
...It is made of memories and premonitions...
...On the agenda are several problems that must be solved...
...But Washington balks at the prospect, for it would limit its ability to overthrow regimes it does not like and to intervene at whim in conflicts like El Salvador's...
...Basic rules help to contain the contest...
...Sometimes, where there has been no revolutionary break with the past, traditional despots become conservative modernizers, or a fitful liberalism is overthrown by authoritarian bureaucrats...
...The U.S., in turn, could face high casualty rates in men and in prestige...
...Not surprisingly, the more flexible are those who are faced with the day-to-day con7 In the '50s and '60s, economic growth benefited not only Somoza's retinue but at least three other powerful economic groups: the Banco Nicaragiiense, Calley Dagnall, and the Nicaraguan Banco de America...
...The vigil against counterrevolution distorts, it claims, the allocation of resources...
...The characters that had then impressed me seemed to have wobbled out of a painting by Botero: generals, overweight priests, chaotic ladies...
...Barring prolonged stress or a regional war, it is likely that a more complex and subtle system of participation/control will maintain the revolutionaries in power...
...Here as elsewhere the Nicaraguans' individualistic, almost anarchic streak asserts itself...
...In discussions about economic development, there is official recognition that the social, economic, and political costs of autarchy are intolerable...
...Such simple goods have become objects of worship and tokens of special favor...
...One concerns the political constitution, another the nature of the state, the third the pattern of accumulation...
...But too often these slogans are put forward as rhetorical abstractions, without much concrete relation to what is happening in Nicaragua, and in some instances such slogans are truly hypocritical...
...In this world, discourse on liberation is not necessarily discourse on liberty...
...Only the progressive but genuine democratization of soci9 Grass-roots democracy is more than an empty slogan...
...They are confident that they will win, which should come as no surprise with the head start they have given themselves...
...The clear danger from the United States has had paradoxical effects...
...A regular tube costs 300 cordobas on the black market, while the monthly rental of a shack is 400 cordobas, utilities included...
...Several of the Sandinista leaders I talked to seemed proud of this revolutionary novelty, namely, a willingness to submit themselves to "bourgeois-democratic" processes of legitimation...
...Even when conspiracy is not immediately rampant, the minority parties succeed in blocking the initiatives of the government...
...This would mean, at best, an Absolutismus gemildert durch Schlamperei (absolutism tempered by sloppiness)—at worst, the meticulous administration of misery...
...Politics would remain under the shadow of a majority party jealous to preserve the integrity of the armed forces and the state apparatus, but without turning them into tools for conquering civil society...
...Nobody gets out...
...The Indians were evangelized by Moravian missions...
...and Western Europe, there are national networks of solidarity with Nicaragua that link parties on the left, unions, student and church organizations to sponsor sociopolitical tours for such groups as educators, social workers, union members, and doctors...
...This amalgam of masses, organization, and guns stems from the insurrection that overthrew Somoza...
...and that some are worse...
...The debate cannot be settled by abstractions...
...The third is made up of warships and troops from the United States...
...The visitor must negotiate four checkpoints before he can enter the city...
...Restaurants have multiplied in Managua since the revolution...
...One hears that Somoza was a partner in this or that establishment, as he was in every lucrative enterprise in Nicaragua...
...As things stand now in the Central American countries, the ruling groups consist of agrarian and commercial oligarchies, business circles tied to multinational corporations, and revolutionary elites...
...The tragedy is that, in pursuit of these maximalist goals, Washington risks precisely what it feigns to fear...
...Between the march toward a stolid "state socialism" and dreams of a liberal regime, there are still prospects for a model of the middle range, featuring state intervention in a mixed economy, and reconciliation with the economic and political opposition...
...and the army's abstention from police and political functions...
...The Web of Politics The tug-of-war between the revolutionary leadership and the opposition is shrill and prone to scandal...
...In Nicaragua that is not the case: everybody is armed but does not look officious...
...I did not expect to ride on army trucks, to visit barracks, to be shelled in a border town, or to talk to wounded soldiers...
...The first consists of incursion by the Contras...
...People surely have good reason to work on their own plots, if they have received title to them—or to move to the cities, if they haven't...
...The paramount problems of Central America are those of the Third World: political dependency, cultural backwardness, and social disarticulation...
