Nicaragua: Sovereignty and Non-Alignment
Armstong, Robert
NON-ALIGNMENT IS A RECENT CON- cept in international relations. It originated among the emerging nations of the Third World as a way of avoiding involvement in the U.S.-Soviet tensions which...
...Well, in order that the blonde beasts not continue deceived, I reformulate the REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18phrase in the following way: The United States of North America for the Yanquis...
...The debate in Nicaragua was not unique...
...Only later did it secure a base among the urban working class...
...Its needs and desires challenged the entire history of political competition in Somocista Nicaragua...
...4 F NSECA AND RAMIREZ AGREED THAT the core themes of Sandino's resistance were: I. anti-imperialism-an end to all political and economic dependency on the United States and to all treaties which injured Nicaragua's interests...
...But Fonseca's special contribution to Nicaraguan history and to the development of the FSLN went beyond his obvious skills as a political...
...4. LeMonde (Paris), March 21, 1980...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperacion Exterior, 1985...
...Some countries have argued that nonalignment requires equidistance from the superpow- ers, but that is a minority view...
...NACLA interview with former State Department official, April I, 1985...
...wait for the future...
...With the probable knowledge of the U.S...
...7. Cited in George Black, Triumph of the People: The San...
...When the dynasty began to alienate the business elite after the 1972 earthquake, the traditional parties found they could offer no alternative to Somocismo that could compel mass support...
...In July 1979, the Somoza dynasty was overthrown in a massive insurrection led by the FSLN...
...regional military strategy through the Central American Defense Council (CONDECA) and the training site for the CIA invasion of Cuba in 1961...
...With the advent of detente, the NAM focussed its attention on the worsening economic position of the Third World, and its deepening dependency on the West, especially the United States...
...It added up to a common counsel of patience...
...Sandino was not a politically sophisticated man...
...Policy analysts regard San- dinismo not as a serious expression of nationalist and working-class aspirations, but as an intellectual hodgepodge without independent vitality, and/or a cover for Soviet expansionism...
...But non-alignment is not "neutrality...
...non-participation in military pacts and no granting of military bases to the great powers...
...several weeks after the meeting, the invasion of Afghanistan, a non-aligned country, definitively killed the Cuban initiative...
...Over and above the international trends that made non-alignment attractive throughout Latin America, the Sandinista leadership was powerfully influenced by a special factor: the historic relationship between Nicaragua and the United States...
...planes undertook the first ever aerial bombardment of a civilian population, in the war against Sandino's army...
...Fonseca was in many ways typical of a generation of Latin American intellectuals who came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s...
...AN ACUTE FORM OF ETHNO-CENTRISM pervades debate about Nicaragua in the United States, which relies on "Western" political symbols and categories as the only legitimate framework for discussing Nicaragua...
...Zelaya, attempted to balance growing U.S...
...The Sandinista leadership had varying attitudes toward the USSR...
...After Sandino's death, his followers in the province of Nueva Segovia were persecuted and massacred...
...on the other the arguments of the traditional Marxists loyal to Moscow...
...Nor in general did the Sandinistas show it the same regard as the traditional communist parties...
...The Soviet Union, meanwhile, has always supported such non-aligned concerns as national liberation and an end to colonialism and imperialism...
...There is, however, sharp debate over whether Fonseca's Marxism may have distorted the legacy of Sandino...
...It lay in his study of the writings of Sandino, in finding their internal coherence and developing from them what he called a "national revolutionary ideology...
...5. Quoted in Selser, Sandino, p.132...
...its platform rejected obeisance to Washington and the privileges of Somoza...
...citizens caught placing mines in Nicaraguan waters...
...The FSLN, meanwhile, saw armed struggle as the only way to liberate Nicaragua...
...According to Tomas Borge, Nicaragua's minister of the interior and a fellow FSLN founder, it was at Fonseca's insistence that the title "Sandinista" was included.3 The FSLN survived the 1960s, unlike most guerrilla groups of the time whose combatants died of exposure or were killed by U.S.-trained counterinsurgency forces...
...Each new nation virtually became a new model...
...Broad acceptance grew for the heretical notion that peasants and the petite bourgeoisie could take the lead in building independent nations...
...a number of factors hastened the regional trend toward non-alignment: the world economic crisis: the effective example of OPEC...
...Fonseca made a brief visit to Moscow and came home impressed...
...It lies in Sandino's opposition to U.S...
...The Washington Post, July 10 and 29, 1982...
...influence in Central America by improving relations with Great Britain, then withdrew a business concession from a U.S...
...Author's interview with senior 1DB official, Miami, March I, 1985...
...Opponents of the FSLN also cite the support given to Sandino by the president of Mexico and other non-communist politicians, as well as his own refusal to declare his movement "communist...
...orbit to a non-aligned position has thus produced consternation...
...Fonseca made a brief visit to Moscow and came home impressed...
...They are peaceful coexistence...
...4. the necessity for armed guerrilla struggle against oppression, and a people's army in times of peace...
...See The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...28 (October 1983), p.4b...
...President Theodore Roosevelt-in his own famous boast- "took Panama" in 1903, Nicaraguan President Jose Santos Zelaya, backed by a dynamic new class of coffee growers, insisted on building a second canal through Nicaragua...
...government-landed in Nicaragua in the pay of the Liberals, one of the two warring factions of the local elite...
...the communists argued that once the productive forces were developed, the working class-whose emergence dialectically followed the growth of capitalism-would grow strong enough to take power...
...resident...
...The Miami Herald, November 18, 1979...
...After losing to the combined armies of the Central American republics...
...The Sandinista strategy, as it evolved over time, was to build a broad mass coalition, centered on the peasantry...
...memory sears deep...
...intentions are not irrational responses by the Sandinista government...
...It grew out of frustration at the inadequacy of traditional prescriptions for development, both capitalist and communist...
...The Defense Monitor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Tiefense Information), Vol...
...influence in Central America by improving relations with Great Britain, then withdrew a business concession from a U.S...
...But the issue never came to the floor...
...Right up to the end, the United States, in alliance with Nicaragua's traditional parties, attempted to preserve the National Guard, which had the highest number of U.S.-trained officers of any Central American army, and to prevent significant FSLN influence in a post-Somoza government...
...After losing to the combined armies of the Central American republics, he returned to the United States to a hero's welcome...
...Sandino was not a politically sophisticated man...
...Jacobsen, "The Jacobsen Report: Soviet Attitudes towards, Aid to and Contacts with Central American Revolutionaries," paper prepared for the Department of State external research program (June 1984), p.19...
...interference and Nicaraguan dependency, in his belief in the cooperation of Latin Americans against the United States, and in his recurring dream-shared with many in the region--of a single Central American nation...
...The Financial Times, March 31, 1982...
...Until the final days of Somocismo, U.S...
