Lifelines: Nicaragua and the Socialist Countries
Edelman, Marc
YEARS BEFORE THE JULY 1979 TRIUMPH of the Nicaraguan revolution, Carlos Fonseca cited a passage from Che Guevara's Guerra de Guerrillas, which pointed to Augusto Cesar Sandino's struggle...
...East Germans have given economic planning assistance and trained radio and television technicians, auto mechanics, tailors and teachers...
...Ibid...
...U NTIL SEPTEMBER 1978, FOLLOWING the Sandinista raid on the National Palace, the Cubans apparently did not believe that a revolutionary situation existed in Nicaragua...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p.46...
...The Reagan Administration puts the number of East German security advisers at "over 60...
...See Heinnch-W...
...89...
...Above all, they were surely intended to send a message to Washington about the level of socialist bloc commitment to Nicaragua...
...Socialist country loans to finance their exports generally involve grace periods of one to three years, payment periods of two to 12 years and interest rates of 2.5 to 7.0...
...ACAN (Panama) in FBIS-LAM, October 19, 1979...
...p.11...
...on April 1 it cancelled the $15 million portion of the loan package that remained undisbursed...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p.46...
...A. Kiva, "Socialist-Oriented Countries: Some Development Problems," International Affairs (Moscow) No...
...Reagan Administration claims that 50 Sandinistas were training with the PLO in 1969 are highly dubious: the entire FSLN probably did not have that many members then.23 Given this history, after the July 1979 triumph relations with Israel were never warm...
...DOD & DOS, Soviet Cuban Connection, p.25...
...DOS & DOD, Soviet-Cuban Connection, p.24...
...FSLN militants saw their participation in struggles against Somoza's allies as a question of self-defense...
...A tank assault would in any case be vulnerable to strikes by the superior Honduran air force and severely hampered by the fact that Nicaragua has only a few days of fuel reserves, It was not until 1984 that Nicaragua acquired PT-76 light tanks (30 of them by Reagan Administration estimates) with amphibious capabilities comparable to Honduras' Scorpions, though still only half their speed...
...1(1985), p.76...
...Latin American and Western European governments which have so far viewed the low-intensity war as a perhaps unfortunate element of the status quo now confront more immediate dangers and urgent choices...
...and assistance for Nicaraguan energy planners...
...4 ' Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto remarked a year later that we condemn intervention and interventionism...
...CMEA countries generally prefer to trade with public-sector entities...
...7 5 To make matters worse, following the CIA-directed attacks on Nicaragua's oil installations that began in September 1983, Exxon temporarily stopped leasing Nicaragua the tankers that had been used to deliver Mexican oil...
...One senior State Department official concerned at the time with Nicaraguan affairs saw the FSLNCPSU accord as "showy rather than substantive" and a clear Sandinista effort to assert independence from the United States.45 The party and aid agreements with the Soviet Union came at a time when pro-U.S...
...109...
...The New York Times, March 28...
...The Miami Herald, February 2, 1981...
...Omar Cabezas, La montahia es algo mas que una inmensa estepa verde (Managua: Nueva Nicaragua, 1982), p.27...
...Most important, a highlevel delegation to the Soviet Union in May returned with two technical assistance and financial agreements worth over $200 million...
...loan bill by halting all foreign aid appropriations, Nicaragua announced its first major high-level delegation to the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Czechoslovakia...
...Cuba extended a $50 million loan for sugar industry development in April and donated farming and construction equipment, food and medicines...
...All told, between 1958 and 1963, some 20 armed movements attempted to topple the Somoza dynasty...
...103...
...Soon afterwards, Nicaragua received between 25 and 50 secondhand Soviet tanks from Algeria...
...12 T HE NUMBER OF FOREIGN ADVISERS IN Nicaragua is a major sticking point in relations with Washington, and is hard to verify independently...
...I (Managua: Ediciones Contemporineas, 1983), pp.1 4 3 - 1 4 4 ; Arturo Cruz Sequiera, "The Origins of Sandinista Foreign Policy," in Robert S. Leiken, ed., Central America: Anatomy of a Conflict (New York: Pergamon, 1984), p.102...
...machinery for chemical and construction industries...
...In the first eight months of the revolution, Cuba was the only socialist country to supply significant aid to Nicaragua or to host major Nicaraguan diplomatic delegations...
...It is necessarily inserted in an *Iran had earlier provided Nicaragua with limited balance-of-payments support by giving it small quantities of oil which it could sell without accepting delivery...
...As a result of these problems with Mexican supplies, the USSR made its first oil shipment to Nicaragua...
...4 (July-August 1984), p.37...
...Third, the theft of Nicaragua's hard currency reserves by fleeing Somocisias made it difficult to contemplate purchasing weapons from Western Europe or Latin America.4 In contrast to Reagan Administration claims that Nicaragua is threatening its neighbors, classified U.S...
...Smirnova, "Formirovaniye partii nikaraguanskoi revolutsii," Voprosi Istorii KPSS (Moscow) no...
...Equipo Interdisciplinario Latinoamericano, Teorla y practica revolucionarias en Nicaragua: curso breve de marxismo, vol...
...Programa del FSLN," Gaceta Sandinista (Havana), May-June 1978, p.35...
...113...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAM, October 10, 1979...
...The Washington Post, November 9, 1980...
...MAY/JUNE I95 I mal sugar mill, a ;uDan aonatlon Nicaragua's sugar quota, Algeria, Mexico, Iran and the USSR offered themselves as alternative buyers...
...Yet socialist country credits actually fell from $252.9 million in 1982 (46.7% of all credits) to $146.0 million in 1983 (just 35.2...
...domination in the Western Hemisphere...
...On the economic front, in November 1981 the United States derailed a $40 million fisheries loan Nicaragua had requested from the Inter-American Development Bank...
...N ICARAGUA'S TRADE RELATIONS WITH the socialist countries suffer, though, from the absence of previous ties...
...Second, it soon became apparent that the United States would not supply significant military assistance...
...To confront these problems, Nicaragua has sought many of the same kinds of commercial relations, aid projects and technical cooperation agree- ments as other underdeveloped countries...
...2 4 Even so, in 1984, the Sandinistas were still expressing interest in re-establishing relations with Israel...
...During the 1930s Depression, anti-imperialist impulses had been channeled into Sandino's struggle against U.S...
...AFP (Paris) in FBIS-I.AM, January 9, 1980...
...In 1984, though, some 50% of Nicaragua's bilateral funding came from CMEA countries...
...In the mid-1940s the university newspaper El Universitario began to print occasional documents about Sandino, but ceased publication after receiving telephone threats from Somoza Garcia himself...
...There, on March 19, they signed eight cooperation agreements cover- ing trade, aid, cultural, scientific and diplomatic ties, establishing regular commercial flights be- tween the Soviet Union and Nicaragua, and developing contacts between the FSLN and the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU...
...5 0 Nevertheless, Nicaragua ranks relatively low on the scale of Third World countries with which the USSR has political relations...
...Goldblat and Millan, "Honduras-Nkaragua Conflict,'' p.531...
...the authoritative London Economist cited a similar figure-50-in 1983.' The administration also claims there are between 30-40 Soviet military advisers...
...In Grenada Nicaragua: Loans and Lines of Credit Contracted July 1979-June 1984 (in millions of dollars) *Includes Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, Central American Bank for Economic Integration and others...
...As late as December 1980, Ruiz complained that "the [Bulgarian] agreements have not been put into effect partly because of the slowness with which we have tried to implement them...
...diplomat in Managua commented at the time that the mountainous terrain made the tanks "in real military terms less than meets the eye...
...Combined Honduran and Nicaraguan forces annihilated the group at El Chaparral...
...Latin America Weekly Report (London), March 28, 1980...
...Carlos Fonseca, Obras vol...
...Increasingly, it became clear that Nicaragua's trade pattern would be determined in large part by the availability of bilateral finance and trade credits...
...La polItica de Reagan hacia Nicaragua...
...C ERTAINLY THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL of the March 1980 accords was the agreement for "contacts" between the FSLN and the CPSU...
...Arturo Cruz, then director of the Central Bank, appeared unconcerned about them...
...DPA (Hamburg) in FBIS-LAM, November 29, 1984...
...MAY/JUNE 1985 51Sandinista Foreign Policy the Reagan Administration made similarly extravag- rant claims, but the number of captured Cuban personnel tallied exactly with official figures issued by the Cuban government...
...The pro-Moscow Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN) was founded in 1944 and the first Marxist study circle in the university started only in the mid1950s, under the direction of Carlos Fonseca...
...Nicaragua's major oil supplier since early 1984...
...5 (May 1984), p.91...
...and Soviet Bloc Training of Latin American and Caribbean Students: Considerations in Developing Future U.S...
...were numerically less of a force...
...4 - 5 . 28...
...Multilateral credit sources were now effectively dead...
...T HE WILLINGNESS OF SOCIALIST AND non-aligned petroleum producers to guarantee Nicaragua's energy needs has been particularly critical for the country's survival...
...He returned to jail and torture, and later wrote a short book, Un nicaragiiense en Moscai, praising Soviet economic development and achievements in social welfare...
...7 7 Although Mexico expressed willingness in May of this year to resume deliveries of 7,500 barrels per day, Nicaragua encountered difficulties in contracting tankers...
...Western European and Canadian loans, however, generally grant more generous grace and payment periods and interest rates...
...El Pais Internacional (Madrid), November 12, 1984...
...Soviet missions have surveyed marine resources and provided health teams and sports coaches...
...communications equipment...
...N.Yu...
...Rubdn Berrios, "Economic Relations Between Nicaragua and the Socialist Countries," Working Paper no...
...Elizabeth Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp...
...A tank assault would in any case be vulnerable to strikes by the superior Honduran air force and severely hampered by the fact that Nicaragua has only a few days of fuel reserves...
...The Miami Herald, May 11, 1982...
...MAY/JUNE 1985 I I 37 condition unacceptable...
...At the same time, in a conscious effort to diversify international ties, a second high-level Nicaraguan delegation, headed by Junta member Sergio Ramirez, FSLN Political Secretary Bayardo Arce and Finance Minister Joaquin Cuadra, was touring Western Europe...
...Omar Cabezas, La montana es algo mas que una inmensa estepa verde (Managua: Nueva Nicaragua, 1982), p.27...
...On arrival, the arms were stored in warehouses by the Costa Rican Security Ministry and later divided between the FSLN and the Costa Rican government...
...Again, the pattern has been for socialist and non-aligned suppliers to compensate for cutoffs from other sources...
...media reports suggested that the Reagan Administration was actively organizing and arming Nicaraguan contras and building military bases in Honduras...
...The administration soon made it clear that it intended to bracket the modest L39s-whose performance is roughly com- parable to the U.S...
...Only in 1978, when a hemispheric consensus began to build against Somoza, would it be possible for them to carry out similar activities in Costa Rica, Panama and other countries...
...Apart from Mexico, where leftist exiles were often received only grudgingly, Cuba really was almost lit- erally "the only safe place in the world" for the Sandinistas...
...According to Brutents, CPSU contacts with these parties "help to promote [their] ideological, political and organizational con- solidation and to extend cooperation . . . on the national and international level in the struggle against imperialism and for national independence, peace and social progress...
...100...
...Only in 1978, when a hemispheric consensus began to build against Somoza, would it be possible for them to carry out similar activities in Costa Rica, Panama and other countries...
...Many Nicaraguans believed that a U.S...
...Cuba signed a $64 million cooperation agreement in April and offered help in building a large, modern sugar complex...
...Projection of Power in Latin America by the Soviet Union and Cuba" (Gainesville, FL: 467th Military Intelligence Detachment, 1980), 96...
...They weigh 32 metric tons each, and so almost certainly accounted for the bulk of the 900 tons of military deliveries which the Reagan Administration claimed for the year...
...the weight of Cuban shipments was over 600,000 pounds (see Early, "Arms and Politics," pp.34,37...
...31.Jose de Jesus MartInez, ed., Ideario Omar Torrijos (San Jose: EDUCA, 1982), p.120...
...Brutents noted in 1983 that "the CPSU now has contacts with over 20 revolutionary- democratic parties in Asia, Africa and Central America," as well as with "organizations which take or can take anti-imperialist and progressive positions on certain specific issues.' '48 In this view, revolutionary democratic parties are those that take anti-imperialist and left political positions, such as the ruling parties in Angola and Mozambique, but differ from traditional communist parties in their organizational structures and more diverse- often middle class- social origins...
...6 ' But even though the balance of trade favors the CMEA countries and indebtedness to them is likely to increase, CMEA loans will probably prove easier to reschedule than credits from other sources...
...Multilateral credit sources were now effectively dead...
...We also] participated in different meetings of the [Mexican-sponsored] Permanent Conference of Latin American Political Parties (COPPAL), in which our vanguard occupies one of the vice-presidencies...
...1 (1985), p. 7 6 . 27...
...Barricada, December 21, 1980...
...For over a decade after Sandino's murder in 1934 at the hands of the U.S.created National Guard, these rebellious yearnings smoldered quietly, stifled by the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Garcia...
...The shipments, with a value of between $8,000 and $12,000 each, were probably worth considerably less that the weapons supplied by Venezuela and Panama.5 The planes used belonged to the Costa Rican company EXACO, and had been contracted by Eden Pastora...
...mining and fishing schools...
...The Cubans, noting the support provided by Panama, Venezuela and Costa Rica, did not send large-scale aid.'4 In 1981, a Costa Rican legislative commission found that in 1978-1979 at least 21 arms flights from Cuba had landed in Costa Rica with the full knowl- edge of the government...
...Like Nicaragua, he said, "the Soviet Union . . . knows hunger, embargo and armed aggression...
...7 ' Cuban engineers helped with construction...
...In the mid-1960s, FSLN sympathizers studying at Moscow's Lumumba University were reported to have clashed frequently with Soviet professors over issues of ideological control and armed struggle...
...118...
...Managua Television in FBIS-LAM, May 28, 1980...
...Some socialist countries which are not members of the Warsaw Pact, such as Cuba, Vietnam and Yugoslavia, are also members of the Non-Aligned Movement...
...Rather, it had been the other way around.' For Nicaraguans, the deeply felt nationalist legacy of Sandino was a continuing source of anti-imperialist and anti-dictatorial sentiment that elsewhere in Latin America often found expression only in traditional Marxist parties...
...Goldblat and Millan, "Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict...
...The original financing came largely from $73.8 million in Cuban credits and additional money from Spain, the GDR, France, Austria, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, the USSR, and the Central American Economic Integration Bank (BCIE...
...Elsewhere in Latin America immigrants introduced elements of the socialist political culture of the European working class...
...The Soviet Union also loaned two helicopters to Nicaragua in 1981, though these were based at the main Managua airport and used for non-military purposes-transporting foodstuffs, medical rescue missions and carrying visiting foreign dignitaries, including Pope John Paul II...
...2. JesUs M. Blandon, Entre Sandino y Fonseca (Managua: DPEP del FSLN, 1981), pp.86, 109...
...100...
...Sunol, Insurreccion, p. 183...
...From these precursors, the FSLN coalesced during 1961-1963...
...I N LATh 1981 THE REAGAN ADMINISTRAtion stepped up economic pressure and military threats...
...A similar impression was surely made on rural PSN member Gladys Bdez (later a Sandinista) who in 1962 "went to the USSR without knowing Managua...
...104...
...fishing boats...
...Despite three requests from the FSLN in 1979 for further arms shipments, the Cubans refused on each occasion, reportedly stating that, "the best help we could give you is not to help you at all...
...announcement of an economic embargo mentioned the Moscow visit as evidence that Nicaragua constitutes "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States...
...U.S...
...An additional $16.8 million was set aside for a radio communications system in northeastern Nicaragua and a ground station linked to the Inter-Sputnik system, for easier telephone communications with Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia...
...some 50% of Nicaragua's bilateral funding came from CMEA countries.tm *It should be noted that Mexico has been a CMEA observer since 1975 and that delegations from the U.N...
...Even with the Mi-24s, the Nicaraguan fleet does not compare in size with those of its neighbors: El Salvador had 15 combat helicopters in 1984, with nine more on order...
...Arturo Cruz Sequiera, "The Origins of Sandinista Foreign Policy," in Robert S. Leiken, ed., Central America: Anatomy of a Conflict (New York: Pergamon, 1984), p.102...
...In 1980 and 1981, the socialist countries only provided Nicaragua with slightly over $100 million in credits per year...
...Jonathan Steel, Soviet Power: The Kremlin's Foreign Policy- Brezhnev to Chernenko (New York: Simon and Schuster, MAY/JUNE 1985 55 piertas (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), pp.50-51...
...Department of Publications, 1984...
...The New York Times, September 13, 1983...
...All told, between 1958 and 1963...
...Algeria too signed an agreement to barter oil for Nicaraguan sugar and other products, and Iran announced that it would also send direct oil shipments.* In another effort to diversify sources of supply, Nicaragua arranged in early 1985 to purchase 300,000 barrels of Ecuadorian crude through a triangular arrangement, by which the USSR agreed to ship oil to one of Ecuador's clients, while Ecuador would supply oil to Nicaragua...
...The Cubans, noting the support provided by Panama, Venezuela and Costa Rica, did not send large-scale aid.' 4 In 1981, a Costa Rican legislative commission found that in 1978-1979 at least 21 arms flights from Cuba had landed in Costa Rica with the full knowledge of the government...
...Unlike them it has had to contend with the destruction caused by the 1972 earthquake, the 1978-79 insurrection, the massive floods of 1982 and the more recent contra war...
...The northern group included at least two elderly former lieutenants of Sandino, future FSLN founder Fonseca and various Cubans, Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans...
...Guatemala had 50 helicopters, though not all were operational...
...The REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 46scheme reflects PAHO's recognition of Cuban achievements in the health field as much as Cuba's commitment to assist Nicaragua...
...Krumwiede, "Sandinist Democracy: Problems of Institutionalization," in Wolf Grabendorff et al., eds., Political Change in Central America (Boulder: Westview, 1984...
...Equipo Interdisciplinario Latinoamericano, Teoria y prdctica revolucionarias en Nicaragua: curso breve de marxismo, vol...
...In 1937, and again in 1940, those commemorating the anniversary of Sandino's assassination were rounded up by Somoza's police, imprisoned and tortured...
...Latinamerica Press Februrary 14, 1985...
...a cotton experiment station...
...The politically heterogeneous southern group penetrated the border zone of Olama y Mollejones...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985...
...Nicaraguas major oil supplier since early 1984...
...8 2 Socialist country ties may also bring political costs...
...President Reagan later declared that the ship Ulyanov was 'loaded with weaponry...
...Author's interview with Ministry of Foreign Commerce economist, January 11, 1985, Managua...
...The Washington Post, November 22, 1981...
...10 (January 1981), pp.32- 33...
...12, 1982...
...Yet socialist country aid, while welcome, poses its own dilemmas...
...Department of Publications, 1984...
...In mid-1980, U.S...
...These "compensation" clauses are essentially barter arrangements whereby Nicaragua trades primary products-such as cotton, coffee or sesame seeds-for socialist and non-aligned country capital goods, manufactured products and oil.63 In other cases, light manufacturing facilities installed in Nicaragua by CMEA countries may be paid for with the products they produce...
...Undersecretary of Defense Fred C. Ikle declared that aircraft such as the L39 and the Mig-21 "would be a bulwark behind which to attack neigh- bors...
...Most important, a highlevel delegation to the Soviet Union in May returned with two technical assistance and financial agreements worth over $200 million...
...6 (1984...
...Brazil had developed wideranging commercial ties with Arab nations, especially after 1977, when the Lima-based Arab-Latin American Bank was founded to develop trade between the two groups of countries...
...In October 1984, Sandinista political coordinator Bayardo Arce remarked that there were "less than 500" Cuban military advisers...
...sugar quota in May 1983, and the halt in Mexican oil deliveries when Nicaragua experienced payment problems in late 1984...
...media reports suggested that the Reagan Administration was actively organizing and arming Nicaraguan contras and building military bases in Honduras...
...In the months following the July 1979 victory, Nicaraguan leaders signalled their intention of pursuing a non-aligned course and opening diplomatic relations with any country that did not place conditions on the relationship...
...4. Sergio Ramirez, Pensamiento vivo de Sandino (San Jos6, Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1974...
...From these precursors, the FSLN coalesced during 1961-1963...
...In addition, the prejudice against socialist country technology among technicians trained during the Somoza era Socialist Country Main Exports to Nicaragua Soviet Union Equipment and machinery for agriculture, mining, petroleum industry, communications and fisheries...
...Nowhere has this been more true than in the case of socialist-bloc military and security assistance...
...Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict," p.533...
...Letter from Secretary of State George Shultz to IDB President Hon...
...Adrian J. English, "Nicaragua Treads Path Between East and West," Jane's Defence Weekly, April 21, 1984, p.610...
...NICARAGUAN PERSPECTIVES takes the 'dis out of disinformation...
...Similar aid and party agreements followed in Bulgaria, East Germany and Czechoslovakia...
...Yuri Koroliov, "Nicaragua: Ia experiencia del perlodo de transicion," America Latina (Moscow) no...
...9. See William LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua: From the Somozas to the Sandinistas," in Barry Levine, ed., The New Cuban Presence in the Caribbean (Boulder: Westview, 1983), p.44...
...6 (1980), pp.86-87...
...Nicaragua was the only Central American nation excluded from the Caribbean Basin Initiative, announced on February 24, 1982...
