Nicaragua: The Pot Boils Over

...A Contra soldier guards kidnapped Sandinistas in August, 1993...

...Once new social and political forces are unleashed at the base, it is difficult to contain them and find a new equilibrium...

...But Nicaragua proved to be a different story...

...Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan suggest that it may have been a Sandinista operation in which the CIA also had a hand...

...The killing of ex-Sandinista soldiers in Esteli, the hostage crisis, the often Machiavellian role played by Humberto Ortega, and the ever deepening tensions within the Sandinista party itself-these incidents or critical issues have placed Nicaragua on the brink of what appears to be an impending collapse...

...The killing of ex-Sandinista soldiers in Esteli by Sandinista army units, the seizure of hostages by former Contras and then the counter seizure of UNO politicians by Sandinista adherents, the increasingly contradictorv and often Machiavel- -- Aj . . .. . . . . . . . . lian role played by Sandinista army chief Humberto Ortega, and the ever deepening tensions and d within the Sandinista party i all these incidents or critical have placed Nicaragua on th of what appears to be an in ing collapse...

...The most likely interpretation is that the bombing was carried out by a rogue international unit with ties to the Interior Ministry...

...The Sandinistas were divided between the leadership which at times moved in tandem with the Chamorro government in quest of stability, and the popular sectors which were willing to take to the streets and even take up arms against the government...

...But even if the process of social upheaval continues, it is important to remember that ever since the era of modern social revolutions began with the taking of the Bastille in France in 1789, few revolutions have been neat or of short duration...

...mong the Sandinistas, it was not these charges but the rebellion in Estelf in July that tore at the heart and soul of the Sandinista movement...

...With the victory of Violeta Chamorro, Sandinista control of the Interior Ministry abruptly ended, and the army became the only institution with the capacity to deal with opponents of the revolution...

...Led by Frank Ibarra, who may have been an activeduty officer at the time of the assassination, though the Army denies it, this small armed group carried out a few subsequent actions of limited importance, and is now inactive...

...government 2d to blame everything on the Sandinistas while completely ignoring the U.S.-backed campaign of murder and terror...

...However, in light of the assassination of two high-ranking FMLN officials in October and the very tenuous peace process in El Salvador, the Sandinistas should certainly not be faulted for looking the other way or even assisting the FMLN...

...These policies hit hard at the public sector, threw many people out of work, and caused a depression in agricultural production, the NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 4UPDATE / NICARAGUA mainstay of the Nicaraguan economy...

...It is clearly too early to tell whether or not a new form of democratization will take hold in Nicaragua...

...a NACLA staff member from 1 1980, and is currently a men NACLA's editorial board...

...Even aft elections, the SandinistasRoger Burbach is the director of t ter for the Study of the Americas...

...But unlike the late 1970s, the protesters did not have a revolutionary program or banner around which the population could coalesce and take political power...

...In most Latin American countries, similar neoliberal measures were implemented during the course of the 1980s...

...The fact is that Daniel is responding to a real rebellion at the base of the Sandinista party which is fed up with Sandinista leaders who collaborate with the Chamorro government...

...Others continued, including some limited logistical backing and political support...

...The accidental slaying of 16-yearold Jean-Paul Genie in 1990 by over-anxious bodyguards of Ortega and the subsequent attempts to cover up the killing emboldened many of Ortega's opponents...

...The revolution had awakened a popular and class consciousness that adamantly resisted the neoliberal measures...

...Humberto Ortega's dual level of operating, instead of winning him allies and securing his hold over the military, actually turned all sides against him...

...By late 1992, even leaders of the Sandinista movement were calling for him to step down, arguing that he had become a solitary figure who followed his own designs, bent Fo only on amassing personal ta fr( power...

...A decade and a half after the ouster of the Somoza re- gime, Nicaragua is a coun- try torn by political and social strife...

...But by its actions, the Sandinista leadership severely damaged the moral and political authority that it once held...

...Now, however, new information has surfaced indicating that the Sandinistas had a role in the bombing...

...There is some discussion in Managua whether this split between the Ortega brothers is real or simply being staged for popular consumption...

...The Sandinista party leadership had not called for the general strike, and in fact many leaders believed that a period of social peace, and even austerity, was necessary for the country to move forward...

...Regardless of who was responsible for La Penca, it has to be borne in mind that the 1980s was a convoluted time of war and conflict...

...But Humberto Ortega, the army and the police soon found themselves at the epicenter of the political and social earthquake tearing apart Nicaragua...

...With the defeat of the Sandinistas in the 1990 elections, many of these support operations were dismantled...

...There is no doubt that the Sandinistas overtly and covertly assisted many of the guerrilla movements in Central America, particularly the FMLN which was fighting against a murderous regime that was fully backed and funded by the United States...

...Above all it cannot be forgotten that the real and consistent terrorists were the Contras and the CIA...

...The uncovering of the arms cache has been used as the "smoking gun" by the press and U.S...