...Since Jawaharlal Nehru of India first enunciated the concept of nonalignment in the late 1940s, calling it "positive neutrality," it has been broadly accepted that a tendency toward either the United States or the USSR does not disqualify a nation from membership in the NAM...
...Fonseca and the FSLN organized these materials in easily readable pamphlet form, and used them as the basis for educating both Sandinista militants and grassroots activists...
...Nicaragua is the size of the state of Iowa...
...His early efforts were a failure, but from 196 1-63 he was a key figure in bringing together a new organization which called itself the Sandinista Front for National Liberation...
...His revolution had succeeded through armed struggle, based on peasant support and the building of a broad nationalist alliance, and was oriented toward Third World concerns...
...He was later killed by govern- ment troops...
...The Washington Post, August 30, 1979...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperacion Exterior, Managua, 1985...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May 3, 1985...
...3. The Washington Post, December I, 1979...
...There is a consistent certainty, from Lenin to contemporary Soviet theorists, that anti-colonial and anti-imperialist advances weaken capitalism and potentially can ma- ture into full-blown socialist experiments...
...Until about 1980, those parties vehemently favored elections over armed struggle, and called for an alliance with-and subordination to-the "progressive" political parties of the bourgeoisie...
...3. Tomas Borge, Carlos, el arnanecer ya no es una tentacion (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p.31...
...IN 1 8 5 5 , A TENNESSEE MERCENARY named William Walker-with tacit support from the U.S...
...Since World War II, Washington has seen international relations as a zero-sum game, calculating any loss for the United States as a Soviet gain...
...It lay in his study of the writings of Sandino, in finding their internal coherence and developing from them what he called a "national revolutionary ideology...
...These were the feelings which the FSLN organized to shape the insurrection...
...Sandinismo is at once political mythology and a theoretical framework, a strategy and a program to guide the Nicaraguan revolution, with the breadth and resonance needed to replace a system as coherent and all-embracing in its own way as Somocismo...
...Yet there is by now a considerable history of the kind of "ideology" represented by Sandinismo operating as a key element of Third World nationalist development...
...we see [there] the broadest organization of Third World states that are playMAY/JUNE 1985 15, A Sandinista Foreign Policy ing an important role and exercising a growing influence in the international sphere, in the struggle of peoples against imperialism, colo- nialism, neocolonialism, apartheid, racism, including Zionism, and every form of oppres- sion...
...Nicaragua and Panama were the most promising sites...
...Marines landed in Nicaragua in 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1898, 1909 and 1912...
...orbit to a non-aligned position has thus produced Consternation...
...All those opposition forces, to a greater or lesser degree, had bought into the system of Somocismo...
...Since World War II, Washington has seen international relations as a zero-sum game, calculating any loss for the United States as a Soviet gain...
...In general, however, for the Latin American Left, the Sandinista revolution represented the victory of an independent, nationalist-oriented Marxism over Moscow-inspired orthodoxy...
...China and Yugoslavia offered alternatives to the Soviet model...
...Until close to the end of Somoza's rule, both the Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN) and the splinter Communist Party of Nicaragua (PCdeN) accused the FSLN of both "ultra-leftism" and "petit-bourgeois" tendencies...
...Nicaraguan history bred frustration, rage and a sense of violation in an entire population, among all classes...
...Yet there is by now a considerable history of the kind of "ideology" represented by Sandinismo operating as a key element of Third World nationalist development...
...6. Inforpress Centroamericana (Guatemala City), November 17, 1979...
...117 (November-December 1979), p.191...
...6 He did not aspire to presidential power and had neither a platform for mobilizing support nor a program of government...
...Marines were dispatched in 1912 to crush a Sandino to Borge: Fifty years of tradition MAY/JL'NI 1985 17 Sandino to Borge: Fifty years of tradition offer any real assistance in resolving chronic economic problems...
...4. Comments of Cabs Fonseca, Jose Valdivia and Bayardo Arce in Pilar Arias, ed., Nicaragua revoluciOn (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), pp.31, 80, 86...
...Omar Cabezas, La montana es algo mas que una inmensa estepa verde (Managua: Nueva Nicaragua, 1982), p.27...
...The Somoza family ruled Nicaragua for 43 years...
...human survival itself requires that it not be forgotten...
...Toward the end of his life, these grew more radical, but Sandino never developed them systematically...
...The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...The United States, Great Britain and France schemed and competed for years to build a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific...
...troops fought their first countennsurgency war in Latin America in Nicaragua against Augusto Cesar Sandino's guerrilla army from 1927 to 1932...
...Washington Report on the Hemisphere, March 19, 1985...
...troops fought their first counterinsurgency war in Latin America in Nicaragua against Augusto C6sar Sandino's guerrilla army from 1927 to 1932...
...By the late l950s, the monolithic influence of the Soviet Union over Marxist-Leninist theory and political development had splintered...
...The Sandinista leadership had vary- ing attitudes toward the USSR...
...However, U.S...
...Only later did it secure a base among the urban working class...
...2. Letter to Froylan Turcios, June 10, 1928, quoted in Gregorio Selser, Sandino (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), p.108...
...However, U.S...
...In 1974, Sergio Ramirez, one of Nicaragua's foremost intellectuals and now the country's vice president, published a widely circulated anthology of Sandino's writings...
...6. Selser, Sandino, p.97...
...Some found nothing of relevance to Nicaragua, while others-including some of the present National Directorate-saw it as a useful model and essential ally...
...The Soviet Union has generally supported both...
...they returned in greater numbers in 1926 and remained until January 1, 1933, leaving only after training a special security force, the National Guard, under the direction of Anastasio Somoza Garcia...
...Nasserism, African socialism, the legacy of Gandhi in India, all have parallels...
...Broad acceptance grew for the heretical notion that peasants and the petite bourgeoisie could take the lead in building independent nations...
...The movement's first leaders-Nehru, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser-aimed to create a secure space for smaller nations who feared being caught in the Cold War...
...The most straightforward definition of non-alignment comes from the four principles that qualify nations for membership in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM...
...Edgardo Garcia, the charismatic young leader of the Rural Workers' Union (ATC), told how, as a young boy growing up in the mid-1960s, he first heard of Sandino: "It was a kind of ghost story that my grandfather told me...
...The United States has generally been suspicious, even hostile, both toward countries which practice non-alignment and toward the NAM itself...
...IT IS HARD TO RECALL TODAY HOW heretical the FSLN's views of revolutionary strategy were, or how bitter the debates grew in the declining years of Somocismo...
...6. preference for non-capitalist forms of economic organization, with an emphasis on cooperatives...
...Only Puerto Rico can equal Nicaragua's history of U.S...
...Twelve years before Guernica, on June 16, 1927, U.S...
...forces on the defensive for five years, and earned hemispheric fame rivalling that of Simon BolIvar and Benito Juarez for his David-and-Goliath defense of Nicaraguan sovereignty...