...but it also withholds labor from the coffee and cotton harvests, which is bad...
...The separation of a neutral state and an apolitical army from a plurality of parties is of course one basis of liberal democracy in the industrial societies...
...For there are no inevitable connections between regime and power bloc—only "elective affinities" at best...
...I thought of Nicaragua surrounded by three circles of hell...
...In it are represented not only the political parties but also unions, interest groups, and mass organizations...
...The protests mask the inherent weakness and fragmentation of the opposition...
...The collusion of state, party, and armed force is of course the single most formidable totalitarian building block to which critics object...
...A realistic notion of democracy is grounded in the long and incomplete historical struggle to accomplish three related tasks: to check arbitrary rulers, to replace them by more just ones, and to obtain a share for the underlying population in the making of rules...
...It is foremost a crisis of domination...
...Over this whole gamut is cast the shadow of the contest between two empires—a fact that helps befog most of the issues...
...Vegetation provides some continuity in the landscape, but not enough...
...These three form a fluid conglomerate...
...Costa Rica also has become a base for many of the U.S...
...the effective separation of powers...
...The overall picture is one of a disrupted market subject to intervention by the state at key points...
...Thus reliance on volunteer labor results in a drop of production...
...But there is also another, real explanation for 4 The export sector accounts for roughly 35 percent of GNP...
...They prefer discrete day-to-day problems to grand vistas: the dilemmas of labor shortages, agrarian reform and cash crops, the recent invention of a pest trap for the cotton fields that cuts down the use of chemicals and saves money and is, above all, extremely inge277 nious...
...The Nicaraguan bourgeoisie was accommodating to Somoza until around 1974...
...Because they were not Sandinistas they were suspect, and because they were suspect their expired ration card was renewed two months after their neighbors had gotten theirs...
...9 The new electoral law sanctioned in March leaves representation entirely in the hands of political parties, whose representatives will occupy the seats in the future Assembly...
...In the longer run, the present fluid situation might settle into a more familiar Latin American pattern—a mixture of populism and corporatism under strong state tutelage, that is, an updated and "progressive" version of Mexican sham democracy...
...A perusal of various projects at the Ministries of Justice and Labor revealed substantial overlaps in legislation and the absence of an overall legal framework—nothing, for instance, on administrative law...
...The split within the Catholic church and the echoes of a primitive, integriste Christianity illustrate the third...
...Peripheral capitalism Latin American style has been unable to generate and sustain these processes...
...After the earthquake of 1972, the relationship changed rapidly...
...The worry behind these charges is about centralized political control...
...When the middle class retains a measure of influence and the international context is more or less benign, the state evolves toward a contractual model, more flexible and open within and without...
...not the streamlining of a liberal economy but the irruption of a grass-roots revolution...
...The disruptions of revolution are felt in many areas...
...The logic of the revolutionary process, the presence of external threats, the growing vested interest in a strong defense establishment, the weakness of the contenders, and the plebiscitary tendency of "popular hegemony" militate against a system of checks and balances...
...There, the crisis is explosive...
...organization of the banking system seeks to put some order into an area that is so crucial for economic development...
...The United States' obsession with stemming the tide of revolution "in its backyard" has resulted in an unnecessary prolongation of human suffering in such countries as El Salvador and Guatemala...
...I met them as fellow passengers: a U.N...
...Managua MORE THAN ANY OTHER, Managua is a city of the mind...
...they sound liberal but really serve the cause of Nicaragua needs $500 million annually to cover its foreign-trade deficit...
...This is communism: a doctrinaire, monolithic, and all-pervasive state system, moving toward a state technocracy when dynamic, toward an ideocratic dictatorship if hidebound...
...on the other, to secede...
...In Nicaragua, however, political differences are aired precisely in this mine field...
...THE PLANE going from Mexico City to Managua soars over volcanoes...
...A popular party that threatens vested interests is voted into government...
...The arrangement is embellished by the notion of "substantive democracy"—presumably embodied in neighborhood committees, local task groups, rallies, and face-to-face confrontations with the leadership (the weekly "Face the People" encounters between the comandantes and assorted citizens...
...The plane sits under the sun...
...But vulnerability to foreign intervention is also greater...
...The Americans first arrived with the gold rush, then came to establish rubber, timber, and banana enclaves...
