Let us Breathe
"Were it not for imperialism," said an FSLN leader in November, as Haig was noisily refusing to rule out options against Nicaragua, "we could talk to the business sector, establish rates of...
...s If true, it certainly puts to rest UDN's pretensions of independence from exGuardsmen...
...The Reagan Administration has now begun to move on the multilateral lending institutions...
...The objective, according to a Navy memo, was to train 130 U.S...
...Diario Las Americas, February 18, 1982...
...There are some indications of growing broadly based support to take to arms to overthrow the Sandinist government, and this support could increase as further economic problems develop.' Sixty percent of the $75 million fiscal 1981 U.S...
...Widely held to have been a political failure against Cuba, it would be harder to apply against a country with long, permeable land borders and a wider spread of trading partners...
...7 2 . In a series of diplomatic notes to the Honduran government and the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Nicaraguans protested Honduran "incapacity" to control these ac35NACLA Report In the Atlantic Coast settlement of El Bluff, this song and dance meeting later turned into a spontaneous demonstration against the joint U.S.-Honduran Halcon Vista military maneuvers...
...Di Giovanni, "U.S...
...6 7 Keeping track of the unification announcements is a game of acronym scrabble...
...Far from simply "accusing the Sandinista Junta of Marxist-Leninist tendencies" as the U.S...
...We will only accept former National Guardsmen who have changed their attitude," says Chamorro in a serious tone...
...3. New York Times, November 28, 1980...
...But of course, as is the case with such headlines, the damage was done both internationally and internally among those already primed to be suspicious of the Sandinistas...
...Funding includes one three-year $5-million project for agricultural and small manufacturing cooperatives managed paternalistically by FUNDE...
...E a) 2 "23NACLA Report Outside a Matagalpa distribuiton center, run by local Sandinista Defense Committees, people wait in line for free meat and milk...
...3 8 Yet hard on the heels of the decree came a four-week sequence of events which convinced the FSLN that a major, coordinated U.S...
...7 5 A week later U.S...
...Policy and the Marxist Threat," p. 3 . 24...
...Reserves had hit rockbottom and it was impossible to generate any internal surplus without resorting to everincreasing foreign aid...
...3 7 The World Bank, in an unpublished report dated October 9, 1981, endorsed the Nicaraguan economic reforms which it said are "expected to define a framework wherein private sector business can satisfactorily operate...
...Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations leveled a vicious attack against Nicaragua in the General Assembly...
...The literacy crusade was ultimately conductedin Spanish, English, Miskito and Sumu...
...Masters of Economic War But the battle is not going on at the ideological and political levels alone, and it is not being fought out primarily among Nicaraguans with merely aid and comfort from the Reagan Administration...
...It could also have important implications since UDN is one of the oldest groups, and one with important reactionary ties in the United States and Honduras, as well, seemingly, as numerous other countries 9 William Baltodano, a member of UDN, was recently captured in connection with a vast international conspiracy which he participated in and ultimately revealed in detail on Nicaraguan television...
...Diario Las Americas, October 6, 1981...
...It was time to try something new...
...The lion's share of this goes to the Nicaraguan Development Foundation (FUNDE), one of the groups under the umbrella organization, COSEP...
...In a meeting with the directors of Nicaragua's three dailies, all members of the Chamorro family, Scripps was treated to a taste of the La Prensa style...
...Diario Las Americas, November 15, 1981...
...Impesca, the state fishing industry, had to close one of its processing plants because so many boats were not operating...
...press was severely curtailed during both the Civil War.and World War I.5" And as for the COSEP prisoners, Norman Bailey of the National Security Council revealed the true extent of the Reagan Administration's concern when he said, "If Nicaragua would change its foreign policy toward the United States...we would take a much different attitude about the arrest of the businessmen...
...They have rustled thousands of head of cattle across the border into Honduras and in the past year have received some assistance from Honduran military for incursions which have caused over 200 deaths of Sandinista soldiers, several Cuban teachers and a number of Nicaraguan civilians...
...2, No...
...CIP Memo, undated...
...What does this mean in practice...
...Several youths who were absolved of charges said they had been abducted and carried to the camps...
...Only the Catholic hierarchy in Nicaragua declined an invitation to visit the camp, yet felt compelled to issue an open communique accusing the government of using drastic measures in the relocation...
...Because the major U.S...
...Diario Las Americas, January 15 and 16, 1981...
...Private investment has plummeted to an all-time low, from 80% of total investment in 1978 to only 10% in 1981...
...The two U.S...
...or 54% more sugar...
...475, January 7, 1982...
...To them, public opinion only determines how government policy is "packaged", and when it is presented...
...The first successes of the revolutionary government's new agro-industry venture-large scale chicken raising...
...Without them, banks and investors are loath to take risks...
...256 NACLA Report El Caracol food-processing plant, Managua...
...International Development Cooperation Agency, Agency for International Development, Washington, D.C., October 1, 1980 - September 31, 1981...
...Steadman Fagoth, whose numbers in Honduras had reportedly dwindled to 200 by late 1981, had enticed thousands of Miskitos to seek refuge in Honduras by his inflammatory broadcasts in the last months of 1981...
...Though they certainly shared the poverty, these people neither suffered the repression nor experienced the resistance that characterized the unfolding of the revolution in the Pacific region...
...But after the victory the money dried up and many of the early members of the executive committee took high posts in the new government...
...Not only does this decrease production, but it puts workers out of jobs...
...Junta member Sergio Ramirez had already pointed out that, "We can't decide everything in terms of international opinion while we are being destabilized...
...New York Times, transcript of President's address to OAS, February 25, 1982...
...export of resins used in Nicaragua's PVC manufacturing industry--because Nicaragua might sell Cuba its surplus stocks of plastics...
...When asked for evidence, the reporter claimed his tapes were garbled...
...ed by Josy Esteban GonzAlez...
...In the Propaganda War The Battle Is International The whole issue of running the presidency is control of the agenda...
...s' The campaign has all the qualities of a water torture theory of opinion building: where basic proof is unavailable, the steady drip, drip, drip of repetition shall make it true...
...New York Times, April 2, 1981...
...A country's principal export product may be boycotted, as happened with Cuba's sugar after the revolution, Chile's copper after Allende's electoral victory and Jamaica's bauxite after Manley imposed higher taxes on U.S...
...representatives of AIFLD were invited to leave Nicaragua last fall presumably after one of them was identified as a CIA agent.' 4 Pressing the Battle Far and away the greatest tool in the battle for hearts and minds in Nicaragua is La Prensa...
...The news of the massacre was totally .false and no Miskito has been assassinated by the Sandinista Popular Army," they said...
...Jos6 Esteban Gonzdlez Gonialez' Permanent Human Rights Commission in Managua had received substantial international funding toward the end of the Somoza regime...
...Once the people had been safely moved, he explained, the villages and crops were burned, to deny the counterrevolutionaries encampment and food on the Nicaraguan side of the river...
...press would have us believe, the signatories accused the FSLN of creating the economic crisis, "preparing a new genocide" and leading the country to the verge of disaster...
...The action betrayed a made-in-Cuba professionalism...
...The example is El Salvador...
...details of the contracts for Nicaragua are classified...
...When asked, Mr...
...Kirkpatrick, addressing the Senate Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, called Nicaragua the worst violator of human rights in Central America...
...They had been biding their time under Carter, but now the honeymoon with the Sandinistas was over...
...7 0 If there is not yet a process of stable unification among the groups, details of this plot as revealed by Baltodano certainly indicate an active network of discussion and tactical cooperation vast in its international linkages...
...Of the balance, $30 million, only half actually made it to the Nicaraguan government before being suspended just as the reins were handed over to Reagan...
...Stories have abounded of shipments of Soviet T-55 tanks (quantities ranging from 24 to 100), Vietnamese planes (ranging from 1,000 to admission that it was only a rumor), and Cuban military advisers (1,500 to 2,000...
...On that same trip, the archbishop received an award bestowed on him and the Nicaraguan Council of Catholic Bishops in July of last year by the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a new organization of the neo-conservative stripe...
...Inforpress (Guatemala), No...
...government or of business interests in a country like Nicaragua louder and more credible than a suspiciously leftist government...
