Nicaragua-The Threat of a Good Example
"Somocismo No! Comunismo No!" The first variant on what would become an endlessly repeated theme came from Francisco Urcuyo, Nicaragua's 43-hour president who loyally presided over the final...
...3 In mid-1981, the FSLN answered critics who accused them of subverting both Sandino and theJuly 1979 Program of National Reconstruction...
...Accountability to the Masses The Government of National Reconstruction, which the FSLN dominated, had a clear mandate to initiate a period of reconstruction...
...core of the manifesto, drafted when the FSLN was no more than a nucleus of guerrilla fighters pinned down in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, proved to be unswervingly faithful to the central tenets of Sandino's own writings...
...They were dictated by dramatic power shifts in the final days of the war, the explosion of demands by workers and peasants in the new context of a popularly supported govenment and the rapid growth of new and powerful mass organizations in the immediate postwar period...
...The FSLN has also encouraged the political organization of traders, artisans and small and medium-sized agricultural producers that they believe could be permanently won over to the revolutionary program if they had a voice and could be guaranteed economic safeguards...
...THE THREAT OF A GOOD EXAMPLE 1. Lars Schoultz, "Nicaragua--The Revolutionary Road to Democracy," second draft of paper No...
...The first paragraph, in turn, promises to enact "the legislation necessary to organize a system of effective democracy, justice and social progress," and lists the political rights such a system will guarantee, including "the right of all Nicaraguans to participate in politics and their right to universal suffrage, and the right of political parties to organize and function...
...It would take that long to carry out a full census, register the hundreds of thousands who had never been able to vote, evolve new legal structures for the rights and obligations of political parties and make a dent in the political and educational isolation that is the enemy of true democracy...
...why they make good tactical sense (to avoid a traumatic reconstruction period and lessen the risk of international isolation...
...7. Carlos Nufiez, La revolucion a traves de nuestra Direccion Nacional, p. 69...
...Agendas for many of the Council of State meetings are set during open assemblies in village squares...
...U.S.-supported dynastic rule for nearly half a century...
...But as asphyxiating pressures from the United States intensify and destabilization attempts increase, the building of democracy becomes harder...
...By any standards, six years is not an unusual term of office to give people a chance to know what they want to improve in the government they brought to power...
...Municipal elections have already been held in many parts of the country and some inefficient leaders have already been replaced...
...The FSLN won this role in the brief space of 21 months between launching their first insurrectional offensive in October 1977 and seizing power in July 1979...
...political process...
...to each new government decree announced, then suddenly filled the air with the chant...
...the ability to demonstrate the deep historical roots of the fight against Somoza and to draw out the nationalist and class basis of Sandino's anti-imperialist struggle...
...While these opposition forces did undoubtedly alter international opinion in favor of the revolution, their peaceful work stoppage in early 1978 and their participation in the alliance which coalesced in 1979 "responded more to enlightened self-interest," in the words of a report prepared for the State Department, "than to a desire to alter the structure of socioeconomic privilege...
...The alliances built by the FSLN bore no resemblance to traditional popular fronts in which the bourgeoisie calls the shots...
...3. Miami Herald, November 13, 1980...
...a flexible understanding of Nicaragua's distinctive class structure and its potential for building a broad anti-dictatorial unity...
...6. Program of the Provisional Government of National Reconstruction ofNicaragua...
...2. Radio Corporacion, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), December 23, 1981...
...The changes included an expansion of popular representation in the Council of State, an extension of the original scope of the agrarian reform program and the evolution of ground rules for the operation of the mixed economy...
...Mass organizations that crisscross "the range of interests of the populations--class, gender, age and community-have burgeoned, and they have struggled, with no experience in such matters, to develop their internal structures and special objectives...
...It's time to show who the real Sandinistas are...
...In the last year before the victory, the FSLN evolved from a small group of committed revolutionaries to the leadership of a massive revolutionary front which militarily defeated Somoza's National Guard...
...The aim of the Sandinistas is "popular power," direct participation at all levels...
...8. Barricada (Managua), August 24, 1980...
...And on August 23, 1980, as returning literacy brigadislas swarmed back into Managua, Comandante Humberto Ortega announced that national elections would be scheduled for 1985, six years after the victory...
...The leadership has had to explain andjustify, using only rudimentary channels of democratic accountability, why cooperation with the bourgeoisie in the reconstruction of the country is compatible with meeting the needs of workers and peasants as called for in the revolutionary program...
...If the Sandinista government is too firmly entrenched, some Washington cynics seem to be arguing, let us at least turn it into aJacobin dictatorship and prevent it acting as a truly democratic beacon to other anti-dictatorial struggles in the region...
...That the FSLN was the vanguard of the movement which overthrew Somoza has rarely been disputed, either by the Right or by nonSandinista groups operating on the Left...
...Even more to the issue, it provided the pointfor-point basis for the 1979 government program, universally accepted as the framework for rebuilding the war-devastated country...
...The task is threefold: to explain how the alliances are necessary (to avoid chaos and recognizing the need for technical skills...
...In the vacuum of institutionalized power created by a genuine revolution in a society lacking minimal democratic traditions, this was only to be expected...