...Earlier projects of wholesale nationalization have been abandoned...
...The difference from Mexico is not the proportion and balance between the public and the private spheres but the organizing logic...
...Those are peripheral capitalist states...
...A strong defensive buildup has been an article of faith from the beginning...
...Development followed the boom-bust cycle of tropical dependencies...
...Thus the middle-class opposition triggered the crisis of the Somoza regime and took the lead in the first stage of the revolution...
...There is also a technical problem: coffee-picking by the inexperienced can jeopardize next year's harvest...
...pushing in the direction of dictatorship is the intransigence of the Reagan administration...
...By the highway outside, hundreds of people wait for scarce buses, or go on foot...
...Army convoys and teams of road workers are common sights...
...While agrarian reform has been successful in distributing land to poor peasants, rural productivity suffers from lack of expertise and disarray among the new owners...
...On the forthcoming elections, the first point made by Sandinista leaders is one about hegemony...
...In a context of military confrontation, the only alternatives will be "war socialism" or collapse...
...The tone changes when the onlooker is warned against keeping "bad company...
...One falls back on a melancholy lesson: "No bourgeoisie, no democracy...
...They are emphatic, sometimes nasty...
...A repetition of cliches is no substitute for real discussion...
...As the plane descends above the sea, one can see scattered swimming pools, as if this were a tourist resort...
...Many of the slogans bandied by the opposition, such as "freedom of speech," are of course attractive in principle...
...Under Somoza the Coast was in full decline...
...But to use this recognition as a way of justifying a dictatorship in the name of progress is a dangerous and difficult political position...
...state as an engine for the people's welfare, while keeping up the bourgeois input and political pluralism...
...Occasionally one stumbles on the seamier side of popular fervor...
...If a U.S...
...The result is lamentable: 20,000 Indians have fled Nicaragua, 2,000 of these have been armed by the Contras and the CIA, many families are split, and a simmering resentment prevails even among those living in model resettlement villages such as Tasba Pri...
...After 20 minutes the engines are fired and the ghost port fades away...
...Thus the system of political representation is a mixture of liberal, corporatist, and populist elements...
...In none of these cases shall we find the kind of competitive politics that prevails in the industrial democracies...
...Sober realism requires a readiness to accept the likelihood that political options are few...
...What type of transition and what sort of socialism are questions to which as yet no one has clear answers...
...Now the state has taken over that share, after the confiscation of Somoza's properties...
...In the midst of a conversation with a Miskito pastor, regarding the political situation on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua," from which the Bay of Pigs invasion was launched, I thought once more of President Kennedy's disastrous expedition...
...In Honduras and Costa Rica, parliamentary change and moderate reform remain viable...
...Many more hours in the barrios would persuade me that the pattern of control is inconsistent...
...The oases are hotel lobbies and government bureaus...
...q 284...
...of Soviet-style "totalitarianism" even less...
...Bourgeois...
...U.S.sponsored mining of Nicaraguan ports was undertaken from this area...
...The problem is so very serious because Nicaragua will continue to rely on export crops in order to earn hard currency.' Mechanization is no solution for harvesting coffee, but it is for cotton...
...A statute that defines property has not yet been issued...
...At stake is—beyond the obvious disparity of political resources between the FSLN and the other parties—their legitimacy in each other's eyes...
...The map of the Third World is peppered, from left to right, with Communist, communitarian-socialist, nationalpopulist, bureaucratic-authoritarian, and conservative-modernizing states...
...4 kilometer marker, South Highway, in front of the ruin of the restaurant Retreat...
...The quality of the meat is comparable, and the fish is delicious...
...Since the counterrevolutionaries have failed in their initial objectives, they have now turned to economic sabotage, with the CIA picking up the slack...
...An air of religiosity surrounds the young ' After decades of military rule, Honduras sought a democratic alternative with the presidential election of 1981...
...But here such food is beyond the reach of modest incomes...
...The Contadora group, and France, Spain, and European social democrats think this would protect the legitimate interests of the United States...
...Third World democracies are both rare and unstable...
...This leaves the future largely uncharted, at the mercy of ad hoc measures and crisscrossing pressures...
...276 officials, many of them women...
...Pragmatic accommodation is still possible...
...But a silence of death surrounds the airport...