...Media coverage of what pening in Nicaragua tends to the Sandinistas for the prese array, ignoring the fact th starting point for underst Nicaragua's current chaos election of Violeta Cham( February, 1990...

...The National Directorate of the Sandinistas appears to have had no direct involvement...

...government, all of whom were intent upon rolling back the revolution...

...It had, after all, come into office as a "party of a new type," a party that was supposed to be immune to the traditional forms of corruption...

...El Salvador and Guatemala may at present be less chaotic, but they are clearly in the midst of social transformations that will very likely lead to tumultuous and conflictive moments as they grope for a new social order that is more responsive to popular demands and interests...

...It was in fact Daniel who may have helped encourage the takeover of Esteli when a couple of days earlier he had suggested in a public speech that confrontational grassroots actions against the regressive social and economic policies of the Chamorro government were legitimate...

...To a certain extent, this is a conflict between the haves and the have-nots within the Sandinista movement...

...It is often forgotten that the other great twentieth-century revolution in Latin America, that of Mexico, began in 1910, and did not really consolidate until the government of Ldzaro Cirdenas in 1934...

...But the takeover of Esteli occurred at a moment when Ortega was under increasing political attack by the right wing and the United States...

...And it is also likely-although no hard evidence exists-that Humberto Ortega and the head of military intelligence, Lenin Cerna, orchestrated the formation of the Ejdrcito Punitivo de la Izquierda (the Punitive Army of the Left), which launched its activities in Vol XXVII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1994 5UPDATE / NICARAGUA November, 1992 with the assassination of Arges Sigueira, head of the Association of Confiscated Property Owners, an organization bent on reclaiming for the "Miami boys" the lands and properties that had been expropriated under the Sandinistas...

...government officials to heap all kinds of accusations on the Sandinistas...

...The existence of the Sandinista army in particular was anathema to the foes of the revolution, particularly the CIA and the Pentagon, which were determined to dismantle and destroy an Quilali in army that had inflicted heavy damage on the surrogate forces they had supported for the better part of the 1980s...

...For instance, the assassination of Somoza in 1980 in Paraguay was orchestrated out of the Interior Ministry with the assistance of internationalist guerrilla units that had collaborated with the Sandinistas during the final stages of the war against the Somoza regime...

...But it makes little difference which view one takes...

...The Cuban revolution, with its relatively short guerrilla movement and the quick consolidation of the revolutionary party in power, is the exception rather than the rule...

...Initially there was a clear consensus within the Sandinista party that the army had to remain intact and under de facto Sandinista control...

...The Sandinistas faced military foes who used the most brutal and atrocious practices-torturing and killing teachers, agricultural technicians and peasants, as well as destroying civilian economic targets like port facilities, food-storage depots and bridges, which made people's daily existence and survival difficult or impossible...

...Only the army or elements linked to it could have done it so cleanly...

...But as time went on, Humberto Ortega was driven to use the military to clamp down on the popular sectors that had once been his allies...

...This is why the Bush presidency, and now even the Clinton Administration, have been determined to remove all Sandinista influence within the army and turn it into a force that will not dare to challenge U.S...

...Because of Pastora's more moderate views and his maverick style of operating, many independent investigators-including some present at La Penca-concluded that more right-wing sectors of the Contras in collusion with the CIA were responsible for the assassination attempt...

...As one high-ranking civilian member of the Sandinista Front who was on the scene at the time of the assassination noted, "this was a professional operation...

...There is little doubt that a Sandinista special unit assassinated Enrique Bermlidez, an old Somocista and the former military head of the Contras, in February, 1991...

...By July, 1990, Managua was paralyzed by massive strikes and demonstrations in the streets...

...as Honey and Avirgan acknowledge, several months before the La Penca operation, the directorate even decided not to act against Pastora because the divisions he fomented within the Contras worked to the Sandinistas' advantage...

...By 1990 the state sector throughout much of the continent had been dramatically curtailed with only limited public resistance...

...Once new social and political forces are unleashed at the base, it is difficult to contain them...

...When Chamorro and Lacayo told him to retake the city, he applied the maximum force in order to demonstrate his loyalty to the government...

...President Chamorro npend- and her son-in-law, Antonio Lacayo, who became the de facto is hap- prime minister, recognized this blame reality when they agreed to accept nt dis- many of the changes that had hat the occurred during the decade of Sananding dinista rule...

...Embassy in Managua...

...It was simply incomprehensible that Sandinista soldiers, who had once fought together against the Contras, were now killing each other...

...One of the more mysterious incidents of the Sandinista period that has been reopened to discussion is the La Penca bombing of 1984...

...When Victor Manuel Gallegos, a popular retired officer of the Sandinista army, led 150 ex-Sandinista soldiers into Esteli to protest the policies of the Chamorro government and to demand land for his soldiers, he thought that the government and the army would negotiate with him, just as they had done with uprisings of a similar nature that have taken place all over Nicaragua since 1990...