...Some 8,000 Miskitos from villages directly along the river were resettled away from the fighting, about 50-60 kilometers inland...
...government against Nicaragua...
...banks have inordinate influence on the international banking community, the Sandinistas have received virtually no private credits, even short term ones, rlUJanlFeb 1982 27 The 7,000 employee San Antonio sugar refinery is Latin America's fourth largest...
...Furthermore, western and socialist countries alike rushed to fill the wheat deficit...
...privately funded projects whose goal is similar...
...53...
...Together with the opposition parties, and the international movements to which some are affiliated, they have played a concerted role...
...2" Another $2 million AID-funded project has been allocated to other branches of COSEP including the chambers of commerce and industry, the cattlemen's organization and similar agricultural associations...
...5 8 A New York Times editorial a few weeks later took issue with the Administration's threats of military measures but corroborated for its readers the view that Nicaragua was embarked on a "drift toward tyranny...
...The explanation is simple, according to AID...
...But none has been disbursed...
...3), May-June, 1981...
...Washington Post, February 5, 1982...
...For months he has been beaming counterrevolutionary propaganda across to the Miskito communities from a clandestine radio station called 15 de Septiembre...
...Policy and the Marxist Threat," p.2...
...7 4 Nonetheless, it provided Honduras an excuse to send a military battalion to Puerto Lempira, beef up its military along the border with Nicaragua and ask the United States for communications and detection equipment...
...Richard C. Haskett, "Prosecuting the Revolution," American Historical Review, April 1954...
...It has been, purely and simply, to undermine the popular support of the FSLN...
...La Prensa is also Nicaragua's best known bourgeois institution internationally...
...Within Congress the effort took its toll...
...pressures: 75% of Nicaragua's meat goes to the United States, with virtually all the rest going to Puerto Rico, while the U.S...
...XV, No...
...That photo had two days earlier been exposed as being Red Cross members burning bodies during the 1978 insurrection on the Pacific side...
...Covert Action Information Bulletin (1982...
...ColumbiaJournalism Review, January- February 1982...
...4 1 Meanwhile, on October 8, the U.S...
...since the triumph...
...The paper called a round-table of opposition parties which suddenly decided to champion all the demands the indigenous population had been pressing for years...
...When Alfonso Robelo resigned from the Junta, together with Violeta Chamorro, in April 1980, his goal was to create a political crisis...
...In late February 1981, he and a number of other Misurasata leaders were arrested on suspicion of heading a separatist plot which was to include imminent military actions...
...aid to Nicaragua was suspended in order to review "evidence" that the Sandinista government had been supplying the Salvadorean guerrilla force with arms...
...Most importantly, it could.drive a wedge between support for the struggle in El Salvador and the triumphant Sandinistas...
...Thomas Eagleton (McGovern's original running mate in the 1972 presidential elections) called Nicaragua a dictatorship on his visit to Central America in April 1981.47 In October, the charge acquired official government status...
...Rather, it opportunistically took advantage of the Miskitos' anger at Fagoth's detention...
...There was civil unrest alright but it 24Jan/Feb 1982 FSLN Comandante Jaime Wheelock solicits the views of a group of campesinos...
...A mass walkout from the Council of State by COSEP, the bourgeois parties and opposition trade unions in November 1980 simply meant they lost the only voice in government they had, albeit a minority one...
...plan of destabilization was finally falling into place, and that the opposition had gained enough confidence from external attacks to force the economic crisis onto a political battleground...
...Haig pushed at this in a speech in Palm Beach, Florida in mid-November: "The Reagan Administration is very worried about the totalitarian course thq Nicaraguan regime is adopting...
...s In a conference sponsored by the Northeast Pastoral Center for Hispanics in New York City in January of this year, after blithely equating Marxism with totalitarianism, he even refused to admit that conditions of human rights were better than they had been under Somoza...
...s The favorable David and Goliath image the Sandinistas enjoyed for overthrowing the tyrant Somoza and carrying out attractive reforms such as the literacy crusade would have to be broken if the Administration wanted a free hand to accelerate...
...the UN Food and Agricultural Organization has been asked by the government to participate in planning agricultural development and, according to Comandante Campbell, the government is applying tremendous human and economic resources as well...
...Agency for International Development (AID) for its work in Nicaragua...
...With a new law governing the activities of political parties on the table for debate, some opposition groups found their way back to the Council of State, while others remained adrift...
...Gonz6lez was clearly sidelined...
...Nicaragua's two leading export crops (coffee and cotton) have relatively diversified markets, but its next highest earners are wide open to U.S...
...E Jan-eb98 19NACLA Report Coffee berries being spread out to dry before shelling...
...Most recently, the CLA T Newsletter published excerpts from Comandante Humberto Ortega's speech to members of the Sandinista Popular Army explaining the nature and importance of Marxism-Leninism to political study (as a "means of analysis...
...Analogies to the CIA-financed pre-coup role of Chile's El Mercurio are now commonplace, but in fact La Prensa's value to a destablization effort is proportionately greater, as it capitalizes on its pre-revolutionary prestige and holds a monopoly on opposition news...
...Liberal members of Congress who had fought on behalf of the $75 million aid package to Nicaragua during Carter's last year began to speak of being betrayed by the Sandinistas...
...Nicaragua's "integration into the international economic system is one of the greatest deterrents to the consolidation of a Marxist system," wrote former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Viron Vaky (1978-80), adding in a footnote that the Sandinista government's agreement on the rescheduling of $600 million in debts contracted by Somoza with some 120 American, European and Japanese creditor banks "locked Nicaragua into the private money market...
...For information on programs of 47 private, nonprofit organizations in Nicaragua see Development Assistance Programs of U.S...
...La Prensa also chose the IAPA visit to publish the results of its public opinion poll...
...The letter was not only widely disseminated within Nicaragua, but was forwarded to a number of international organizations, including the UN, the OAS and the International Labor Organization, a direct challenge to stipulations of the Emergency Decree...
...Its own editors are perfectly capable of moving outside the bounds of honest dissent by manipulating the news and being a willing conduit for what the CIA calls '"black" propaganda (i.e., unattributed or falsely attributed material, or false material attributed to a real source...
...The climax of mounting domestic dissent had come on October 19...
...Herbert Aptheker, The American Revolution, 1763 -1783 (New York: International Publishers, 1960), pp...
...For all this, the establishment media have been known to risk a breach with an administration now and again when a story has overriding scoop value or can hope to temper government policy if it is deemed dangerously wrongheaded...
...As one essayist succinctly put it, "The success of the Revolution was impossible without a revolutionary government which could enforce its will...
...The Guardian, December 2, 1981...
...La Prensa's oppositional stance has become both more blatant and more crude since a policy dispute with editor Xavier Chamorro caused him and a large portion of the staff to leave the paper and start El Nuevo Diario, which defines itself as "critically supportive" of the revolutionary government...
...The Battle for Hearts and Minds This rash of overt attacks, all within the space of a few months, does not mean that Nicaragua 20JanlFeb 1982 On the La Estrella state coffee farm near Matagalpa, even cooking is done communally is polarized between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries...
...Violation carried penalties of one to three years in prison...
...Our reactions are going to get harder as the harassment gets more aggressive...
...Church World Service is assisting with emergency relief and plans to send a delegation down...
...3 Uniquely...
...If they wanted to criticize the government, they could have sent the letter directly to the Junta," he said to a group of journalists at the Center for Inter-American Relations...
...unemployment and inflation, which had bottomed out at 18% and 25% respectively by 1980, both began to rise again...
...State coffee plantations blanket the Matagalpa hills behind, overthrown...
...aluminum corporations...
...Those who remained were viewed by the contras as pro-Sandinista and considered fair game...
...Those who preferred to cross the river to Honduras were free to do so, and reportedly several thousand did...
...By the time Reagan submitted the request to Congress, it had been cut to $33.3 million...
...Add to this the historic lack of an influential left press such as exists in most European countries, and the result is a powerful ideological homogeneity...
...In addition, Reagan also halted PL-480 credits for the puchase of $9.6 million worth of U.S...
...New York Times, August 16, 1981...
...involvement and begin to construct a rationale for the eventual regionalization of the conflict...