...Every year that passes, the economic plan takes longer to draft...
...I suggest that their own behavior is, instead, the flash of a metastasis in years to come...
...The new law could be a step toward uncoupling the state from civil society...
...This is the national-populist pattern...
...Intelligent steps in that direction include heeding—besting MarxistLeninist obstinacy—at least some of the proposals of the opposition...
...Within the general framework of hegemony, the Sandinistas have opened the political process to elections...
...Many of these states are activist, quite autonomous vis-a-vis the societies they run...
...There are abstract slogans: "Sandino is alive," or "Death to the Contras...
...In a system of competitive politics, conflict may enhance the system as a whole, keeping it flexible...
...The Sandinistas' dilemma is the opposite of that confronted by right-wing power-holders during the abertura of an authoritarian regime: not how to prevent others from winning, but how to avoid an orchestrated victory that could cripple their opponents...
...The Council shares legislative powers with the junta...
...San Salvador is the first stop...
...As other revolutions learned before, the economy cannot run for long on the slogan of "solidarity...
...283 ety can avoid those pitfalls...
...From San Salvador to Managua the flight is just a hop over the Gulf of Fonseca...
...The broadened range of Somoza's activities in the '70s threatened to break the balance among them...
...The distortion is immense...
...The flight of capital going abroad since the revolutionary victory has been serious—nearing, according to some informants, $4 billion...
...The terms of the discussion are tough, even dramatic...
...And the government makes much of this...
...The FSLN has been challenged by the very unions it has organized, as shown by the recent strike in the largest sugar mill...
...The Sandinistas responded with the forcible resettlement of the Miskitos...
...But waging war is something they know how to do well...
...This mobilization of Nicaraguans for farm work can be viewed as a method of draft labor...
...Reliance on professionals must and will increase and thus, egalitarianism notwithstanding, new forms of inequality will be born...
...The virtual bankruptcy of the economy has induced the government of President Monge to tighten the alliance with the United States, at the expense of traditional nonalignment, in the hope of a financial bailout...
...Some policy-makers in Washington consider violent intervention a surgical procedure...
...A representative of the FSLN to the Council of State told me, only half joking, that the Sandinistas may have to lend the other parties some votes, to prevent their disappearance after the elections...
...The FSLN controls effective power, by which is meant the state apparatus and the 280 organized means of violence...
...Pulling in the direction of a contractual solution are efforts at mediation by European social democrats and Contadora diplomacy...
...There are trenches everywhere...
...If the backwardness is extreme and there has been a revolutionary break with traditional autocracy, the trend is toward a hyperactive and overbearing state that reconstructs society from the top down...
...As time goes by, the moderate center tends to leave the alliance and the ruling elite seems increasingly to heed demands for "popular hegemony," without, however, sailing at full steam toward a single "proletarian" party system...
...Bloody reaction and revenge swiftly follow...
...I saw "Burgug.s...
...A Sense of Crisis ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I learned during my visit is that the notion of regional crisis is not an abstract concept...
...On one side, the temptation is to exclude...
...Only a few modern buildings stand tall in desolation...
...In Nicaragua the revolutionary leadership rides on a political alliance of multiclass mass movements...
...There one might be approached for money—by people who tend to be apologetic, as if begging were no longer, as in Mexico, an accepted institution...
...Meanwhile, continued instability in the region thwarts the resolution of economic problems...
...Despite the Sandinistas' mea culpa, reconciliation will take time and depend on the pacification of the Rio Coco region, along the border with Honduras...
...With the help of some of my new acquaintances I tried to get a picture of the agrarian reform under way: it creates small independent farmers who work for themselves, which is fine...
...Dinner at some restaurants reminded me of meals in Buenos Aires...
...He is in pursuit of addresses like these: From the Church of San Miguel, 1 block down, 1 block toward the mountain, and 2 blocks down...
...When, in the airport, I requested to talk with the downtown tourist office, I was handed a red phone with a sticker that still read Volkspolizei...
...They seek greater independence, the upgrading of technical and cultural resources, and the integration of disparate social and ethnic groups...
...It faces the need to earn hard currency, even to import food (rice and beans come through the Central American Common Market...
...The proposed solutions are not quite satisfactory...