...On March 12, 38 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Sandinista Foreign Policy A LTHOUGH NICARAGUA RECOGNIZED the Soviet Union in 1944, diplomats were never exchanged and the relationship had virtually no political or economic significance...
...In the cases where cash was paid, the transactions were at world-market prices...
...The New York Times, March 28, 1984...
...Their centrally planned economies often lack the flexibility to meet new foreign orders swiftly, especially small ones...
...and Jozef Gotdblat and Victor Millan, "The Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict and Prospects for Arms Control in Centrat America, "in SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Tay'or & Francis, 1984...
...8. Arias, Relaros, p.78...
...The New York Times, January 30, 1982...
...And in March 1985, less than a month before the vote in Congress, the United States prevented the Inter-American Development Bank from acting on a $58 million Nicaraguan loan request...
...Only in early 1980, as congressional frictions over the Carter Administration's proposed $75 million loan package strained relations with the United States, did Nicaragua first seek more serious aid commitments from the socialist countries...
...Yet socialist country aid, while welcome, poses its own dilemmas...
...The Washington Post, April 29, 1980...
...Bulgaria Food processing ptants...
...They embarked on a flurry of diplomatic activity which in one year had doubled the number of countries with which Nicaragua had relations...
...Journal of Commerce (New York), May 28, 198L 68...
...loan and the Nicaraguans' mid-March visit to the Soviet Union, a pattern has emerged of U.S...
...1984...
...people about wh.tt is really going on in Central America...
...In March 1985, for example, hearings before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs revealed that even the CIA had presented "much lower figures" on Nicaragua's military capability than those published by the administration...
...For example, Managua Radio in FBIS -LAM, June 8, 1982 and June 28, 1983...
...mounting energy bills, tradi- tional dependence on a small number of markets, a huge debt exacerbated by high interest rates and a chronic balance-of-payments problem...
...10 (1984...
...Latin America Commodities Report January 14, 1983...
...5 4 However, though Ramirez himself was named deputy foreign minister in 1979 and later ambassador to the GDR, his supporters did not generally achieve prominence in the government or in the much larger FSLN, which by 1984 had an estimated 15,000 members...
...other countries in the region such as Jamaica and Guyana...
...In the same way we have strengthened our relations with the Socialist International, with our leaders attending different meetings as observers...
...V, no...
...I, no...
...Nicaraguan Perspectives magazine is honest...
...After signing a purchase agreement for the trucks, the Sandinistas learned from the Cubans that the model they had ordered performed poorly and that spare parts were hard to obtain...
...5 million for acquiring industrial machinery...
...the United States, however, pays a preferential price to Central American sugar producers...
...engineers...
...Venezuela, of course, had not provided Nicaragua with oil for two years...
...On March 14 contra demolition squads destroyed two key highway bridges in northern Nicaragua...
...The Washington Post, May 21, 1985...
...MAY/JUNE 1985 47 A.eSandinista Foreign Policy economy and society quite different from Soviet or Cuban models...
...FSLN, Iremos hacia el sol de la libertad . . . Sandino (Managua: FSLN, 1979), pp.8, 27-29...
...military retaliation...
...If the Nicaraguans had few alternatives to this economic and diplomatic strategy for survival, it also clear that it is an approach which entails serious risks...
...2 Whatever the numbers, the Sandinistas evidently have enough confidence in the self-sufficiency of their military and security forces to be willing to dis- pense with their foreign advisers...
...intervention...
...Goldblat and Millan, "Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict," p.533...
...Un nicaraguense en Mosca, praising Soviet economic development and achievements in social welfare...
...Even with the Mi-24s, the Nicaraguan fleet does not compare in size with those of its neighbors: El Salvador had 15 combat helicopters in 1984, with nine more on order...
...Ruben BerrIos, "Economic Relations Between Nicaragua and the Socialist Countries," Working Paper no...
...The heterodox nature of the Sandinista revolution is certainly one limit on the extent of Soviet aid beyond political support in international forums...
...only Alfonso Robelo expressed reservations...
...Central America Report (Guatemala), March 31, 1980...
...and Japanese machinery...
...Marines as an antecedent for the Cuban revolutionary movement of the 1950s...
...attractive, professional...
...CMEA foreign trade institutions are unfamiliar...
...O UT OF THE ANTI-DICTATORIAL UPsurge of the I 950s grew a number of organizations- the New Nicaragua Movement, the Nicaraguan Patriotic Youth and the National Liberation Front- all deeply dissatisfied with both the traditional anti-Somoza opposition and the pro-Moscow PSN...
...the theft in 1979 of all but $3.5 million of the country's currency reserves by fleeing Somocistas...
...DOS and DOD, SovietCuban Connection with both 1155, The Military Balance 1984/985 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1984), pp.123-124...
...The March 1980 trip to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe produced neither substantial financial aid nor abrupt shifts in Nicaragua's trade pattern...
...Rather, it had been the other way around.' For Nicaraguans, the deeply felt nationalist legacy of Sandino was a continuing source of anti-imperialist and anti-dictatorial sentiment that elsewhere in Latin America often found expression only in traditional Marxist parties...
...The composition of Nicaragua's imports from the CMEA largely reflects the economic specializations and capabilities of member countries...
...The approach was not without its problems...
...In 1984, Nicaragua had just 12 combat aircraft...
...So did the participants in the 1974 FSLN "Christmas party" action which traded high-ranking Somocista hostages for Sandinista political pns- oners, cash and the publication of manifestos...
...DOS & DOD...
...1985," Testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, February 28, 1985...
...Patria Libre (Managua), No...
...invasion of Nicaragua...
...a 400-bed hospital in Managua...
...bursements to Nicaragua...
...Even after Nicaragua was granted observer status in the CMEA in September 1983, no major aid commitments were forthcoming.* At the October 1984 CMEA meeting in Havana, Nicaragua submitted a proposal to expand bilateral and multilateral cooperation, but the meeting ended with no agreement being announced...
...Thomas P. Anderson, "Nicaragua," in Richard F. Staar, ed., Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1984 (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1984), pp.157-158...
...95 The Reagan Administration would later ignore these same figures and claim that 200 Cuban advisers had arrived in Managua by October 1979.96 The Reagan Administration reported that 1981 Soviet-bloc arms shipments to Nicaragua totalled 900 metric tons, up just 50 tons from the relatively small-scale deliveries of 1980...
...This compares favorably with the loans contracted with Latin American nations, which charge slightly higher interest and do not usually provide for grace periods...
...Following the revolutionary victory of July 1979, Nicaragua expanded these ties in an effort to diversify its historic dependence on a few markets and suppliers...
...Box 1004, Dept...
...The effort to guarantee survival and maintain dignity has led Nicaragua to seek resources elsewhere, whether from Western Europe, Latin America or the socialist bloc and radical non-aligned nations...
...3. TomAs Borge, Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacidn (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p.31...
...economic and military aggression...
...President Reagan later declared that the ship Ulyanov was 'loaded with weaponry...
...It claimed that Nicaragua was behind on its payments, but the Venezuelan decision was widely perceived as a political one...
...See, for example, Bayardo Arce, "Por qu6 nos agrede el imperialismo...
...Nicaragua remains surrounded by foreign troops: at the end of 1983 U.S...
...military personnel in the region totalled 14,568, with more than 5,000 troops in Honduras for continuing military maneuvers and a further 9,000 in the Panama Canal Zone...
...machinery for chemical and construction industries...
...The following day the Nicaraguan government declared a state of emergency, suspending constitutional guarantees and establishing censorship...
...The Cubans probably did play some role at this time-as did Panama and Venezuela-in encouraging unity between the three FSLN tendencies which, having divided in 1975, formally reunited in March 1979.12 However, events themselves were already providing a powerful impetus to unity...
...CMEA Countries* Central America Other Latin America** Western Europe Japan Other TOTAL Trade Balance 1980 162.1 12.2 75.2 0.5 147.7 12.6 40.1 450.4 244.0 1.8 300.7 179.2 87.8 28.4 45.3 887.2 -436.8 (36%) (3%) (17%) ( 0%) (33%) (3%) (9%) (100%) (28%) ( 0%) (34%) (20%) (10%) ( 3%) ( 5%) (100%) "1981 134.7 31.8 70.7 22.1 98.6 57.0 93.3 508.2 262.9 43.7 210.5 304.3 103.0 28.3 46.7 999.4 (27%) ( 6%) (14%) ( 4%) (19%) (11%) (18%) (100%) (26%) ( 4%) (21%) (30%) (10%) (3%) ( 5%) (100%) -491.2 1982 90.0 20.5 52.2 25.0 95.1 45.0 77.7 405.5 147.4 87.4 116.9 244.1 109.1 18.5 52.2 775.6 -370.1 (22%) ( 5%) (13%) ( 6%) (23%) ( 11%) (19%) (100%) (19%) (11%) (15%) (31%) (14%) ( 2%) ( 7%) (100%) 1983 74.9 54.8 33.5 15.9 111.4 65.8 72.5 428.8 156.7 133.6 123.6 241.1 78.4 19.2 54.3 806.9 -378.1 (17%) (13%) ( 8%) ( 4%) (26%) (15%) (17%) (100%) (19%) (17%) (15%) S30%) (10%) ( 2%) (7%) (100%) 1984 45.3 22.8 32.9 6.7 138.8 93.5 34.0 374.0 158.8 209.0 88.5 111.4 169.4 26.0 26.9 790.0 -416.0 (12%) ( 6%) ( 9%) ( 2%) (37%) (25%) ( 9%) (100%) (20%) (26%) (11%) (14%) ( 21%) ( 3%) ( 3%) (100%) *Includes Cuba "Does not include Cuba Source: Nicaraguan Central Bank MAY/JUNE 1985 49.' 4 A.sot Sandinista Foreign Policy cancelling the agreement, but the GDR refused, with party chief Erich Honecker reportedly insisting that 'a deal is a deal...
...See also Timossi, op.cit., pp.191-93...
...This is the context for President Daniel Ortega's April trip to the Soviet Union and seven other socialist countries...
...The Defense Monitor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Defense Information), Vol...
...In September an agreement was concluded for Cuba to send 1,200 teachers to work in the Nicaraguan education system and the mass literacy campaign...
...Even U.S...
...Yet as early as November 1982, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega announced that Nicaragua would probably not introduce high-per- formance combat planes in the foreseeable future.'o6 Nevertheless, during the November 1984 "Mig week" crisis, the Reagan Administration charged that Soviet ships were about to unload Mig-21s at the port of Corinto...
...The Washington Post, August 24, 1984...
...Castro also praised the wisdom of the United States for refraining from military intervention and for sending post-war relief aid...
...N.Yu...
...Danby et al., Military Balance in Central America, p.15...
...pressure...
...Mijail Gornov and Yuri Koroliov, "El torbellino centroamericano," America Latina (Moscow) No...
...In 1948 Somoza's National Guard crushed an armed uprising against the dictatorship and assassinated veteran Sandinista Juan Gregorio Colindres...
...GDR Trucks...
...China, for example, demanded a diplomatic break with Taiwan, with whom relations had been established under Somoza, in order to establish relations with Nicaragua...
...1 (Managua: Nueva Nicaragua, 1982), p.1 8 3 ; Humberto Ortega, 50 ahios de lucha sandinista (Havana: Editorial de las Ciencias Sociales, 1980), p.143...
...J. Drechsler, "La Repiblica Democrhtica Alemana y Amdrica Latina," in Los paises del CAME y America Latina (Moscow: Editorial Progreso, 1983), p.94...
...The Soviet Union has the largest and most diversified socialist bloc economy...
...in Joseph Cirincione, ed., Central America and the Western Alliance (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985) p.155...
...According to Planning Minister Henry RuIz, Robelo had refused an invitation to join the delegation, opting instead to attend a war veterans' meeting in the United States A NALYSTS FROM THE CPSU, SUCH AS Karen Brutents, viewed the party agreement in a different light...
...The Washington Post, November 9. 1980...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p. 4 6 . 18...
...107...
...In the first eight months of the revolution, Cuba was the only socialist country to supply significant aid to Nicaragua or to host major Nicaraguan diplomatic delegations...
...Similarly, the Soviets made their first oil shipments to Nicaragua, just after Mexico slowed down its supplies...
...All this is in addition to a 600-student high school for Nicaraguans opened in 1980...
...Consequently relations were slower to develop and diplomatic contacts were limited...
...Instead, Nicaragua ranks somewhere below those African and Middle Eastern states unambiguously pursuing socialist orientation...
...3 4 The substance of the accords with the Soviet bloc was in some respects less impressive than the message they conveyed...
...This pattern of balancing tours to socialist bloc countries with visits to Western Europe or Latin America continues to be a conspicuous feature of Nicaraguan policy...
...Jos6 de Jestis Martinez, ed., Ideario Omar Torrijos (San Josd: EDUCA, 1982), p.120...
...The Sandinistas are painfully aware of their limited resources for managing even the current, limited state sector...
...In early 1985, Mexican shipments were halted, a decision which Nicaragua's ambassador there termed "strictly commercial and financial [and without] any political intention...
...The Washington Post, April 13, 1985...
...Most reports gave the figure of $200 million as the amount of Soviet aid sought by Ortega...
...The New York Times reported in 1984 that none was known to be in Nicaragua...
...They have advised agronomists and built and equipped technical schools...
...hydroelectric machinery...
...H. Ortega, S0anos, p.203...
...p.254...
...As late as 1984, Jane's Defence Weekly put the figure at ap- proximately 200...
...29 On his return to Managua, Robelo praised "the clarity of Comandante Castro's thought" and described the Moncada anniversary celebration as the "most extraordinary political event in which I have ever picipated...
...Socialist country technology may be hard to incorporate into an economy long dependent on U.S...
...Libya, earlier a small-scale supplier, now agreed to start providing some $15 million worth of oil, payable in Nicaraguan primary products, such as cotton, sesame seed, coffee and bananas...
...As early as November 1983, Nicaragua offered to send all foreign advisers home and stop acquiring arms if other Central American countries would reciprocate...
...The Soviets granted 195 university scholarships in 1980 and 320 in 1981 (most for veterinarians and Socialist country training missions offer Nicaragua the range of development aid which virtually all poor Third World nations seek, whatever their political orientation...
...In September 1984, Nicaragua offered to sign the draft Contadora Act which would have obliged signatories to remove all foreign military and security personnel...
...In the dark years of struggle, only in Cuba did we find the fraternal solidarity that acted as a stimulant to our determination to fight.'o Carlos Fonseca and several other Sandinistas ended up in Cuba in 1970 after being freed from a Costa Rican prison in exchange for several United Fruit Company executives seized in an FSLN hijacking...
...and Japanese machinery...
...The following day the Nicaraguan government declared a state of emergency, suspending constitutional guarantees and establishing censorship...
...Nonaligned countries" refers to members of the NonAligned Movement...
...After 1969, Cuba's foreign policy toward the region shifted from supporting armed struggle to seeking state-to-state relations...
...The Washington Post, April 13...
...A number of working sessions for the exchange of "experiences" and "impressions" have been reported in the media...
...But apart from a small trade, health and education agreement with East Germany signed on October 31, 1979, no significant aid was forthcoming...
...options will deepen the diplomatic isolation of the United States and increase pressures for negotiations from U.S...
...Latin America Commodities Report January 14, 1983...
...Compare, for example, U.S...
...Nowhere has this been more true than in the case of socialist-bloc military and security assistance...
...As we have seen, in mid-1980 U.S...
...V, no...
...see also Doris Tijerino, Inside the Nicaraguan Revolution, (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1978), pp.64-67...
...DOD & DOS...
...an unusual and extraordinary threat...
...diplomat in Man- agua commented at the time that the mountainous terrain made the tanks "in real military terms . . . less than meets the eye...
...intelligence reports state that, "The overall buildup is primarily defense-oriented, and much of the recent effort has been devoted to improving counterinsurgency capabilities...
...Though it ceased active support for foreign guerrillas, Cuba remained a place of refuge for those fleeing repression in Nicaragua and elsewhere...
...Second, it soon became apparent that the United States would not supply significant military assistance...
...Managua Television in FBIS-LAM, May 28, 1980...
...Algeria too signed an agreement to barter oil for Nicaraguan sugar and other products, and Iran announced that it would also send direct oil shipments.* In another effort to diversify sources of supply, Nicaragua arranged in early 1985 to purchase 300,000 barrels of Ecuadorian crude through a triangular arrangement, by which the USSR agreed to ship oil to one of Ecuador's clients, while Ecuador would supply oil to Nicaragua...
...Central America Report (Guatemala), March 31, 1980...
...The Reagan Administration reported that 1981 Soviet-bloc arms shipments to Nicaragua totalled 900 metric tons, up just 50 tons from the relatively small-scale deliveries of 1980.' These estimates, however, placed a much greater cash value on the 1981 shipments, claiming they were worth between $39 and $45 milIion...
...Only in one reported instance- a GDR agreement of unknown scope- has a CMEA country explicitly offered Nicaragua preferential prices for its goods.M Nevertheless, the long-term nature of many of Nicaragua's commercial accords with the CMEA countries has a stabilizing effect: demand is assured for several years, and prices may be set at international market rates at the outset and maintained for the entire period of the agreement, even if world prices deCoffee Is the main dollar earner 42 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Sandinista Foreign Policy Coffee is the main dollar earner ideology clearly remains a heterodox blend of Marxism, nationalism and Christianity...
...Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly, 36th and 37th General Sessions (New York: United Nations, 1982 and 1983...
...cement...
...2 Although their early efforts ended in defeat, the disparate opposition forces benefited from a feature of the Nicaraguan situation which made it unique in Latin America...
...Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly, 36th and 37th General Sessions (New York: United Nations, 1982 and 1983...
...In February, Washington suspended credits for wheat purchases...
...Unlike them it has had to contend with the destruction caused by the 1972 earthquake, the 1978-79 insurrection, the massive floods of 1982 and the more recent contra war...
...ACAN (Panama) in FBIS.LAM, October 19, 1979...
...Hugh Lucas, "Pentagon Confusion over 'Nicaraguan MiGs,' " Jane's Defence Weekly, Vol...
...P. Karaivanova, 'La Repuibtica Popular de Bulgaria y Amertca Latina," in Los palses del CAME y America Latina, p.58...
...cement...
...Jacobsen, "The Defence Department's White Paper on Central America, Feb...
...when their human rights were the concern of no one in the world...
...tone, the 1969 program declared that the FSLN would "put an end to yankee interference in the internal problems of Nicaragua and practice toward other countries a policy of mutual respect and fraternal collaboration...
...XVIII, no...
...2, no...
...It claimed that Nicaragua was behind on its payments, but the Venezuelan decision was widely perceived as a political one...
...The New York Times reported in 1984 that none was known to be in Nicaragua.'9 Finally, Reagan asserted in 1983 that some 50 PLO pilots were present...
...Then, in January 1985, Cuba donated the mill outright...
...By March 1984, The New York Times estimated that the Soviets were supplying 25% of Nicaragua's petroleum needs...
...William Villagra, "Las posiciones politicas de las corrientes sindicales nicaragiienses," Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (San Josd) no...
...The Soviets have not indicated deeper commitment by signing a long-term friendship treaty with Nicaragua, as they have with such countries as India, Iraq, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, South Yemen, Syria and North Korea.5' Only rarely do Soviet sources refer to Nicaragua as a state of "socialist orientation," a designation applied to countries engaged in programs of political mobilization and structural reform, but REPORT ON THE AMERICAS RSandinista Foregn APoic Sandinista Foreign Policy icy of international non-alignment...
...Latin America Weekly Report, December 21, 1979...
...By early 1982, numerous U.S...
...XVIII,, no...
...One U.S...
...economic pressures...
...Carlos Fonseca, Obras vol...
...4. Comments of Cabs Fonseca, Jose Valdivia and Bayardo Arce in Pilar Arias, ed., Nicaragua revoluciOn (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), pp.31, 80, 86...
...Soviet Ambassador German Shliapnikov was quick to point out that "the donation...
...On March 14 contra demolition squads destroyed two key highway bridges in northern Nicaragua...
...for further details, see ibid., September 13, 1979...
...The Sandinista arniy journal Patria Libre viewed the agreement as part of the FSLN's effort to diversify its political relations: in accord with the principle of strengthening ties of friendship and cooperation with democratic, progressive and revolutionary parties and movements . . . [we have] strengthened our political relations with various Communist parties of the socialist camp, with which we have signed friendship and cooperation agree- ments...
...In January 1981, immediately upon assuming office, the Reagan administration announced that it would withhold aid payments from the controversial $75 million loan to Nicaragua because of alleged arms shipments to the Salvadorean guerrillas...
...This was the link with the earlier Sandinista movement of the 1920s and 1930s, which provided not only a reservoir of military experience through its surviving veterans, but also a set of powerful political symbols and a legitimating ideology with deep roots...
...A few years later, the Israelis returned the favor, selling Somoza 45 Staghound armored cars, 10 Sherman tanks and various armored personnel carriers, which gave Nicaragua the strongest armored force in Central America.21 After 1966, Israel signed a series of military aid agreements with Somoza's sons...
...We also maintain that no partial interpretation- by one side or the other- can help win peace in that region.42 Nicaragua continued to uphold non-aligned posi- tions in the United Nations, and again abstainedtogether with China, Zimbabwe and Guyana- on the 1983 Security Council vote on the Soviet downing of Korean Airlines flight 007...
...the U.S...
...Critics pointed out that no other Central American country was paying its bills on time...