...While these moves were denounced as "betrayals" and "divergences" by an enraged right-wing press, they came in response to ever more vocal and clearly articulated demands from below...
...But in the revolution's first year, with the relative breathing space allowed by the Carter Administration, ambitious seeds of democracy were sown...
...Thus the central question in this groundlaying period of the government was how to ensure broad popular participation in a country where the systematically structured mass organizations which have typified the struggle in El Salvador had never been a feature of Nicaraguan history...
...Vote by acclaim occasionally comes into play as well, such as at the second anniversary rally where half a million in attendance chorused "Si...
...2 But most of the attacks now mounted by the private business sector organization, COSEP, the range of small bourgeois opposition parties and the U.S...
...Their mediation talks with Somoza and U.S...
...Though organizational miracles had been wrought around the tasks of the insurrection, the upsurge which had swept the FSLN to power was often raw and inchoate...
...The bourgeois opposition's principal spokesman, Alfonso Robelo, signs his letters with Sandino's own seal of' 'Patria y Libertad...
...This kind of talk, like the subsequent maneuvering from the Right to undercut FSLN influence in a post-Somoza government, cut little ice with a militant mass movement which ultimately sacrificed 50,000 lives in the cause of liberation...
...Paragraph 1.2 of the government program says, "The Government will servefor as long as needed [italics ours] to lay the groundwork for true democratic development of Nicaragua, based on broad popular participation and practical application of the concepts and aims set forth in paragraph 1.1 of this Program...
...The bourgeoisie had no basis to demand more power than it in fact received...
...Housing is a priority for the Sandinista government...
...Where repression and Somoza's perpetual anticommunist propaganda had also hindered organizing and the capacities of working class parties to build political consciousness...
...Popular interests, not business or professional interests, make up the majority of the Council...
...but they could not find consensus...
...We're sick of everyone saying they're Sandinistas," was how one Managua student put it...
...The essentially weak and unstructured democratic forms of a young revolution are peculiarly vulnerable to pressure...
...Some, like the Moscow-line Socialist Party (PSN), saw which way the wind was blowing and opted to accept subordination to the FSLN...
...Rival unions have expanded their membership, opposition parties have just been given a legal framework for their participation, and La Prensa rails daily against the government-as long as it stays within the guidelines of the communications law put into effect while Violeta Chamorro, widow of the slain La Prensa editor, was still on the junta...
...The idea, then, was not that the Sandinistas would rule on behalf of the masses...
...Where labor unions, for instance, had touched a scant 6% of the working population...
...Merely rhetorical to outsiders, it recalls for Nicaraguans the decision to continue on to triumph after rejecting the U.S...
...government, with its own interest in discrediting attempts at profound social change, would use and distort this question of legitimacy...
...And in fact, the government program is still very much in effect today...
...This dynamic, in turn, gave clearer definition to the kind of society that would be created...
...As the bourgeois leadership dithered, the FSLN led the insurrection, both militarily and politically...
...Important business interests had been propelled late in the game into open hostility toward a regime which had invaded their traditional preserves and suffocated their chances of further economic growth...
...In Nicaragua, top leaders appear weekly on live media programs like TV's De Cara al Pueblo or radio's Linea Directa, where the audiences grill government leaders on their failings...
...Here the home of a migrant cotton picker...
...7 An example is the organization of small cattle ranchers and growers (UNAG) formed last year...
...While angry peasants persuaded the government to lower land rentals, for example, the Junta has resisted frequent demands for action against right-wing redoubts like the newspaper La Prensa or businesses that are decapitalizing, which would jeopardize the increasingly fragile modus vivendi with the private sector...
...As right-wing attacks mounted to a crescendo, the Sandinistas republished their original 1969 manifesto, reminding opponents of the consistency of the FSLN's proposals for a post-Somoza government...
...Opportunism characterized their every move...
...Within the framework of support for the general goals of the revolutionary process, and with respect for the siege this fragile process is under, pluralism is a reality...
...They are not the end, as they are in western-style democracies...
...negotiators foundered on the dictator's intransigence and further undermined their legitimacy in the eyes of the working class, which by this time-1978 and early 1979-had taken to the street en masse to fight the National Guard with any weapon at hand...
...These mass organizations have been encouraged and provided multiple means to participate in the national political process as well...
...A Mandate to Govern In the context of a broad, multi-class alliance of national unity, such as that established after Somoza's downfall, the emergence of these claims and counter-claims to legitimacy is not surprising...
...The bourgeoisie has screamed that this is a "postponement" of promises for early elections...
...They began working with anti-Somoza professionals and intellectuals in an attempt to reach a shared strategy for unseating him...
...Confiscate La Prensa...
...The mass organizations also work directly with the various ministries in developing programs pushed by their particular constituencies...
...The chronic lack of politically developed leadership has also meant that democratic procedures at the local level have been sometimes travestied into strong-arming and shortcuts...
...If the class beneficiaries of the struggle had been unclear to anyone at the moment of triumph, they were publicly declared by Comandante Daniel Ortega, a member of both the FSLN National Directorate and the Junta of National Reconstruction, four months later: "This is the revolution of the vast majority, of the workers and peasants who produce all the country's wealth...