...Throughout November and December, clashes with invading counterrevolutionary bands along the border became an almost daily occurrence...
...Those who have already visited the camps, including the former president of Costa Rica, Jos6 Figueres, members of the Nicaraguan Commission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, Capuchin leaders and leaders of CEPAD, a powerful ecumenical organization in Nicaragua, have all reported peaceful and cooperative conditions...
...According to the Nicaraguan government, they are all part of a scheme called "Red Christmas," to besiege the coastal region, sowing confusion and aversion to the revolution among the Miskito...
...involvement...
...In its content and ferocity, it bears a canny relationship to the rhythm of struggle waged by the insurgents in El Salvador...
...By the end of the year, some analysts suggested that Nicaragua would need $500 million over and above currently predicted export earnings and foreign aid receipts simply to maintain current levels of economic activity in 1982.' Exports for 1981 were predicted at $540 million and imports at $900 million, a full 20% higher than first expected...
...Press conference held in Nicaraguan Embassy, Washington, D.C., March 5, 1982...
...El Salvador is going to follow that same road if the United States doesn't increase economic and military assistance to the Duarte junta...
...The Cuban connection also lay behind threats to suspend U.S...
...7 B In addition to these statements, the U.S...
...military carried out an unusually large exercise with 38 ships and 200 aircraft, with maneuvers running from Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters of the Second Fleet, to the Caribbean Sea...
...It included the provision of false passports and airline tickets to the conspirators by an Army captain from Honduran military intelligence and the purchase of arms in Miami with $50,000 given by Argentine military personnel "to get things started...
...policy...
...However, it is not illegal," he adds, with steely-eyed gallows humor, "to have military exercises, guys running around the fields with guns, or to say 'Uncle Sam, we're ready when you're ready-wink, wink-and here we go.' "" 62 Nicaragua's Miguel D'Escoto put the total number of counterrevolutionary exiles in some 20 camps in Honduras at 6,000, though it is impossible to establish the overall strength or preparedness of the myriad groups in the United States, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala...
...But those that are trying to sabotage the revolution, that are boycotting it, that are decapitalizing the economy, do so because they are energized, supported and pushed from outside by a power that makes them feel confident...
...Current Technical Service Contracts and Grants, U.S...
...The first recipient of IRD's Religious Freedom Award, Obando was praised for his "fight for human rights against both the Right and the Left," according to the Institute...
...In the long run, we could fall into Marxism," he said in an interview in early January 1981, "and by long run I don't mean 20 years, I mean three years...
...As of October 5, the details of the maneuvers involving patrol boats and aircraft "had not been concretized," and would therefore not become public information, but the exercise involved training in ocean search and interception...
...In the case of n C...
...New York Times, December 23, 1981...
...Jesse Helms, in a December hearing by his Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs: "If we don't fight this now, south of El Salvador, we will have to fight it in a decade, north of Mexico...
...on October 12, the IAPA arrived in Managua and received La Prensa's accusations of sharply falling FSLN support and on October 19, a column in the Washington Post by Evans and Novak insinuated Cuba had sent troops via Nicaragua to blow up an important Salvadorean bridge: "Exactly 26 days [after 5-600 Cuban troops had supposedly arrived in Nicaragua masquerading as civilians], in the pre-dawn morning of October 15, the most important bridge over the Lempa River that cuts El Salvador in two was blown up...
...Bailey, Center for Inter-American Relations...
...The plot had been aborted a few days earlier with the killing of Salazar in a gun battle between his driver and Sandinista security police when they tried to stop his car, reportedly full of weapons...
...2 " Institutionally, this strength shows in COSEP, not in any of the myriad political parties of the Right and center...
...ambassador to Nicaragua, journalism professorJohn Spicer Nichols points out that freedom of the press is always a relative concept, having much to do with a country's level of national development and social tranquility...
...3 5 The crisis presented the FSLN with an acute political dilemma...
...This campaign has undoubtedly been carried by Voice of America, which is listened to in English by many on the Atlantic Coast...
...Another is that some groups fear becoming publicly linked with others known to consist mainly of members of Somoza's corrupt and brutal National Guard...
...2 Conversely, these same sectors saw in the election of Ronald Reagan the opportunity to finally press their case with vehemence...
...Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980), pp...
...Random quotations such as these by Administration officials and conservative allies in Congress made their way incessantly into the network news and the front pages of the mainstream press...
...8. La Prensa, April 5, 1981...
...La Prensa (Managua), November 15, 1981...
...The group's leader in exile, CUS Assistant Secretary General FrankJim6nez, according to Remos, pledged the loyalty of CUS to the overtly counterrevolutionary organization, the Nicaraguan Democratic Union (UDN), and its military wing, the Nicaraguan...
...The new COSEP board took a conciliatory tone...
...If people were not warming to the idea of a Central American war in the name of stopping Soviet expansionism, they could surely be motivated to defend the region's great democratic traditions against totalitarianism...
...In the ideological struggle that has sharpened since Reagan's election, the so-called "free" trade unions, or the "free" newspaper, La Prensa, are hardly independent and neutral forces...
...In fact, since 1979, the great majority of government credits have flowed into private business...
...Trumped-up elections in El Salvador were scheduled for March to shore up its dubious image of democracy...
...The IDB still has seven loan and technical assistance projects worth $87.6 million under consideration for Nicaragua, and the World Bank more than $70 million...
...The Guardian Weekly reported that "What Robelo cannot pardon is that wealth no longer brings with it power...
...There is "mounting evidence in Nicaragua of the totalitarian character of the Sandinista regime," he claimed, and warned that policy-makers would exclude no options to deal with it...
...Among the most often repeated are the Nicaraguan government's decision not to hold early national elections, the series of punitive closings of La Prensa and the arrest and conviction of the three business leaders...
...One of the most recent is that Steadman Fagoth's growing exile band of Miskitos which has claimed the name Misurasata, the 15th of September Legion (named for the date of Nicaragua's independence from Spain) and UDN/FARN have formed a new alliance, the so-called Nicaraguan Democratic Forces (FDN...
...Despite the fact that no reporter has seen any Cuban military personnel in Nicaragua, it is strange that the media did not at least balance Administration charges with the categorical statement by Nicaragua's Comandante Lumberto Campbell in a recent Washington press conference that there are no more than 10.60 However, to their credit, the media are beginning to be suspicious of the Administration's inability to back up its year-long assertions of Nicaraguan involvement in arms traffic to El Salvador...
...Army's, Field Manual of Psychological Operations, which outlines how to subliminally create anxieties through the manipulation of provocative headlines and photos...
...Diario Las Americas, February 7, 1982...
...In particular, Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto condemned the complicity of Major Leonel Luque Jim6nez recently promoted to commander of Puerto Lempira on Honduras' own Atlantic Coast...
...Both Barricada and El Nuevo Diario published photostats of letters handwritten by Fagoth showing that he had also been an informer for Somoza's Office of National Security...
...The loan would be guaranteed by the Banco Nacional de Mexico...
...The following month, a delegation led by IAPA president Charles E. Scripps arrived in Managua to discuss the treatment of La Prensa and challenge the government on the very idea of having media laws requiring responsible reporting...
...Aided by a series of Administration leaks, the major liberal newspapers and the network news teams are competing feverishly to find new pegs to expose the hottest story of the year-what Newsweek recently called in its special report "the fire next door...
...News articles on the military situation also exhibited disregard for factual consistency unparalleled since the wildly fluctuating estimates of enemy strength during the Vietnam war...
...UDN/FARN with an estimated strength of 500 to 1,000 and ELN both purport to have numerous camps inside Nicaragua, including on the Atlantic Coast...
...Five months after the triumph, it was awarded an additional $500,000 for projects "in the Caribbean area and Nicaragua," and in April 1981 another $350,000 specifically for Nicaragua...
...An angered Carlos Chamorro stiffly suggested that the meeting had just come to an end...
...Ikl6, "The Security Threat...
...At issue for the press is the juridical flauting of the 1794 Neutrality Act which bars use of the United States as a base of military operations against any country not at war with the United States...
...La Prensa, the most widely distributed paper on the Coast, downplayed this news...
...Viron P. Vaky, "Hemispheric Relations: 'Everything Is Part of Everything Else'," Foreign Affairs (Vol...