...forces on the defensive for five years, and earned hemispheric fame rivalling that of Sim6n Bolivar and Benito Jtiarez for his David-and-Goliath defense of Nicaraguan sovereignty...
...Marines landed in Nicaragua in 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1898, 1909 and 1912...
...Their relations with Cuba were stormy at best...
...The Moscow-oriented PSN and the splinter PCdeN, with their tiny trade-union base and their long history of subordinate alliance with the mainstream opposition, offered only a stuffy and turgid Marxism...
...3. Tomas Borge, Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacton (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p.20...
...S OVIET AND U.S...
...He isolated certain key themes and symbols, which through his own and others' writings, and the political education work of the FSLN, stimulated a revival of interest in the guerrilla leader and restored his memory as a symbol of resistance to inspire the anti-Somoza struggle...
...the success of national liberation movements in Africa and Asia...
...Latin America for the Indo-Americans.2 The FSLN has attempted to capture those aspirations as elements of what it calls Sandinismo...
...The issue of the Soviet Union was not a burning question for the FSLN as it is for leftists in the developed countries...
...Nicaragua and Panama were the most promising sites...
...That latter tradition has been expressed in the Moscow-oriented parties whose analysis and strategy Fonseca and the FSLN rejected...
...Great Britain and France schemed and competed for years to build a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific...
...It lives on into the present...
...2 The FSLN has attempted to capture those aspirations as elements of what it calls Sandinismo...
...the Kissinger Commission report on Central America, for example, does not mention his name...
...the communists argued that once the productive forces were developed, the working classwhose emergence dialectically followed the growth of capitalism-would grow strong enough to take power...
...The Soviets have used aid, trade, diplomatic and military support, and influence in local Communist parties, to push for the transition to socialism in Third World countries...
...D URING THE CRISIS OF THE 1970s, THE FSLN challenged not only the Somoza dynasty, but all traditional opposition to Sornocismo in Nicaragua...
...Their relations with Cuba were stormy at best...
...XVIII...
...The way in which most Nicaraguans read that history explains how the famous reference to the "Yanqui" as the "enemy of humanity" in the Sandinista anthem is less rhetorical excess than the expression of a suppressed "truth" whose very utterance is an act of psychological as well as national liberation...
...He was later killed by government troops...
...5 Sandino rejected any affiliation with international bodies, whether the International Labor Organization, the Anti-Imperialist League or the Quakers...
...In the Western Hemisphere, Cuba was alone in opting for non-alignment until the late 1960s...
...The Miami Herald, February 2, 1981...
...His early efforts were a failure, but from 1961-63 he was a key figure in bringing together a new organization which called itself the Sandinista Front for National Liberation...
...In the former colonies, leaders devised an unorthodox blend of nationalism, ethnicity, religion and Marxism...
...He isolated certain key themes and symbols, which through his own and others' writings, and the political education work of the FSLN, stimulated a revival of interest in the guerrilla leader and restored his memory as a symbol of resistance to inspire the anti-Somoza struggle...
...one which drew on the historic memory of national resistance to find inspiration for a new nationalism...
...But the imperialists have interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as "America for the Yanquis...
...human survival itself requires that it not be forgotten...
...Most of all, it had made a complete break with the United States...
...However, the underlying Soviet belief in historic inevitability means considerable tolerance and patience if events take an unexpected turn...
...Cuba, however, was a different case...
...Beyond his anti-imperialism lay only vague ideas of social justice...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAM, October 10, 1979...
...Certainly he was not a Marxist, but nor was he an anti-comMAY/JUNE 1985 19 phrase in the following way: The United States of North America for the Yanquis...
...and support for national liberation struggles...
...Non-alignment, then, is not an ideology but a smorgasbord of positions which have varied over time...
...ATTITUDES TOWARD non-alignment have been strikingly different...
...The way in which most Nicaraguans read that history explains how the fa- mous reference to the "Yanqui" as the "enemy of humanity" in the Sandinista anthem is less rhetori- cal excess than the expression of a suppressed 'truth" whose very utterance is an act of psychological as well as national liberation...
...At the end of two more unsuccessful Central American campaigns, he was eventually defeated and executed in 1860 in Puerto Trujillo, Honduras...
...That rancor contributed to the continued existence of a left opposition to the FSLN in Nicaragua today...
...He was a nationalist with a single goal-to expel the United States from Nicaragua-and a broad strategy: "Neither extreme right nor extreme left, but united front, is our slogan," he wrote...
...The New York Times, August 12 and 13, 1979...
...The bombing of Ocotal that day took 300 lives...
...The Sandinista decision to opt for non-alignment is firmly rooted in the tradition of Sandino...
...THE LIMITS OF FRIENDSHIP I. Susanne Jonas, 'The Nicaraguan Revolution and the Emerging Cold War," in Thomas W. Walker, ed., Nicaragua in Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp.383-84...
...Non-alignment, then, is not an ideology but a smorgasbord of positions which have varied over time...
...SOVEREIGNTY AND NON-ALIGNMENT 1. Tomas Borge, Daniel Ortega et a!., Sandinistas Speak (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1982), p.45...
...Two years later, the United States negotiated the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty with the new government, which ceded to Washington the perpetual right to build a canal in Nicaragua...
...Two years later, the United States negotiated the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty with the new government, which ceded to Washington the perpetual right to build a canal in Nicaragua...
...The decision by any country to move away from the U.S...
...the effective example of OPEC...
...In the former colonies, leaders devised an unorthodox blend of nationalism, ethnicity, religion and Marxism...
...Both sides argued a remarkably similar line: that only full capitalist development would open the door to general prosperity in the Third World...
...When the dynasty began to alienate the business elite after the 1972 earthquake, the traditional parties found they could offer no alternative to Sornocismo that could compel mass support...
...In 1928 Sandino wrote, We are well into the 20th century...
...Until about 1980, those parties vehemently favored elections over armed struggle, and called for an alliance with-and subordination to-the "progressive" political parties of the bourgeoisie...
...It originated among the emerging nations of the Third World as a way of avoiding involvement in the U.S.-Soviet tensions which have dominated world politics since World War II...
...When Daniel Ortega spoke at the NonAligned conference in Havana in 1979, he pledged the six-week-old Sandinista government to a catalogue of common positions of NAM members: We are entering the Non-Aligned Movement because...
...the growing NAM concern for the NIEO: the success of national liberation movements in Africa and Asia...
...support was constant, even clubby...
...Fonseca was in many ways typical of a generation of Latin American intellectuals who came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s...
...With a deep sense of the lessons of Nicaragua's past experience, the Sandinistas have chosen non-alignment as the best way of guaranteeing that history will not repeat itself...
...See also Timossi, op.cit., pp.191-93...
...Most seriously, he ordered the execution of two U.S...
...In the late 1960s and early 1970s...