...In Nicaragua, there is a popular slogan which says, "The people have already voted with their blood...
...The first variant on what would become an endlessly repeated theme came from Francisco Urcuyo, Nicaragua's 43-hour president who loyally presided over the final destruction of Somoza's National Guard and fled to Guatemala City in the grey dawn of July 19, 1979...
...But the changes have been few...
...and the capacity to put together a program which offered a framework for satisfying the liberalizing wishes of the opposition business sector while gaining massive support for a more thoroughgoing social revolution...
...Other, similar slogans followed, some from centrist parties opposed to the FSLN, some from marauding gangs of ex-National Guardsmen in the mountainous wilds of Matagalpa...
...4 The nine-point 14 NACLA ReportJanlFeb 1982 15 Many of Managua's homeless live in ruins left by 1972 earthquake, this one facing the National Palace and gutted Cathedral...
...In the Sandinista's concept of popular democracy, elections are but one means of legitimization, of accountability...
...The charge of opportunism could be leveled as well at non-Sandinista groups of the Left...
...There was overwhelming support for the original project, for the concept expressed in the government of national reconstruction," said Robelo on his return from a tour in December 1981 to seek support from European politicians...
...A complex blend of skills made this possible: the sophisticated combination of guerrilla warfare, urban insurrection and conventional army maneuvers...
...As Tomis Borge said, "Nicaragua is the threat of a good example...
...Nor is it surprising that the U.S...
...5 What the bourgeoisie was and remains upset about is that it did not receive political power commensurate with its economic power...
...Thus, as Ortega stressed, elections will be "to perfect revolutionary power, not to hold a raffle among those who seek to weaken that power...
...In particular, Robelo's Nicaraguan Democratic Movement (MDN) was formed three months after Chamorro's death with the slogan, "Our time is now...
...Caught off guard, the speaker, Daniel Ortega, replied that the government had no plans to confiscate La Prensa, but that if it really were the paper of the people, as it claimed, surely it would listen to the demands and modify its hostile line...
...But others, like the pro-Albanian Worker's Front (FO) or the Stalinist Communist Party, were content to let the FSLN carry out the armed stage of the revolution...
...and how they will 16JanlFeb 1982 not lead to the decline of popular power over the prolonged reconstruction period (the popular movement after all controls the armed forces...
...If the working class and peasantry have had one major complaint, it is that change is not coming fast enough...
...Afterwards, they believed, they would rise to take their ordained role as vanguard of the revolution's "proletarian phase...
...These and other ideas are debated in forums that provide political accountability to the public unavailable in the U.S...
...Factions disintegrated and regrouped...
...Without the approval of the popular sectors who had fought and won the revolution, the FSLN insisted, no binding agreement could be made...
...In the crisis of 1978, these forces discovered they had lost their only JanlFeb 1982 134JACLA Report Conditions of life for Nicaragua's poor led to insurrection which toppled the Somoza dynasty...
...The Council of State, a deliberative and legislative body, is composed of members selected by the size of the organized constituency they represent...
...plausible leader with the death of Chamorro, that the subservient mainstream Conservative opposition stood discredited by the monotonous litany of power-sharing pacts with Somoza, and that the splinter parties of the right and center lacked any real political base among the people...
...But it is difficult to see such protestations as anything but opportunistic, since even a visiting UN diplomat in 1980 recognized that the FSLN would undoubtedly receive 90% of any popular vote...
...Trying to Accomplish the Program Certainly, democratic developments have been uneven: at times exhilaratingly fast, at others almost painfully slow...
...5. Barricada (Managua), October 30, 1979...
...Modifying the Program or Scuttling It...
...And the right-wing daily, La Prensa, the pro-government El Nuevo Diario and even the counterrevolutionary 15 de Septiembre radio station, broadcasting from over the border in Honduras, all claim the heritage of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the La Prensa editor considered Washington's choice as a liberal successor to the Somoza dictatorship until he was murdered by Somocistas in January 1978...
...But, albeit unevenly, democracy has begun to invade the country-and not just in the mass organizations identifiably close to the FSLN, or in the factories where workers have begun to band together to form production councils...
...All who participated in the war, from those who fought in the streets to those who hid bandages and food in their one-room houses, proudly called themselves Sandinistas...
...5 prepared for the Department of State, August 1981...
...There were never any attempts to hide the need for post-victory modifications to the program or to continually refine the language of the general points...
...It is named for Luis Alfonso Velasquez, an 1 f-year-old martyr of the revolution...
...It is that groundwork that is being laid today, in a country that has suffered a JanlFeb 1982 15NACLA Report One of the first postinsurrection projects was a children's park in what was once downtown Managua...
...government center on accusations that the Sandinistas have unilaterally scuttled this original program in favor of a "totalitarian scheme which betrays the essence of the anti-Somoza coalition...
...4. Interview in Managua, Nicaragua, October 1981...
...attempt to impose what they labeled "Somocismo without Somoza," a political solution that attempted to change as little as possible...
Vol. 16 • January 1982 • No. 1
