An exchange on Nicaragua: Replies
Berman, Paul
In my article in the Summer 1990 Dissent, I outlined what went wrong with the Nicaraguan revolution under Sandinista leadership. The article was written in March 1990. Events since then...
...Much of the Fidelista, Leninist, and oldline communist left in Latin America did manage to modernize itself in a democratic way during the course of the seventies and eighties...
...Certain passages in the El Crucero statement—though not the bulk of the document—show that some of the leaders would probably like to switch to a more democratic left...
...But it says more...
...For example, the labor organizations had a very reduced space to develop themselves...
...The El Crucero report is not internally consistent...
...c) The muzzling of criticism...
...There are many factors inhibiting such a development— ingrained ideology and, above all, the institutional structure of the Front, which would have to be dismantled in some degree for such a switch to have any meaning...
...In this context the government has faced three waves of strikes by the Sandinista publicemployee unions (including one strike with a sharp insurrectionary quality) and a steady drizzle of Sandinista threats (principally from the Sandinista union leader Lucio Jitrinez) to stage some sort of coup d'etat...
...the "errors" committed against the indigenous peoples of the Atlantic Coast...
...an inability to control the national police and army (which remain strictly under Sandinista leadership...
...There is reason to be pessimistic about Sandinismo's transition into a democratic and civilian movement...
...This may sound improbable from afar, and is in fact almost inconceivable—but it has succeeded in creating a mood of fear and intimidation...
...The bulk of it contradicts the spirit of what I have just quoted...
...b) The lack of sensitivity in the face of the statements and worries of the bases [of the party...
...The largest bloc of corporations and businesses remain strictly Sandinista...
...After what we have been learning about the economies of the East European bloc, can anyone seriously continue to assert that only U.S...
...I might add that even in the United States people who have used terms like those to criticize the Sandinistas have been hooted down at many a public meeting...
...Will the Ortegas allow their base to wither away...
...As I write (in late October 1990), the situation looks exceedingly grim...
...and other errors...
...In short, Nicaragua's political structure is in a peculiar way coming to resemble that of otherwise utterly different countries like Guatemala and Honduras, where the army dominates the elected civilian governments...
...The East German Stasi maintained a tutelary relation with Tomas Borge's State Security police in Nicaragua...
...In Part II the authors of the report speak of "abuses and outrages" against the campesinos by the Sandinista People's Army and the Interior Ministry...
...And there has been confirmation of my argument in other respects too...
...I have maintained for some time that Nicaraguan economic progress was rendered impossible not only by bad Sandinista planning and by imperialist opposition from the United States but especially by the government's inability to form a consensus among the people, which has led to continual destructive struggles...
...the alienation of the small farmers by the state farms...
...an inability to control the government bureaucracy, which is also Sandinista...
...The anti-Sandinistas won the election because of a popular outpouring, not because of any institutional strength...
...WINTER • 1991 • 121 Communications boycott is over, the United States has returned to sending millions of dollars (just as it did at the start of the revolution, before the direction of Sandinista policies was clear)—and still the economy is in a disastrous state...
...One of those events was an important meeting at El Crucero, Managua, June 17-18, 1990, of 300 Sandinista militants who issued a report on the election loss and other setbacks...
...Chamorro's government and its institutional supporters (the non-Sandinista unions, the organized non-Sandinista business community, the small political parties, the main faction of the Catholic Church, and so on) have found themselves with very little power...
...the "general hostility against merchants" (which means tiny businesspeople, not large corporations...
...Can anyone continue to imagine that ordinary Nicaraguans had no reason to fear the Sandinista regime...
...The organizations of the non-Sandinista left and of the moreorless authentic democrats remain weak...
...d) The implementation of these policies was realized often in a coercive and bureaucratic manner...
...The example in the last sentence refers to the fact—undiscovered by sundry well-meaning delegations from the United States—that Sandinista unions were generally unable to choose their own leadership or make their own plans...
...an inability even to control the secret police (which far from having been disbanded, likewise remain Sandinista, though now under Humberto Ortega, not Borge...
...d) The bureaucratic styles of leadership and the imposition of directors and organizational planes...
...Anti-Sandinista uprisings are likely...
...This vocabulary and these criticisms are, after all, what you would have read in past years in Violeta Chamorro's much-persecuted paper, La Prensa...
...Chamorro's government, true to the worst predictions, has shown a disposition toward the kind of backroom dealing among rival elites (in this case, between her own technocrats and General Ortega) that has always debilitated democracy in Nicaragua and is likely to inhibit the growth of grass-roots democratic institutions...
...Dismissing a large number of army officers means crippling the Front...
...The Sandinistas themselves, apart from one small splinter faction, were prevented from doing so partly by their own apparent success...
...The weakness of these institutions is precisely what has continually allowed dictators to come to power...
...The model that we began to put into effect, with a socialist orientation chosen as a banner, contradicted, in practice, the program of reconstruction and national unity...
...And sure enough, under those circumstances, not even the combined support of the United States and the Soviet Union is much help, and uncertainty and strife continue to undermine any possibility of economic growth...
...the "forced purchase of basic grains at official prices...
...Mightn't that be because, among other reasons, there is still no consensus or proper rule of law able to achieve a consensus...
...q 122 • DISSENT...
...The principal newspaper of the democratic left, La Cranica, which was part of Chamorro's coalition, has folded...
...Will the Sandinistas agree to that...
...Now the appearance has changed...
...Today the contra army has folded, the U.S...
...I will quote a couple of sections from Part I, a discussion of policies during the ten years of Sandinista government: c) In many cases—although it was correct to plan profound changes that, in the last instance, responded to felt historical demands—practices of the socialist countries [meaning communist countries, of course] were reproduced that led us to single-party styles of political leadership of society, and an excessive emphasis on the control and the centralization of public management...
...But even in its reduced state, the Sandinista army may well account for up to half or even more of the full members of the Sandinista Front...
...In its first months, Chamorro's government has faced a treasury looted by the outgoing government along with a wave of Sandinista privatizations of state property (to ensure that, in the style of East Bloc communists, good property will go to the people who have just been voted out of office...
...The army happens to be the political base of the Ortega brothers vis-à-vis their internal competitor, Borge's harder-line faction...
...Humberto Ortega's Sandinista People's Army by itself controls a substantial number of businesses...
...If anybody controls the destiny of Nicaragua, it is, therefore, the Sandinistas themselves, whose institutions are anything but weak...
...Naturally, the Sandinista report emphasizes aggression from the United States...
...The Sandinista People's Army—to name an obvious problem—has already been reduced by Chamorro to almost a third of its maximum size, yet is still more than four times larger than was Somoza's National Guard...
...Events since then have confirmed the gist of what I said...
...In Nicaragua, elements of the nonSandinista Marxist left (for instance, the formerly Moscow-line socialists, now largely social democratic) have taken such steps during the last few years...
...aggression prevented the advisers from East Germany, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Cuba and other countries, who dominated Sandinista thinking, from achieving success in Nicaragua...
...Obviously the Sandinista army will have to be reduced further, and should in fact be abolished altogether, if Nicaragua is to enjoy a healthy economy, stable democratic institutions, and a nonmilitaristic political culture...
...They conclude at one point: The negative phenomena which should be given up are: a) Authoritarianism...
...Yet the Sandinista Front contains many serious and idealistic people, some of whom are obviously trying to absorb the (to them) shocking news about their lack of public support...
...Yet such self-criticisms, stated so baldly with words like "authoritarianism" and "singleparty styles" —this is something new...
Vol. 38 • January 1991 • No. 1