...This incident has led to much soul-searching within the Sandinista party...

...Indeed an FBI informant has admitted that the passports came from a ring in the U.S...

...These changes includis the ed the agrarian-reform program, rro in the Constitution and government er the infrastructure created under the -who Sandinistas, and perhaps most critically, the existence and institu- he Cen- tionalization of the Sandinista He was 1973 to army...

...The tarnished image of the Sandinista army also made it possible for foes of the military to raise questions about clandestine operations carried out during the years of Sandinista rule...

...For the first time, there is now serious discussion about renovating the party leadership...

...One of the more insidious claims is that the Sandinistas were somehow involved in the New York bombing of the World Trade Center after the discovery of five fake Nicaraguan passports in connection with the investigation into the bombing...

...Certainly sectors of the 6 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 6UPDATE / NICARAGUA Sandinista leadership-including Humberto Ortega and Tomis Borge-knew of the arms cache that blew up in Managua...

...The resources they appropriated were actually quite limited compared to what has been swindled by other governments in Latin America, like those of Carlos Andr6s P6rez in Venezuela, Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil, and even Violeta Chamorro, where, according to many in Nicaragua, corruption-though much less publicized-has reached proportions akin to the Somoza era...

...The Chamorro government, backed by Washington, ordered Ortega to take over worker-occupied farms and factories, to repress street demonstrators, and to fight against dissident elements in the countryside who sometimes took up arms to protest the government's grueling economic policies...

...The dichotomy continues to this day to be a major fault line tearing apart the Sandinista party and the country as a whole...

...The result was over 40 dead, mainly ex-Sandinista soldiers who supported Gallegos...

...Indeed such collaboration is in the long-term interest of the survival of the Left in a region where rightwing forces are still very deadly and capable of carrying out murderous activities and campaigns...

...Fiber of But this modus vivendi was challenged almost immediately by the Contras, their backers in Miami, important factions of the UNO coalition, and the U.S...

...interests or dictates...

...Charges that Sandinista leaders were involved in preparing documents for those who undertook the New York bombing are totally baseless...

...Ortega himself, recognizing that he was objectively sustaining some of the very political forces he had once fought against, began to initiate clandestine operations designed to keep the far right in check...

...While some make the more extreme claim that this was solely a Sandinista operation, others like rmer Sandinista and Contra leader Eden Paste Iks with reporters about the injuries he sustain om the bombing at La Penca in 1984...

...For Sandinistas this slaughter was shocking...

...Humberto Ortega and his brother Daniel appear to be increasingly at odds over where the Sandinista movement should go...

...The explosion of an FMLN arms cache in Managua in May is another event that has to be understood in the context of the extended conflict throughout Central America...

...According to this official, Borge launched an internal investigation of the affair and actually fired or displaced some of those associated with the bombing...

...The revolutionary bloodshed, turmoil and destruction in Mexico were much more severe and prolonged than they have been in Nicaragua...

...Under the Sandinista government, the Interior Ministry was in charge of special operations and units designed to deal with the armed opposition and the old Somocistas...

...He escaped but eight people died, including three journalists...

...While refusing to dismantle the Sandinista army and depose Humberto Ortega as head of the army, the Chamorro government did decide to follow Washington's recipe on the economic front by implementing neoliberal policies...

...he Sandinista army and police--insurers of peace and stability in the country-were supposed to be above the political fray and infighting...

...We also need to remember that Nicaragua is still very much a part of Central America, where similar social processes have been set in motion...

...ebates won over 40% of the popular tself- vote-remained the most consoliissues dated and stabilizing political force e brink in the country...

...The target of the bombing was Ed6n Pastora, one of the more popular leaders of the Contras at that time...

...Many Sandinista leaders, in the infamous pinataa," took over houses, lands and even government buildings and funds during their final days in office, putting themselves in a much better position to weather the neoliberal policies of the Chamorro government...

...But today, given the end of the war and the damaged reputation of the Sandinista leadership-and the army in particular-it is relatively easy for the international press and 'ra sectors of the U.S...

...During the strike and street uprisings of July, 1990, the army and the police stood largely on the sidelines, unwilling to repress the demonstrators and workers who paralyzed traffic and production...

...Compelled to support government policies, Ortega and the army became divorced from the popular sectors and the base of the Sandinista movement, the very forces that had given the army its legitimacy and strength in the long war against the Contras and the United States...

...Few revolutions have been neat or of short duration...

...On the surface, this general strike-with its takeover of roads and highways, and the erection of brick barricades-appeared similar to the popular insurrection that led to the toppling of the Somoza regime...

...An Interior Ministry official at the time reports that TomBs Borge, a member of the directorate and the head of the ministry, was caught off-guard by the assassination attempt...

...And now that the concept of the vanguard party has largely collapsed, revolutions will inevitably be more complex and difficult...