What Went Wrong
Vilas, Carlos M.
ANTONIO WAS WITH ME IN THE MILITIA BACK in 1981 and 1982, when we used those ancient VZ rifles with their devilish bolts. He had taken part in the insurrection in Managua's Monsefior Lezcano...
...The FSLN is relying on the traditional practice of divide-and-conquer politics to preserve its place as the one solid, and effectively majority, party...
...T HERE MAY ALSO HAVE BEEN AN ELEMENT of "getting even''--what is known as "spite voting...
...allies, were advocating a system of limited mass participation via electoral democracy-a system that would support an economic strategy of bland reforms and entrepreneurial leadership, together with a weeding out from the National Guard of the most corrupt repressive elements...
...Under these conditions-aggression, economic crisis, adjustment policy, increasing estrangement between the Sandinista line and the de facto political climate-the trumpeting of the slogan "Everything's Going to be Better," by FSLN hopefuls must have sounded like mockery to many, or rather like "more of the same" after eleven years of Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramirez in power...
...But you and I, we've known each other for ten years...
...What then is left of the Sandinista Revolution...
...Sandinista policies spoke louder than their words...
...UNO's 51 parliamentary seats fall into six broad ideological currents: 13 seats for parties that grew out of the old Conservative Party...
...T HE OUTCOME OF THE ELECTIONS WAS CONditioned in its most fundamental aspects by a decade of counterrevolutionary war that left thousands dead, wounded and crippled, the economic and social infrastructure in ruins, hundreds of thousands of people displaced-drafted into military service, relocated to refugee camps, forced to flee to the cities to escape attack-and basic goods in desperately short supply...
...Rond6n is a brother-in-law of FSLN directorate member Commander Victor Tirado L6pez, and one of the richest cattle ranchers in Chontales...
...His political ascent to primus inter pares in the National Directorate was linked to his role in government, above all as president...
...Why expect anything new from them...
...12 for those that grew out of the old Liberal Party...
...3 3 The correlation of forces that achieved the Sandinista victory made this unfeasible, but a good part of what was accomplished and the way in which it was accomplished during the second half of 1979 was fused into this approach of limited confrontation with the internal and hemispheric established order...
...The phrase has been attributed to Carlos Coronel Kautz, who started out in 1979 as head of the Nicaraguan Fishing Institute, then joined Eddn Pastora's Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE), the Contra group that operated from Costa Rica...
...It is possible that for many the issue wasn't so much the re-election of the president and vice president, as the certainty that this reelection would ensure that everything would remain as it was: the overbearing boss, the parvenu neighbor, the high cost of living, unemployment, the daily suffering...
...On the basis of the adjustment policies in force since June 1988, UNO will try to revive the economy by supporting exports of non-traditional agricultural and industrial products, by stimulating private enterprise, and by attracting fresh, short-term financing and investment capital from abroad...
...T HE BELIEF THAT AN ADJUSTMENT PROgram could meet with popular acquiescence turned out to be a technocratic fantasy that cost the revolution dearly.' 5 Some of the opinion polls taken at the end of 1989 reflected a marked drop in participation in government-sponsored community development programs, which are run by the Sandinista mass organizations...
...One could argue that their rigid vertical organizational structure was appropriate for a party which was in many ways also the state...
...See Instituto Histdrico Centroamericano, "LHacia d6nde vamos...
...4. Broadcast nationwide on Cadena Nacional the evening of Dec...
...And everyone wonders where-between the ingenuous extremes that Sandinismo is an eternal universal power, and that the United States, the Contras and UNO are omnipotent-the future of the revolution lies...
...The accords signed between Sandinista government officials and representatives of Dofia Violeta regarding the transfer of power stipulate that juridical security be given to those families who received urban or rural property from the state before the February 25 elections, "harmonizing their interests with the legitimate rights of those persons whose property was affected negatively...
...By then, the rank and file were already weakened and demobilized...
...Ignacio Fonseca, '"El fierro de los Chamorros' en la era sandinista," La Prensa (Managua), Oct...
...9. Barricada, February 15 and 21, 1989...