...The Miami Herald, August 17, 1979...
...In 1979 Nicaragua became the eighth non-aligned nation in the hemisphere...
...Most seriously, he ordered the execution of two U.S...
...government-landed in Nicaragua in the pay of the Liberals, one of the two warring factions of the local elite...
...Fonseca and the FSLN organized these materials in easily readable pamphlet form, and used them as the basis for educating both Sandinista militants and grassroots activists...
...see also Central America Report (Guatemala City), November 19, 1979...
...China and Yugoslavia offered alternatives to the Soviet model...
...The FSLN, meanwhile, saw armed struggle as the only way to liberate Nicaragua...
...In general, however, for the Latin American Left, the Sandinista revolution represented the victory of an independent, nationalist-oriented Marxism over Moscow-inspired orthodoxy...
...The FSLN, meanwhile, came to recognize that Sandino's memory expressed deeply felt aspirations for independence, self-determination and social justice...
...The Washington Post, January 20, 1985...
...but that history also contained the memory of defiance and resistance...
...see also Kai Bird and Max Holland, "Nicaragua: No Friend at the JDB," The Nation, March 2, 1985...
...But as that future of true economic and political independence for the Third 20 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS RSandnsta Foregn Polcy Sandinista Foreign Policy munist...
...And it is from the resistance of Sandino and Zeledon that the Sandinistas have created an alternative vision of Nicaragua...
...When the Somozas were overthrown, they controlled 20% of the Nicaraguan economy, from sugar plantations and cattle farms to casinos and prostitution rings...
...The Washington Post, December I, 1979...
...It was a Latin American country with similar traditions, customs and history...
...With the probable knowledge of the U.S...
...Nor did Washington 16 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Antigua Brazil Cos Rica El Saivador Mexico Uruguay Veneniela * Chile has boycotted NAM meetings since 1976...
...According to Tomits Borge, Nicaragua's minister of the interior and a fellow FSLN founder, it was at Fonseca's insistence that the title "Sandinista" was included...
...LIFELINES I. Carlos Fonseca, Viva Sandino (Managua: Departarnento de Propaganda y Educacion PolItica del FSLN, 1984), p.7...
...Somoza established himself as the founder of a family dynasty...
...When they speak of the Monroe Doctrine, they say, 'America for Americans...
...The opposition to President Reagan's controversial May visit to Bitburg was based, among other things, on the conviction that "history matters...
...Unlike the United States, the Soviets have not felt their interests threatened by non-alignment (although the invasion of Afghanistan challenges the Soviet commitment to its founding principles...
...Nicaragua was virtually the Somozas' family property...
...Seventeen Latin American and Caribbean countries are members of the NAM: seven others are permanent observers...
...its platform rejected obeisance to Washington and the privileges of Somoza...
...To grasp Fonseca's accomplishment, one must understand that the Somoza regime tried systematically to destroy the memory of Sandino just as the first Somoza had eliminated the man himself...
...The debate in Nicaragua was not unique...
...Ibid...
...The Washington Post, July 10, 1982...
...He was a nationalist with a single goal-to expel the United States from Nicaragua-and a broad strategy: 'Neither extreme right nor extreme left, but united front, is our slogan," he wrote.5 San- dino rejected any affiliation with international bodies, whether the International Labor Organization, the Anti-Imperialist League or the Quakers.6 He did not aspire to presidential power and had neither a platform for mobilizing support nor a program of government...
...3 The FSLN survived the 1960s, unlike most guerrilla groups of the time whose combatants died of exposure or were killed by U.S.-trained counterinsurgency forces...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May I, 1981...
...Sandino himself never enters the debate...
...Policy analysts regard Sandinismo not as a serious expression of nationalist and working-class aspirations, but as an intellectual hodgepodge without independent vitality, and/or a cover for Soviet expansionism...
...There is, however, sharp debate over whether Fonseca's Marxism may have distorted the legacy of Sandino...
...on the other the arguments of the traditional Marxists loyal to Moscow...
...The FSLN, meanwhile, came to recognize that Sandino's memory expressed deeply felt aspirations for independence, self-determination and social jus- tice...
...At the next NAM meeting in New Delhi in 1983, the agenda again focussed on the questions of economic dependency and the need for a New International Economic Order (NIEO...
...A N ACUTE FORM OF ETHNO-CENTRISM pervades debate about Nicaragua in the United States, which relies on "Western" political symbols and categories as the only legitimate framework for discussing Nicaragua...
...It originated among the emerging nations of the Third World as a way of avoiding involvement in the U.S.-Soviet tensions which have dominated world politics since World War II...
...The core of its appeal was the nationalist tradition of Sandino and the revival of his struggle of national resistance-however "petit bourgeois" others on the Left might regard that...
...President Theodore Roosevelt-in his own famous boast-"took Panama" in 1903, Nicaraguan President Jos6 Santos Zelaya, backed by a dynamic new class of coffee growers, insisted on building a second canal through Nicaragua...
...the Kissinger Commission report on Central America, for example, does not mention his name...
...citizens caught placing mines in Nicaraguan waters...
...Until close to the end of Somoza's rule, both the Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN) and the splinter Communist Party of Nicaragua (PCdeN) accused the FSLN of both "ultra-leftism" and "petit-bourgeois" tendencies...
...4 (July-August 1984), p.37...
...Fine, well said...
...Latin America Weekly Report, December 21, 1979...
...But Fonseca's special contribution to Nicaraguan history and to the development of the FSLN went beyond his obvious skills as a political/ military leader...
...Nicaragua was virtually the Somozas' family property...
...2. JesUs M. Blandon, Entre Sandino y Fonseca (Managua: DPEP del FSLN, 1981), pp.86, 109...
...In defense of their argument, they cite the hostility of the Latin American communist parties during San- dino's lifetime, when they dismissed him as a "petit-bourgeois nationalist" in charge of a peasant movement that was not led by the urban proletariat...
...The New York Times, July 20, 1980...
...The Moscow-oriented PSN and the splinter PCdeN, with their tiny trade-union base and their long history of subordinate alliance with the mainstream opposition, offered only a stuffy and turgid Marxism...
...Sandino was a man who had helped the peasants...
...Televisora Nacional (Panama) in FBIS -LAM, February 4, 1980...
...DURING THE CRISIS OF THE 1970s, THE FSLN challenged not only the Somoza dynasty, but all traditional opposition to Somocismo in Nicaragua...
...ibid., April 6, 1984...
...7. international solidarity, especially among Latin American nations, to protect Nicaragua from the United States...
...its population is now approaching three million...
...regional military strategy through the Central American Defense Council (CONDECA) and the training site for the CIA invasion of Cuba in 1961...
...As armed struggle against colonial and neocolonial rule intensified in the 1960s and 1970s in South Africa, Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies, as well as in Indochina and the Middle East, support for national liberation movements became the predominant concern...