...But the Moscow talks, which led to the formation of a Soviet-Nicaraguan inter-governmental commission on economic, trade and scientific-technical cooperation, clearly covered a wide range of topics, as did the discussions elsewhere in Eastern Europe and in Cuba...
...tone, the 1969 program declared that the FSLN would "put an end to yankee interference in the internal problems of Nicaragua and practice toward other countries a policy of mutual respect and fraternal collaboration...
...Whatever the content of these exchanges, Sandinista MAY/JUNE 1985 41s ?k Sandinista Foreign Policy ideology clearly remains a heterodox blend of Marxism, nationalism and Christianity...
...110...
...Following the Sandinista victory, the first socialist countries to open embassies in Managua were Cuba, in early August, and Vietnam, in September.* As "proof" of rapid Soviet involvement, some analysts mistakenly assert that the USSR recognized Nicaragua the day after the triumph...
...Of all the economic difficulties that led Nicaragua to seek additional foreign assistance, the most pressing was probably the country's oil shortage, exacerbated by the Mexican cutoff...
...6 2 Another advantage of trade with the CMEA countries is that many trade agreements allow for payment in kind rather than in scarce convertible currency...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985...
...3. Tomds Borge, Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacidn (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p. 2 0 . 4. Comments of Carlos Fonseca, Jos6 Valdivia and Bayardo Arce in Pilar Arias, ed., Nicaragua revolucidn (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), pp.31, 80, 86...
...FSLN Political Secretary Bayardo Arce and Finance Minister JoaquIn Cuadra, was touring Western Europe...
...So have other non-aligned nations such as India, Algeria, Zimbabwe and Syria, which share Nicaragua's realpolitik desire to act as far as possible on principles without alienating a friend...
...7 4 Mexico took up the slack until late 1983, when it was forced to reduce the amount of oil supplied at concessionary rates under the San Jos6 agreement...
...And they have no intention of transplanting economic models developed in other contexts.K In private, Nicaraguan economists report that Eastern European planning advisers have sometimes shown a 'lack of comprehension" about Nicaragua's commitment to maintaining a mixed economy...
...The New York Times, November 16, 1983...
...MARXISM CAME LATE TO NICARAGUA...
...Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos commented favorably on Cuban reconstruction aid during a visit to the Nicaraguan city of Esteli in August 1979...
...The Washington Post, August 16, 1984...
...The founders of the FSLN- Fonseca, Tomas Borge and Silvio Mayorga- had been recruited by the PSN in the 1950s, but it was, as Borge later remarked, "a halfway recruitment...
...Once again, the pattern emerged of socialist and non-aligned countries filling in when other markets or sources of credit and supplies were dosed...
...informal cooperation between the tendencies had existed since 1977 and in the mass insurrection of September 1978 combatants of all three groups fought together in the same trenches...
...Nicaragua's efforts to diversify its foreign relations also necessarily involved seeking relations with economically powerful, anti-imperialist oil producers such as Algeria and Libya...
...Nothing of what was found is capable of changing the balance of forces in Central America.'87 E STIMATES OF THE CURRENT SIZE OF Nicaragua's armed forces range from an official figure of 85,000- of which half are militia- to the Reagan Administration's claim of 1 19,000 (62,000 on active duty and 57,000 in the reserves and militia).88 There are greater discrepancies be- tween administration estimates of Nicaragua's equipment inventories- especially armored forces - and figures published by independent military analysts such as the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (LISS) and the Stock- holm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).89 Numerous recent analyses have also contradicted administration claims that Nicaragua's armed forces are disproportionately stronger than those of its neighbors...
...The mill will allow Nicaragua to refine sugar at a profit and produce by-products such as cattle feed, fuel alcohol and plastics...
...The Washington Post, December 1, 1979...
...Guatemala had 50 helicopters, though not all were operational...
...Many people say a lot of crap ipendejadas] about Fidel," declared Torrijos, "but he doesn't place conditions on aiding other peoples...
...also Peter Clement, "Moscow and Nicaragua: Two Sides of Soviet Policy," Comparative Strategy, Vol...
...If the Nicaraguans had few alternatives to this economic and diplomatic strategy for survival, it also clear that it is an approach which entails serious risks...
...Several early FSLN members trained with the PLO in the late l960s and early 1970s.* One, Patricio Arguello, was killed while participating in a PLO-directed hijacking in Europe in 1970...
...Once in power, it would "accept economic and technical aid from any country, as long as it did not imply politi- cal commitments...
...According to a U.S...
...Relatos de un combatiente, (San Jose: Trejos Hermanos, 1982), pp.2733...
...4 (July-August 1984), p.39...
...1(1983...
...Le Monde (Paris) March 21, 1980 in FBIS-LAM March 26, 1980...
...Military and security advisers from other socialist and radical non-aligned countries have been present in small numbers...
...H. Ortega, 50 aflos, p.203...
...A similar impression was surely made on rural PSN member Gladys Baez (later a Sandinista) who in 1962 "went to the USSR without knowing Managua...
...121...
...But in September 1982, Venezuela suspended its crude shipments to Nicaragua...
...Yugoslavia has offered to set up a research center to increase maize yields...
...On several occasions since 1981, the Sandinistas had insisted on their right as a sovereign nation under attack to acquire these 1950s vintage aircraft...
...In late March 1985, President Daniel Ortega announced that both Brazil and Ecuador had offered to alleviate Nicaragua's "truly critical [oil supply] situation...
...The visit raised a furor on Capitol Hill, and the Senate passed a resolution condemning it...
...And those figures are highly suspect...
...The fact that Ortega's itinerary included stops in France, Spain, Italy, Finland and Sweden was largely overlooked...
...mining and fishing schools...
...7. This early Cuban support, which consisted primarily of military training for a few cadres, is discussed frankly by Borge in Amanecer and in an interview with Julio Sunol, Insurreccion en Nicaragua: La historia no contada (San Jose: Editorial Costa Rica, 1981), pp.48-49...
...The Libyan planes detained in Brazil in April of 1983 were said to carry 'heavy arms, missiles, Czech rifles and some five tons of bombs and grenades...
...1985," Testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, February 28, 1985...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May 1, 1981...
...Nor have the Sandinistas yet employed the Mi24s in combat, since they contain complex electronic equipment which the Nicaraguans have not been trained to use...
...Government Junta member Moises Hassan, Planfling Minister Henry RuIz, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega and Interior Minister Tomas Borge, travelled first to the Soviet Union...
...Given this history, after the July 1979 triumph relations with Israel were never warm...
...Soviet Central Committee spokesman Leonid Zamyatin even had trouble at a press conference recalling whether Nicaraguans spoke Spanish or Portuguese...
...A later report in The Washington Post put the figure for the first quarter of 1984 as high as 60%.76 In October 1984 Mexico and Venezuela announced that they might suspend (rather than just re- duce) oil shipments to all beneficiary countries of the San Jose accord because of payment arrears...
...The GDR provided 15 six-month courses for technicians in 1981 and 40 scholarships to the Leipzig Tropical Agriculture Institute in 1983...
...Le Monde (Paris) March 21, 1980 in FBIS-LAM March 26, 1980...
...As Bayardo Arce later recalled, When the name of Nicaragua was neither known nor mentioned anywhere in the world...
...geological surveys of mines and topographic maps...
...when they were dying of hunger, exploitation, and poverty...
...Of all the economic difficulties that led Nicaragua to seek additional foreign assistance, the most pressing was probably the country's oil shortage, exacerbated by the Mexican cutoff...
...client states such as Honduras and El Salvador, this key provision was unaccepta- ble...
...Yugoslavia has offered to set up a research center to increase maize yields...
...Ibid., p.260...
...government, through the media .ind popul.Ir culture...
...intelligence figures showed only $5 million worth of Soviet-bloc military imports in 1979.92 Imports during late 1979 and the first half of 1980 included Soviet ZPU light anti-aircraft guns, SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, RPG-7 anti-tank grenades and East German trucks...
...Cohn Danby et al., The Military Balance in Central America (Washington: Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1985...
...The value of Nicaraguan exports to the socialist bloc increased from $12.2 million (3% of total exports) in 1980 to $31.8 million (6%) in 1981...
...They have trained cinematographers, circus artists and communications workers, and petroleum, fisheries and textile technicians...
...Arturo Cruz, then director of the Central Bank, appeared unconcerned about them...
...they included aid in mining, mineral exploration, food production, port construction and hydroelectric development and the creation of joint commercial enterprises...
...the weight of Cuban shipments was over 600,000 pounds (see Early, "Arms and Politics," pp.34,37...
...cutoff...
...and Soviet Bloc Training of Latin American and Caribbean Students: Considerations in Developing Future U.S...
...52 REPORT ON THE AMERICA5 Sandinista Foreign APolic Sandinista Foreign Policy the Reagan Administration made similarly extravagrant claims, but the number of captured Cuban personnel tallied exactly with official figures issued by the Cuban government...
...U.S...
...For the Nicaraguans, however, the decision to go ahead with the trip reflected a calculation that the low-intensity war would continue and economic sanctions increase whatever the outcome of the vote...
...114...
...A second motive was undoubtedly the FSLN's hope that the socialist camp could place some check on the potential threat posed by the United States...
...El Salvador had 59, Guatemala 30 and Honduras 30, including 12 Israeli-modernized French Super Mysthre fighter-bombers which are roughly equivalent to the Soviet Mig-21s that Nicaragua never received...
...Navy in the Indian Ocean and the arms race in Pakistan...
...American reporters present at the unloading saw only field kitchens from East Germany, and 12,000 tons of fertilizer...
...However, what impressed observers at the Moscow Congress was the Soviets' lack of concern with Central America...
...B Y THIS POINT, WITH GROWING U.S...
...Bulgaria, for example, has had responsibility for agro-industrial development since 1978 in CMEA relations with Mexico...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p.46...
...7 2 The mill will allow Nicaragua to refine sugar at a profit and produce by-products such as cattle feed, fuel alcohol and plastics...
...In 1980 Junta Member Mois6s Hassin, referring to Afghanistan, stated that the presence of military forces of one country in another can "in no way be approved...
...GDR Trucks...
...invasion was imminent...
...Though aid from the Soviet Union and its allies grew significantly after April 1980, it took time to develop bilateral institutions to implement the aid protocols...
...Some Soviet theorists point to the collaboration of the RamIrez PSN with the Sandinistas and its integration into the FSLN in 1981 as factors which strengthen the FSLN's working-class character...
...9 ' Honduras also requested 12 advanced U.S.-made F-5Es and additional Israeli Kfir-C2s...
...For all this, there was no hard currency support, which the Nicaraguans had reportedly requested.69 The socialist countries responded to the devastat- ing May 1982 floods with relief assistance...
...But the FSLN also called for an "independent foreign policy...
...Edward L. King, Out of Step, Out of Line: U.S...
...Navy in the Indian Ocean and the arms race in Pakistan...
...Adrian English, Armed Forces of Latin America (London: Jane's Publishing Company, 1984), p.328...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAM, September 6, 1979...
...The effort to guarantee survival and maintain dignity has led Nicaragua to seek resources elsewhere, whether from Western Europe, Latin America or the socialist bloc and radical non-aligned nations...
...28 (October 1983), p.4b...
...Only in early 1980, as congressional frictions over the Carter Administration's proposed $75 million loan package strained relations with the United States, did Nicaragua first seek more serious aid commitments from the socialist countries...
...The New York Times, March 26, 1985...
...The Financial Times (London), March 10, 1982...
...10 million for the installation of turnkey industrial plants...
...Jacobsen, Soviet Attitudes Towards Aid to and Contacts with Central American Revolutionaries (Washington: Department of State, 1984), p.15...
...Other socialist and non-aligned countries and radical movements to recognize Nicaragua included South Yemen (August 1979), Cambodia and the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic or Polisario Front (September 1979), Albania (November 1979), North Korea (December 1979), Yugoslavia (March 1980), the PLO (July 1980), Poland (August 1980) and Libya (May 1981...
...A nearly identical number--1,240-were attending universities in the United States...
...DOD & DOS, Soviet-Cuban Connection, p.25...
...Managua Television in FBIS-LAM, May 28, 1980...
...Its air force is weak by any standard...
...One U.S...
...Radio Sandino in FBIS-LAM, June 24, 1980...
...THE LIMITS OF FRIENDSHIP 1. Susanne Jonas, "The Nicaraguan Revolution and the Emerging Cold War," in Thomas W. Walker, ed., Nicaragua in Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp...
...and the need to channel 40% of its annual budget to the defense effort...
...4. Le Monde (Paris), March 21, 1980...
...88 There are greater discrepancies between administration estimates of Nicaragua's equipment inventories-especially armored forces -and figures published by independent military analysts such as the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).89 Numerous recent analyses have also contradicted administration claims that Nicaragua's armed forces are disproportionately stronger than those of its neighbors...
...The principal reasons cited were Nicaragua's mounting debt and Mexico's own economic crisis, but reports in September 1983 suggested that Mexico was under pressure from the International Monetary Fund not to sell oil to Nicaragua.75 To make matters worse, following the CIA-di- rected attacks on Nicaragua's oil installations that began in September 1983, Exxon temporarily stopped leasing Nicaragua the tankers that had been used to deliver Mexican oil...
...10(1984...
...Projection of Power in Latin America by the Soviet Union and Cuba" (Gainesville, FL: 467th Military Intelligence Detachment, 1980...
...A later report in The Washington Post put the figure for the first quarter of 1984 as high as 60%.76 In October 1984 Mexico and Venezuela announced that they might suspend (rather than just reduce) oil shipments to all beneficiary countries of the San Jos6 accord because of payment arrears...
...FSLN militants saw their participation in struggles against Somoza's allies as a question of self-defense...
...0 The Soviets had delivered 16 of these sophisticated highspeed gunships to Peru the previous year...
...poultry and livestock equipment...
...While it now appears unlikely that it will receive these planes, the move could only have heightened Nicaraguan concern over the regional balance of power...
...Given Nicaragua's acute shortage of foreign exchange, compensation and long-term marketing accords are clearly helpful...
...government study, in 1982 a total of 1,260 Nicaraguans were studying in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe...
...These factors conditioned the close relations between the Sandinistas and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which dated to the late l960s...
...See The White House Digest, July 20, 1983...
...Ant6nio Ortiz Mena, January 30, 1985...
...They have advised agronomists and built and equipped technical schools...
...pharmaceuticals...
...This pattern of balancing tours to socialist bloc countries with visits to Western Europe or Latin America continues to be a conspicuous feature of Nicaraguan policy.34 The substance of the accords with the Soviet bloc was in some respects less impressive than the message they conveyed...
...114...
...in 1984, it offered 124 five-year university scholarships to members of the Sandinista Youth...
...2 60-261...
...Congressional Presentation Document, Security Assistance Programs, FY 1981, p.419...
...3 3 Similar aid and party agreements followed in Bulgaria, East Germany and Czechoslovakia...
...7. Cited in George Black, Triumph of the People: The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua (London: Zed Press, 1981), p.224...
...The Sandinista army journal Patria Libre viewed the agreement as part of the FSLN's effort to diversify its political relations: in accord with the principle of strengthening ties of friendship and cooperation with democratic, progressive and revolutionary parties and movements . .. [we have] strengthened our political relations with various Communist parties of the socialist camp, with which we have signed friendship and cooperation agreements...
...it has played a similar role with Nicaragua.66 Cuba has long experience as a sugar producer...
...Like numerous other Third World visitors to Moscow, Fonseca viewed the Soviet Union through the prism of someone with little other travel experience, from an impoverished country ruled by a U.S.-supported, right-wing dictatorship...
...Estimates claimed that Panamanian deliveries weighed between one-quarter and one-half million pounds...
...M UCH OF NICARAGUA'S SOCIALIST country trade is accompanied by technical aid and training packages which would greatly increase the cost of comparable items from other trading partners...
...Author's interview with former State Department official, April 1, 1985...
...effort to block multilateral credits and to first limit and then totally embargo trade...
...116...
...LIFELINES 1. Carlos Fonseca, Viva Sandino (Managua: Departamento de Propaganda y Educaci6n Politica del FSLN, 1984), p. 7 . 2. Jestis M. Bland6n, Entre Sandino y Fonseca (Managua: DPEP del FSLN, 1981), pp.86, 109...
...aid, Libya granted a $100 million credit which covered cultural and scientific exchanges, reconstruction aid, technical assistance forpetroleum exploration and the creation of joint agricultural enterprises...
...but soon ended in disarray...
...Shortly after the arrival of the Mi-24s, the FDN contras announced they had received surface-to-air missiles, prompting Honduran officials to express concern that these would increase the danger of war between Honduras and Nicaragua...
...intelligence had known from the outset that the Soviet freighter Bakuriani had stopped in Libya before crossing the Atlantic and offloaded the crates which allegedly contained the Migs.' 0 7 By early 1985, reports indicated that Nicaragua had halted construction on the Punta Huete airfield which would supposedly have accommodated the aircraft...
...The Soviets granted 195 university scholarships in 1980 and 320 in 1981 (most for veterinarians and engineers...
...The 2,000 or so Cuban teachers in Nicaragua in early 1984, for example, had their numbers halved by the end of the year because of fears of a Grenada-style invasion...
...Some socialist countries which are not members of the Warsaw Pact, such as Cuba, Vietnam and Yugoslavia, are also members of the Non-Aligned Movement...
...1 5 7 - 1 5 8 . 35...
...Many of the young revolutionaries were irked by what they saw as PSN (and Soviet) illusions that the Somoza dynasty could be replaced by peaceful means...
...There, on March 19, they signed eight cooperation agreements covering trade, aid, cultural, scientific and diplomatic ties, establishing regular commercial flights between the Soviet Union and Nicaragua, and developing contacts between the FSLN and the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU...
...See also Center for International Policy Aid Memo, January 15, 1985...
...Western European and Canadian loans, however, generally grant more generous grace and payment periods and interest rates.6' But even though the balance of trade favors the CMEA countries and indebtedness to them is likely to increase, CMEA loans will probably prove easier to reschedule than credits from other sources...
...117...
...Karen Brutents, The Newly Free Countries in the Seventies (Moscow: Progess Publishers, 1983), pp.260-261...
...But few came to Nicaragua...
...The Miami Herald, August 17, 1979...
...Christian Science Monitor, June 27, 1979...
...North Korea Iron ingots...
...in September 1984, the World Bank suspended dis...
...CMEA Countries* Central America Other Latin America** Western Europe Japan Other TOTAL Imports U.S.A...
...115...
...9, University of New Mexico, 1982, p.37...
...The fact that Ortega's itinerary included stops in France, Spain, Italy, Finland and Sweden was largely overlooked...
...120...
...yet it was precisely then, with Cuba providing little more than occasional sanctuary, that the Sandinistas first posed a serious threat to the Somoza regime...
...Nicaragua sought military aid from the socialist countries for three reasons...
...loan and the Nicaraguans' mid-March visit to the Soviet Union, a pattern has emerged of U.S...
...Latin America Regional Reports Mexico and Central America, March 22, 1985...
...Since the February 1980 tabling of the $75 million U.S...
...Box 1004, Dept...
...On March 12, 38REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38 REPORT ON THE AMERICASshortly after the Senate effectively froze the U.S...
...Give a gift subscription to a friend...
...Source: Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Cooperation MAY/JUNE 1985 $250 million (18,000 tons) in 1984.'0 Nonetheless, the inflow of key items such as tanks and trucks was at "a much-reduced rate" after early 1983.'05 A T THE SAME TIME, NICARAGUA'S ability to build a minimal modern air force has been thwarted by the administration's designation of the Soviet-built Mig-21 fighter as "unacceptable" and its success in building a congressional consensus that the introduction of Migs would justify U.S...
...79 Though Nicaragua now has a more diverse set of suppliers than when it relied solely on Mexico and Venezuela, the Soviet Union today meets more than half of its petroleum needs.8o Yet the situation remains fluid...
...see below) T HE RHYTHM OF NICARAGUA'S TRADE with the socialist and non-aligned countries has been influenced by the broader political pressures on the revolution, including the behavior of the country's other trading partners and creditors...
...Cubans have helped with radio broadcasting, road construction, agricultural equipment, telecommunications, min- ing and public health...
...This stark choice is bound to heighten concerns in Latin America and Western Europe about the conflagration that could be touched off by a U.S...
...Fonseca, the Sandinistas' leading theoretician, recalled that his study of the subject was based on Mao Ze-dong's tract, New Democracy, Lenin's pamphlet, Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, and a few works by Marx and Engels...
...9 (September 1984), pp.49-SI...
...The Washington Post, December 1, 1979...
...One of the first study materials to circulate among FSLN militants in the 1 9 60s was Fonseca's compilation of the thoughts of Sandino...
...Economic Commission for Latin America and the Latin American Economic System (SELA) also attended the Havana CMEA meeting...
...Jonathan Steel, Soviet Power: The Kremlin's Foreign Policy-Brezhnev to Chernenko (New York: Simon and Schuster, MAY/JUNE 1985 55: Uc Sandinista Foreign Policy 1983), p.220...
...The socialist countries responded to the devastating May 1982 floods with relief assistance...
...military retaliation...
...support for the contras and an escalating war, the stage was set for an increase in Nicaragua's military capacity...
...Cri- tics pointed out that no other Central American country was paying its bills on time.74 Mexico took up the slack until late 1983, when it was forced to reduce the amount of oil supplied at concessionary rates under the San Jose agreement...