...The private sector is united under an umbrella organization, COSEP, which speaks authoritatively for it...
...Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, "The Miskito People Within the Revolutionary Process in Nicaragua," unpublished paper...
...representative Kenneth Adelman in a bristling response to Nicaragua's address to the General Assembly...
...AmbassadorJeane Kirkpatrick threw in her two cents in a televised encounter with Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto...
...3 9 Over the first three weeks of the month, an unprecedented 16 cross-border raids by Somocista terrorists from Honduras were registered and on October 7-9, the United States and Honduras staged two days of joint military maneuvers off Puerto Cortez on Honduras' Atlantic Coast...
...5 7 The Press Plays Along The liberal establishment press initially picked up the totalitarian theme with alarming alacrity...
...In U.S...
...elections, COSEP issued a 30-page document charging the regime with monopolizing political power, reneging on a promise to hold early elections and preparing to "implement in Nicaragua a Communist political-economic project, with totalitarian state capitalism (sic) and consequent restrictions on all civil liberties...
...Then there was the action of Heritage Foundation darling...
...In 1980 the figure was $5 million, in 1981 it was $7 million and so far in 1982, $2.4 million...
...Even without calling in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and their infamous restrictions, the Nicaraguan people were seeing liberation followed by austerity...
...4 Among others, he netted the 43-hour president, Urcuyo Maliano, and the head of the National Guard High Command, General Federico Mejia...
...It included $53.3 million in development assistance (usually administered by a local AID office for specific infrastructural or basic human needs projects) and Economic Support Funds (normally provided to governments for such items as offsetting military expenditures or balance of payments deficits...
...Here, watched by agriculture minister Wheelock, a folk theater group depicts a worker-plantation owner confrontation...
...It would be simplistic to condemn the media as mere colluders with disinformation peddlers such as the CIA, though contact is acknowledged and.,here are certainly examples of collusion...
...Plan Economico 1981, Ministry of Planning (Managua...
...As it turned out, the story originated with an obscure, recently formed Mexican newspaper which claimed to have sent a reporter to cover D'Escoto in New Delhi, India, six months earlier...
...In fact, not a day goes by without gruesome photos of auto accidents, birth mutations or other stomachclenching images of chaos ostensibly caused either by the Sandinistas or an angry god...
...Journal of Commerce, March 9, 1982) U.S...
...According to Campbell there were no deaths...
...But not to be tied is even rougher...
...6. Miami Herald, January 3, 1981...
...media, reaching deep into public and private discussions about the fate of Central America and playing havoc with liberal sympathizers in Congress...
...Alan Riding wrote that "except for the occasional shortage of imported liquor...
...Drifting Toward Totalitarianism" It began offshore, like a Caribbean twister not significant enough to cause a stir in the mainland press...
...Remos assured NACLA that Mr...
...the dislocation of export crop cycles and Somoza's looting of reserves (both by mortgaging Somocista properties to get liquid capital in the later period of the war and by the blatant robbery of all but $3.5 million from the Central Bank just before he fled...
...or 145% more coffee...
...2 4 Before leaving office, Carter prepared the aid request for fiscal 1982...
...2. Cleto Di Giovanni, "U.S...
...World Bank News Release, No...
...Congressional Record - Senate, October 20, 1981, p. S11665...
...7. Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1981...
...5 A Slight Case of Exaggeration A trigger-word like totalitarianism sets off dark, unthinking fears in the public mind...
...Diario Las Americas, January 9, 1982...
...Navy Press Release and Miami Herald, November 26, 1981...
...5), May 1981...
...Pace and scope of agrarian reform have been set by constant dialog between government and the Rural Workers' Federation...
...There is one free newspaper in Nicaragua, La Prensa...
...What was wrong with El Salvador," offered...
...Called "absolutely false and absurd" by D'Escoto, the accusation was later contradicted by a delegation from the Honduran College of Education which visited the supposed site...
...the civil war in El Salvador was stalemated, guerrilla forces controlling an estimated 25% of the country...
...Traditionally comprising large capitalists, COSEP has realized it must extend its legitimacy and broaden its base among the smaller growers in competition with the FSLN-inspired agricultural and cattle ranchers' association, UNAG...
...A week later, on the eve of Carter's departure, U.S...
...Diario Las Americas, November 14, 1981...
...must revert to a more traditional view of Central America if the spread of Marxism is to be contained...
...Representatives Irom the OAS InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International have been invited to inspect the resettlement...
...The operations, involving the aircraft carriers Kennedy and Eisenhower, were designed to "improve fleet readiness in coordinated dual carrier battle ground operations with Navy and Marine Corps personnel on weapons systems under realistic conditions...
...Counterrevolution Comes to the Coast Recent events in the northeastern section of the Atlantic Coast reveal another level of cooperation, this time between members of the Honduran military, Steadman Fagoth's Indian bands, UDN/FARN ex-National Guard and the Reagan Administration itself...
...We deal with what ought to be the buildup of things six to nine months out...
...Diario Las Americas, January 30, 1982...
...Pressed for JanlFeb 1982 3334 NACLA Report time in a situation the Administration sees as desperate, the Reagan team has played its propaganda cards too rashly and the press now seems even eager to call its bluff with each new round of betting...
...First, in early November, the newly appointed U.S...
...and, as a final affront to the Nicaraguan government, Steadman Fagoth was permitted to testify (off the record of course, since he is not a U. S. citizen) before 36JanlFeb 1q82 37 several congressional committees and Administration officials...
...It had as its goals the blowing up of Nicaragua's oil refinery and national cement factory and personal attacks against specified Sandinista leaders...
...Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARN...
...Le Monde Diplomatique, July 19, 1981...
...The Philadelphia-based chemicals corporation, Pennwalt, and the Sears Roebuck department store are two U.S...
...7 In his major address to the OAS, President Reagan himself claimed that "many Indian 'communities have been burned to the ground and men, women and children killed...
...Nicaragua suddenly became a "forward base of operations for Cuba," which in turn is a "puppet of the expansionist Soviet Union" which is carrying out a "strategy to turn all of Central America into a Marxist enclave...
...Transcript of McNeil-Lehrer Report, Public Broadcasting System, February 14, 1982...
...Diario Las Americas, May 21, 1981 and January 27, 1982...
...Only the Miami Herald carried the story that Sen...
...Another testified that Jorge Salazar, a vice president of COSEP, had given $50,000 to buy arms for the movement...
...has as one of its main objectives to isolate progressive sectors within the U.S...
...Their conclusion: Nicaragua's military buildup can only be seen as offensive-the creation of "a superpower in Central American terms...
...Among 160 Miskitos being tried for counterrevolutionary activities in Puerto Cabezas, one Moravian pastor said that Honduran military came to the camps at night to talk...
...There are many political' parties...
...This two-pronged attack was simultaneous with a reporter's revelation in the Washington Post that 30JanlFeb 1982 One hundred thousand people were injured during the war of liberation...
...57...
...In addition to labeling Nicaragua a dictatorship, Adelman accused it of being "a base for the export of violence to other countries...
...It is business' way to serve notice of its discontent with the FSLN's conscious strategy of not letting economic influence be translated into corresponding political power...
...On November 12, speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State Haig moved from accusation to a threat of action...
...59, No...
...united in their opposition to the Sandinistas...
...The elderly and children were carried by helicopter...
...The remaining $13.3 million for development assistance has been designated for the private sector as well...
...It is not a subtle technique, but Reagan's propaganda team does not pride itself on subtlety...
...But the terms of economic coexistence provided for guaranteed profit margins in exchange for uninterrupted production, and the agreement has faltered...
...7 7 Haig reiterated the charge before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations...
...There has been a distinct "buildup of things" in the propaganda war carried out by the U.S...
...The evacuation was carried out peacefully and with the cooperation of those being moved, although understandably the villagers did not relish being uprooted from their homes...
...4 " Managing the Message Why has the propaganda offensive become such a key tool of Reagan's destablization efforts against Nicaragua...
...For now they are simply an increasingly restless, if also destructive, destablization factor...
...The Heritage Foundation had put it in a nutshell: "Nicaraguan workers continue to have an emotional attachment to the revolutionary movement...