...The private sector, which complains of strangulation, may shy away from firm investments,' but private accumulation continues to progress, and the income gap has probably not narrowed...
...The city is only convincing on a map, and a map is hard to find...
...The story would be different if full facilities were given to the opposition...
...It gets worse when one reads "Vigila o to vigilamos" ("Watch or be watched") on a wall...
...But where there is appropriate vision (among the Europeans and in the Contadora group) there is no power, and where there is power (in Washington) the vision is myopic...
...If the Sandinistas have reason to fear that relaxation of strategic controls might put them at the mercy of a coup Chilean style, there is also reason to believe that a compulsive and inefficient regulation of social life would end in another type of coup de force, perhaps in Polish fashion (party dictatorship devolving into military authoritarianism...
...The Nicaraguans, for their part, risk the breakdown of the economy, great loss of life, and part of their territory...
...The more radical elements wish to do away with capitalism altogether...
...His regime rapidly devolved into an unabashed kleptocracy, in confrontation with other privileged groups.' The latter began to oppose the dictator, joined the fight against him, and expected to become the new ruling elite...
...Most forward thrusts in development have hitherto resulted in greater state authoritarianism...
...in others they are innocuous, in charge of such services as vaccination...
...The movement of people to the cities continues unabated, with serious consequences for the allocation of labor resources...
...Middle-class youths resist this, and their apprehensions are made worse by the war risks in the countryside, as a result of Contra actions...
...As for cotton, the cleanliness and quality of the picking is decisive for the price...
...One of the first projects undertaken by these networks was the recruitment and coordination of young volunteers for coffee and cotton "brigades" to help with the harvest of cash crops...
...Blame should also be put on hard-liners in Managua...
...In other words, whether the change is sweeping enough to improve the lot of the downtrodden and slow enough not to panic members of the middle class, many of whom possess indispensable skills and resources...
...worse yet when "Aqui vive un contra" (Here lives a counterrevolutionary) is tagged to someone's door...
...This means that, at least before a new constitution is drafted, the political system will revert to a more classical mold...
...A feeling of exalted frailty is the result...
...In political history, who wins what and when is seldom obvious...
...On the one hand, revolutionaries argue that the failure to exercise power in a decisive manner may throw the country back into the hands of the reaction...
...But one gets used to them: they laugh, and blend in with everyone else like regular schoolchildren...
...The social and economic weight of the business elements seems much greater than their political skill...
...Constitutional examples fall roughly into three types: the liberal constitutions of other Latin American republics, the Mexican constitution, and the constitutions of the Soviet Union and other East European states...
...The second is composed of neighboring armies...
...In this respect, the Sandinista regime is the structural opposite of Allende's government in Chile...
...281 straints of policy...
...I arrived in a country four and a half years into a revolution that is entering its phase of institutionalization and now proceeds, with ambivalence, toward elections...
...The sweeping militarization that has ensued threatens to destroy the weak democratic institutions...
...military strategy in the area...
...But an irrevocable threshold has not been crossed...
...Revolutionary state autonomy is greater as a result of a more intimate alliance with subordinate groups...
...These gyrations have drawn in more and more participants and observers...
...My acquaintance with the country had been indirect: articles and books, also dim images of a brief stopover in 1963, when the Somozas were well entrenched...
...But the present preparedness intruded...
...From the air, though, every object fits into a childhood picture book: plumed volcanoes, plump clouds, small villages, meadows, cattle...
...The diplomatic solution proposed by the Contadora countries counts precisely on that...
...To speak of closure makes little sense...
...rum helps them along to the end of the night...
...Their calculations, however, were frustrated by the cruel obstinacy of the tyrant and by the correlative growth of the Sandinista Front...
...intervenes, others follow— not just states but civil groups as well (the press, writers, intellectuals, and the churches...
...The MIGs—which Nicaraguans are said to have learned to fly in Bulgaria—have not materialized...
...As we approached Managua, passengers were addressed as "companeros...
...About 178,000 people are unemployed, out of a labor force of nearly a million...
...On this topic, both revolutionary officials and the besieged bourgeois prefer to remain vague...
...Unfortunately, it requires importing machinery, which is expensive to buy and maintain, as well as the use of defoliants...
...Only some of the building blocks for the Cuban way are there, not the entire framework...
Vol. 31 • July 1984 • No. 3