...Latin America Political Report, August 10, 1979...
...General Accounting Office, U.S...
...3 2 Shortly after the Sandinista victory, Bulgaria sent some doctors and several socialist countries made small donations of relief materials...
...informal cooperation between the tendencies had existed since 1977 and in the mass insurrection of September 1978 combatants of all three groups fought together in the same trenches...
...6 (1984...
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...U.S...
...The Nicaraguans found the condition unacceptable...
...In private, Nicaraguan economists report that Eastern European planning advisers have sometimes shown a "lack of comprehension" about Nicaragua's commitment to maintaining a mixed economy...
...By 1983, it was reported that Israel was supplying arms to the conzras.24 Even so, in 1984, the Sandinistas were still expressing interest in re-establishing relations with Israel.25 *Others fought with Guatemalan guerrillas in the l960s to overthrow a regime which, with Somoza's...
...DOD & DOS, Soviet Cuban Connection, p.25...
...Carlos Nunez's speech calling for Soviet aid and solidarity "appeared to fall on deaf ears.' ' Soviet Premier Brezhnev made no mention of Nicaragua in his Congress speech and did not meet with Nunez, although he did receive delegations from "socialistoriented" Angola and Ethiopia...
...They may feed the perception in the United States and elsewhere that the problems of Central America are rooted in the East-West conflict...
...For the first year of the revolution, military aid from Cuba, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was not very substantial...
...Diario Las Americas (Miami), May 15, 1980...
...See Larry Boyd, "Managua: 'a Costly Impossible Objective,' " Jane's Defence Weekly, vol...
...In several cases, individual CMEA countries have absorbed all or part of the cost of installing equipment, training Nicaraguan personnel and developing production and distribution plans...
...Trade with the socialist countries offers Nicaragua advantages and disadvantages...
...Smirnova, "Formirovaniye partii nikaraguanskoi revolutsii," Voprosi Istorii KPSS (Moscow) no...
...Latin American Economic Panorama (Havana), March 15, 1984...
...In addition to our serious concern over the presence of Russian troops in a small, underdeveloped Third World country we are concerned over the presence of the U.S...
...Another quarter-$50 millionwas earmarked for a series of projects that included a hydroelectric dam on the Rio Grande de Matagalpa...
...Sandinista reminiscences are replete with accusations of PSN perfidy, including charges of colIaboration with the Somozas, failure to support strikes, betrayals of peasant activists and, on one occasion, of Fonseca himself.4 Fonseca travelled to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1957 as the lone Nicaraguan delegate to the World Youth Festival...
...The Washington Post, August 30, 1979...
...Ibid...
...Though it ceased active support for foreign guer- rillas, Cuba remained a place of refuge for those fleeing repression in Nicaragua and elsewhere...
...Latin American and Western European governments which have so far viewed the low-intensity war as a perhaps unfortunate element of the status quo now confront more immediate dangers and urgent choices...
...In the mid-l960s, FSLN sympathizers studying at Moscow's Lumumba University were reported to have clashed frequently with Soviet professors over issues of ideological control and armed struggle...
...SIPRI, World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1984...
...The New York Times, March 30, 1985...
...Sufiol, Insurreccidn, p.138...
...The Soviet Union also loaned two helicopters to Nicaragua in 1981, though these were based at the main Managua airport and used for non-military purposes- transporting foodstuffs, medical rescue missions and carrying visiting foreign dignitaries, including Pope John Paul II...
...See Robert S. Leiken, "The USSR and Central America: Great Expectations Dampened...
...This was the link with the earlier Sandinista movement of the 1920s and 1930s...
...Though world sugar prices are currently at an alltime low, reports indicate that TIMAL had filled orders for its entire output for three years well before production started...
...the authoritative London Economist cited a similar figure-SO--in 1983.118 The administration also claims there are between 30-40 Soviet military advisers...
...Adrian J. English, "Nicaragua Treads Path Between East and West," Jane's Defence Weekly, April 21, 1984, p.610...
...For a discussion of these arrangements in Latin America, see Comisi6n Econ6mica para America Latina, Relaciones eco.nd6micas de America Latina con los pauses miembros del 'Consejo de Asistencia Mdttua Econdmica' (CAME) (Santiago: Estudios e Informes de la CEPAL no...
...In addition, the prejudice against socialist country technology among technicians trained during the Somoza era Socialist Country Main Exports to Nicaragua Soviet Union Equipment and machinery for agriculture, mining, petroleum industry, communications and fisheries...
...Their centrally planned econ- omies often lack the flexibility to meet new foreign orders swiftly, especially small ones...
...Latinamerica Press (Lima), February 5, 1981...
...This delicate balance between the exigencies of survival and the perceptions they create will be of mounting importance in the months to come...
...M ARXISM CAME LATE TO NICARAGUA...
...3 Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos commented favorably on Cuban reconstruction aid during a visit to the Nicaraguan city of EstelI in August 1979...
...Resolutions and Decisions by the General Assembly During the First Part of Its 38th Session (New York: U.N...
...Given Nicaragua's acute shortage of foreign exchange, compensation and long-term marketing accords are clearly helpful...
...Until now, the United States has had at least three basic options in its relations with Nicaragua: a negotiated settlement of bilateral and regional issues...
...MAY/JUNE 1985 53 Austerity means few funds for new building WHILE THE ORTEGA VISIT MAY NOT unlock massive amounts of Soviet-bloc aid, it is now understood that the socialist countries will provide the economic and military resources necessary to ensure the Sandinistas' survival...
...With few credits forthcoming from multilateral lending institutions since 1982 and much of the country's own resources devoted to defense, Nicaragua has been forced to seek resources elsewhere to realize its ambitious development and social investment programs...
...But few came to Nicaragua...
...Latin America Weekly Report, January 15, 1982...
...Nicaragua took Brazil as its model for relations with the Arab countries...
...With a socialist country commitment of increased economic aid and assistance to defeat the contras, the United States may soon face only two options: serious negotiations or direct intervention...
...Virtually the only contact between the two governments prior to the Sandinista victory involved a Cuban medical mission sent to Nicaragua in the aftermath of the Christmas 1972 earthquake...
...Other Soviet and Eastern European sources echo Brutents' concern for building influence, and stress that Latin American and socialist countries share the common goal of lessening U.S...
...effort to block multilateral credits and to first limit and then totally embargo trade...
...AFP (Paris) in FBIS-LAM, August 2, 1979...
...Military imports in 1982, according to Reagan Administration estimates, were some 6,700 metric tons, worth $80 million.'' One independent source reports that the "small quantities" of equipment transferred during 1982 included a further 20 T-54 tanks, 12 BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, six 105mm howitzers and some 48 ZIS-2 37mm antiaircraft guns.'o 2 Even the Kissinger Commission report conceded that the first delivery of "sophisticated Soviet electronic gear" took place only in December 1982, a full year after the CIA had begun active support for the contras.03 In 1983-84, Nicaragua requested increased foreign support to cope with the worsening military situation...
...The principal reasons cited were Nicaragua's mounting debt and Mexico's own economic crisis, but reports in September 1983 suggested that Mexico was under pressure from the International Monetary Fund not to sell oil to Nicaragua...
...DOD and DOS, The Soviet-Cuban Connection, p.25...
...Programa del FSLN," Gacera Sandinisra (Havana), May-June 1978, p.35...
...options will deepen the diplomatic isolation of the United States and increase pressures for negotiations from U.S...
...Also in February, the World Bank suspended its aid program in response to U.S...
...and Michael Gardenswartz, "Has Politics Spoiled the IDB?," Institutional Investor (March 1985), pp.97-100...
...As early as November 1983, Nicaragua offered to send all foreign advisers home and stop acquiring arms if other Central American countries would reciprocate...
...In May and June 1959, opposition bands invaded Nicaragua from the north and south...
...La politica de Reagan hacia Nicaragua," supplement to Barricada, February 20, 1985, p. 1 1 . 82...
...the arms for the palace operation had been donated by former Costa Rican president Jose ("Pepe") Figueres, a long- time enemy of the Somozas...
...6 5 And since trade with CMEA countries tends not to produce hard currency earnings, it does not contribute directly to resolving Nicaragua's pressing debt and balance-ofpayments problems...
...XIII, no...
...The New York Times, July 30, 1981...
...actions and Nicaraguan countermeasures...
...39 But Nicaragua has in fact repeatedly abstained in United Nations votes on the Afghanistan issue...
...James Nelson Goodsell, "Nicaragua," in Richard F. Staar, ed., Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1980 (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1980), p.379...
...2, no...
...J. Drechsler, "La Republica Democratica Alemana y America Latina," in Los palses del CAME y America Latina (Moscow: Editorial Progreso, 1983), p.94...
...Cuba's own relations with the Somozas remained NICARAGUAN Pt2RSI'ECTIVLS Dis information, ii...
...The Brazilian government later released a detailed listing of the planes' cargo, together with the Brazilian Air Force's formal report...
...intervention...
...The S15 million sale included coastal patrol boats, two Alouette helicopters, 45 troop transports, 100 rocket launchers and 7,000 rockets...
...In August 1980, Mexico and Venezuela agreed to supply oil to all five Central American nations, Panama and several Caribbean countries, with onethird of the cost to be financed by soft credits...
...Latin America Commodities Report (London), September 14, 1984...
...See Heinrich-W...
...Many Nicaraguans be- lieved that a U.S...
...In 1977 this tiny proMoscow party divided, with one faction led by Domingo Sanchez ("Chaguitillo") joining the Broad Opposition Front and the other, led by Alvaro RamIrez, with the majority of the membership, backing the FSLN...
...Reagan Administration claims that 50 Sandinistas were training with the PLO in 1969 are highly dubious: the entire FSLN probably did not have that many members then...
...In January, Bulgaria agreed to provide $48.5 million in credits: $10 million for the installation of turnkey industrial plants...
...The Soviets also undertook to build a floating dry dock at the Pacific port of San Juan del Sur...
...Most reports gave the figure of $200 million as the amount of Soviet aid sought by Ortega...
...Jacobsen, Soviet Attitudes Towards Aid to and Contacts with Central American Revolutionaries (Washington: Department of State, 1984), p. 1 5 . 88...
...All this is in addition to a 600-student high school for Nicaraguans opened in 1980...
...Zohra Mechri, "Ventas de armamentos israelIes a los regImenes dictatoriales de America Latina" (unpublished mss...
...Adrian English, Armed Forces of Latin America (London: Jane's Publishing Company, 1984), p. 3 2 8 . 22...
...By ignoring the nationalist heritage of Sandinismo, they condemned themselves to play a secondary role when the anti-dictatorial movement led by the FSLN gathered steam in the 1970s...
...Appendix, Report of the National Bipartisan Com,nission on Central America (Washington: U.S...
...In September an agreement was concluded for Cuba to send 1,200 teachers to work in the Nicaraguan education system and the mass literacy campaign...
...9 8 - 9 9 . 53...
...3.5 million for agricultural materials and medicines...
...The coun34 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Sandinista Foreign Policy I - A I An election Washington would rather ignore tivity by a wide range of opposition political forces, including dissident Liberals and Conservatives...
...IO Unable to acquire the Migs, the Nicaraguans instead looked to obtain Czech-built L39 "Albatross" subsonic trainers, which can be converted for use in counterinsurgency operations...
...Between one-quarter and one-half of the arms were intended for the Costa Rican government, although detailed inventories were often not kept...
...The country devotes a significant percentage of fuel imports to generating electricity, and socialist country efforts to increase Nicaragua's use of renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectric power, have thus also been crucial...
...For U.S...
...EARS BEFORE THE JULY 1979 TRIUMPH of the Nicaraguan revolution, Carlos Fonseca cited a passage from Ch6 Guevara's Guerra de Guerrillas, which pointed to Augusto C6sar Sandino's struggle against the U.S...
...Figures from Banco Central de Nicaragua, 1985...
...Nevertheless, the long-term nature of many of Nicaragua's commercial accords with the CMEA countries has a stabilizing effect: demand is assured for several years, and prices may be set at international market rates at the outset and maintained for the entire period of the agreement, even if world prices de42REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 42 REPORT ON THE AMERICASdine...
...As Bayardo Arce later recalled, When the name of Nicaragua was neither known nor mentioned anywhere in the world...
...Cuba Czechoslovakia Hungary Bulgaria Sugar refining machinery...
...In May 1983 the White House announced that reconnaissance photos proved the Soviet ships Novovolynsk and Polotosk carried heavy military equipment...
...The international political space won by the revolution has allowed Nicaragua to establish closer economic relations with socialist and non-aligned nations as one means of meeting some of its fundamental development needs...
...The founders of the FSLN-Fonseca, Tomis Borge and Silvio Mayorga-had been recruited by the PSN in the 1950s, but it was, as Borge later remarked, "a halfway recruitment...
...yet a respected Conservative British observer saw 'no sign of offensive weaponry or armored vehicles,' only 200 transport vehicles, 80 jeeps, 5 ambulances, Petty commerce employs halt the population 48 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS RSandinista Forei Agn Polic Sandinista Foreign Policy economy and society quite different from Soviet or Cuban models...
...Venezuela, of course, had not provided Nicaragua with oil for two years...
...In August 1980, Mexico and Venezuela agreed to supply oil to all five Central American nations, Panama and several Caribbean countries, with onethird of the cost to be financed by soft credits...
...Havana Radio in FBIS-LAM, November 16, 1979...
...Author's interview with Alejandro Bendana, Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, Managua, February 19, 1985...
...many felt that it might provoke a rapid con- gressional reversal on the contra aid issue...
...FSLN delegations also attended party congresses that year in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and the GDR...
...The Washington Post, July 10, 1982...
...Bulgarian teams have trained statisticians and port workers...
...government study, in 1982 a total of 1,260 Nicaraguans were studying in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe...
...Bulk orders and information: A4...
...Until now, the United States has had at least three basic options in its relations with Nicaragua: a negotiated settlement of bilateral and regional issues...
...It was not Cubans who had influenced Nicaraguans, Fonseca suggested...
...The New York Times, March 24, 1985...
...Nevertheless, the May 1, U.S...
...It heard Fidel Castro hail the Nicaraguan revolution as "the most extraordinary, most significant and most meaningful event of these times...
...In March the State Department pressed U.S...
...See Stephen Early, "Arms and Politics in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, 1948-1981," Research Paper Series No...
...some 20 armed movements attempted to topple the Somoza dynasty...
...buses...
...In 1981, Honduras acquired 16 1970s-vintage British Scorpion tanks with a maximum speed of 48 mph and amphibious capabilities...
...Nothing of what was found is capable of changing the balance of forces in Central America.' 7 ESTIMATES OF THE CURRENT SIZE OF Nicaragua's armed forces range from an official figure of 85,000--of which half are militia-to the Reagan Administration's claim of 119,000 (62,000 on active duty and 57,000 in the reserves and militia...
...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...
...1984...
...12 T HE NUMBER OF FOREIGN ADVISERS IN Nicaragua is a major sticking point in relations with Washington, and is hard to verify indepen- dently...
...But not all Sandinistas shared Fonseca's uncritical view of the Soviet Union...
...Diario Las Americas (Miami), May 15, 1980...
...See The White House Digest, July 20, 1983...
...the U.S...
...The 2,000 or so Cuban teachers in Nicaragua in early 1984, for example, had their numbers halved by the end of the year because of fears of a Grenada-style invasion...
...The Washington Post, July 10 and 29, 1982...
...Havana Radio in FBIS -LAM, November 16, 1979...
...poultry and livestock equipment...
...Similarly, San- dinista mass organizations maintain a much greater degree of independence from party and state struc- tures than the Soviet (or Cuban) models allow.9 Texts by Sandinista leaders such as Carlos Fonseca, Jaime Wheelock and Humberto Ortega are the principal tools of political education for FSLN cadre, even though the FSLN-CPSU accord provides for Nicaraguan purchases of Soviet literature.w TT ICARAGUA'S DIRE ECONOMIC SITUAIN lion is at once similar to and worse than that of its Central American neighbors...
...The counTwo-thirds of Nicaraguans voted for the FSLN REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34try's level of economic development, low even by regional standards, meant that the urban artisans and plantation workers who formed the political base for Communist parties in neighboring Costa Rica, Hon...
...Like them, it faces falling prices for the few agricultural exports which provide most of its dollar earnings, rising prices for manufactured imports...
...This indeed was the case at the 26th CPSU Congress in 1981...
...announcement of an economic embargo mentioned the Moscow visit as evidence that Nicaragua constitutes "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States...
...Brutents noted in 1983 that "the CPSU now has contacts with over 20 revolutionarydemocratic parties in Asia, Africa and Central America," as well as with "organizations which take or can take anti-imperialist and progressive positions on certain specific issues...
...But overall economic planning confronts the reality of a nation with some 60% of the economy in private hands and half its working population employed in the informal sector of petty commerce and services...
...The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...The Washington Post, August 16, 1984...
...See also La Nacidn (San Jos6), May 15, 1981...
...and when their efforts at struggle were coldly ignored in other countries: Cuba was funda- mentally the only safe place in the world where the Sandinista leaders of the people were able to recover from their wounds so as to continue fighting...
...On April 23, 1985, one day before the House of Representatives defeated the administration's $14 million contra "humanitarian" aid package, Ortega announced that he would visit the Soviet Union to seek increased economic aid.'23 The visit raised a furor on Capitol Hill, and the Senate passed a resolution condemning it...
...Coming just a year after the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, at a time REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36New social programs have been thwarted when Cuba was drawing closer to the Soviet Union and reassessing its support for guerrillas in Latin America, the program was a militant assertion of independence...
...Carlos Ndfiez's speech calling for Soviet aid and solidarity "appeared to fall on deaf ears...
...allies...
...military official questioned about the charge at the time replied that there were probably no more than 25 PLO personnel in Nicaragua, only a few of them pilots.'20 The latest White Paper claims only that the PLO is "playing a minor role in the development of the Sandinista armed forces...
...According to Planning Minister Henry Ruiz, Robelo had refused an invitation to join the delegation, opting instead to attend a war veterans' meeting in the United States.47 NALYSTS FROM THE CPSU, SUCH AS Karen Brutents, viewed the party agreement in a different light...
...Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Taylor and Francis Ltd., 1984), p. 2 1 5 . 31...
...But it is the country's geographical position, as Soviet diplomats in Managua pointedly suggest, that constitutes a more serious impediment...
...Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1981...
...In late March 1985, President Daniel Ortega announced that both Brazil and Ecuador had offered to alleviate Nicaragua's "truly critical [oil supply] situation...
...Soviet Central Committee spokesman Leonid Zamyatin even had trouble at a press conference recalling whether Nicaraguans spoke Spanish or Portuguese.7 Third, the party agreement probably contains provisions for annual consultations on questions of ideology and organization...
...Soviet Ambassador German Shliapnikov was quick to point out that "the donation...
...And they have no intention of transplanting economic models developed in other contexts...
...With early inspiration and assistance from the Cubans, the FSLN achieved few political successes and suffered serious military defeats at Bocay in 1963 and Pancasan in 1967.' Indeed, during the pre-1969 "Tricontinental phase" of its foreign policy, when Cuba provided active support to Latin American guerrilla movements, the FSLN was a tiny, poorly equipped band of visionaries...
...However, what impressed observers at the Moscow Congress was the Soviets' lack of concern with Central America...
...I s Unable to acquire the Migs, the Nicaraguans instead looked to obtain Czech-built L39 "Albatross" subsonic trainers, which can be converted for use in counterinsurgency operations...
...The New York Times, March 26, 1985...
...government, through the media and popular culture, of distortions and outright lies designed to misinform and mislead the U.S...
...Latin America Regional Reports Mexico and Central America (London), May 3, 1985...
...Patria Libre (Managua), No...
...4 8 - 4 9 ; see also Fonseca, Obras vol...
...Sufiol, Insurreccirn, p.183...
...The Economist (London), October 29, 1983...
...The New York Times, July 20, 1980...
...Yuri Koroliov, "Nicaragua: la experiencia del periodo de transici6n," Amirica Latina (Moscow) no...
...The GDR provided 15 six-month courses for technicians in 1981 and 40 scholarships to the Leipzig Tropical Agriculture Institute in 1983...
...The relationship with Israel was complicated by specific factors...
...1 (Managua: Ediciones Contemporaneas, 1983), pp.l43.-l44...
...Compare, for exampte, U.S...
...Socialist country ties may also bring political costs...
...1 (Managua: Nueva Nicaragua, 1982), p.183...
...117...
...Canada continued its wheat shipments and Belgium too helped out with $33,000 for wheat purchases...
...Food processing plants...
...7 9 Though Nicaragua now has a more diverse set of suppliers than when it relied solely on Mexico and Venezuela, the Soviet Union today meets more than half of its petroleum needs...
...Socialist and non-aligned countries quickly stepped in to fill the gap...
...81 (281B...
...El Salvador had 59, Guatemala 30 and Honduras 30, including 12 Israeli-modernized French Super Mys- tere fighter-bombers which are roughly equivalent to the Soviet Mig-21s that Nicaragua never received...
...In November 1981, its army stood at an estimated 25,000--larger than the army of Honduras but several thousand less than that of El Salvador...
...It was not Cubans who had influenced Nicaraguans, Fonseca suggested...
...Fifteen hundred Nicaraguan health workers also received training under a 1980 tripartite agreement- renewed in 1982- between Nicaragua, Cuba and the Pan- American Health Organization (PAHO...
...Boyd, "Managua," p.378...