...Furthermore, it had become clear that the Administration was opting for a military solution to the situation in El Salvador, and with the gains of the insurgents that would mean far greater U.S...
...It is automatic in such situations that Ex-Im Bank trade guarantees and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) investment guarantees are halted as well...
...Asked about the tour of Steadman Fagoth in the United States, Bishop John Wilson said Fagoth had manipulated some of the Moravian pastors, let his own people down and made a serious mistake by joining the counterrevolutionaries in Honduras.BO This cynical campaign has a CIA smell to it, reminiscent of the efforts applied to the Montagnards in Vietnam, who were recruited and armed by the CIA to fight the liberation front, and similar situations in Iraq, the Congo, Nigeria and Ethiopia...
...It was inaugurated in the United Nations by deputy U.S...
...These problems, most of which are shared regionally, and are even worse in Costa Rica and El Salvador than in Nicaragua, come on top of and are exacerbated by the situation the Sandinistas inherited from Somoza: a $1.6 billion foreign debt, the highest debt per capita in the Americas...
...The Nation, September 13, 1981...
...Signs are that this newest crisis has left the opposition, as before, in some disarray...
...Wqshington Post, November 10, 1981...
...29NACLA Report With diarrhea and malnutrition rampant causes of infant mortality, this children's hospital in Pueblo Nuevo is one of many opened since 1979...
...New York Times, November 25, 1981...
...At one extreme, sabotage is the withdrawal of industrial capital through any number of difficult-to-detect means...
...Non-Profit Organizations, Nicaragua, May 1981 (New York: Technical Assistance Information Clearing House, 1981...
...5. Miami Herald, January 2, 1981...
...Based on a sample of 900 respondents, the survey drew scathing conclusions about public opposition to the government's harassment of La Prensa and right-wing Radio Corporacion, and asserted that popular support for the FSLN was running at a mere 28...
...But the AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) which is financing some 2122 44 projects in Nicaragua, most through CUS, challenged the claim that Jimtnez was still affiliated with CUS...
...3 1 Underdeveloped countries are also locked into world capitalist commodity markets, opening a further structural vulnerability easily exploited through trade embargoes...
...And in what can only be viewed as overkill, the State Department is now rumored to be directly pressuring the banks not to change their minds.* In effect, this means that the Nicaraguan government must put up cash for all import purchases, from food to tractors to horseshoe nails...
...In debate over Senator Zorinsky's proposed amendment to the fiscal 1982 foreign aid request that all $33 million for Nicaragua go to the private sector, Senator Kennedy endorsed it with the following remark: "Nicaragua has experienced the lion's share of social and political injustice under two regimes--including first a corrupt tyrant of the right and now an authoritarian regime of the left...
...And with the popular power that the revolution has, these businessmen could accept it as a real consequence of the political phenomenon that Nicaragua has lived through...
...In general, the bands are many, small and given to divisive squabbling...
...Within Nicaragua, the only initial complaint came from some who felt the step might have been taken earlier...
...Washington Post, November 23, 1981...
...New York Times, December 23, 1981 and January 17, 1982...
...They themselves count on a popular uprising inside Nicaragua or to be foot soldiers in a U.S...
...New York Times, August 23, 1981...
...The Exile Peg What first tipped the scale for the news media was the cavalier approach of Administration officials toward military training camps for avowed counterrevolutionaries located in Florida's everglades and California's deserts...
...Even Robelo positioned himself as far from the U.S...
...4 3 The three COSEP signatories who did not go into hiding were tried and sentenced to seven months in jail (though this was commuted after four months...
...Di Giovanni, "U.S...
...National elections were not held for 13 years, opposition presses were smashed, and Tories were expelled from public office, imprisoned without trial, forcibly exiled or summarily shot...
...It is an affiliate of the regional Confederation of Latin American Workers (CLAT), and enjoys the powerful backing of the government of Venezuela and international Christian Democracy...
...Nicaragua, decapitalization has resulted in a capital flight of some $140 million...
...3 "With an eye on fund raising and keeping the Sandinistas jumpy, they all tend to exaggerate their numbers, the countries where they have a presence and their degree of infiltration into Nicaragua itself...
...Sidney Blumenthal, "Marketing the President," New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1981...
...For other groupings, see New York Times, April 2, 1981 and La Prensa (Honduras), September 1, 1981...
...In the United States, the various groups are trained by former U.S...
...4 2 Facing the most serious political challenge to date, the FSLN moved swiftly to assert its authority, knowing in advance that to do so would have clear international consequences...
...Embassy in Managua issued a press bulletin with the same information as put out on September 15th Radio...
...Haig refused to assure Representative Gerry Studds (D-Mass) that the United States would not give further support to the Nicaraguan exiles in the United States or Honduras...
...Blumenthal, "Marketing the President...
...foreign aid had been designated for the private sector...
...Obando y Bravo, no stranger to temporal politics, is an adversary the Sandinistas would prefer not to 18JanlFeb 1982 have...
...Here, the forms of attack are multiple...
...Richard S. Beal, survey research expert for Reagan's political management team...
...50...
...Widely identified with years of opposition to Somoza, he is still an important voice of authority in Nicaragua, even though a majority of priests and other religious workers have left his side to work within the revolutionary process...
...New York Times, March 3, 1982...
...The objective has not been to put forth an alternative model that would improve the lot of the Nicaraguan people...
...Six COSEP leaders signed an open letter to Junta coordinator Daniel Ortega denouncing government policies...
...Its private owners concluded new production agreements with the Sandinista government in 1981...
...FARN has taken credit for a number of deaths inflicted during armed confrontations with the Sandinista Army inside Nicaragua...
...La Prensa had picked up the story from Diario Las Americas which, according to Covert Action Information Bulletin, has several CIA agents on its staff.'" (It is worth noting that even in this case, the government did not impose prior censorship on La Prensa...
...l There are signs of such independent investigation now...
...It wasn't well staged or sequenced...
...Within five days there were reports in the press of a 100-strong guerrilla force, reputedly Nicaraguan, which had landed by boat on a Salvadorean beach...
...Despite the fact that the Sandinistas agreed to accept Somoza's debts, and actually received favorable rescheduling terms, both private credits and investments were effectively halted when the' Administration cut off aid...
...It hadn't helped that the boat story was exposed as a hoax and that the Administration's "White Paper on Communist Interference in El Salvador" first met lukewarm response in Europe and was ultimately discredited by both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal...
...military personnel and their Honduran counterparts in sea and air tactics, communications and joint command...
...In the near future," advises Di Giovanni, "the U.S...
...Retreating from the brink, La Prensa changed tack in mid-November, denouncing Haig's "interfering and threatening attitude" in an editorial...
...Underpinning all these'attempts to break the fragile national unity in Nicaragua is the first and most basic level of the U.S...
...By the end of December, FARN forces had killed 20 campesinos and 15 soldiers, 15 women were reported raped, and 27 people, including Sandinista soldiers, were abducted to camps in Honduras...
...There are times when it is better to show that the authority of the revolution does exist and that it can hit back at its foes...
...One banker admitted the loan might be politically impossible, adding, "We are listening to what happens in Mexico and Washington...
...It prides itself on winning...
...4 Only a month later, Managua's Archbishop Obando y Bravo risked splitting the Church by publicly demanding that four priests serving in ministerial posts in the government choose between politics and the Church...
...Throughout November and December (roughly until Congress adjourned for Christmas recess) the charge of totalitarianism became a leitmotif as Haig and other Administration officials hammered away daily at Nicaragua in interviews, press conferences, congressional hearings, television panels and trips to other countries...
...Diario las Americas December 31, 1981 74...
...Under public E ownership since its occupation two years ago by the workforce who accused the plant's owners of economic sabotage...
...7 In fact, the Sandinistas had abolished the death penalty and had just concluded laboriously trying over 6,000 followers of Somoza, mainly National Guardsmen, as war criminals, convicting some 4,000 to sentences ranging from one to thirty years...
...While the stated reasons for opposing the loan were "technical," *This pressure is admitted by U.S...
...The decree set out to cut government expenditure, raise tax revenues, halt capital flight and increase productivity-the latter by means of a controversial no-strike clause...