...On the bottom-that is among the people-some settling of accounts will undoubtedly come before any attempt at peaceful co-existence...
...Both Daniel Ortega and Violeta Chamorro presented themselves as candidates of peace...
...and more recently, Luis Serra, "Limitada por la guerra, pendiente al futuro: La participaci6n y organizaci6n popular en Nicaragua," Nueva Sociedad, No...
...the boss' sexual harassment...
...There the cotton magnates were awarded a subsidy of one million c6rdobas per manzana of land (1.75 acres)-something they had not actually requested-while the workers' demand for a wage that would cover a minimum supply of eight basic foodstuffs was rejected.' 2 At the time a million c6rdobas amounted to $250...
...What's this, hermano...
...The outlook is not unlike that which Nicaragua faced at the moment the revolution triumphed on July 19,1979...
...This was undertaken to impress intemational public opinion, and to eliminate doubts as to the legitimacy of a Sandinista electoral victory, which was seen as assured...
...See, for example, Marvin Ortega, "Worker's Participation in the Management of the Agro-Enterprises of the APP," Latin American Perspectives, No.45 (Spring 1985...
...in 1989, foreign debt amounted to over $7.5 billion or $2,300 per capita...
...Pressures on the FMLN to make concessions to Cristiani's government will be stepped up, and Cuba's isolation in the region will deepen...
...A poll taken in Managua in October, for example, showed that two-thirds did not participate in activities such as environmental hygiene, vaccinations, or community gardens.' 6 This may have resulted from government policies that used the mass organizations to control popular activity and demands whenever these threatened to go outside state channels...
...And it gave official confirmation that there was no legitimate room in the revolutionary economy for a good part of Sandinismo's social underpinnings...
...It all lent plausibility to the UNO message that linked the penury of the people to the enrichment of government officials...
...Finally, the Sandinistas' decision to run Ortega and Ramirez violated a deep Nicaraguan sentiment against reelection, which grew out of the inveterate electoral practices of Anastasio Somoza and his son...
...He also liked my visits and would challenge my points of view...
...12, 1990...
...25 Over the following weeks, the Sandinista media used the phrase to ridicule the UNO candidate, suggesting that the brand only shows to whom the cattle belongs...
...After the February 1989 Costa del Sol Accords, the Sandinista government let all of the old National Guardsmen out of jail, as well as the Contras who had been convicted of crimes and human rights violations...
...During 1988, milk consumption fell by 50...
...It concluded: "This is the irony of fate...in the government I did not find as many Sandinos or Fonsecas as I did Chamorros...
...Photographs of Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo blessing Dofia Violeta were published profusely in La Prensa, leaving no doubt as to the preferences of the Catholic hierarchy...
...he said...
...There are so few alternatives for dealing with the economic crisis that UNO can be expected to handle matters much in the way the FSLN would have, regardless of mutual attacks, ridicule and invective...
...Rose Spalding ed., The Political Economy of Revolutionary Nicaragua (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987...
...See Barricada and ElNuevo Diario, Oct...
...What do you think about the elections...
...and two for the Central American Integrationist Party (PIAC...
...Already he has been removed from the party leadership, replaced by a triumvirate made up of Commanders Luis Carri6n as coordinator, Bayardo Arce as treasurer, and Henry Ruiz in charge of foreign relations...
...When construction and automotive workers went on strike for higher wages during the first half of 1988, the government's answer was to accuse them of being at the service of the United States and to set the police on them...
...13, 1989...
...Antonio Lacayo is also the first cousin of Commander Luis Carri6n Cruz's wife (Carri6n is a member of the National Directorate), and the first cousin of Sandinista Mariano Fiallos Oyanguren, president of the Supreme Electoral Council...
...A year later, when certain members of the education sector went on strike for the same reason, the usual accusation of being pawns of the United States was leveled at them...
...1988, mimeo...
...In July 1989 one of my children cut himself on a rusty can while swimming in Lake XiloB, and the public health center could not give him a tetanus shot because they had no cotton or alcohol...
...Eleven years after that famous July 19, Nicaragua bears little resemblance to the society envisioned by Carlos Fonseca and the other founders of the FSLN, or by those who led it at the time and still do...