...Ibid., p.45...
...the contra war, and more...
...The New York Times, December 25, 1984...
...These young Nicaraguans' acquaintance with Marxism was superficial, in part because Marxist literature was hard to come by in the Somozas' Nicaragua...
...One U.S...
...The Financial Times, December 15, 1981...
...Karen Brutents, The Newly Free Countries in the Seventies (Moscow: Progess Publishers, 1983), pp...
...Like them, it faces falling prices for the few agricultural exports which provide most of its dollar earnings, rising prices for manufactured imports, mounting energy bills, traditional dependence on a small number of markets, a huge debt exacerbated by high interest rates and a chronic balance-of-payments problem...
...The Nicaraguans found the ricio Arguiello, was killed while participating in a PLO-directed hijacking in Europe in 1970...
...intelligence reports placed the number of Cuban military advisers in the "dozens...
...Department of State, Cuba's Renewed Support for Violence in the Hemisphere (Washington: DOS, 1981), pp.15-16...
...Zafar Iman, "Soviet Treaties with Third World Countries," Soviet Studies vol...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May 3, 1985...
...Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 4 0 . 104...
...a 400-bed hospital in Managua...
...The message conveyed by the Ortega trip is that the socialist countries are willing to take the necessary steps to foreclose the success of the second option...
...Programa histdrico del FSLN (Managua: DPEP del FSLN, 1984 [orig.1969]), pp.34-35...
...The Czechs and North Koreans, as well as various Latin American and Western countries, sent additional relief aid...
...In February, Washington suspended credits for wheat purchases...
...support for the contras and an escalating war, the stage was set for an increase in Nicaragua's military capacity...
...Goldblat and Millan, "Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict...
...The embargo reflects two Reagan Administration goals: to further strangle the Nicaraguan economy by removing one of its few sources of dollars and to bring about a greater dependence on the Soviet Union in order to justify further U.S...
...Department of State, Cuba's Renewed Support for Violence in the Hemisphere (Washington: DOS, 1981), pp.15-16...
...The accusations turned out to be no more than a further effort to heighten tensions...
...Sunol, Insurreccion, p.138...
...Immediately after the war, Cuba began to provide relief assistance worth approximately $10 million and sent Nicaragua sorely needed health teamsmuch the same kind of aid it had earlier provided to *The term "socialist countries" is used here to refer to full members of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), as well as other countries which consider themselves socialist such as Yugos- lavia, North Korea, China and Albania...
...113...
...The New York Times, July 21, 1983...
...Opposition figures linked to the Conservative and Independent Liberal parties did not embrace any form of Sandinista ideology and after the abortive armed uprisings of the late 1950s and early 1960s returned to traditional methods of struggle...
...Gotdblat and Millan, 'Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict," p.522...
...Colin Danby et al., The Military Balance in Central America (Washington: Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1985...
...In mid-1980, U.S...
...As late as December 1980, Ruiz complained that "the [Bulgarian] agreements have not been put into effect partly because of the slowness with which we have tried to implement '38 T HE MARCH 1980 MOSCOW VISIT SUGgested that the socialist countries would be one element of the Sandinistas' effort to diversify economic relations, but it did not alter Nicaragua's po1MAY/JUNE l95 39 Agriculture has been a key contra target shortly after the Senate effectively froze the U.S...
...A. Kiva, "Socialist-Oriented Countries: Some Development Problems," Inrernational Affairs (Moscow) No...
...public and congressional opinion, especially in the absence of creative policy alternatives in Congress...
...Ibid., p.22l...
...English, Armed Forces, p.330...
...On July 26, the anniversary of the Moncada uprising that started the Cuban revolution and just one week after the Sandinista victory, a high-level Nicaraguan delegation attended celebrations in Holguin...
...Like numerous other Third World visitors to Moscow, Fonseca viewed the Soviet Union through the prism of someone with little other travel experience, from an impoverished country ruled by a U.S.-supported, right-wing dictatorship...
...A few years later, the Israelis returned the favor, selling Somoza 45 Staghound armored cars, 10 Sherman tanks and various armored personnel carriers, which gave Nicaragua the strongest armored force in Central America.2 After 1966, Israel signed a series of military aid agreements with Somoza's sons.22 In the last years of the Somoza dictatorship, Israel had supplied almost all of the war materiel used to fight the Sandinistas...
...The Chaparral group enjoyed some Cuban support in the form of arms, advice and logistical aid, as well as the backing of Honduran President Ram6n Villeda Morales-although not of his armed forces...
...Give a gift subscription to a friend...
...The Miami Herald, May 11, 1982...
...Jacobsen, "The Defence Department's White Paper on Central America, Feb...
...see below) T HE RHYTHM OF NICARAGUA'S TRADE with the socialist and non-aligned countries has been influenced by the broader political pressures on the revolution, including the behavior of the country's other trading partners and creditors...
...LIFELINES 1. Carlos Fonseca, Viva Sandino (Managua: Departarnento de Propaganda y Educacion PolItica del FSLN, 1984), p.7...
...Thomas P. Anderson, "Nicaragua," in Richard F. Staar, ed., Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1984 (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1984), pp...
...Combined Honduran and Nicaraguan forces annihi- lated the group at El Chaparral...
...Data from Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Cooperation...
...government sources revealed a similarly modest presence of foreign military advisers in Nicaragua...
...The Soviet Union donated 20,000 metric tons of wheat, and Bulgaria 10,000 tons, to make up for the U.S...
...For the Soviet Union and its allies this is a relatively low-cost strategy which promises political dividends in an increasingly nationalistic hemisphere...
...supple- ment to Barricada, February 20, 1985...
...Uno Mas Uno (Mexico), October 3, 1983...
...The Washington Post, July 14, 1982...
...1 Despite three requests from the FSLN in 1979 for further arms shipments, the Cubans refused on each occasion, reportedly stating that, "the best help we could give you is not to help you at all...
...cutoff...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3. 1985...
...Zafar Iman, "Soviet Treaties with Third World Countries," Soviet Studies vol...
...Above all, they were surely intended to send a message to Washington about the level of socialist bloc commitment to Nicaragua...
...Jacobsen, Soviet Attitudes, pp.17-18...
...Mijail Gornov and Yuri Koroliov, "El torbellino centroamericano," America Latina (Moscow) No...
...Military and security advisers from other socialist and radical non-aligned countries have been present in small numbers...
...102...
...Latin America Weekly Report, March 28, 1980...
...in 1984, it offered 124 RSandinista Foreign APolic Sandinista Foreign Policy A pressing need for technology Socialist country training missions offer Nicaragua the range of development aid which virtually all poor Third World nations seek, whatever their political orientation...
...Ecuador's resources minister declared defensively that "Ecuador is a sovereign country that can sell its petroleum freely to whomever offers the best prices and condi- tions...
...Political commentary and analysis, culture, the contra war, and more...
...7 Finally, in April, on the heels of the cancellation of the remaining U.S...
...600 Nicaraguan high school students received scholarships in Cuba...
...Often they grew as a result of specific acts of U.S...
...N ICARAGUA'S TRADE RELATIONS WITH the socialist countries suffer, though, from the absence of previous ties...
...Radio Sandino in FBIS-LAM, October 3. 1984...
...Goldblat and Millan, "Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict," p.522...
...Zohra Mechri, "Ventas de armamentos israelies a los regimenes dictatoriales de Amdrica Latina" (unpublished mss...
...intelligence reports state that, "The overall buildup is primarily defense-oriented, and much of the recent effort has been devoted to improving counterinsurgency capabilities.' ' Even the administration's own figures on the timing of Nicaragua's acquisitions of military equipment indicate that the country has armed itself in response to external threats and attacks...
...But the Moscow talks, which led to the formation of a Soviet-Nicaraguan inter-governmental commission on economic, trade and scientific-technical cooperation, clearly covered a wide range of topics, as did the discussions elsewhere in Eastern Europe and in Cuba...
...when the Nicaraguan people were condemned to genocide...
...The New York Times, September 13, 1983...
...By contrast, Latin American countries (excluding Cuba) accounted for 22% of Nicaragua's foreign credit in 1980 and a full 48% in 1981...
...600 Nicaraguan high school students received scholarships in Cuba...
...Danby et al., Military Balance in Central America, p. 15...
...General Accounting Office, U.S...
...21 (December 1, 1984), p.378...
...In the months following the July 1979 victory, Nicaraguan leaders signalled their intention of pursuing a non-aligned course and opening diplomatic relations with any country that did not place conditions on the relationship...
...But it is the country's geographical position, as Soviet diplomats in Managua pointedly suggest, that constitutes a more serious impediment...
...It is necessarily inserted in an *Iran had earlier provided Nicaragua with limited balance-of-payments support by giving it small quantities of oil which it could sell without accepting delivery...
...FSLN delegations also attended party congresses that year in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and the GDR...
...Nevertheless, the May 1, U.S...
...intelligence suggested that there were only "dozens" of Cuban military and security advisers...
...La Prensa, March 2, 1985...
...This is the context for President Daniel Ortega's April trip to the Soviet Union and seven other socialist countries...
...At the same time, in a conscious effort to diversify international ties, a second high-level Nicaraguan delegation, headed by Junta member Sergio RamIrez...
...The Financial Times, March 31, 1982...
...119...
...A nearly identical number- I ,240- were attending universities in the United States.73 No socialist country has offered more extensive training than Cuba, though even official estimates of the number of Nicaraguans studying there vary widely...
...For U.S...
...The value of Nicaraguan exports to the socialist bloc increased from $12.2 million (3% of total exports) in 1980 to $31.8 million (6%) in 1981...
...Once again, the pattern emerged of socialist and non-aligned countries filling in when other markets or sources of credit and supplies were closed...
...Whatever the content of these exchanges, Sandinista MAY/JUNE 1955 41 Cotton, a precious source of foreign exchange where socialization is limited and the revolutionary process may face a serious threat of reversal...
...Other socialist and non-aligned countries and radical movements to recognize Nicaragua included South Yemen (August 1979), Cambodia and the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic or Polisario Front (September 1979), Albania (November 1979), North Korea (December 1979), Yugoslavia (March 1980), the PLO (July 1980), Poland (August 1980) and Libya (May 1981...
...All sectors of the anti-Somoza alliance, not just the FSLN directorate, recognized that this was a special relationship...
...was a bastion of the U.S.-sponsored CONDECA military pact...
...occupation...
...allies...
...For the Soviet Union and its allies this is a relatively low-cost strat- egy which promises political dividends in an increasingly nationalistic hemisphere...
...This stark choice is bound to heighten concerns in Latin America and Western Europe about the conflagration that could be touched off by a U.S...
...when the Nicaraguan people were condemned to genocide...
...Bulgaria, for example, has had responsibility for agro-industrial development since 1978 in CMEA relations with Mexico...
...In September 1984, Nicaragua offered to sign the draft Contadora Act which would have obliged signatories to remove all foreign military and security personnel...
...Fonseca, the Sandinistas' leading theoretician, recalled that his study of the subject was based on Mao Ze-dong's tract, New De,nocra'v, Lenin's pamphlet, Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, and a few works by Marx and Engels...
...5 million for acquiring industrial machinery...
...Programa hisrorico del FSLN (Managua: DPEP del FSLN, 1984 [orig.1969]), pp.34-35...
...Coming just a year after the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, at a time 36 REPORT ON THE AMERICA5 Reqo ta mo z4 Aome icas Sandinista Foreign Policy poor...
...The Soviets also undertook to build a floating dry dock at the Pacific port of San Juan del Sur...
...The Soviets have not indicated deeper commitment by signing a long-term friendship treaty with Nicaragua, as they have with such countries as India, Iraq, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, South Yemen, Syria and North Korea...
...Marines as an antecedent for the Cuban revolutionary movement of the l950s...
...Half of this amount was a credit for buying agricultural, mining and fishing equipment...
...For both reasons, the size of the Nicaraguan private sectorwhich still accounts for around 60% of GNP, constitutes a natural limit to trade expansion...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985...
...Also in February, the World Bank suspended its aid pro- gram in response to U.S...
...9. Central Intelligence Agency, "Background Article," September 6, 1978, Declassified Documents Reference System, Document no...
...Another quarter-S50 million- was earmarked for a series of projects that included a hydroelectric dam on the Rio Grande de Matagalpa...
...Its leader was the Conservative Pedro JoaquIn Chamorro, later editor of La Prensa, who was assassinated in 1978...
...But in September 1982, Venezuela suspended its crude shipments to Nicaragua...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperaci6n Exteri6r, 1985...
...The Cubans sent equipment to build 6,000 prefabricated houses, to- gether with cement, medicine and 500 metric tons of rice...
...Latin America Regional Reports Mexico and Central America, March 22, 1985...
...Data from Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Cooperation...
...Just as the example of Sandino inspired Cuba's 26th of July Movement, so the overthrow of the Cuban dictator Batista brought hope to opponents of dictators elsewhere in the hemisphere, including Nicaragua...
...The Brazilian government later released a detailed listing of the planes' cargo, together with the Brazilian Air Force's formal report...
...119...
...2 2 In the last years of the Somoza dictatorship, Israel had supplied almost all of the war materiel used to fight the Sandinistas...
...Cuba extended a $50 million loan for sugar industry development in April and donated farming and construction equipment, food and medicines...
...In 1984, though...
...3. Tomas Borge, Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacton (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p.20...
...The original financing came largely from $73.8 million in Cuban credits and additional money from Spain, the GDR, France, Austria, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, the USSR, and the Central American Economic Integration Bank (BCIE).1' Cuban engineers helped with construction...
...Each of these countries had made significant purchases of fighter aircraft in 1979, soon after the Sandinistas came to power...
...166 (Washing- ton: The Wilson Center, 1985...
...Indeed, in 1979 Nicaragua received no credits at all from the socialist bloc...
...First, it faced an immediate security threat after July 1979...
...On arrival, the arms were stored in warehouses by the Costa Rican Security Ministry and later divided between the FSLN and the Costa Rican govern- ment...
...Nicaragua remains surrounded by foreign troops: at the end of 1983 U.S...
...1, p.197...
...China, for example, demanded a diplomatic break with Taiwan, with whom relations had been established under Somoza, in order to establish relations with Nicaragua...
...intelligence suggested that there were only "dozens" of Cuban military and security advisers...
...invasion of Nicaragua...
...Similarly, Sandinista mass organizations maintain a much greater degree of independence from party and state structures than the Soviet (or Cuban) models allow...
...T HE MOST STRIKING FEATURE OF NICAaragua's military buildup is how its rhythm has responded to specific threats and acts of aggression...
...In August 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Nicaragua broke relations...
...AFP (Paris) in FBIS -LAM, August 2, 1979...
...Its leader was the Conservative Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, later editor of La Prensa, who was assassinated in 1978...
...He returned to jail and torture, and later wrote a short book...
...10 (January 1981), pp.3233...
...East German Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer visited Nicaragua in September and in October-November FSLN Directorate member Henry Ruiz travelled briefly to the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, as well as to Algeria and Libya...
...Socialist country loans to finance their exports generally involve grace periods of one to three years, payment periods of two to 12 years and interest rates of 2.5 to 7.0...
...economic and military aggression...
...Another advantage of trade with the CMEA countries is that many trade agreements allow for payment in kind rather than in scarce convertible cur- rency...
...Between one-quarter and one-half of the arms were intended for the Costa Rican government, although detailed inventories were often not kept...
...4 By March 1985, President Ortega gave apre- cise number-786.'5 Reagan Administration estimates, which run into the thousands, are almost certainly grossly exaggerated, both because of its addiction to hyperbole and its criterion of counting as "advisers" any Cuban civilians who have received training in Cuba's military reserves.'6 In Grenada NEcaragua: Loans and Lines of Credit Contracted July 1979-June 1984 (in millions of dollars) IncIudes nter-Americaii Development Bank, World Bank, Central Amcrwan Bink for Economic Inegrauon and others...
...Nicaraguan Perspectives magazine is honest, attractive, professional...
...FSLN, Iremos hacia el sol de la libertad . . . Sandino (Managua: FSLN, 1979), pp.8, 27-29...
...See Robert S. Leiken, "The USSR and Central America: Great Expectations Dampened...
...Latin America Regional Report Mexico and Central America, May 3, 1985...
...fishing boats...
...Third, the theft of Nicaragua's hard currency reserves by fleeing Somocistas made it difficult to contemplate purchasing weapons from Western Europe or Latin America.84 In contrast to Reagan Administration claims that Nicaragua is threatening its neighbors, classified U.S...
...110...
...Junta member Alfonso Robelo, who later turned against the Sandinistas, declared in his Holguin speech that Cuba would have a "preferential place" in the reconstruction effort and that "Cuba and Nicaragua will always be, as they have been, brother peoples.'"' On his return to Managua, Robelo praised "the clarity of Comandante Castro's thought" and described the Moncada anniversary celebration as the "most extraordinary political event in which I have ever participated...
...Soon afterwards, Nicaragua received between 25 and 50 secondhand Soviet tanks from Algeria...
...8 He reportedly advised the Sandinistas to maintain good relations with the private sector and with Washington in order to avoid the economic and political difficulties suffered by Cuba...
...20 (November 24, 1984), p. 9 1 5 . 108...
...106...
...9 (September 1984), pp.49-51...
...The wisdom of Ortega's timing was widely questioned...
...The composition of Nicaragua's imports from the CMEA largely reflects the economic specializations and capabilities of member countries...
...Danby et al., Military Balance in CentralAmerica, p.15...
...Author's interview with Ministry of Foreign Commerce economist, January 11, 1985, Managua...
...Administration estimates of socialist country military aid in these years are $113 million (14,000 metric tons) in 1983 and between $112 and 50S250 million (18,000 tons) in l984.'o Nonetheless, the inflow of key items such as tanks and trucks was at "a much-reduced rate" after early 1983.05 A T THE SAME TIME, NICARAGUA'S ability to build a minimal modern air force has been thwarted by the administration's designation of the Soviet-built Mig-21 fighter as "unacceptable" and its success in building a congressional consensus that the introduction of Migs would justify U.S...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985...
...the theft in 1979 of all but $3.5 million of the country's currency reserves by fleeing Somocistas...
...Radio Sandino (Managua) in FBIS-LAM, September 3, 1983...
...L ARGE NUMBERS OF NICARAGUANS have been granted full scholarships to study in the socialist countries...
...CMEA Countries' Central America OtherLatinAmerica WesternEurope Japan Other TOTAL 162.1 12.2 75.2 0.5 147.7 2.6 40.1 450.4 ( 36%) 3%) ( 17%) ( 0%) ( 33%) ( 3%) ( 9%) (100%) 13.4.7 31.8 70.7 22.1 98.6 57.0 93.3 508.2 ( 27%) ( 6%) ( 14%) ( 4%) ( 19%) ( 11%) ( 18%) (1OO) 90.0 20.5 52.2 25.0 95.1 45.0 77.7 405.5 ( 22%) ( 5%) ( 13%) ( 6%) ( 23%) ( 11%) ( 19%) (100%) 74.9 54.8 33.5 15.9 111.4 65.8 72.5 428.8 ( 17%) ( 13%) ( 8%) ( 4%) ( 26%) ( 15%) ( 17%) (100%) 45.3 22.8 32.9 6.7 138.8 93.5 34.0 374.0 ( 12%) ( 6%) ( 9%) ( 2%) ( 37%) ( 25%) ( 9%) (100%) Imports U.S.A...
...in response, Mexico made a one-time special shipment...
...On the economic front, in November 1981 the United States derailed a $40 million fisheries loan Nicaragua had requested from the Inter-American Development Bank...
...o In late 1984, Nicaragua did obtain between five and 12 Soviet Mi-24 "Hind" helicopters...
...Equipment for textile industry...
...In early 1985, Mexican shipments were halted, a decision which Nicaragua's ambassador there termed "strictly commercial and financial [and without] any political intention...
...Though world sugar prices are currently at an alltime low, reports indicate that TIMAL had filled orders for its entire output for three years well before production started...
...U.S...
...MAY/JUNE 19s5 37 New social programs have been thwarted when Cuba was drawing closer to the Soviet Union and reassessing its support for guerrillas in Latin America, the program was a militant assertion of independence...
...The New York Times...
...LATIN (Buenos Aires) in FBIS-LAM, March 21, 1985...
...Here, the experience of the centrally planned CMEA economies is of limited relevance...
...After Somoza's assassination in 1956, these sporadic attempts grew into an upsurge of acMAY/JUNE 195S 33 BY MARC EDELMAN Lifelines: Nicaragua and the Socialist Countries...
...Latin America Commodities Report (London), September 14, 1984...
...By world standards, prices for CMEA-coun- try manufactures also tend to be favorable...
...government sources revealed a similarly mod- est presence of foreign military advisers in Nicaragua...
...Ill...
...The wisdom of Ortega's timing was widely questioned...
...HE LONG RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN Cuba and the Sandinistas had no parallel when it came to other socialist countries...
...7 8 However, political pressures blocked the first shipment of Ecuadorian crude...
...Nicaragua Information Center P0...
...public and congressional opinion, especially in the absence of creative policy alternatives in Congress...
...These factors conditioned the close relations between the Sandinistas and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which dated to the late 1960s...
...2 6 In fact, relations were not established until October 18 and significant numbers of Soviet Embassy personnel did not begin to arrive until January, 1980.27 In October several Eastern European countries and Mongolia also established relations...
...Immediately after the United States cut 44 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS RSandinista Foreign APolic Sandinista Foreign Policy electric station...