...In that appearance he no longer brandished his photograph from the Paris newspaper Le Figaro showing burning bodies purported to be Miskitos...
...Some would call it just saber rattling...
...The Sandinistas are like the Nazis," exploded La Prensa's Jaime Chamorro to his nephew Carlos, director of the FSLN's Barricada, "because the leftist commanders control the government of Nicaragua like the followers of Hitler controlled Germany...
...Interview with Xabier Gorostiaga, reprinted in Instituto Historico Centroamericano bulletin (Managua), 1981...
...The goal is to foment a separatist uprising to create an excuse for the possible intervention of foreign military forces and thus a "liberated" beachhead for aggressions against the central government...
...The charge was even endorsed in editorials, such as one in the Washington Post that concluded, "Strictly from its own point of view, this is a strange time for the [Nicaraguan] junta to be becoming a Communist-controlled police state...
...In a press conference in Washington, D.C...
...The bombing and closure of El Salvador's El Independiente, the elimination of La Crdnisa del Pueblo after Salvadorean death squads had disposed of its editor and chief photographer, the killing of the editor of Guatemala's third largest daily, La Nacidn, and the murder and disappearance of 28 journalists in that country since the beginning of 1980, have all been met with a resounding silence from Washington.'s So, for that matter, was the news that La Prensa employees recently fired directly into a crowd of demonstrators in front of their offices, wounding three.'" Turning the Economic Screws The private sector derives its greatest muscle from majority control of the economy-75% of industrial and 80% of agricultural production...
...It could hope to explain away the successes of the Salvadorean insurgents, help mobilize public opinion in support of increased U.S...
...And the FSLN, in no doubt about the most pressing task at hand, dubbed 1982 the "Year of National Unity Against Aggression...
...religious community...
...Like the "totalitarian" accusation, it serves a divisive purpose both within Nicaragua and among liberal and other supporters of the Sandinista efforts abroad...
...multinationals accused by their Nicaraguan workers of decapitalization...
...Economic Emergency, Political Confrontation By mid-1981, the economic situation was headed from bad to worse...
...Miami Heraly September 15, 1981...
...In October 1980, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, published policy recommendations for Nicaragua that have become a virtual blueprint for U.S...
...But the maneuver backfired...
...3), 1980, p. 621...
...Washington Post, November 9, 1981...
...Their property was confiscated as a general practice...
...The Heritage Foundation neglected to mention the three indigenous groups on the Atlantic Coast...
...But a revolution is by definition the profound rupturing of an existing system...
...Our political influence derives from our entrepreneurial ability," claimed COSEP' sJaime Montealegre.21 With the exception of a few properties confiscated on grounds of decapitilization, the FSLN has restricted state control to former Somoza properties, natural resources and the financial system...
...InterPress Service (Managua), November 27, 1981...
...The Invisible Blockade Strikes Again Given that all underdeveloped nations are structurally and dependently integrated in multiple ways into the capitalist world economy, economic warfare strikes at their Achilles heel...
...An all-out blockadewouldhowever,make little sense...
...125 -128...
...This Managua rehabilitation center for the disabled is a central focus of revolutionary health care programs...
...LET US BREATHE 1. Interview with Bayardo Arce (Managua), November 1981...
...It is on particularly shaky grounds when it indignantly pushes for elections, while remaining unperturbed that Argentina has not had real elections in six years of military dictatorship, Chile in eight, Uruguay in ten or Paraguay in nearly half a century...
...assault: economic warfare.The hoped for sequence of events is that the disruption of economic activities will lead to social unrest, which in turn will induce political turmoil...
...Ibid., No...
...Free labor unions are competing successfully for the loyalty of workers...
...State Department, but again based on admittedly unconfirmed reports...
...Administration as he could...
...Since Nicaragua has few manufacturing plants for spare parts and most of the machinery is from the United States, it only takes a few breakdowns before an entire fishing fleet is docked, buses and taxis are out of commission and factory production is operating at less than full capacity...
...At the other extreme lies the bombing of a Nicaraguan state-owned passenger jet in Mexico City in December 1981...
...This attachment can be expected to weaken as the economy deteriorates...
...Major Jimenez, other members of the Honduran military and Steadman Fagoth had been discovered traveling together aboard a Honduran Air Force plane when it crashed on December 28, wounding several of the passengers.73 At the beginning of January the Honduran Minister of Defense retaliated by accusing Nicaraguan military of crossing the Rio Coco in December and massacring 200 Miskitos living in refugee camps, based on an admittedly unconfirmed report...
...4. Miami Herald, November 23, 1980...
...By the historic standards of revolutionary consolidation, these acts hardly qualify Nicaragua as totalitarian...
...Were it not for imperialism," said an FSLN leader in November, as Haig was noisily refusing to rule out options against Nicaragua, "we could talk to the business sector, establish rates of profit based on their productive experience and say to them, this is the new situation of Nicaragua...
...These funds were to provide the private sector with foreign exchange in order to facilitate its import needs...
...After a carefully planned, fullscale campaign portraying El Salvador as a crucial East-West confrontation, Reagan's strategists were stunned to see a drop in his support in the polls...
...New York Times, December 23, 1981...
...the time, February 1981...
...8 For his part, Fagoth violated his provisional release by fleeing to Honduras', where he now works with like-minded Miskitos and exNational Guardsmen in training camps along the Nicaraguan eastern border...
...FUNDE is also listed as the Nicaraguan cooperating agency for several U.S...
...The Reagan Administration was taking giant steps forward in its attacks against Nicaragua from which there would be no easy retreat...
...And by the time it passed Congress, the $20 million in Economic Support Funds had been designated specifically to the private sector for raw materials or capital goods imports...
...Although the Nicaraguan government has categorically and consistently denied involvement in such activities, the Reagan Administration fastened on the theme, using it as a rationale to cut off aid definitively in April...
...Recruited by ex-Guard officers shortly after the victory because, in his words, they needed "another image," he traveled last year to Paraguay, Argentina, Guatemala and Miami to bring dispersed exGuardsmen together...
...5 2 Reagan's strategists, by November, had clearly concluded that the East-West campaign would fly better if the ideological component were brought more into play...
...To be thus locked means to be subjected to international interest rates, exchange rates, loans procedures, creditor ratings, etc...
...According to their investigation several members of Misurasata had died in confrontations with the Sandinistas led by Fagoth and an ex-Somocista colonel...
...And finally, the end of the month saw the first signs of a radical new propaganda initiative from Washington which would target Nicaragua...
...3 It was followed a few weeks later by the arrest and conviction of eight people, most of them business leaders, who admitted conspiring to overthrow the Nicaraguan junta...
...Financial Times(London), January 27, 1981 and New York Times, January 23, 1981...
...Two weeks after the U.S...
...Administration officials reportedly used this as part of their arsenal to convince other governments of the dangers of Nicaragua to regional security...
...Thus, although the Marxist government in Nicaragua might fall eventually of its own failures, the security of El Salvador requires the acceleration of the removal of the government in Managua...
...A CEPAD representative and the bishop of the Moravian Church on the Atlantic Coast accompanied Lumberto Campbell in the press conference and both corroborated the causes of the resettlement and efforts of the government to carry out the evacuation with the least possible discomfort...
...In Nicaragua's case, the embargoes will be more selective...
...As examples of alarmist rhetoric, they were only topped by Sen...
...The hitch was that close to half of the U.S...
...Barricada Internacional (Managua), September 15, 1981...
...As Daniel Ortega explained in his speech to the United Nations, 47% more cotton was required to buy one tractor in 1981 than in 1977...
...A final, and more dramatic facet of economic warfare is direct sabotage...
...In Nicaragua, many people are simply confused by the speed of events-by the schism in the Church, by the stark inability of the revolution to bring the quick benefits they thought would come, by charges against the Sandinistas coming from paternalistic figures like Obando y Bravo...
...If it is not possible to prove CIA links with La Prensa, neither is it the cutting edge...
...Yet by applying the criteria associated with this concept in a static way, not taking the context into account, the early period of the American revolution could easily have qualified as "drifting toward totalitarianism...
...The Christian Democratic Nicaraguan Workers' Confederation (CTN), for example, has grown by its own claim to a membership of 65,000, making it the second largest federation after the Sandinistas' CST...