...Sandino himself never enters the debate...
...Latin America Weekly Report, January IS, 1982...
...Well, in order that the blonde beasts not continue deceived, I reformulate the 18 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Sandinista Foreign Policy revolt against the U.S.-imposed government...
...Its definition is dynamic, changing with the ebbs and flows of East-West tension and the emergence of new problems among Third World countries...
...AU of us born in America are Americans...
...other FSLN leaders stayed longer and had mixed reactions...
...Latin America Political Report, August 10, 1979...
...T HE IMPETUS FOR ITS DEVELOPMENT came from Carlos Fonseca Amador, one of the founders of the FSLN...
...Zelaya, attempted to balance growing U.S...
...Sandino kept the U.S...
...Latin America for the Indo-Americans...
...its population is now approaching three million...
...The advocates of capitalism argued that once the productive forces were developed, wealth would trickle down to all...
...He saw Marxism as an attractive alternative to the elite concerns of traditional political parties, yet was frustrated by the passivity of the Moscowline communist parties...
...for further details, see ibid., September 13, 1979...
...Nor did Washington REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16offer any real assistance in resolving chronic economic problems: instead, it demanded a harsh anti-communism that strengthened economic and military elites and strangled social change...
...All of us born in America are Americans...
...Leslie Geib, "On Arms for Nicaragua," op-ed, The New York Times, August 29, 1979...
...post-war policy toward Latin America continued its old interventionist course in Guatemala (1954 and 1968), Cuba (1961), the Dominican Republic (1965) and Chile (1973...
...They used the U.S-armed and trained National Guard as a personal army to enrich the family and its cronies through extortion, harass- ment and terror...
...There is an intimacy to history that one finds especially in small countries...
...3. TomAs Borge, Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacidn (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p.31...
...On the contrary, a new distance from the insensitive neighbor to .the north, based on a less exclusive relationship, appears a sine qua non of national integrity...
...When the Somozas were overthrown, they controlled 20% of the Nicaraguan economy, from sugar plantations and cattle farms to casinos and prostitution rings...
...several weeks after the meeting, the invasion of Afghanistan, a non-aligned country, de- finitively killed the Cuban initiative...
...Because they are for active peaceful coexistence, against the existence of military blocs and alliances, for restructuring international relations on an honorable basis, and for the establishment of a new international economic order.' Since the organization of the NAM in 1961, its concerns have shifted...
...In return, the Somozas made Nicaragua a sure vote for the United States in the United Nations, the backbone of U.S...
...The New York Times, August 13, 1979...
...Fine, well said...
...Central American Historical Institute, "U.S-Honduran Relations: A Background Briefing Packet," (Georgetown, 1984...
...instead, it demanded a harsh anti-communism that strengthened economic and military elites and strangled social change...
...The United States has generally been suspicious, even hostile, both toward countries which practice non-alignment and toward the NAM itself...
...T O ASSESS THE PLACE OF MARXISM IN Sandinismo means recognizing that Fonseca represents a tradition within Latin American Marxism quite distinct from that of the communist parties of Sandino's time...
...The New York Times, July 30, 1981...
...The Financial Times, December 15, 1981...
...For the FSLN, Cuba was a beacon, and many Sandinista leaders lived and studied there...
...Most of all, it had made a complete break with the United States...
...2. Nicaraguan national sovereignty...
...In 1928 Sandino wrote, We are well into the 20th century, and the times have shown the whole world how the Yanquis' slogans can be turned against them...
...The Soviet Union has generally supported both...
...After the crisis of the Great Depression and World War II, its global task was to rebuild the capitalist order while resisting determined challenges both from the socialist bloc and from the new nationalist upsurge in the Southern Hemisphere...
...In response, political parties and governments, ranging from nationalist to Marxist in outlook, searched for alternatives...
...The Eden Pastora faction of the contra opposition, for example, claims Sandino's heritage as its own and charges the FSLN with usurping it...
...The movement's first leaders-Nehru, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser-aimed to create a secure space for smaller nations who feared being caught in the Cold War...
...After World War lithe United States had quickly sewn up hemispheric allegiance by pledging a new era of international respect through a mutual defense treaty and the Organization of American States...
...In the Western Hemisphere, Cuba was alone in opting for non-alignment until the late 1960s...
...After defeating the Conservatives, he turned against his employers, overcame them, declared himself president of Nicaragua (though he spoke no Spanish), re-established slavery and set out to conquer the rest of Central America...
...Sandinismo existed outside the system, as its negation...
...Two years of fighting left 50,000 dead-2% of the population...
...Twelve years before Guernica, on June 16, 1927, U.S...
...intervention...
...wait for the future...
...As armed struggle against colonial and neocolonial rule intensified in the 1960s and 1970s in South Africa, Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies, as well as in Indochina and the Middle East, support for national liberation movements became the predominant concern...
...After Sandino's death, his followers in the province of Nueva Segovia were persecuted and massacred...
...Somoza: Always a sure U.S...
...his politics were narrowly anti-imperialist...
...5. an independent government that meets the needs of the peasantry and the working class...
...resident...
...Guerrilla warfare became the chosen path to liberation, and its relative success encouraged its repeated use...
...they returned in greater numbers in 1926 and remained until January 1, 1933, leaving only after training a special security force, the National Guard, under the direction of Anastasio Somoza Garcia...
...Envio (Managua: Instituto Historico Centroamericano), No...
...ambassador, National Guard commander Somoza GarcIa ordered Sandino's murder on February 21, 1934...
...The New York Times, January 30, 1982...
...The Washington Post, July 14, 1982...
...These were the feelings which the FSLN organized to shape the insurrection...
...The Sandinista decision to opt for non-alignment is firmly rooted in the tradition of Sandino...
...On one side was the Sandinista nationalism of the FSLN's independent Marxists...
...That latter tradition has been expressed in the Moscow-oriented parties whose analysis and strategy Fonseca and the FSLN rejected...
...Ibid...
...In 1974, Sergio RamIrez, one of Nicaragua's foremost intellectuals and now the country's vice president, published a widely circulated anthology of Sandino's writings.4 FONSECA AND RAMIREZ AGREED THAT the core themes of Sandino's resistance were: 1. anti-imperialism-an end to all political and economic dependency on the United States and to all treaties which injured Nicaragua's interests...
...Nicaragua is the size of the state of Iowa...
...Some countries have argued that nonalignment requires equidistance from the superpowers, but that is a minority view...
...The Miami Herald, August I and 17, September 13, 1979...
...The New York Times, November 16, 1983...
...The Soviets have used aid, trade, diplomatic and military support, and influence in local Communist parties, to push for the transition to socialism in Third World countries...
...Like many of his contemporaries, Fonseca chose to go "to the mountains" to try and replicate Castro's triumph...
...The Washington Post, De- cember I, 1979...