...yet a respected Conservative British observer saw 'no sign of offensive weaponry or armored vehicles,' only 200 transport vehicles, 80 jeeps, 5 ambulances, REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 48and assorted civilian equipment...
...3. The Washington Post, December 1, 1979...
...intervention...
...The heterodox nature of the Sandinista revolution is certainly one limit on the extent of Soviet aid beyond political support in international forums...
...One senior State Department official concerned at the time with Nicaraguan affairs saw the FSLNCPSU accord as "showy rather than substantive" and a clear Sandinista effort to assert independence from the United States.45 The party and aid agreements with the Soviet Union came at a time when pro-U.S...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985...
...4 6 Shortly after the delegation's return from Eastern Europe, he resigned from the governing Junta in a dispute over the number of seats allocated to the Sandinista mass organizations in the Council of State...
...Cuba donated books, construction equipment and fishing boats...
...3.5 million for agricultural materials and medicines...
...An independent report commissioned by the State Department and written by Sovietologist Carl Jacobsen put the matter bluntly: All too many U.S...
...intelligence reports placed the number of Cuban military advisers in the "dozens.' ' The Reagan Administration would later ignore these same figures and claim that 200 Cuban advisers had arrived in Managua by October l979...
...continued low-intensity contra war combined with economic blockade...
...LATIN (Buenos Aires) in FBIS-LAM, March 21 1985...
...In 1937, and again in 1940, those commemorating the anniversary of Sandino's assassination were rounded up by Somoza's police, imprisoned and tortured...
...In March the State Department pressed U.S...
...The L ARGE NUMBERS OF NICARAGUANS have been granted full scholarships to study in the socialist countries...
...Like Nicaragua, he said, "the Soviet Union . . . knows hunger, embargo and armed aggression...
...Though Nicaragua's early trade with the socialist countries grew substantially, it remained a small portion of overall trade...
...J N APRIL AND MAY 1982, NICARAGUA I again looked to the socialist countries for additional aid to meet the growing military threat and soften the effects of U.S...
...20 (November 24, 1984), p.915...
...Latinamerica Press Februrary 14, 1985...
...of distortions and outright lies designed I,' misinform and mislead the U.S...
...Bulgaria offered in 1983 to train up to 5,000 Nicaraguans in technical fields, although it is doubtful that anywhere near that many have actually been accepted...
...U.S...
...Bulgarian teams have trained statisticians and port workers...
...9 In 1981, Honduras acquired 16 1970s-vintage British Scorpion tanks with a maximum speed of 48 mph and amphibious capabilities...
...1(1982), pp.37- 38...
...In August 1958, months before the Cuban lighters marched into Havana and three years before the founding of the FSLN, 68-year old...
...5 (May 1984), p.91...
...Military Policy in Central America (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, 1984...
...client states such as Honduras and El Salvador, this key provision was unacceptable...
...77 Although Mexico expressed willingness in May of this year to resume deliveries of 7,500 barrels per day, Nicaragua encountered difficulties in contracting tankers...
...The New York Times, April 25, 1985...
...U.S...
...5 But not all Sandinistas shared Fonseca's uncritical view of the Soviet Union...
...However, though Ram Irez himself was named deputy foreign minister in 1979 and later ambassador to the GDR, his supporters did not generally achieve prominence in the government or in the much larger FSLN, which by 1984 had an estimated 15,000 members.53 Second, the recognition accorded in the party-toparty pact implies that the FSLN will be invited to major CPSU meetings...
...4 issues $12...
...also Peter Clement, "Moscow and Nicaragua: Two Sides of Soviet Policy," Comparative Strategy, Vol...
...Latin America Weekly Report, March 28, 1980...
...which provided not only a reservoir of military experience through its surviving veterans, but also a set of powerful political symbols and a legitimating ideology with deep roots...
...Half of this amount was a credit for buying agricultural, mining and fishing equipment...
...Political commentary and analysis, culture...
...Consequently relations were- slower to develop and diplomatic contacts were limited...
...Bulgaria offered in 1983 to train up to 5,000 Nicaraguans in technical fields, although it is doubtful that anywhere near that many have actually been accepted...
...The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1985...
...6 ~B~A~ Dis information, n. purposeful dissemination by the U.S...
...Immediately after the United States cut REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 44Nicaragua's sugar quota...
...The threat from the United States has on occasion forced a cutback in socialist country involvement...
...Ibid., March 10, 1982...
...success in blocking Nicaragua's access to multilateral credits, decreases in U.S.-Nicaraguan trade after the near-total cutoff of the U.S...
...While it now appears unlikely that it will receive these planes, the move could only have heightened Nicaraguan concern over the regional balance of power...
...Some recent accounts have charged that Nicaragua "faithfully followed the Cuban and Soviet line on . . . the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...
...Once in power, it would "accept economic and technical aid from any country, as long as it did not imply political commitments...
...figures still occupied prominent posts in the Nicaraguan govern- ment...
...Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1984...
...Ministerio de Comercio Exterior (MICE), Nicaragua en la coyuntura economica mundial 1982 vol...
...Goldblat and Millan, "Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict," p.531...
...Ibid., p.45...
...a cotton experiment station...
...many felt that it might provoke a rapid congressional reversal on the contra aid issue...
...T HE MOST STRIKING FEATURE OF NICAaragua's military buildup is how its rhythm has responded to specific threats and acts of aggression...
...3 These young Nicaraguans' acquaintance with Marxism was superficial, in part because Marxist literature was hard to come by in the Somozas' Nicaragua...
...William Villagra, "Las posiciones polIticas de las corrientes sindicales nicaraguenses," Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (San Jose) no...
...8 5 Even the administration's own figures on the timing of Nicaragua's Petty commerce employs half the population acquisitions of military equipment indicate that the country has armed itself in response to external threats and attacks...
...o9 In late 1984, Nicaragua did obtain between five and 12 Soviet Mi-24 "Hind" helicopters...
...Three weeks after the announcement of the Soviet accord Mexico agreed to a July renewal of shipments equivalent to approximately one-third of Nicaragua's needs...
...XVIII, no...
...Even after Nicaragua was granted observer status in the CMEA in September 1983, no major aid commitments were forthcoming.* At the October 1984 CMEA meeting in Havana, Nicaragua submitted a proposal to expand bilateral and multilateral cooperation, but the meeting ended with no agreement being announced...
...1985...
...The international political space won by the revolution has allowed Nicaragua to establish closer economic rela(ions with socialist and non-aligned nations as one means of meeting some of its fundamental development needs...
...aid, Libya granted a $100 million credit which covered cultural and scientific exchanges, reconstruction aid, technical assistance for'petroleum exploration and the creation of joint agricultural enterprises...
...Danby et al., Military Balance in Central America, p.15...
...or direct intervention...
...3 But Borge's answering speech reportedly disappointed the Soviets by stressing Nicaragua's economic needs rather than condemning the United States over issues such as Afghanistan...
...101...
...122...
...Goldblat and Millan...
...Mexico, Iran and the USSR offered themselves as alternative buyers...
...7 These estimates, however, placed a much greater cash value on the 1981 shipments, claiming they were worth between $39 and $45 million...
...Junta member Alfonso Robelo, who later turned against the Sandinistas, declared in his HolguIn speech that Cuba would have a "prefe- rential place" in the reconstruction effort and that "Cuba and Nicaragua will always be, as they have been, brother peoples...
...Envi6 (Managua: Instituto Historico Centroamericano), No...
...Latin America Regional Report Mexico and Central Ainerica, May 3, 1985...
...In August 1958, months before the Cuban fighters marched into Havana and three years before the founding of the FSLN, 68-year old, white-bearded Ram6n Raudales, a former general in Sandino's army, left his Honduran exile and led an armed band into the jungles of Nicaragua...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...4 Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto remarked a year later that we condemn intervention and interventionism In addition to our serious concern over the presence of Russian troops in a small, under- developed Third World country we are concerned over the presence of the U.S...
...Bulk orders and information: (415)549-1387...
...The authoritative Jane's Defence Weekly places total forces at 100,000...
...With a severe shortage of foreign exchange and an annual oil bill of around S200 million-close to half its export earnings-Nicaragua has experienced frequent fuel shortages and instituted rationing...
...Increasingly, it became clear that Nicaragua's trade pattern would be determined in large part by the availability of bilateral finance and trade credits...
...La Nacidn, May 15, 1981...
...the United States, however, pays a preferential price to Central American sugar producers...
...They embarked on a flurry of diplomatic activity which in one year had doubled the number of countries with which Nicaragua had relations...
...In 1977 this tiny proMoscow party divided, with one faction led by Domingo Sinchez ("Chagiiitillo") joining the Broad Opposition Front and the other, led by Alvaro Ramirez, with the majority of the membership, backing the FSLN...
...The Soviet Union has the largest and most diversified socialist bloc economy...
...invasion was imminent...
...In January 1981, immediately upon assuming of- fice, the Reagan administration announced that it would withhold aid payments from the controversial $75 million loan to Nicaragua because of alleged arms shipments to the Salvadorean guerrillas...
...The authoritative Jane's Defence Weekly places total forces at 100,000...
...American reporters present at the unloading saw only field kitchens from East Germany, and 12,000 tons of fertilizer...
...MAY/JUNE 198545 MAY/JUNE 1985 45e: Ut st...
...A second motive was undoubtedly the FSLN's hope that the socialist camp could place some check on the potential threat posed by the United States...
...only Al- fonso Robelo expressed reservations.46 Shortly after the delegation's return from Eastern Europe, he resigned from the governing Junta in a dispute over the number of seats allocated to the Sandinista mass organizations in the Council of State...
...By March 1984, The New York Times estimated that the Soviets were supplying 25% of Nicaragua's petroleum needs...
...Ecuador's resources minister declared defensively that "Ecuador is a sovereign country that can sell its petroleum freely to whomever offers the best prices and conditions...
...Robert Matthews, "Oil on Troubled Waters," Report on the Americas Vol...
...Castro also praised the wisdom of the United States for refraining from military intervention and for sending post-war relief aid.28 He reportedly advised the Sandinistas to maintain good relations with the private sector and with Washington in order to avoid the economic and political difficulties suffered by Cuba...
...Medical equipment...
...Radio Sandino in FBIS-LAM, October 3, 1984...
...As we have seen, in mid-1980 U.S...
...The pro-Moscow Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN) was founded in 1944 and the first Marxist study circle in the university started only in the mid1950s, under the direction of Carlos Fonseca...
...M UCH OF NICARAGUA'S SOCIALIST country trade is accompanied by technical aid and training packages which would greatly increase the cost of comparable items from other trading partners...
...Some recent accounts have charged that Nicaragua "faithfully followed the Cuban and Soviet line on . . . the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...
...MICE, Nicaragua, p.44...
...Czechoslovakia Equipment for textile industry...
...8. Ibid., pp...
...U.S...
...Resolutions and Decisions by the General Assembly During the First Part of Its 38th Session (New York: U.N...
...The planes used belonged to the Costa Rican company EXACO, and had been contracted by Ed6n Pastora...
...The Washington Post, January 20, 1985...
...Administration estimates of socialist country military aid in these years are $1 13 million (14,000 metric tons) in 1983 and between $112 and Tobacco fields have become a war zone 50 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Rteo4 044 Ue A*fct' Sandmnista Foreign Policy loDacco TIelas nave Decome a war zone cancelling the agreement, but the GDR refused, with party chief Erich Honecker reportedly insisting that "a deal is a deal...
...The Miami Herald, December 8, 1982...
...15=4O-1 87 Nicaragua Information Center P.O...
...duras and El Salvador...
...see also Kai Bird and Max Holland, "Nicaragua: No Friend at the IDB," The Nation, March 2, 1985...
...ibid., April 6, 1984...
...The same conception recurs in the major pretriumph statements of 1978.'9 In a characteristically anti-U.S...
...1979), p.1...
...We also maintain that no partial interpretation-by one side or the other-can help win peace in that region...
...Six years later, in 1954, another armed movement was defeated with the murder of a former soldier of Sandino's, Optaciano Morazin...
...With a severe shortage of foreign exchange and an annual oil bill of around $200 million-close to half its export earnings-Nicaragua has experienced frequent fuel shortages and instituted rationing...
...In the case of an individual assistance project- a factory, a hydroelectric dam, a technical training school- this may not be problematic...
...By August 1981, the FDN contra organization had been founded with U.S...
...Though Nicaragua's early trade with the socialist countries grew substantially, it remained a small portion of overall trade...
...Manufactured between 1948 and 1963, these T-54 and T-55 models have a top speed of 30 mph, and are limited to travel on flat land...
...Nicaragua sought military aid from the socialist countries for three reasons...
...In the cases where cash was paid, the transactions were at world-market prices...
...officials at the time said there was no evidence to substantiate such a claim.' NE OF THE KEY PRINCIPLES ENUNciated in the FSLN's "Historic Program" of 1969 was a vision of non-alignment based on antiimperialism and independence from the great powers...
...Central American Historical Institute, "U.S.-Honduran Relations: A Background Briefing Packet," (Georgetown, 1984...
...October and November saw fresh agreements providing for Cuban assistance in radio broadcasting, agricultural aviation and sugar industry technology...
...In 1948, the elder Somoza had provided 5,000 surplus rifles to the Israeli government during that country's war of independence...
...La Prensa, March 1, 1985...
...4 (July-August 1984), p. 3 9 . 75...
...Five hundred workers for the TIMAL sugar refinery have taken courses in Cuba, and some 150 other technicians receive training there each year...
...and when their efforts at struggle were coldly ignored in other countries: Cuba was fundamentally the only safe place in the world where the Sandinista leaders of the people were able to recover from their wounds so as to continue fighting...
...7 Though aid from the Soviet Union and its allies grew significantly after April 1980, it took time to develop bilateral institutions to implement the aid protocols...
...These "compensation" clauses are essentially barter arrangements whereby Nicaragua trades primary products- such as cotton, coffee or sesame seeds- for socialist and non-aligned country capital goods, manufactured products and oil.6 In other cases, light manufacturing facilities installed in Nicaragua by CMEA countries may be paid for with the products they produce...
...ID AND TRADE FROM SOCIALIST AND non-aligned countries has helped Nicaragua to survive and stave off the full impact of the U.S...
...Canada continued its wheat shipments and Belgium too helped out with $33,000 for wheat purchases...
...The Czechs and North Koreans, as well as various Latin American and Western countries, sent additional relief aid...
...success in blocking Nicaragua's access to multilateral credits, decreases in U.S.-Nicaraguan trade after the near-total cutoff of the U.S...
...Soviet-Cuban Connection, p.24...
...166 (Washington: The Wilson Center, 1985...
...The most dramatic example was Cuba's gift of the ultra-modern TIMAL sugar mill...
...economic blockade and the contra war...
...people about what is really going on in Central America NICARAGUAN PERSPECTIVES takes the 'dis' out of disinformation...
...By ignoring the nationalist heritage of Sandinismo, they condemned themselves to play a secondary role when the anti-dictatorial movement led by the FSLN gathered steam in the 1970s...
...5. Quoted in Selser, Sandino, p.132...
...T HE WILLINGNESS OF SOCIALIST AND non-aligned petroleum producers to guarantee Nicaragua's energy needs has been particularly critical for the country's survival...
...Krumwiede, "Sandinist Democracy: Problems of Institutionalization," in Wolf Grabendorff et al., eds., Political Change in Central America (Boulder: Westview, 1984...
...However, political pressures blocked the first shipment of Ecuadorian crude...
...8 3 T HE UNITED STATES HAS SEIZED UPON other kinds of socialist and non-aligned aid as pretexts for continuing its assault on Nicaragua...
...The New York Times, August 13, 1979...
...LaPrensa, March 1, 1985...
...Soiiet-Cuban Connection, p.25...
...Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1979...
...8. Arias, Relatos, p.78...
...Many of the young revolutionaries were irked by what they saw as PSN (and Soviet) illusions that the Somoza dynasty could be replaced by peaceful means...
...Barricada (Managua), January 7, 1984...
...it has played a similar role with Nicaragua.66 Cuba has long experience as a sugar producer...
...105...
...Ibid., p.75...
...Programs (Washington: GAO, 1984), p.5...
...The Cubans sent equipment to build 6,000 prefabricated houses, together with cement, medicine and 500 metric tons of rice...
...is not a philanthropic gesture, but a logical consequence of comprehension by the Soviet people toward this country...
...Hungary Medical equipment...
...And in March 1985, less than a month before the vote in Congress, the United States prevented the Inter-American Development Bank from acting on a $58 million Nicaraguan loan request...
...Scholarships have been offered for at least 400 university students and 52 fisheries technicians...
...So have other non-aligned nations such as India, Algeria, Zimbabwe and Syria, which share Nicaragua's realpolitik desire to act as far as possible on principles without alienating a friend.40 In 1980 Junta Member Moises Hassan, re- ferring to Afghanistan, stated that the presence of military forces of one country in another can "in no way be approved...
...In October 1984, Sandinista political coordinator Bayardo Arce remarked that there were "less than 500" Cuban military advisers...
...the arms for the palace operation had been donated by former Costa Rican president Jos6 ("Pepe") Figueres, a longtime enemy of the Somozas...
...The New York Times, March 28, 1984...
...MICE, Nicaragua, p.44...
...104 Berkeley, California 94701 MAY/JUNE 1985 35 try's level of economic development, low even by regional standards, meant that the urban artisans and plantation workers who formed the political base for Communist parties in neighboring Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador, were numerically less of a force...
...economic pressures...
...The Cubans probably did play some role at this time- as did Panama and Venezuela- in encouraging unity between the three FSLN tendencies which, having divided in 1975, formally reunited in March 1979.2 However, events themselves were already providing a powerful impetus to unity...
...Appendix, Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (Washington: U.S...
...An additional $16.8 million was set aside for a radio communications system in northeastern Nicaragua and a ground station linked to the Inter-Sputnik system, for easier telephone communications with Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia...
...The Wall Street Journal, (April 3, 1985...
...Robert Matthews, "Oil on Troubled Waters," Report on the Americas Vol...
...With a socialist country commitment of increased economic aid and assistance to defeat the contras, the United States may soon face only two options: serious negotiations or direct intervention...
...9. See William LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua: From the Somozas to the Sandinistas," in Barry Levine, ed., The New Cuban Presence in the Caribbean (Boulder: Westview, 1983), p. 4 4 . 10...
...In August 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Nicaragua broke relations...
...inc!udes $24.6 million in supplier credits from Italian firms...
...4 issues S12...
...David Nolan, The Ideology of the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Coral Gables: University of Miami, 1984), p.117...
...I N APRIL AND MAY 1982, NICARAGUA again looked to the socialist countries for additional aid to meet the growing military threat and soften the effects of U.S...
...a greying veteran of both Sandino's war against the Marines and the Chaparral battle, directed yet another abortive incursion...
...3 (1984), pp...
...Then, in January 1985, Cuba donated the mill outright...
...They may feed the perception in the United States and elsewhere that the problems of Central America are rooted in the East-West conflict...
...CMEACountnes Central America OtherLatinAmerica** Western Europe Japan Other TOTAL 244.0 1.8 300.7 179.2 87.8 28.4 45.3 887.2 ( 2%) ( O%) ( 34%) ( 2Q% ( 10%) ( 3%) ( 5%) (lOO% 262.9 43.7 210.5 304.3 103.0 28.3 4.6.7 999.4 ( 26%) ( 4%) ( 21%) ( 30%) ( 10%) ( 3%) ( 5%) (1(X)%) 147.4 87.4 116.9 244.1 109.L 18.5 52.2 775...
...IN LATE 1981 THE REAGAN ADMINISTRAtion stepped up economic pressure and military threats...
...Uno Mds Uno (Mexico), October 3, 1983...
...2, no...
...may be reinforced if spare parts and maintenance are not readily available, or if equipment compares poorly with similar Western items...
...in September 1984, the World Bank suspended disbursements to Nicaragua...
...The New York Times, March 30, 1985...
...7 Although a 1981 State Department "White Paper" alleged that Cuban military advisers participated in the last months of the insurrection, U.S...
...By world standards, prices for CMEA-country manufactures also tend to be favorable...
...The shipments, with a value of between $8,000 and $12,000 each, were probably worth considerably less that the weapons supplied by Venezuela and Panama...
...In January, Bulgaria agreed to provide $48.5 million in credits...
...The New York Times, March 24, 1985...
...The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1985...
...For all this, there was no hard currency support, which the Nicaraguans had reportedly requested...
...CMEA countries generally prefer to trade with public-sector entities...
...104 Berkeley, California 94701 MAY/JUNE 1985 35 UT OF THE ANTI-DICTATORIAL UPsurge of the 1950s grew a number of organizations-the New Nicaragua Movement, the Nicaraguan Patriotic Youth and the National Liberation Front-all deeply dissatisfied with both the traditional anti-Somoza opposition and the pro-Moscow PSN...
...Many people say a lot of crap [pendejadas] about Fidel," declared Torrijos, "but he doesn't place conditions on aiding other peoples...
...As late as 1984, Jane's Defence Weekly put the figure at approximately 200...
...The Soviet Union donated 20,000 metric tons of wheat, and Bulgaria 10,000 tons, to make up for the U.S...
...LaNacion, May 15, 1981...
...communications equipment...
...And those figures are highly suspect...
...In several cases, individual CMEA countries have absorbed all or part of the cost of installing equipment, training Nicaraguan personnel and developing production and distribution plans...