...3 2 Pax Americana reigns once more...
...2 ' These proclamations did not evoke reactions from the politicians of the Right, nor the agencies of the U.S...
...This is unquestionably a victory for the United States...
...This decade of harsh and insecure existence was not the creation of the Sandinistas, but the Sandinista government did administer it...
...But they decided against it, confident that their victory was assured and concerned that it could have been seen as last-minute opportunism...
...I liked to talk to him, or to hear him talk, to hear his version of the progress of the revolution in the micro-world of the barrio...
...For other examples and a discussion of these aspects of the revolution, see Carlos M. Vilas, "Unidad nacional y contradicciones sociales en una economfa mixta: Nicaragua 1979-1984," in Richard Harris and Carlos M. Vilas eds., La revolucidn en Nicaragua: Liberacidn nacional, democracia popular y transformacidn econ6mica (Mexico: Ediciones Era, 1985), and Vilas, Transicidn, ch...
...the lack of textbooks in the schools while novels, declarations, and speeches by the leaders abounded...
...8. Ibid...
...See, for example, the article signed by Ren6 Corea in El Nuevo Diario, Oct...
...This proposal was not accepted by either the Contras or the United States...
...4 & 5; Vilas, "The Mass Organizations in Nicaragua: the current problematic and perspectives for the future," Monthly Review, Vol...
...3 Their leaders believed the former to be a matter of indifference to the population-and in some zones, on the contrary, it could be a positive factor-and that the latter was actually an asset...
...A number of the UNO candidates had in fact been Somoza functionaries, and at least two close advisers to Dofia Violeta were indeed connected to the National Resistance: her son, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Barrios, and her most prominent adviser, Alfredo C6sar...
...To the degree the revolutionary process became ensnarled in its own ambiguities and inability to defend earlier advances, such manifestations became more notorious and reprehensible...
...In recent months the outflow of people has fallen off...
...Not a few population groups joined the Contras in response to aspects of government policy they considered negative-sectors of the peasant and Indian populations of the Atlantic Coast, for example...
...In case anyone doubted that this was the case, President Bush, his secretary of state and the Contra leaders bombarded the population with an unvarying litany of messages and declarations to the effect that as long as there are Sandinistas there will be war...
...9 According to estimates made by officials of the Ministry of Education, the illiteracy rate in Region III (Managua) was 30% among the adult population at the end of 1988...
...2 8 Before we break down in tears and breast-beating, due note should be taken of the fact that despite the many adverse circumstances surrounding the electoral process, 40% of the Nicaraguan people opted in spite of everything to continue on the difficult path of revolution...
...See Carlos M. Vilas, "War and Revolution in Nicaragua...
...2 6 La Prensa later published an editorial which, after reciting the illustrious role of the Chamorros in Nicaragua's history, listed 25 family members who were at the time high-level officials of the Sandinista government...
...What better symbol for a peace proposal...
...Barricada, February 20 and 21, 1989...
...and their program claimed all the country's problems would be solved through foreign assistance once the elections were won and the Contras were demobilized...
...The 60% needed to modify the constitution adds up to 55 votes...
...Not one mention was made of the bombardment of the civilian population by the government air force, nor of the assassination of the leadership of the Jesuit Central American University...
...If, as the Sandinistas claimed, the U.S...
...The Sandinista campaign sought to link UNO to the counterrevolution and to the National Guard of ex-dictator Anastasio Somoza...
...Despite this and other omens, on Monday February 26, the morning after the elections, all Nicaragua was in shock...
...However, under foreseeable pressure from Washington, Violeta Chamorro's government may well be brought around to breaking relations with Cuba...
...See also Josd Manuel Ruiz Marcos' judicious article, "LPor qu6 perdi6 el FSLN?," (ElNuevoDiario, March 6, 1990), and the statements of Commander Bayardo Arce during his visit to Mexico (La Jornada, March 11, 1990...
...10 for Social Christians...
...The level of consciousness and experience in labor rights that workers and peasants enjoy today was unknown ten years ago, in spite of the restrictions which the state tried to place on them in order to win the support of the business community...