...The campaign portraying Nicaragua as a totalitarian bastion carrying out the bidding of the Soviet Union in El Salvador would.thus serve several ends...
...Like all of Central America, Nicaragua's economy is based on export crops which have confronted plummeting world market prices, while the cost of machinery imports has increased...
...Under normal conditions, this renders the voice of the U.S...
...wheat...
...That is the imperialist policy...
...But since they would be funneled through the government, which imports far more than this amount for private sector use anyway, there is no way to document that this money is additional...
...Even though representatives for many of the myriad small groups openly admit they are dedicated to the armed overthrow of Nicaragua, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders tosses off challenges as calmly as he must have done when he was secretly directing the 1972 bombing of Cambodia (a country with which the United States was also not at war...
...These entrepreneurs have been happy to take their risks with state supplied investment capital...
...A U.S...
...Diario Las Americas, February 25, 1982...
...New York Times, March 5, 1981...
...2 5 Outright grants administered by the AID office in Managua and turned over directly to the private sector have been continued...
...Multinational Monitor (Vol...
...For this reason the Nicaraguan Democratic Union (UDN) and its armed wing, the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARN), led by Pedro Joaquin Chamorro's cousins Edmundo and Fernando, will publicly have nothing to do with the ELN...
...Phone conversation with AID official at Nicaraguadesk...
...Given the conditions in Nicaragua today, professor Nichols points out, "the amount of dissenting ideas and discussion of unsettling topics flowing from the Nicaraguan media is remarkable...
...It's a process question...
...If you attack a country or assist in an attack on a country or conspire to do this, all these things are illegal...
...Jim~nez speaks for both the exile and internal branches of CUS...
...z r tions and reiterated their frequent appeal for joint border patrol...
...The byzantine plot, according to Baltodano's confessions, involved members of the Venezuelan Embassy in Nicaragua, of the Salvadorean Embassy in Costa Rica, of the Argentine military mission in Honduras, as well as Jos6 Esteban Gonzilez, the owner of Diario las Americas, unidentified persons in Washington and the Honduran Special Security Forces...
...While the others were soon released, Fagoth was held for two more months...
...support in case Honduras goes to war with Nicaragua...
...4 8 Within another month, the now hurricane force propaganda storm swept the U.S...
...Productivity has remained low (labor problems were estimated to have cost $100 million in 1981...
...Senate as the FY82 Foreign Aid Amendment approving the $33.3 million to the Nicaraguan private sector was passed...
...Following the suggestion of the Heritage Foundation-- economic shortcomings might provoke at least limited civil unrest by the end of the current harvest season (May-June 1981"Reagan turned the suspension into outright cancellation in April...
...In a paper adapted from a briefing for the new U.S...
...Even Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States Arturo Cruz, who resigned in part because of disagreement with the actions taken by the government against his COSEP friends, was the first to admit that the letter had had a destabilizing effect...
...15 de Septiembre Radio, FBIS, January 4, 1982...
...They quickly decided to "low key the issue," allowing it to "recede in the public mind" until the polls changed...
...Miami Herald, April 26, 1981...
...On January 10, 1981, just as President Carter was preparing to cede the Oval Office to his successor, the Farabundo Marti Forces of National Liberation launched a major offensive in El Salvador...
...Samuel Dickens, past staff member of the Inter-American Defense Board, said at 28JanlFeb 1982 the time that the maneuvers were a signal of U.S...
...The bourgeoisie's periodic engineering of confrontations to coerce greater political clout from the Sandinistas has netted it the opposite...
...1,June 1981...
...Nichols, "Principles and Realities...
...The reassertion of authority was validated by impressive mass mobilization...
...9. CLATNewsletter, No...
...3, December 1981...
...On the Atlantic Coast, incursions had resulted in the deaths of 22, most of them Sandinista soldiers, and another 20 abducted...
...population feared a war under Reagan, and an effective solidarity 31NACLA Report movement had prevented Reagan from making any dent in that statistic with regard to El Salvador...
...A recent article by columnist Ariel Remos in Diario LasAmericas, a rightwing Spanish-language daily in Miami, claimed that CUS had now formed in exile in Miami...
...The Sandinistas, unfamiliar with their customs and social organization, had for a year and a half been grappling with the question of how to appropriately incorporate them into the new revolutionary process, making many errors of cultural insensitivity along the way...
...The clearest example of this is La Prensa's August 16, 1981 headline story that Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto had publicly maligned Archbishop Obando y Bravo...
...At his trial, GonzAlez backed off, saying that his remarks in Rome had been "misinterpreted...
...One issue is contention for leadership...
...Indeed it is...
...The strike freeze, as well as seven other restrictions, made it illegal to carry out any act that would effect the precarious economic situation, whether by sabotage, land invasions, speculation, or spreading of false information...
...was aimed at Reagan, not the Sandinistas...
...state bureaucracy had mushroomed from 33,000 to 61,000 employees...
...COSEP welcomed the decree as "the first step toward solving the national crisis...
...The change of political climate the private sector demanded was nothing less than gaining state power...
...While the Sandinistas had never released figures on the strength of their military forces, press figures--virtually never qualified as estimates-jumped madly between 20,000 and 60,000 for the Army and between 100,000 and 200,000 for the volunteer militia...
...Not very good at recent history, the Administration has forgotten altogether that the U.S...
...4 This move came as a surprise to many, since even Haig was saying that the supposed weapons shipments had "slowed to a trickle...
...143 - 45, 151 - 55...
...Unomasuno (Mexico), January 17, 1982...
...The redistributive reforms put into effect by the government had yet to hit the middle class really hard...
...Central America, No Road Back," NACLA Report on the Americas (Vol...
...A charismatic leader named Steadman Fagoth Mueller, part Miskito Indian, had been elected head of a post-revolutionary organization of the three groups called Misurasata, and was subsequently selected by its membership to represent them on the Council of State...
...Much, but not all, of the bureaucratic growth results from the expansion or creation of ministries which provide the vast new social services...
...The rhetoric escalated at a geometric rate...
...IRD, which recently published and widely distributed a pamphlet called "Nicaragua-a Revolution Against the Church...
...Called for clarification, Mr...
...The dynamic is much more complex, and includes factors such as the continuing monopolization of the print and electronic media, sensitivity to the interests of moneyed advertisers, and the obvious pressure to maintain good relations with pro-Administration sources or risk losing access to special interviews and inside story lines, the cutting edge of high-rolling competitive journalism...
...One young executive, who boasts that he has salted away $80,000 abroad since the revolution, made it clear: "Why shouldn't I? The government gives us economic incentives, but what we want is a climate of political confidence...
...In a press conference called by Interior Minister Tomis Borge, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry-one of those arrested--admitted that the plotters had made contact with ex-Guardsmen and representatives of other Central American government and military officials...
...Press conference, Washington, D.C., March 5, 1982...
...3 2 Early threats were waved at beef exports, but lifted when Nicaragua cancelled the planned purchase of high-grade, low-cost breeding bulls from Cuba...
...banks asked to par- ticipate in a $130 million loan to Nicaragua being syndicated by a London-based consortium named Intermex...
...Tied, in short, to a set of objective conditions determined by western finance capital, and above all by the United States...
...Perhaps the most important explanation, because it is less obvious to the public and therefore more dangerous in the long run, is a pervasive ideological bias among journalists and editors that is conditioned and reinforced by all of the above...
...Those in the United States have received at least the tacit approval of the Reagan Administration, if not more...
...In its provocative preface, CLAT raised the fear of a MarxistLeninist "military dictatorship" in Nicaragua.'o The AFL-CIO-supported anti-communist union, the Confederation for Trade Union Unification (CUS), on the other hand, remains a relatively ineffectual force, with only several thousand members...
...Guardian Weekly (England), August 2, 1981...
...The association is Hitler's Germany or Soviet society under Stalin...
...Even to an outsider it provokes a sense of inexplicable NACLA ReportJanlFeb 1982 unease, quite in contrast to the other papers, which feature volunteers happily picking cotton, roads under repair, parks being built, peasants being taught to read...
...Far from being a concentration camp, the relocation is planned as a model resettlement...