...Until the final days of Somocismo, U.S...
...He saw Marxism as an attractive alternative to the elite concerns of traditional political parties, yet was frustrated by the passivity of the Moscowline communist parties...
...What makes that history so special...
...In 1979 Nicaragua became the eighth non-aligned nation in the hemisphere...
...In response, political parties and governments...
...Robert Matthews, "Oil on Troubled Waters: Venezuelan Policy in the Caribbean," Report on the Americas, Vol...
...The Financial Times (London), March 10, 1982...
...Seventeen Latin American and Caribbean countries are members of the NAM...
...tions and the Soviet Union...
...Lea Guido in Margaret Randall, Todas estamos des54 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Uc Ase' Sandinista Foreign Poficy Repot onr te AI olica Sandinista Foreign Policy SOVEREIGNTY AND NON-ALIGNMENT 1. Tomas Borge, Daniel Ortega et al., Sandinistas Speak (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1982), p. 4 5 . 2. Letter to Froylin Turcios, June 10, 1928, quoted in Gregorio Selser, Sandino (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), p.108...
...dinista Revolution in Nicaragua (London: Zed Press, 1981), p.224...
...His revolution had succeeded through armed struggle, based on peasant support and the building of a broad nationalist alliance, and was oriented toward Third World concerns...
...Besieged in a hilltop fort near Masaya, the lawyer and judge Benjamin Zeled6n fought the Marines until he was forced to retreat...
...Sandino was a man who had helped the peasants...
...T HE IMPETUS FOR ITS DEVELOPMENT came from Carlos Fonseca Amador, one of the founders of the FSLN...
...They are peaceful coexistence...
...Ibid., March 10, 1982...
...and Fidel Castro's promotion of Third World solidarity...
...Though Castro was very dependent on the Soviet Union, his conception of revolutionary strategy often was at odds with the desires of the Moscoworiented parties...
...What makes that history so special...
...It was the vindication of the thesis of armed struggle, and throughout the 1960s the Soviets looked on with chagrin as Castro enthusiastically backed Latin American guerrillas and vocally disagreed with the line of sister communist parties...
...Figures from Banco Central de Nicaragua, 1985...
...But as that future of true economic and political independence for the Third REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20Somoza: Always a sure U.S...
...It added up to a common counsel of patience...
...The Ed6n Pastora faction of the contra opposition, for example, claims Sandino's heritage as its own and charges the FSLN with usurping it...
...That rancor contributed to the continued existence of a left opposition to the FSLN in Nicaragua today...
...The issue of the Soviet Union was not a burning question for the FSLN as it is for leftists in the developed countries...
...Fraternal parties" with the Soviet Union, their programs reflected Soviet analyses and concerns...
...And it is from the resistance of Sandino and Zeled6n that the Sandinistas have created an alternative vision of Nicaragua...
...3. lack of confidence in traditional Nicaraguan political parties and the interests they repre- sent...
...Edgardo Garcia, the charismatic young leader of the Rural Workers' Union (ATC), told how, as a young boy growing up in the mid-1960s, he first heard of Sandino: "It was a kind of ghost story that my grandfather told me...
...In return, the Somozas made Nicaragua a sure vote for the United States in the United Nations, the backbone of U.S...
...vote World receded ever further, a new generation of political leaders forged fresh responses to the questions of nationalism, development and revolution...
...Only Puerto Rico can equal Nicaragua's history of U.S...
...4. Sergio RamIrez, Pensamiento vivo de Sandino (San Jose, Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1974...
...and Michael Gardenswartz, "Has Politics Spoiled the 1DB?," Institutional Investor (March 1985), pp.97-100...
...Some found nothing of relevance to Nicaragua, while others-including some of the present National Directorate-saw it as a useful model and essential ally...
...But one day, he mysteriously went away, and all the people were very sad...
...6. preference for non-capitalist forms of economic organization, with an emphasis on cooperatives...
...Fraternal parties" with the Soviet Union, their programs reflected Soviet analyses and concerns...
...It built its initial support among the peasantry (the largest sector of Nicaraguan society) and the middle classes, especially students...
...Nasserism, African socialism, the legacy of Gandhi in India, all have parallels...
...vote World receded ever further, a new generation of political leaders forged fresh responses to the ques- tions of nationalism, development and revolution...
...military leader...
...Author's interview with Alejandro Bendana, Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, Managua, February 19, 1985...
...By the late 1950s, the monolithic influence of the Soviet Union over Marxist-Leninist theory and political development had splintered...
...Cuba, a founding member of the NAM, was a prominent influence on this trend, and as criticism of the United States grew, it led an effort by several nations at the 1979 Havana summit to have the NAM declare that a "natural alliance" existed between non-aligned naHemispheric Nations in the NAM, With Date of Entry Members Cuba (1961) Bolivia (1979) Guyana (1970) Grenada (1979) Jamaica (1970) Surinam (1979) Trinidad and Tobago (1970) Bahamas (1983) Argentina (1973) Barbados (1983) Chile (1973)* Belize (1983) Peru (1973) Colombia (1983) Panama (1976) Ecuador (1983) Nicaragua (1979) St.Lucia (1983) Permanent Observers Antigua Brazil Costa Rica El Salvador Mexico Uruguay Venezuela * Chile has boycotted NAM meetings since 1976...
...Even after U.S...
...The Miami Herald, August 7, 1981...
...I N 1855, A TENNESSEE MERCENARY named William Walker-with tacit support from the U.S...
...The most straightforward definition of non-alignment comes from the four principles that qualify nations for membership in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM...
...Toward the end of his life, these grew more radical, but Sandino never developed them systematically...
...The Soviet Union, meanwhile, has always sup- ported such non-aligned concerns as national liberation and an end to colonialism and imperialism...
...Its importance and application in bilateral relations are determined by the changing governments of NAM member nations, who cover the political spectrum from Indonesia to India, from Argentina to Cuba...
...Nor in general did the Sandinistas show it the same regard as the traditional communist parties...
...The arena for social change shifted to the rural, semi-capitalist societies of the Third World, where traditional approaches to revolution and development were of dubious relevance...
...and Fidel Castro's promotion of Third World solidarity...
...I T IS HARD TO RECALL TODAY HOW heretical the FSLN's views of revolutionary strategy were, or how bitter the debates grew in the declining years of Somocismo...
...The arena for social change shifted to the rural, semi-capitalist societies of the Third World, where traditional approaches to revolution and development were of dubious relevance...
...It was the vindication of the thesis of armed struggle, and throughout the 1960s the Soviets looked on with chagrin as Castro enthusiastically backed Latin American guerrillas and vocally disagreed with the line of sister communist parties...
...Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Taylor and Francis Ltd., 1984), p.215...
...It did not avoid broad coalitions with progressive business sectors, but formed them on the basis of FSLN hegemony, not subordination...