...Furthermore, economic policy was couched in rhetoric that rubbed salt in the wounds of those who got the short end of the stick...
...In order to keep the national political front united against the Contras and the United States, the Sandinistas offered broad economic concessions to large private farmers, while attempting to hold back worker and peasant demands...
...One recent and vivid example took place on April 20 of last year, at an assembly of businessmen, peasants and rural workers held by the Agrarian Reform Ministry to promote a policy of concertacidn ("working together...
...The possibility for the revolution to survive this electoral defeat will depend on the solidity and depth of the social and political transformations the revolution wrought...
...In 1989 some 25 informal travel agencies advertised daily in La Prensa and El Nuevo Diario their ground transport service to Guatemala and Mexico-the traditional itinerary for illegal migrants to the United States...
...In 1987 he accepted the amnesty offered by the Sandinista government within the framework of Esquipulas II, and until recently he was a project administrator at the Agrarian Reform Ministry, on whose executive board sat his brothers Ricardo and Manuel...
...3, 1990...
...There were elements of both and more...
...Where the FSLN saw limitations and absurdity, it is possible that a large segment of the population saw merit and virtue...
...Even if UNO maintains its unity and manages to win over the two independent representatives--one each from the Revolutionary Unity Movement (MUR) and the NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16Social Christian Party (PSC)-it will still need two more votes which can only come from the Sandinistas...
...The new government has placed great hopes on the repatriation of the private capital of those Nicaraguans who moved to the United States after 1979.30 Of immediate concern is the agricultural cycle which is soon to begin...
...Nicaraguans, as well as proponents and detractors of the revolution throughout the hemisphere, are still trying to explain why over half the electorate chose to reject the Sandinistas and support an option ostensibly linked to Washington's policy of aggression...
...Joaquin Cuadra Lacayo, chief of the Joint High Command of the army, is a member of one of the most blue-blooded families of Nicaragua...
...Yes, I know," I insisted, "but in the barrio, what do people think...
...It is clearly inadequate for the coming stage...
...T HE ECONOMIC PANORAMA AT THE TIME OF the February elections was the worst in Nicaragua's history, and of course it became the main topic of electoral debate...
...And not only from them, but from the whole pyramid of authority which reaches down and spreads out ever farther as it comes closer to people's daily lives...
...the trade balance showed a deficit of $1.2 billion and the balance of payments was a negative $2 billion...
...But now the murderers are walking the streets...
...Long before the campaign began, Dofia Violeta staked out this turf by promising to end the war and immediately abolish the draft...
...He had taken part in the insurrection in Managua's Monsefior Lezcano barrio and was a point man for the Sandinista Defense Committees...
...2 7 In the same order of ideas, the Sandinista strategy of organizing a rollicking election campaign inspired by the youth-oriented symbolism of the mass media seemed out of key with the mood of many Nicaraguans...
...La Jornada, Feb...
...Tuberculosis and malaria spread widely, and during the first trimester of 1989 infant mortality due to diarrhea was double that of a year earlier...
...Of these, nearly 84% left after 1983...
...He added, "You're one of the few...
...The demobilization of the mass organizations and the gradual drop-off in the level of social participation were noted at the time by Sandinistas and observers, and pointed to as indicators of the weakness of the revolutionary process...
...28, 1989...
...Who's going to win...
...It is probable that the issue will be dealt with case by case, rather than by general objective criteria...
...Barricada, June 18 and 19, 1988...
...Some undoubtedly did so because the hard course was sweetened with not a little honey, but the majority unquestionably did so out of conviction and hope...
...On Dec...
...See El Nuevo Diario, Sept...
...Antonio was a good example of the Sandinista rank and file: combative, quick to protest, well-liked by everyone in the barrio, the first to volunteer for any activity...
...Author's interviews...
...2. However, it should be pointed out at the same time that many of the most prominent names in UNO were once connected with the revolution: Virgilio Godoy was minister of labor from 1979 to the beginning of 1984...
...1986...
...7 (Dec...
...6. See Barricada (Managua), Jan...