...In the same way we have strengthened our relations with the Socialist International, with our leaders attending different meetings as observers...
...Some, such as the Chaparral band and Chamorro's Conservative Party group, had assembled in Havana prior to entering Nicaragua...
...103...
...A number of working sessions for the exchange of "experiences" and "impressions" have been reported in the media...
...domination in the Western Hemisphere Nevertheless, Nicaragua ranks relatively low on the scale of Third World countries with which the USSR has political relations...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 52Austerity means few funds for new building fl I HILE THE ORTEGA VISIT MAY NOT VV unlock massive amounts of Soviet-bloc aid, it is now understood that the socialist countries will provide the economic and military resources necessary to ensure the Sandinistas' survival...
...The country devotes a significant percentage of fuel imports to generating electricity, and socialist country efforts to increase Nicaragua's use of renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectric power, have thus also been crucial...
...Socialist and non-aligned countries quickly step- ped in to fill the gap...
...8 After 1969, Cuba's foreign policy toward the region shifted from supporting armed struggle to seeking state-to-state relations...
...Latin America Political Report (London),August 3, 1979...
...For a discussion of these affangements in Latin America, see Comision Economica para America Latina, Relaciones econOmicas de America Latina con los palses miembros del 'Consejo de Asistencia M,tua EconOmica' (CAME) (Santiago: Estudios e Informes de Ia CEPAL no...
...figures for Nicaragua's Soviet-bloc arms imports during 1980 showed only a marginal increase to 850 metric tons, worth between $6 and $7 million...
...After Somoza's assassination in 1956, these sporadic attempts grew into an upsurge of acMAY/JUNE 1985 33efr 04% 4 Sandinista Foreign Policy tivity by a wide range of opposition political forces, including dissident Liberals and Conservatives...
...East German Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer visited Nicaragua in September and in October-November FSLN Directorate member Henry RuIz travelled briefly to the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, as well as to Algeria and Libya.32 Shortly after the Sandinista victory, Bulgaria sent some doctors and several socialist countries made small dona- tions of relief materials...
...During the 1930s Depression, anti-im- perialist impulses had been channeled into Sandino's struggle against U.S...
...In 1948, the elder Somoza had provided 5,000 surplus rifles to the Israeli government during that country's war of independence...
...19%) ( 11%) ( 15%) ( 31%) ( 14%) ( 2%) ( 7%) (100%) 156.7 133.6 l236 241.1 78.4 19.2 54.3 806.9 ( 19%) ( 17%) ( 15%) ( 30%} ( 10%) ( 2%) ( 7) (100%) 158.8 209.0 88.5 11L4 169.4 26.0 26.9 790.0 ( 20%) ( 26%) ( 11%) ( 14%) ( 21%) 1 3%) ( 3%) (100%) TradeDalknce -436.8 -491.2 -370.1 -378.1 -416.0 tincludes Cuba Does not include Cuba Source Nicaraguan Central Bank MAY/JUNE 1985 49 and assorted civilian equipment...
...China nonetheless later became a major purchaser of Nicaraguan cotton...
...Panama City Domestic Service in FBISLAM, November 30, 1979...
...1, p.197...
...banks not to participate in a $130 million loan package being organized by a London-based consortium...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985...
...see also Fonseca, Obras vol...
...Undersecretary of Defense Fred C. Ikl6 declared that aircraft such as the L39 and the Mig-21 "would be a bulwark behind which to attack neighbors...
...By early 1982, numerous U.S...
...5 3 Some Soviet theorists point to the collaboration of the Ramirez PSN with the Sandinistas and its integration into the FSLN in 1981 as factors which strengthen the FSLN's working-class character...
...DOS & DOD, Soviet-Cuban Connection, p.24...
...In December 1959, Heriberto Reyes, a greying veteran of both Sandino's war against the Marines and the Chaparral battle, directed yet another abortive incursion...
...sugar quota in May 1983, and the halt in Mexican oil deliveries when Nicaragua experienced payment problems in late 1984...
...Honduras had 15, 10 of them on loan from the United States...
...Here, the experience of the centrally planned CMEA economies is of limited relevance...
...when their human rights were the concern of no one in the world...
...The increase reflected U.S...
...The relationship with Israel was complicated by specific factors...
...The New York Times, March 20, 1985...
...Just as the example of Sandino inspired Cuba's 26th of July Movement, so the overthrow of the Cuban dictator Batista brought hope to opponents of dictators elsewhere in the hemisphere, including Nicaragua...
...Programs (Washington: GAO, 1984), p. 5 . 74...
...In December 1959, 1-leriberto Reyes...
...See, for example, Bayardo Arce, "Por que nos agrede el imperialismo...
...planned installation of Nicaragua's first steel mill...
...Cuba's own relations with the Somozas remainede z4 Sandinista Foreign Policy poor...
...Subscribe now...
...12, 1982...
...5. Jorge Timossi, "Tres entrevistas: Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega y Luis Carri6n," Casa de las Americas (Havana), No...
...Shortly after the arrival of the Mi-24s, the FDN contras announced they had received surface-to-air missiles, prompting Honduran officials to express concern that these would increase the danger of war between Honduras and Nicaragua...
...intelligence figures showed only $5 million worth of Soviet-bloc military imports in 1979.92 Imports during late 1979 and the first half of 1980 included Soviet ZPU light anti-air- craft guns, SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, RPG-7 anti-tank grenades and East German trucks.93 After signing a purchase agreement for the trucks, the Sandinistas learned from the Cubans that the model they had ordered performed poorly and that spare parts were hard to obtain...
...Libya, earlier a small-scale supplier, now agreed to start providing some $15 million worth of oil, payable in Nicaraguan primary products, such as cotton, sesame seed, coffee and bananas...
...and the need to channel 40% of its annual budget to the defense effort...
...Each of these countries had made significant purchases of fighter aircraft in 1979, soon after the Sandinistas came to power.9 Honduras also requested 12 advanced U.S.-made F-5Es and additional Israeli Kfir-C2s...
...At the March meeting in Moscow, Politburo member Andrei Kirilenko hailed the agreements and called for expanded Soviet-Latin American relations to insure 'independent progress and development...
...IX 7 HAT DO THESE POLITICAL TIES AND VV perceptions mean in practical terms...
...48 In this view, revolutionary democratic parties are those that take anti-imperialist and left political positions, such as the ruling parties in Angola and Mozambique, but differ from traditional communist parties in their organizational structures and more diverse-often middle class-social origins...
...yet it was precisely then, with Cuba providing little more than occasional sanctuary, that the Sandinistas first posed a serious threat to the Somoza regime...
...Bayardo Arce probably exaggerated little when he later remembered that as late as early 1971 the entire FSLN owned only one weapon, a pistol...
...hydroelectric machinery...
...DOD and DOS, The Soviet-Cuban Connection, p.25...
...Education Minister Father Fernando Cardenal commented that while Cuban cooperation in education was "not indispensable," the lack of teachers would deprive some 100,000 Nicaraguan children of schooling...
...Humberto Ortega, 50 anos de lucha sandinisra (Havana: Editorial de las Ciencias Sociales, 1980), p.143...
...encouragement.68 In November, Secretary of State Alexander Haig suggested that the United States would not rule out a direct military intervention against Nicaragua and the National Security Council authorized a $19 million program of political and paramilitary opera- tions...
...According to Brutents, CPSU contacts with these parties "help to promote [their] ideological, political and organizational consolidation and to extend cooperation . . . on the national and international level in the struggle against imperialism and for national independence, peace and social progress...
...By August 1981, the FDN contra orgmization had been founded with U.S...
...military personnel in the region totalled 14,568, with more than 5,000 troops in Honduras for continuing military maneuvers and a further 9,000 in the Panama Canal Zone.t22 N ICARAGUA'S RELATIONS WITH THE socialist and radical non-aligned countries have roots in the Sandinistas' sympathies toward Cuba, which provided crucial shelter and inspiration and limited amounts of arms during the long years of struggle against the Somoza dictatorship...
...2 2 N ICARAGUA'S RELATIONS WITH THE socialist and radical non-aligned countries have roots in the Sandinistas' sympathies toward Cuba, which provided crucial shelter and inspiration and limited amounts of arms during the long years of struggle against the Somoza dictatorship...
...9 Texts by Sandinista leaders such as Carlos Fonseca, Jaime Wheelock and Humberto Ortega are the principal tools of political education for FSLN cadre, even though the FSLN-CPSU accord provides for Nicaraguan purchases of Soviet literature.' N ICARAGUA'S DIRE ECONOMIC SITUAtion is at once similar to and worse than that of its Central American neighbors...
...Jacobsen, Soviet Attitudes, pp.17-18...
...On April 23, 1985, one day before the House of Representatives defeated the administration's $14 million contra "humanitarian" aid package, Ortega announced that he would visit the Soviet Union to seek increased economic aid...
...The accusations turned out to be no more than a further effort to heighten tensions...
...SIPRI, World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1984), p. 2 5 4 . 112...
...In addition, Libya and other Middle Eastern states hostile to the United States (such as South Yemen and Iran) were naturally sympathetic to a country like Nicaragua which had suffered historically at Washington's hands...
...8 6 An independent report commissioned by the State Department and written by Sovietologist Carl Jacobsen put the matter bluntly: All too many U.S...
...A nearby artificial lake will increase the country's electrical-generating capacity...
...The administration soon made it clear that it intended to bracket the modest L39s-whose performance is roughly comparable to the U.S...
...The Miami Herald, August 7, 1981...
...Brazil had developed wideranging commercial ties with Arab nations, especially after 1977, when the Lima-based Arab-Latin American Bank was founded to develop trade between the two groups of countries...
...This compares favorably with the loans contracted with Latin American nations, which charge slightly higher interest and do not usually provide for grace periods...
...Apart from Mexico, where leftist exiles were often received only grudgingly, Cuba really was almost literally "the only safe place in the world" for the Sandinistas...
...The Washington Post, August 24, 1984...
...YEARS BEFORE THE JULY 1979 TRIUMPH of the Nicaraguan revolution, Carlos Fonseca cited a passage from Che Guevara's Guerra de Guerrillas, which pointed to Augusto Cesar Sandino's struggle against the U.S...
...With early inspiration and assistance from the Cubans, the FSLN achieved few political successes and suffered serious military defeats at Bocay in 1963 and Pancasin in 1967.' Indeed, during the pre-1969 "Tricontinental phase" of its foreign policy, when Cuba provided active support to Latin American guerrilla movements, the FSLN was a tiny, poorly equipped band of visionaries...
...Relatos de un combatiente, (San Josd: Trejos Hermanos, 1982), pp.27-33...
...Again, the pattern has been for socialist and non-aligned suppliers to compensate for cutoffs from other sources...
...David Nolan, The Ideology of the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Coral Gables: University of Miami, 1984), p.117...
...Scholarships have been offered for at least 400 university students and 52 fisheries technicians...
...6. Plutarco Hernandez, El FSLN por dentro...
...The Chaparral group enjoyed some Cuban support in the form of arms, advice and logistical aid, as well as the backing of Honduran President Ramon Villeda Morales- although not of his armed forces...
...on April 1 it cancelled the $15 million portion of the loan package that remained undisbursed...
...loan bill by halting all foreign aid appropriations, Nicaragua announced its first major high-level delegation to the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Czechoslovakia...
...By contrast, Latin American countries (excluding Cuba) accounted for 22% of Nicaragua's foreign credit in 1980 and a full 48% in 1981...
...But the eight anti-aircraft batteries sent by Panama to Costa Rica, for example, were valued at $6.4 million...
...Similarly, the Soviets made their first oil shipments to Nicaragua, just after Mexico slowed down its supplies...
...35, no...
...encouragement...
...One U.S...
...107...
...In late 1978, Venezuela, Panama and Cuba began to supply arms both to the FSLN and to Costa Rica, which was threatened by Somoza with invasion after providing bases to the Sandinistas.'3 Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez travelled to Havana in June 1979 seeking assurances that Cuba would not intervene massively in Nicaragua...
...Latin America Regional Reports Mexico and Central America (London), May 3, 1985...
...The New York Times, April 27, 1983...
...The Washingron Post, April 29, 1980...
...Author's interview with senior IDB official, Miami, March 1, 1985...
...The message conveyed by the Ortega trip is that the socialist countries are willing to take the necessary steps to foreclose the success of the second option...
...The increase reflected U.S...
...and $30 million for the construction of a 50-megawatt hydroMAY/JUNE 1985 43efr 0 Ue Sandinista Foreign Policy electric station...
...Often they grew as a result of specific acts of U.S...
...Miguel Acoca, "Why Fear Nicaragua...
...purposetul dissern,n,,tion by the U.S...
...The administration promptly began to express alarm at the threat of a Nicaraguan tank attack against its neighbors, even though its own officials were less concerned...
...The Somozas allowed Nicaragua to be used as a staging area for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and also provided training camps to Cuban exiles from 1962-l975...
...The most dramatic example was Cuba's gift of the ultra-modern TIMAL sugar mill...
...Estimates claimed that Panamanian deliveries weighed between one-quarter and one-half million pounds...
...Bayardo Arce probably exaggerated little when he later remembered that as late as early 1971 the entire FSLN owned only one weapon, a pistol...
...occupation...
...Small numbers of Nicaraguan exiles and FSLN militants published magazines there, is- sued declarations and dreamt of overthrowing the Somozas...
...Small numbers of Nicaraguan exiles and FSLN militants published magazines there, issued declarations and dreamt of overthrowing the Somozas...
...April 27, 1983...
...Six trade agreements and contracts with Bulgaria were worth over $30 million...
...Algeria...
...geological surveys of mines and topographic maps...
...7 3 No socialist country has offered more extensive training than Cuba, though even official estimates of the number of Nicaraguans studying there vary widely...
...It heard Fidel Castro hail the Nicaraguan revolution as "the most extraordinary, most significant and most meaningful event of these times...
...In 1948 Somoza's National Guard crushed an armed uprising against the dictatorship and assassinated veteran Sandinista Juan Gregorio Colindres...
...Only in one reported instance-a GDR agreement of unknown scope-has a CMEA country explicitly offered Nicaragua preferential prices for its goods...
...Military Policy in Central America (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee...
...La Prensa (Managua), March 20, 1980 38...
...Soviet missions have surveyed marine resources and provided health teams and sports coaches...
...For the Nicaraguans, however, the decision to go ahead with the trip reflected a calculation that the low-intensity war would continue and economic sanctions increase whatever the outcome of the vote...
...It was not until 1984 that Nicaragua acquired PT-76 light tanks (30 of them by Reagan Administration estimates) with amphibious capabilities comparable to Honduras' Scorpions, though still only half their speed...
...But Borge's answering speech reportedly disappointed the Soviets by stressing Ni- caragua's economic needs rather than condemning the United States over issues such as Afghanistan.TM' Nicaragua, Borge declared, 'has taken the irrevocable decision to be free and Nicaraguans will go on being masters of our destiny...
...intelligence had known from the outset that the Soviet freighter Bakuriani had stopped in Libya be- fore crossing the Atlantic and offloaded the crates which allegedly contained the Migs.'o7 By early 1985, reports indicated that Nicaragua had halted construction on the Punta Huete airfield which would supposedly have accommodated the aircraft...
...112...
...Its air force is weak by any standard...
...EFE (Madrid) in FBIS-LAM, June 14, 1983...
...Sandinista Foreign Policy A pressing need for technology REPORT ON THE AMERICAS five-year university scholarships to members of the Sandinista Youth...
...Fifteen hundred Nicaraguan health workers also received training under a 1980 tripartite agreement-renewed in 1982-between Nicaragua, Cuba and the PanAmerican Health Organization (PAHO...
...see also Doris Tijerino, Inside the Nicaraguan Revolution, (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1978), pp.64-67...
...The Libyan planes detained in Brazil in April of 1983 were said to carry 'heavy arms, missiles, Czech rifles and some five tons of bombs and grenades...
...banks not to participate in a $130 million loan package being organized by a London-based consortium...
...The Miami Herald, December 8, 1982...
...7. This early Cuban support, which consisted primarily of military training for a few cadres, is discussed frankly by Borge in Amanecer and in an interview with Julio Sufiol, Insurreccidn en Nicaragua: La historia no contada (San Jos6: Editorial Costa Rica, 1981), pp...
...AFP (Paris) in FBIS -LAM, January 9, 1980...
...31 T HE LONG RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN Cuba and the Sandinistas had no parallel when it came to other socialist countries...
...1 (1983...
...One of the first study materials to circulate among FSLN militants in the 1960s was Fonseca's compilation of the thoughts of Sandino...
...At the March meeting in Moscow, Politburo member Andrei Kirilenko hailed the agreements and called for expanded Soviet-Latin American relations to insure "independent progress and development...
...In May and June 1959, opposition bands invaded Nicaragua from the north and south...
...figures for Nicaragua's Soviet-bloc arms imports during 1980 showed only a marginal increase to 850 metric tons, worth between $6 and $7 million...
...The Miami Herald, August 1 and 17, September 13, 1979...
...P. Karaivanova, "La Repdblica Popular de Bulgaria y America Latina," in Los pauses del CAME y America Latina, p.58...
...They are helping to guarantee the existence of a threatened revolutionary experiment and at the same time raising the cost of U.S...
...2 2 4 -26...
...They weigh 32 metric tons each, and so almost certainly Repor on the Americas REPORT ON THE AMERICAS accounted for the bulk of the 900 tons of military de- liveries which the Reagan Administration claimed for the year...
...Cuba Sugar refining machinery...
...Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1981...
...p.378...
...To a lesser degree, the same principle holds true in Western European and Latin American countries that have repeatedly called for peaceful solutions but are also fearful of seeing EastWest conflicts transplanted to Central American soil...
...This was substantially less than the $36.3 million in military deliveries by Washington to its Cen- tral American clients during the same year...
...Christian Science Monitor, June 27, 1979...
...Ministerio de Comercio Exterior (MICE), Nicaragua en la coyuntura econdmica mundial 1982 vol...
...UNTIL SEPTEMBER 1978, FOLLOWING the Sandinista raid on the National Palace, the Cubans apparently did not believe that a revolutionary situation existed in Nicaragua...
...military official questioned about the charge at the time replied that there were probably no more than 25 PLO personnel in Nicaragua, only a few of them pilots.' 2 0 The latest White Paper claims only that the PLO is "playing a minor role in the development of the Sandinista armed forces...
...Six trade agreements and contracts with Bulgaria were worth over $30 million...
...Cubans have helped with radio broadcasting, road construction, agricultural equipment, telecommunications, mining and public health...
...Nor have the Sandinistas yet employed the Mi24s in combat, since they contain complex electronic equipment which the Nicaraguans have not been trained to use...
...For over a decade after Sandino's murder in 1934 at the hands of the U.S.created National Guard, these rebellious yearnings smoldered quietly, stifled by the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Garcia...
...T HE UNITED STATES HAS SEIZED UPON other kinds of socialist and non-aligned aid as pretexts for continuing its assault on Nicaragua...
...Five hundred workers for the TIMAL sugar refinery have taken courses in Cuba, and some 150 other technicians receive training there each year...
...The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985...
...The New York Times, March 20, 1985...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...The Reagan Administration puts the number of East German security advisers at "over 60...
...The Miami Herald, November 18, 1979...
...Finally, Reagan asserted in 1983 that some 50 PLO pilots were present...
...3 Nicaragua, Borge declared, "has taken the irrevocable decision to be free and Nicaraguans will go on being masters of our destiny...
...Author's interview with former State Department official, April 1, 1985...
...Although their early efforts ended in defeat, the disparate opposition forces benefited from a feature of the Nicaraguan situation which made it unique in Latin America...
...In 1980 and 1981, the socialist countries only provided Nicaragua with slightly over $100 million in credits per year...
...other countries in the region such as Jamaica and Guyana...
...pharmaceuticals...
...King, Out of Step...
...cit., pp.73-75...
...Opposition figures linked to the Conservative and Independent Liberal parties did not embrace any form of Sandinista ideology and after the abortive armed uprisings of the late 1950s and early I 960s returned to traditional methods of struggle...
...Nicaraguan government analysts also foresee limits to the expansion of socialist country trade and aid because of the decrease in growth rates in the CMEA countries, whose historical pattern of "extensive growth" based on abundant supplies of labor and raw materials may be ending...
...The Sandinistas are painfully aware of their limited resources for managing even the current, limited state sector...
...Edward L. King, Out of Step, Out of Line: U.S...
...Leslie Gelb, "On Arms for Nicaragua," op-ed, The New York Times, August 29, 1979...
...Televisora Nacional (Panama) in FBIS-LAM, February 4, 1980...
...The approach was not without its problems...
...and Jozef Goldblat and Victor Millan, "The Honduras-Nicaragua Conflict and Prospects for Arms Control in Central America," in SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1984...
...9, University of New Mexico, 1982, p. 3 7 . 14...
...The Washington Post, November 22, 1981...
...DOS & DOD, Soviet-Cuban Connection, p.24...
...To confront these problems, Nicaragua has sought many of the same kinds of commercial relations, aid projects and technical cooperation agreements as other underdeveloped countries...
...supplied A-37 "Dragonfly" widely used in El Salvador-together with the Mig- 21s...
...But Nicaragua has in fact repeatedly abstained in United Nations votes on the Afghanistan issue...
...Six years later, in 1954, another armed movement was defeated with the murder of a former soldier of Sandino's, Optaciano Morazan...