...In February 1981, after an audience with Pope John Paul II, Gonzilez captured international headlines with the news that he had delivered a document to Vatican officials charging that there were 8,000 political prisoners in Nicaragua, that the "Sandinista regime applies methods of torture and repression very similar to those applied in the past by the Somoza dictatorship," and that he had compiled figures showing that 800 people in Nicaragua had mysteriously "disappeared" since Somoza was A Miskito brigadista teaching children to readin their own language...
...By the end of December, 30 Miskitos had been killed, including union leaders and militia members from the communities...
...3 0 It did not appear to matter that the social impact on the Nicaraguan poor is immediate...
...Others, remembering that Reagan's hero, Calvin Coolidge, had sent 50,000 Marines to Nicaragua, were not so sure...
...At the end ofJanuary a new round of accusations began, this time by the U.S...
...sources revealed that the United States and some other countries had an "overall political problem with the direction" of the Nicaraguan government.28 In the World Bank, where the United States holds fewer votes, its "no" did not prevent other members from approving a $16 million loan for the improvement of Managua slum districts in January 1982.29 State Department spokesperson Sue Pittman confirmed in that month that the Reagan Administration would oppose any Nicaraguan credit or aid request to any international lending institution...
...Center for International Policy (CIP) Aid Memo, November 12, 1981...
...Transcript of press conference, FBIS, January 15 and 18, 1982...
...The paper provoked punitive government measures by running the story even though D'Escoto, who got wind of its impending publication, categorically denied the charge...
...The government, as well as much of the population which had wanted to avenge the brutal murders of friends and relatives at the hands of the Guard in a less generous way, was enraged, Gonzilez was arrested on his return for spreading false and dangerous propaganda...
...It has received a $500,000 grant from West Germany's right-wing Friedrich Naumann Foundation, and was the focus of concern at the October 1981 conference of the U.S.-dominated Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in Rio de Janeiro...
...policy, "doves" and "hawks" alike have exploited this weakness and dependency...
...Both also offered general support to the programs of the Sandinistas on the Coast, and were confident of continuing dialogue...
...CUS is going to stay inside and fight it out," said an AIFLD representative who acknowledged receiving a copy of the article from Jimenez...
...wholesale destruction of the country's productive infrastructure (factories and croplands...
...Notable examples include Watergate, the refutation of Reagan's El Salvador White Paper and New York Times writer Tad Szulc's exposure of the impending Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 (even though the latter was significantly toned down by then Times publisher Orvil Drytbos...
...Washington Post, November 9, 1981...
...the quality of life for the middle class is largely unchanged".38) Treading a tightrope by trying to keep alliances alive while not alienating mass support, the FSLN decided to share the load evenly and visibly among all classes...
...A training camp at Sandy Bay on the Nicaraguan side was discovered and destroyed at the end of December...
...blockade of external financing (imposed against Cuba, Allende's Chile, Grenada and now Nicaragua), which in turn implies a blockade of foreign investment, is thus one of the deadliest weapons in the economic arsenal...
...His trip was sponsored by the American Security Council, those wonderful people who brought you the film Attack on the A mericas...
...Most other sources acknowledge that these accusations are grossly distorted, and that the people living directly along the border were caught in a military situation created by the counterrevolutionaries (or "contras," as the Nicaraguans call them) across the river...
...Despite the Administration's accusatory litany, the effort to coalesce active Congressional concern, international allies and public opinion against Nicaragua on these grounds showed few appreciable results...
...on March 5, Lumberto Campbell, Vice Minister for the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, explained the next events in detail...
...This, coupled with the breakdown of regional markets and the resulting capital flight in all the countries, has left all near bankruptcy...
...17 The vigorous championing of La Prensa by IAPA and the Administration contrasts starkly with their indifference to the repression of the media elsewhere in Central America today...
...representative, Cuban exile Jos6 Manuel Casanova, forced Nicaragua to withdraw a loan application to the Inter-American Development Bank for $40 million to renovate and invest in Nicaragua's fishing industry, centered mainly along the Atlantic Coast...
...market also accounts for 82.7 % C c E in JanlFeb 1982 27NACLA Report of sugar exports...
...Army Rangers, Green Berets, Vietnam veterans and Cuban exiles, including members of Alpha 66.66 Even if unified, these groups could never hope to overthrow the Sadinista Popular Army and volunteer militias without major logistical military support from other countries...
...32JanlFeb 1982 33 While it is to be expected that these and other decisions by the Nicaraguan government will be subject to critical evaluation from a variety of perspectives, the hypocritical posturing of the Reagan Administration is beyond the pale...
...As long as it exists in any great strength in any one of[the countries], the others will be in danger...
...4 0 Three weeks later the U.S...
...s Another is the September 15 Legion, estimated to number some 1,000 Guardsmen, organized in small groups along the Honduran border with financial support from wealthy Somocistas...
...In its hypocrisy and its desperate quality, it is a fearsome harbinger of other measures yet to come...
...Some 250,000 Mestizo (sic) Indians are being so badly repressed that concentration camps are being built on the coast "of Nicaragua to try to imprison them," she charged...
...Presentation by former Nicaraguan Ambassador to the United States Arturo Cruz to the Center for InterAmerican Relations, December 1, 1981...
...82-41, January 14, 1982...
...Nationwide antiintervention rallies in October brought 250,000 Nicaraguans onto the streets, the target of their wrath as much domestic enemies of the revolution as the Halcon Vista naval maneuvers which they saw as a dry run for intervention...
...On September 9 the government decreed a State of Economic and Social Emergency...
...While few Americans are still naive enough to believe that public opinion is a major determinant of government policy, a recent article by Sidney Blumenthal called "The Marketing of the President" captures the cynicism with which Reagan's media masters regard such democratic silliness...
...Author Cleto Di Giovanni, a former CIA officer in Latin America, identified real or possible allies that should be supported in a "well orchestrated program targeted against the Marxist Sandinista government [:] The Catholic Church is influential...
...Instead, they were simply replaced by two other representatives of the private sector who were more cooperative...
...La Prensa is also able to take its own cues from the U.S...
...Richard S. Beal, a public opinion pollster who reports to political manager Edwin Meese III, "was the packaging of the activity in terms of policy and presentation to the public...
...Forgetting the medium and long-term investment loans which carry high interest rates, there are also the crucial short-term credits which allow a country to carry on daily international trade...
...Finally, among the free democratic forces in Nicaragua is the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, head*Vice Minister of Atlantic Coast Lumberto Campbell in Washington press conference, March 5, 1982...
...The State Department issued a travelers' warning, saying that the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua was a militarized zone and that major repression was being carried out against the Miskito population...
...On September 29 and October 1, La Prensa was twice closed for its most serious provocation yet: the publication of false allegations by a convicted "decapitalizer...
...Days later, COSEP heard its complaints of Junta mismanagement cited in the U.S...
...war with Nicaragua...
...5 5 The Administration's charge against revolutionary Nicaragua uses as its rationale far less serious or pervasive events...
...Initially subdued in his criticism of the Sandinistas, he suddenly became more outspoken...
...They have been isolated from the western side of Nicaragua for centuries by geography, language, religion, a different colonial experience and the supreme neglect of the Somoza regime...
...Policy and the Marxist Threat to Central America," The Heritage Foundation Backgrounder (October 15, 1980), pp...
...A paean delivered by CLAT in June 1981 declared that "both the CTN and [Poland's]Solidarnosc defend their rights in a nation controlled by an omnipotent Political Military Technobureaucracy...
...One such pariah group is the Nicaraguan Liberation Army (ELN), led by the wealthy Pedro Ortega (alias Juan Carlos), an old Somoza business crony...
...Once again, reference to the Heritage Foundation provides the clue...
...The period which follows is necessarily an unstable one in which contending forces struggle for control of the process by which a new ideology, a new social, political and economic system is forged...
...34 34 NACLA ReportJanlFeb 1982 Art too is revolution...
...John Spicer Nichols, "The Principles and Realities of Press Freedom in Nicaragua and Beyond," paper presented to the 10th National Meeting of LASA, Washington, D.C., March 3-6, 1982...
...Since 1965 AIFLD has received between $100,000 and $150,000 per year from the U.S...
Vol. 16 • January 1982 • No. 1