...1989...
...To make matters worse, the rich accepted these considerable concessions while always demanding more before they would abandon their antiSandinista stance...
...The party called its candidate el gallo ennavajado (the knife-bearing fighting cock) to portray him as a man of the people (cock fights are a popular sport) and a macho man, superior to his female opponent...
...Agrarian reform will be subject to revision within this framework and it is unquestionably an area in which political confrontations will reach the highest pitch...
...Both sides agreed to set up "forms of compensation for those persons who could be affected," a generic formula which opens the door to all sorts of solutions, including handing over the goods to the old owners in return for some indemnization in cash or in government IOU's...
...Barricada, Dec...
...Nicaragua's new government has made temporizing declarations regarding Cuba that signal a drastic readjustment in relations, but no break...
...3. UNO's main source of financing for the campaign came from the $9 million dollars approved by Congress at the request of the White House...
...5 UNO complained to the Supreme Electoral Council, but it took no action other than to ask the Ministry of VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 1 (JUNE 1990) 1INicaragua Defense almost a week later for an "explanation of the scope and meaning" of the paragraph in question and to express concern that it "restricts the rights and guarantees set forth in our Constitution...
...In 1979 he was by no means as prominent a leader as he later became...
...counter-revolutionary war on the Sandinista strategies of revolutionary transition," in Ralph Miliband et al eds., The Socialist Register 1988 (London: Merlin Press, 1988...
...The revolution will not be blown away, nor will the UNO government be scuttled...
...23, 1990...
...he would usually end up telling me I was too intellectual...
...Antonio, that's what people say who are going to vote for Violeta...
...Everything seems to point to a drop in numbers, at least among those who joined the FSLN not so much out of ideological conviction as for self-advancement...
...He took to demonstrating his Catholic devoutness by attending mass and referring to "the Lord" in his speeches...
...1986...
...2 0 Under these conditions, at the very moment when the Sandinistas' turn to the Right was most evident, referVOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 1 (JUNE 1990) 13Nicaragua ences by the government to its socialist orientation, even democratic socialist, were semantic curiosities that seemed to move very few...
...It was won through great struggle against Somoza, against the ruling circles who joined the revolution, and sometimes against the agencies of the revolutionary state itself...
...In a society in which kinship structures follow class lines-and are sometimes more important than ideology for explaining political processes-the old Conservative Party lineage that runs through both the Sandinistas and the UNO core around Dofia Violeta will serve as a bridge toward mutual understanding, and prevent a hasty rupture, even on the thorny question of the army...
...and demanded that the Contras lay down their weapons by February 5, 1990 at the latest...
...Speech to the crowd outside the Olaf Palme Housing Complex, Managua, Feb...
...and report to the National Assembly on a new adjustment program (Barricada, Feb...
...But so are the very socioeconomic transformations brought on by the revolution (which caused unavoidable dislocations) and not a few errors in economic policy-not so much in the overall macroeconomic context as in their impact at the microeconomic level, in the day-to-day life of the people...
...The FSLN's personal attacks on Dofia Violeta may have only reinforced this feeling...
...He looked older-I did too-and thinner...
...Yes, hermano," he cut in, "but democracy is democracy, and the vote is secret...
...She had no noteworthy political experience nor sought to make it appear as though she did...
...They floated the possibility of rescinding land expropriations under the agrarian reform, and offered renewed guarantees to private property and foreign investment.19 Any references to the nationalizations carried out during the initial phase of the revolution disappeared from the Sandinista media, even from calendars of anniversaries published in the newspapers...
...28, 1990...
...government was responsible for the war, then, UNO reasoned, voting for Washington's choice afforded an infinitely greater possibility for ending it than continuing with a party and a ticket notoriously hostile to the United States...
...War and crisis, in turn, brought about a slowdown of the process of revolutionary change and the reversal of some of the initial measures of strongest popular impact...
...3, 1990...
...24,1990...
...All right, there are all kinds, but who are you going to vote for...
...While it will not eliminate tensions and contradictions, it does offer the possibility of a permanent and friendly dialogue...
...38, No...