...In May 1983 the White House announced that reconnaissance photos proved the Soviet ships Nov ovolvnsk and Polotosk carried heavy military equipment...
...The threat from the United States has on occasion forced a cutback in socialist country involvement...
...actions and Nicaraguan countermeasures...
...Following the revolutionary victory of July 1979, Nicaragua expanded these ties in an effort to diversify its historic dependence on a few markets and suppliers...
...By 1983, it was reported that Israel was supplying arms to the contras...
...may be reinforced if spare parts and maintenance are not readily available, or if equipment compares poorly with similar Western items...
...For both reasons, the size of the Nicaraguan private sector-which still accounts for around 60% of GNP, constitutes a natural limit to trade expansion...
...In November 1981, its army stood at an estimated 25,000- larger than the army of Honduras but several thousand less than that of El SalMilitary imports in 1982, according to Reagan Administration estimates, were some 6,700 metric tons, worth $80 million.'0' One independent source reports that the "small quantities" of equipment transferred during 1982 included a further 20 T-54 tanks, 12 BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, six 105mm howitzers and some 48 ZIS-2 37mm antiaircraft guns.'o Even the Kissinger Commission report conceded that the first delivery of "sophisticated Soviet electronic gear" took place only in December 1982, a full year after the CIA had begun active support for the conzras.o In 1983-84, Nicaragua requested increased foreign support to cope with the worsening military situation...
...In March 1985, for example, hearings before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs revealed that even the CIA had presented "much lower figures" on Nicaragua's military capability than those published by the administra- tion...
...December 1981 brought Nicaragua's most sophisticated arms deal to date-from France...
...6 (1980), pp...
...On February 21, 1980, the first major technical and economic cooperation accord provided for Cuban aid in the areas of agrarian reform, education, construction, transportation, social welfare and health...
...A ID AND TRADE FROM SOCIALIST AND non-aligned countries has helped Nicaragua to survive and stave off the full impact of the U.S...
...In late 1978, Venezuela, Panama and Cuba began to supply arms both to the FSLN and to Costa Rica, which was threatened by Somoza with invasion after providing bases to the Sandinistas.' 3 Venezuelan President Carlos Andr6s P6rez travelled to Havana in June 1979 seeking assurances that Cuba would not intervene massively in Nicaragua...
...HE MARCH 1980 MOSCOW VISIT SUGgested that the socialist countries would be one element of the Sandinistas' effort to diversify economic relations, but it did not alter Nicaragua's polMAY/JUNE 1985 I II II I II I 39Sandinista Foreign Policy icy of international non-alignment...
...123...
...The New York Times, August 12 and 13, 1979...
...Third, the party agreement probably contains pro- visions for annual consultations on questions of ideology and organization...
...6. Selser, Sandino, p.97...
...First of all, within Nicaragua the Soviets have clearly downgraded the status of the PSN...
...In addition, Libya and other Middle Eastern states hostile to the United States (such as South Yemen and Iran) were naturally sympathetic to a country like Nicaragua which had suffered historically at Washington's hands...
...continued low-intensity contra war combined with economic blockade...
...101...
...Managua Television in FBIS -LAM, May 28, 1980...
...In the mid-1940s the university newspaper El Universitario began to print occasional documents about Sandino, but ceased publication after receiving telephone threats from Somoza Garcia himself...
...The New York Times, April 25, 1985...
...Nicaragua clearly hopes that the specters raised by this limiting of U.S...
...With few credits forthcoming from multilateral lending institutions since 1982 and much of the country's own resources devoted to defense, Nicaragua has been forced to seek resources elsewhere to realize its ambitious development and social investment programs...
...Ibid., p.260...
...56 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS ReSandinort t APolicy Sandinista Foreign Policy 1983), p. 2 2 0 . 57...
...For example, Managua Radio in FBIS-LAM, June 8, 1982 and June 28, 1983...
...49 Other Soviet and Eastern European sources echo Brutents' concern for building influence, and stress that Latin American and socialist countries share the common goal of lessening U.S...
...Latin America Political Report (London),'August 3, 1979...
...claims proved open to question...
...The administration promptly began to express alarm at the threat of a Nicaraguan tank attack against its neighbors, even though its own officials were less concerned...
...Indeed, in 1979 Nicaragua received no credits at all from the socialist bloc...
...8 o Yet the situation remains fluid...
...El Pals Internacional (Madrid), November 12, 1984...
...Nicaragua clearly hopes that the specters raised by this limiting of U.S...
...The Soviets donated a 120-bed hospital in Chinandega and provided physicians to staff it...
...On several occasions since 1981, the Sandinistas had insisted on their right as a sovereign nation under attack to acquire these 1950s vintage aircraft...
...12' Whatever the numbers, the Sandinistas evidently have enough confidence in the self-sufficiency of their military and security forces to be willing to dispense with their foreign advisers...
...Latin American Economic Panorama (Havana), March 15, 1984...
...in Joseph Cirincione, ed., Central America and the Western Alliance (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985) p.155...
...As a result of these problems with Mexican supplies, the USSR made its first oil shipment to Nicaragua...
...Washington Report on the Hemisphere, March 19, 1985...
...James Nelson Goodsell, "Nicaragua," in Richard F. Staar, ed., Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1980 (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1980), p. 3 7 9 . 15...
...56 Soviet Premier Brezhnev made no mention of Nicaragua in his Congress speech and did not meet with Ntifiez, although he did receive delegations from "socialistoriented" Angola and Ethiopia...
...NACLA interview with former State Department official, April 1, 1985...
...Economic Commission for Latin America and the Latin American Economic System (SELA) also attended the Havana CMEA meeting...
...Yet socialist country credits actually fell from $252.9 million in 1982 (46.7% of all credits) to $146.0 million in 1983 (just 35.2...
...The $15 million sale included coastal patrol boats, two Alouette helicopters, 45 troop transports, 100 rocket launchers and 7,000 rockets...
...Ibid., p.75...
...On February 21, 1980, the first major technical and economic cooperation accord provided for Cuban aid in the areas of agrarian reform, education, construction, transportation, social welfare and health...
...A nearby artificial lake will increase the country's electrical-generating capacity...
...Boyd, 'Managua...
...This amounted to 19% of the country's foreign credits in 1980 and just 15% in 1981...
...8 6 -87...
...But overall economic planning confronts the reality of a nation with some 60% of the economy in private hands and half its working population employed in the informal sector of petty commerce and services...
...MAY/JUNE 1985 scheme reflects PAHO's recognition of Cuban achievements in the health field as much as Cuba's commitment to assist Nicaragua...
...or direct intervention...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p.47...
...But the FSLN also called for an "independent foreign policy...
...The embargo reflects two Reagan Administration goals: to further strangle the Nicaraguan economy by removing one of its few sources of dollars and to bring about a greater dependence on the Soviet Union in order to justify further U.S...
...Government Printing Office, 1984), p.40...
...3 83-84...
...0 Carlos Fonseca and several other Sandinistas ended up in Cuba in 1970 after being freed from a Costa Rican prison in exchange for several United Fruit Company executives seized in an FSLN hijacking...
...This amounted to 19% of the country's foreign credits in 1980 and just 15% in 1981...
...First, it faced an immediate security threat after July 1979...
...We are the ones who decide and it's for that reason we are here...
...Increased socialist country aid is likely to erode the restraints imposed on the Reagan Administration by U.S...
...Moscow Radio in FBIS-Soviet Union, March 20, 1980...
...Moscow Radio in FBIS-Soviet Union, March 20, 1980...
...But the eight anti-aircraft batteries sent by Panama to Costa Rica, for example, were valued at $6.4 million...
...I N 1983-1984, NICARAGUA'S TRADE WITH the CMEA countries grew in both absolute and percentage terms...
...Barricada, December 21, 1980...
...Nicaragua was the only Central American nation excluded from the Caribbean Basin Initiative, announced on February 24, 1982...
...Elizabeth Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp.98-99...
...figures still occupied prominent posts in the Nicaraguan government...
...Cuba signed a $64 million cooperation agreement in April and offered help in building a large, modern sugar complex...
...Second, the recognition accorded in the party-toparty pact implies that the FSLN will be invited to major CPSU meetings...
...buses...
...The Cubans suggested Nicaragua: Foreign Trade - 1980-1984 (Millions of Dollars) Exports U.S.A...
...Only rarely do Soviet sources refer to Nicaragua as a state of "socialist orientation," a designation applied to countries engaged in programs of political mobilization and structural reform, but REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40where socialization is limited and the revolutionary process may face a serious threat of reversal.32 Instead, Nicaragua ranks somewhere below those African and Middle Eastern states unambiguously pursuing socialist orientation...
...See Larry Boyd, "Managua: 'a Costly Impossible Objective, " Jane's Defence Weekly, vol...
...2, no...
...when they were dying of hunger, exploitation, and poverty...
...1 (1982), pp.3738...
...DPA (Hamburg) in FBIS-LAM, November 29, 1984...
...supplied A-37 "Dragonfly" widely used in El Salvador-together with the Mig21s...
...N 1983-1984, NICARAGUA'S TRADE WITH the CMEA countries grew in both absolute and percentage terms...
...Reagan Administration estimates, which run into the thousands, are almost certainly grossly exaggerated, both because of its addiction to hyperbole and its criterion of counting as "advisers" any Cuban civilians who have received training in Cuba's military reserves...
...The March 1980 trip to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe produced neither substantial financial aid nor abrupt shifts in Nicaragua's trade pattern...
...Nicaraguan government analysts also foresee limits to the expansion of socialist country trade and aid because of the decrease in growth rates in the CMEA countries, whose historical pattern of "extensive growth" based on abundant supplies of labor and raw materials may be ending.65 And since trade with CMEA countries tends not to produce hard currency earnings, it does not contribute directly to resolving Nicaragua's pressing debt and balance-ofpayments problems...
...35, no...
...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...
...In 1984, Nicaragua had just 12 combat aircraft...
...and assistance for Nicaraguan energy planners...
...But apart from a small trade, health and education agreement with East Germany signed on October 31, 1979, no significant aid was forthcoming...
...Radio Sandino in FBIS-LAM, June 24, 1980...
...According to a U.S...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperaci6n Exteri6r, Managua, 1985...
...1979), p.1...
...In the dark years of struggle, only in Cuba did we find the fraternal solidarity that acted as a stimulant to our determination to fight...
...122...
...economic blockade and the contra war...
...Danby et al., Military Balance in Central America, p. 15...
...Government Junta member Mois6s Hassdn, Planning Minister Henry Ruiz, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega and Interior Minister Tomis Borge, travelled first to the Soviet Union...
...Miguel Acoca, "Why Fear Nicaragua...
...The following October Raudales was killed in combat and his tiny guerrilla band was crushed by the National Guard...
...see also Central America Report (Guatemala City), November 19, 1979...
...2 *Others fought with Guatemalan guerrillas in the 1960s to overthrow a regime which, with Somoza's, was a bastion of the U.S.-sponsored CONDECA military pact...
...Nonaligned countries" refers to members of the NonAligned Movement...
...In the case of an individual assistance project-a factory, a hydroelectric dam, a technical training school-this may not be problematic...
...is not a philanthropic gesture, but a logical consequence of comprehension by the Soviet people to- ward this country...
...that sum is roughly equivalent to Nicaragua's annual petroleum bill...
...Some, such as the Chaparral band and Chamorro's Conservative Party group, had assem- bled in Havana prior to entering Nicaragua...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p.46...
...Increased socialist country aid is likely to erode the restraints imposed on the Reagan Administration by U.S...
...The Somozas allowed Nicaragua to be used as a staging area for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and also provided training camps to Cuban exiles from 1962-1975.' Virtually the only contact between the two governments prior to the Sandinista victory involved a Cuban medical mission sent to Nicaragua in the aftermath of the Christmas 1972 earthquake...
...So did the participants in the 1974 FSLN "Christmas party" action which traded high-ranking Somocista hostages for Sandinista political prisoners, cash and the publication of manifestos...
...in response, Mexico made a one-time special shipment...
...On July 26, the anniversary of the Moncada uprising that started the Cuban revolution and just one week after the Sandinista victory, a high-level Nicaraguan delegation attended celebra- tions in HolguIn...
...The Economist (London), October 29, 1983...
...WHAT DO THESE POLITICAL TIES AND perceptions mean in practical terms...
...Nicaragua took Brazil as its model for relations with the Arab countries...
...They are help- ing to guarantee the existence of a threatened revolutionary experiment and at the same time raising the cost of U.S...
...We also] participated in different meetings of the [Mexican-sponsored] Permanent Conference of Latin American Political Parties (COPPAL), in which our vanguard occupies one of the vice-presidencies...
...that sum is roughly equivalent to Nicaragua's annual petroleum bill...
...Nicaragua continued to uphold non-aligned positions in the United Nations, and again abstainedtogether with China, Zimbabwe and Guyana-on the 1983 Security Council vote on the Soviet downing of Korean Airlines flight 007.43 CERTAINLY THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL of the March 1980 accords was the agreement for "contacts" between the FSLN and the CPSU...
...Immediately after the war, Cuba began to provide relief assistance worth approximately $10 million and sent Nicaragua sorely needed health teams-much the same kind of aid it had earlier provided to *The term "socialist countries" is used here to refer to full members of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), as well as other countries which consider themselves socialist such as Yugoslavia, North Korea, China and Albania...
...1, no...
...pressure...
...and $30 million for the construction of a 50-megawatt hydroMAY/3UNE 1985 43 cline...
...Journal of Commerce (New York), May 28, 1981...
...Honduras had 15, 10 of them on loan from the United States...
...Ibid., p. 2 2 1. 58...
...We are the ones who decide and it's for that reason we are here...
...The value of Nicaragua's imports from the socialist countries grew from less than $2 million (0.1%) in 1980 to $43.7 million (4%) in 1981, largely as a result of $29.4 million in purchases from the GDR...
...The value of Nicaragua's imports from the socialist countries grew from less than $2 million (0.1%) in 1980 to $43.7 million (4%) in 1981, largely as a result of $29.4 million in purchases from the GDR...
...To a lesser degree, the same principle holds true in Western European and Latin American countries that have repeatedly called for peaceful solutions but are also fearful of seeing East- West conflicts transplanted to Central American soil...
...7 Although a 1981 State Department "White Paper" alleged that Cuban military advisers participated in the last months of the insurrection, U.S...
...7 *It should be noted that Mexico has been a CMEA observer since 1975 and that delegations from the U.N...
...The following October Raudales was killed in combat and his tiny guerrilla band was crushed by the National Guard...
...Barricada (Managua), January 7, 1984...
...The northern group included at least two elderly former lieutenants of Sandino, future FSLN founder Fonseca and various Cubans, Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans...
...Since the February 1980 tabling of the $75 million U.S...
...2 o Nicaragua's efforts to diversify its foreign relations also necessarily involved seeking relations with economically powerful, anti-imperialist oil producers such as Algeria and Libya...
...Even U.S...
...December 1981 brought Nicaragua's most sophisticated arms deal to date-from France...
...Department of Defense, Defense Security Assistance Agency, Foreign Military Sales and Military Assistance Facts, September 30, 1983, p.33...
...Three weeks after the announcement of the Soviet accord Mexico agreed to a July renewal of shipments equivalent to approximately one-third of Nicaragua's needs...
...61 Finally, in April, on the heels of the cancellation of the remaining U.S...
...This indeed was the case at the 26th CPSU Congress in 1981...
...This was substantially less than the $36.3 million in military deliveries by Washington to its Central American clients during the same year...
...The New York Times, March 28, 984...
...Includes $24.6 million in supplier credits from Italian firms Source: Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Cooperation...
...The Washington Post, August 12, 1979...
...5. See Randall, Todas, p.222...
...Hugh Lucas, "Pentagon Confusion over 'Nicaraguan MiGs,' 'Janes Defence Weekly...
...Education Minister Father Fernando Cardenal commented that while Cuban cooperation in education was "not indispensable," the lack of teachers would deprive some 100,000 Nicaraguan children of schooling...
...officials at the time said there was no evidence to substantiate such a claim.8 O NE OF THE KEY PRINCIPLES ENUN.- ciated in the FSLN's "Historic Program" of 1969 was a vision of non-alignment based on antiimperialism and independence from the great pow- ers...
...The Wall Street Journal, (April 3, 1985...
...First of all, within Nicaragua the Soviets have clearly downgraded the status of the PSN...
...Latinamerica Press (Lima), February 5, 1981...
...Socialist country technology may be hard to incorporate into an economy long dependent on U.S...
...DOS and DOD, SovietCuban Connection with both IISS, The Military Balance 19841985 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1984), pp.123-124...
...The Washington Post, May 21, 1985...
...For the first year of the revolution, military aid from Cuba, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was not very substantial...
...China nonetheless later became a major purchaser of Nicaraguan cotton...
...intervention...
...La Prensa, March 2, 1985...
...King, Out of Step...
...La Prensa (Managua), March 20, 1980...
...English, Armed Forces, p.330...
...Several early FSLN members trained with the PLO in the late 1960s and early 1970s.* One, Pat-: Ue A.''.' Sandinista Foreign Policy A LTHOUGH NICARAGUA RECOGNIZED the Soviet Union in 1944, diplomats were never exchanged and the relationship had virtually no political or economic significance...
...6 8 In November, Secretary of State Alexander Haig suggested that the United States would not rule out a direct military intervention against Nicaragua and the National Security Council authorized a $19 million program of political and paramilitary operations...
...120...
...white-bearded Ramon Raudales, a former general in Sandinos army, left his Honduran exile and led an armed band into the jungles of Nicaragua...
...117 (November-December 1979), p. 1 9 1 . 6. Inforpress Centroamericana (Guatemala City), November 17, 1979...
...North Korea Iron ingots: planned installation of Nicaragua's first steel mill...
...CMEA foreign trade institutions are unfamiliar...
...Cuba donated books, construction equipment and fishing boats...
...All sectors of the anti-Somoza alliance, not just the FSLN directorate, recognized that this was a special relationship...
...Sandinista reminiscences are replete with accusations of PSN perfidy, including charges of collaboration with the Somozas, failure to support strikes, betrayals of peasant activists and, on one occasion, of Fonseca himself.' Fonseca travelled to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1957 as the lone Nicaraguan delegate to the World Youth Festival...
...B Y THIS POINT, WITH GROWING U.S...
...94 U.S...
...4 By March 1985, President Ortega gave a precise number-786...
...Danby et al., Military Balance in Central America, p.15...
...See Stephen Early, "Arms and Politics in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, 1948-1981," Research Paper Series No...
...Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-LAM), October 16 and November 3, 1979...
...21 (December 1, 1984), p. 3 7 8 . 89...
...0 The Soviets had delivered 16 of these sophisticated highspeed gunships to Peru the previous year...
...5. See Randall, Todas, p.222...
...See The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...The Cubans suggested Nicaragua: Foreign Trade - 1980-1 84 (MiHions of Dollars) E,tports 19CO 1981 19S2 J%3 19M USA...
...claims proved open to question...
...they included aid in mining, mineral exploration, food production, port construc- tion and hydroelectric development and the creation of joint commercial enterprises...
...The politically heterogeneous southern group penetrated the border zone of Olama y Mollejones, but soon ended in disarray...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p.47...
...Following the Sandinista victory, the first socialist countries to open embassies in Managua were Cuba, in early August, and Vietnam, in September.* As "proof" of rapid Soviet involvement, some analysts mistakenly assert that the USSR recognized Nicaragua the day after the triumph.26 In fact, relations were not established until October 18 and significant numbers of Soviet Embassy personnel did not begin to arrive until January, 1980.27 In October several Eastern European countries and Mongolia also established relations...
...LeoGrande, "Cuba and Nicaragua," p.46...
...They have trained cinematographers, circus artists and communications workers, and petroleum, fisheries and textile technicians...
...Lea Guido in Margaret Randall, Todas estamos des54 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 54 REPORT ON THE AMERICASpierras (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), pp.50-SI...
...This delicate balance between the exigencies of survival and the perceptions they create will be of mounting importance in the months to come...
...Robert Matthews, "Oil on Troubled Waters: Venezuelan Policy in the Caribbean," Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Trade with the socialist countries offers Nicaragua advantages and disadvantages...
...The New York Times, July 21, 1983...
...Berrios, "Economic Relations...
...2. William M. LeoGrande, "The United States and the Nicaraguan Revolution," in Walker, op...
...The Soviets donated a 120-bed hospital in Chinandega and provided physicians to staff it...
...The same conception recurs in the major pretriumph statements of 1978.19 In a characteristically anti-U.S...
...6. Plutarco Herndndez, El FSLN por dentro...
...See also La Nacion (San Jose), May 15, 1981...
...Latin America Weekly Report (London), March 28, 1980...
...Manufactured between 1948 and 1963, these T-54 and T-55 models have a top speed of 30 mph, and are limited to travel on flat land...
...Elsewhere in Latin America immigrants introduced elements of the socialist political culture of the European working class...
...BerrIos, "Economic Relations...
...October and November saw fresh agreements providing for Cuban assistance in radio broadcasting, agricultural aviation and sugar industry technology...
...East Germans have given economic planning assistance and trained radio and television technicians, auto mechanics, tailors and teachers...
...Yet as early as November 1982, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega announced that Nicaragua would probably not introduce high-performance combat planes in the foreseeable future.'" Nevertheless, during the November 1984 "Mig week" crisis, the Reagan Administration charged that Soviet ships were about to unload Mig-21s at the port of Corinto...
Vol. 19 • May 1985 • No. 3