...5. Jorge Timossi, "Tres entrevistas: Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega y LuIs Carrion," Casa de las Americas (Havana), No...
...his politics were narrowly anti-imperialist...
...When they speak of the Monroe Doctrine, they say, "America for Americans...
...troops...
...Antonio OrtIz Mena, January 30, 1985...
...seven others are permanent observers...
...Its importance and application in bilateral relations are determined by the changing governments of NAM member nations, who cover the political spectrum from Indonesia to India, from Argentina to Cuba...
...the growing NAM concern for the NIEO...
...3 (1984), pp.4-5...
...In the light of Nicaraguan history, anti-Americanism and suspi- cion of U.S...
...8. Ibid., pp.224-26...
...Beyond his anti-imperialism lay only vague ideas of social justice...
...He was galvanized instead by Fidel Castro's example of armed struggle and guerrilla warfare in Cuba...
...They used the U.S.-armed and trained National Guard as a personal army to enrich the family and its cronies through extortion, harassment and terror...
...Cuba, a founding member of the NAM, was a prominent influence on this trend, and as criticism of the United States grew, it led an effort by several nations at the 1979 Havana summit to have the NAM declare that a "natural alliance" existed between non-aligned naHemispheric Nations in the NAM, With Date of Entry Members Cuba (1961) Bolivia (1979) Guyana (1970) Grenada (1979) Jamaica (1970) Surinarn (1979) Trinidad and Tobago (1970) Babamas (1983) Argentina (1973) Barbados (1983) Chile (1973)* Belize (1983) Peru (L973) Colombia (1983) Panama (1976) Ecuador (1983) Nicaragua (1979) St.Lucia (1983) Permanent Observers tions and the Soviet Union, But the issue never came to the floor...
...but that history also contained the memory of defiance and resistance...
...troops...
...9. Central Intelligence Agency, "Background Article," Sep- tember 6, 1978, Declassfied Documents Reference System, Document no.81 (281B...
...intentions are not irrational responses by the Sandinista government...
...It grew out of frustration at the inadequacy of traditional prescriptions for development, both capitalist and communist...
...Its definition is dynamic, changing with the ebbs and flows of East-West tension and the emergence of new problems among Third World countries...
...Within the "progressive alliance" their task would be to organize the urban working class, which in the under- developed economies of Latin America-and nowhere more so than Nicaragua-was only a fraction of the workforce...
...7. international solidarity, especially among La- tin American nations, to protect Nicaragua from the United States...
...planes undertook the first ever aerial bombardment of a civilian population, in the war against Sandino's army...
...Like many of his contemporaries, Fonseca chose to go "to the mountains" to try and replicate Castro's triumph...
...5. an independent government that meets the needs of the peasantry and the working class...
...Marines were dispatched in 1912 to crush a MAY/JUNE 1985 17efri;l i 4 Sandinista Foreign Policy revolt against the U.S.-imposed government...
...In response, Washington forced Zelaya out of office in 1909 and installed a more malleable Conservative government with the help of 400 U.S...
...Somoza established himself as the founder of a family dynasty...
...TO ASSESS THE PLACE OF MARXISM IN Sandinismo means recognizing that Fonseca represents a tradition within Latin American Marxism quite distinct from that of the communist parties of Sandino's time...
...memory sears deep...
...non-participation in military pacts and no granting of military bases to the great powers...
...The advocates of capitalism argued that once the productive forces were developed, wealth would trickle down to all...
...5. Quoted in Selser, Sandino, p.132...
...Cuba, however, was a different case...
...Because they are for active peaceful coexistence, against the existence of military blocs and alliances, for restructuring international relations on an honorable basis, and for the establishment of a new international economic order...
...But the imperialists have interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as "America for the Yanquis...
...Over and above the international trends that made non-alignment attractive throughout Latin America, the Sandinista leadership was powerfully influenced by a special factor: the historic relationship between Nicaragua and the United States...
...Someday, though,' my grandfather said, 'he will return.' " Fonseca went back through Sandino's writings, organized them and talked to survivors of the original Sandinistas...
...ambassador, National Guard commander Somoza Garcia ordered Sandino's murder on February 21, 1934...
...6. Selser, Sandino, p.97...
...The Washington Post, August 12, 1979...
...intervention...
...other FSLN leaders stayed longer and had mixed reactions...
...The bombing of Ocotal that day took 300 lives...
...Since Jawaharlal Nehru of India first enunciated the concept of nonalignment in the late 1940s, calling it 'positive neutrality...
...Panama City Domestic Service in FBISLAM, November 30, 1979...
...In July 1979, the Somoza dynasty was overthrown in a massive insurrection led by the FSLN...
...one which drew on the historic memory of national resistance to find inspiration for a new nationalism...
...Unlike the United States, the Soviets have not felt their interests threatened by non-alignment (although the invasion of Afghanistan challenges the Soviet commitment to its founding principles...
...3. lack of confidence in traditional Nicaraguan political parties and the interests they represent...
...Be- sieged in a hilltop fort near Masaya, the lawyer and judge Benjamin Zeledon fought the Marines until he was forced to retreat...
...But one day, he mysteriously went away, and all the people were very sad...
...ATTITUDES TOWARD non-alignment have been strikingly different...
...In response, Washington forced Zelaya out of office in 1909 and installed a more malleable Conservative government with the help of 400 U.S...
...It lives on into the present...
...S OVIET AND U.S...
...1R4t O4, te Am ericas Sandinista Foreign Policy ing an important role and exercising a growing influence in the international sphere, in the struggle of peoples against imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, apartheid, racism, including Zionism, and every form of oppression...
...There is a consistent certainty, from Lenin to contemporary Soviet theorists, that anti-colonial and anti-imperialist advances weaken capitalism and potentially can mature into full-blown socialist experiments...
...The United States maintained a military garrison of 100 Marines in Nicaragua from 19 12-25...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...Each new nation virtually became a new model...
...The Somoza family ruled Nicaragua for 43 years...
...After World War II the United States had quickly sewn up hemispheric allegiance by pledging a new era of international respect through a mutual defense treaty and the Organization of American States...
...he returned to the United States to a hero's welcome...
...and the times have shown the whole world how the Yanquis' slogans can be turned against them...
...In the light of Nicaraguan history, anti-Americanism and suspicion of U.S...
...After the crisis of the Great Depression and World War II, its global task was to rebuild the capitalist order while resisting determined challenges both from the socialist bloc and from the new nationalist upsurge in the Southern Hemisphere...
...On the contrary, a new distance from the insensitive neighbor to the north, based on a less exclusive relationship, appears a sine qua non of national integrity...
...For the FSLN, Cuba was a beacon, and many Sandinista leaders lived and studied there...
...It built its initial support among the peasantry (the largest sector of Nicaraguan society) and the middle classes, especially students...
...it has been broadly accepted that a tendency toward either the United States or the USSR does not disqualify a nation from membership in the NAM...
...There is an intimacy to history that one finds especially in small countries...
...Certainly he was not a Marxist, but nor was he an anti-comMAY/JUNE 1985 194 A.sti Sandinista Foreign Pohcy munist...
...Even after U.S...
...To grasp Fonseca's accomplishment, one must understand that the Somoza regime tried systematically to destroy the memory of Sandino just as the first Somoza had eliminated the man himself...
...The core of its appeal was the nationalist tradition of Sandino and the revival of his struggle of national resistance-however 'petit bourgeois" others on the Left might regard that...
...Radio Sandino (Managua) in FBIS-LAM, September 3, 1983...
...He was galvanized instead by Fidel Castro's ex- ample of armed struggle and guerrilla warfare in Cuba...
...4. the necessity for armed guerrilla struggle against oppression, and a people's army in times of peace...
...In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of factors hastened the regional trend toward non-alignment: the world economic crisis...
...Department of Defense, Defense Security Assistance Agency, Foreign Military Sales and Military Assistance Facts, September 30, 1983, p.33...
...The United States maintained a military garrison of 100 Marines in Nicaragua from 1912-25...
...Like many of their Third World contemporaries contemplating national liberation, therefore, Fonseca and other leaders and intellectuals of the FSLN used their understanding of Marxism to fashion a new theory and political practice...
...Like many of their Third World contemporaries contemplating national liberation, therefore, Fonseca and other leaders and intellectuals of the FSLN used their understanding of Marxism to fashion a new theory and political practice...
...Someday, though,' my grandfather said, 'he will return.' Fonseca went back through Sandino's writings, organized them and talked to survivors of the original Sandinistas...
...Though Castro was very dependent on the Soviet Union, his conception of revolutionary strategy often was at odds with the desires of the Moscoworiented parties...
...The opposition to President Reagan's controversial May visit to Bitburg was based, among other things, on the conviction that 'history matters...
...After defeating the Conservatives, he turned against his employers, overcame them, declared himself president of Nicaragua (though he spoke no Spanish), re-established slavery and set out to conquer the rest of Central America...
...It was a Latin American country with similar traditions, customs and history...
...It lies in Sandino's opposition to U.S...
...With a deep sense of the lessons of Nicaragua's past experience, the Sandinistas have chosen non-alignment as the best way of guaranteeing that history will not repeat itself...
...Within the "progressive alliance" their task would be to organize the urban working class, which in the underdeveloped economies of Latin America-and nowhere more so than Nicaragua--was only a fraction of the workforce...
...support was constant, even clubby...
...2. William M. LeoGrande, 'The United States and the Nicaraguan Revolution," in Walker, op...
...Congressional Presentation Document, Security Assistance Programs, FY 1981, p.419...
...Since the organization of the NAM in 1961, its concerns have shifted...
...Two years of fighting left 50,000 dead- 2% of the population...
...Sandino kept the U.S...
...post-war policy toward Latin America continued its old interventionist course in Guatemala (1954 and 1968), Cuba (1961), the Dominican Republic (1965) and Chile (1973...
...Its needs and desires challenged the entire history of political competition in Somocisra Nicaragua...
...and support for national liberation struggles...
...Sandinismo is at once political mythology and a theoretical framework, a strategy and a program to guide the Nicaraguan revolution, with the breadth and resonance needed to replace a system as coherent and all-embracing in its own way as Somocismo...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAJi'.f, September 6, 1979...
...4. Sergio Ramirez, Pensamiento vivo de Sandino (San Jos6, Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1974...
...interference and Nicaraguan dependency, in his belief in the cooperation of Latin Americans against the United States, and in his recurring dream-shared with many in the region- of a single Central American nation...
...However, the underlying Soviet belief in historic inevitability means considerable tolerance and patience if events take an unexpected turn...
...When Daniel Ortega spoke at the NonAligned conference in Havana in 1979, he pledged the six-week-old Sandinista government to a catalogue of common positions of NAM members: We are entering the Non-Aligned Movement because . . . we see Itherel the broadest organization of Third World states that are playNicaragua: Sovereignty and Non-Alignment BY ROBERT ARMSTRONG A legacy of anti-yanqui feeling N ON-ALIGNMENT IS A RECENT CON- cept in international relations...
...Sandinismo existed outside the system, as its negation...
...Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1984...
...The Sandinista strategy, as it evolved over time, was to build a broad mass coalition, centered on the peasantry...
...At the next NAM meeting in New Delhi in 1983, the agenda again focussed on the questions of economic depen- dency and the need for a New International Economic Order (NIEO...
...EFE (Madrid) in FBIS -LAM, June 14, 1983...
...Guerrilla warfare became the chosen path to liberation, and its relative success encouraged its repeated use...
...Letter from Secretary of State George Shultz to 1DB President Hon...
...Both sides argued a remarkably similar line: that only full capitalist development would open the door to general prosperity in the Third World...
...Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-LAM), October 16 and November 3, 1979...
...Washington has preferred the dependable loyalty of allies to the uncertainty of non-alignment...
...Nicaraguan history bred frustration, rage and a sense of violation in an entire population, among all classes...
...But non-alignment is not 'neutrality...
...In defense of their argument, they cite the hostility of the Latin American communist parties during Sandino's lifetime, when they dismissed him as a "petit-bourgeois nationalist" in charge of a peasant movement that was not led by the urban proletariat...
...Opponents of the FSLN also cite the support given to Sandino by the president of Mexico and other non-communist politicians, as well as his own refusal to declare his movement "communist...
...cit., pp.73-75...
...XIII, no...
...2. Nicaraguan national sovereignty...
...On one side was the Sandinista nationalism of the FSLN's independent Marxists...
...Right up to the end, the United States, in alliance with Nicaragua's traditional parties, attempted to preserve the National Guard, which had the highest number of U.S.-trained officers of any Central American army, and to prevent significant FSLN influence in a post-Somoza government...
...The New York Times, December 25, 1984...
...At the end of two more unsuccessful Central American campaigns, he was eventually defeated and executed in 1860 in Puerto Trujillo, I-Ionduras...
...All those opposition forces, to a great- er or lesser degree, had bought into the system of MAY/JUNE 1985 Somocismo...
...Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1979...
...Washington has preferred the dependable loyalty of allies to the uncertainty of non-alignment...
...With the advent of detente, the NAM focussed its attention on the worsening economic position of the Third World, and its deepening dependency on the West, especially the United States...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...It did not avoid broad coalitions with progressive business sectors, but formed them on the basis of FSLN hegemony, not subordination...
...See also Center for International Policy Aid Memo, January IS, 1985...
...ranging from nationalist to Marxist in outlook, searched for alternatives...
...The United States...
...The decision by any country to move away from the U.S...
Vol. 19 • May 1985 • No. 3