...11 for social democrats...
...The changes are considerable and have transformed more than the nations's facade...
...Alfredo Cdsar was president of the Central Bank from 1980 to 1982...
...Moreover, these subsequently chose to return to civilian life, not because of external factors, but as a consequence of changes in government policy and Sandinista political style...
...Real wages fell from an index of 29.2 in February 1988 (1980 = 100) to 6.5 in June 1989 and to 1 by December...
...the illicit enrichment of a Sandinista neighbor...
...Physical rationing of basic commodities, which guaranteed access for everybody, was eliminated in favor of market rationing by making prices affordable only to the richest and plunging peasants into debt...
...That's right Antonio, and how are things going...
...This feeling was reinforced by the inclusion of numerous relatives of Sandinista leaders as candidates for the National Assembly...
...Don't give me this...
...Salvador Mayorga Sacasa, the Sandinista deputy minister for Agrarian Reform and head of the Sandinista "transition team" at the ministry, handed it over to the new minister, his first cousin Roberto Rond6n Sacasa...
...The FSLN alone, on the other hand, does not have the votes to block reforms of the legal code which call for a simple majority of 47 votes...
...The knee-jerk reaction of the Left that points exclusively to external forces (the U.S...
...See, for example, Carlos M. Vilas, Transici6n desde el subdesarrollo, (Caracas: Ediciones Nueva Sociedad, 1989...
...Access to short-term financing and investment capital will obviously be the key to any economic policy...
...7. See CEPAL, "Balance econ6mico preliminar de la economia latinoamericana," (Santiago, Dec...
...The government did not always help to dispel people's fear and insecurity...
...Julio Ricardo, a long-time friend who is no cousin of anyone, commented on the transition: "It was amazing to watch cousins handing power over to cousins...
...27, 1989, and published in Barricada and ElNuevo Diario, Dec...
...It will also contribute to sharpening antagonisms within UNO between the white, foreign-educated gentlemen of Conservative lineage, and their plebeian Socialist, Communist, and Liberal allies who, though mestizo, are better versed in the arts of Creole politicking...
...27, 1990...
...The free and secret ballot became for many voters a means for repudiating specific aspects of the Sandinista administration that were personally irritating: the overbearing bureaucrat...
...Then, large sectors of Nicaragua's elite, along with their liberal U.S...
...5. See, for example, EINuevo Diario (Managua), Dec...
...Like it or not, we all still carry the Chamorro brand...
...Well, you can't tell with these things...
...2 3 El Nuevo Diario, published by her brother-in-law, Xavier Chamorro, ran a series of denigrating cartoons in which Dofia Violeta appeared dressed in a long priest-like gown with the initials "GN" (for the National Guard), laden with grenades and ammunition belts, and wearing an ugly, evil expression...
...If warm relations with the White House showed UNO to be on the side of the mighty, Cardinal Obando's open sympathy for Dofia Violeta lent a spiritual legitimacy to the opposition which, for many Nicaraguans, was much more convincing than the support shown by base communities or liberation theologians for the Sandinistas...
...Knocked out of the state, it is likely that Ortega will return to his former status...
...Facing its own economic problems, Cuba rushed to announce that, since the UNO government did not request a renewal of their economic assistance pact, it would come to an end...
...2 4 She pointed out that no matter what the newspapers claim, all of Nicaragua knows that she is "marked with the Chamorro brand...
...These two high-ranking officers-second and third highest in the army-are at the same time first cousins of Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, Dofia Violeta's son-in-law and her primary political adviser...
...Between 1979 and 1987, 140,066 people emigrated legally...
...26, 1989...
...However, simply mentioning this type of problem more often than not evoked aggressive attacks from those, inside the FSLN and out, who preferred to see the world through rose-colored glasses, and interpreted any critical stance as something close to treason.18 During the campaign, the FSLN candidates wooed the vote of the business community...
...You know you get all kinds...
...He would give his opinion, but his was also the opinion of the many Antonios of Managua...
...Despite all his efforts, cool shirts, and groovy campaign style, Daniel Ortega was never able to shake off his comandante image...
...UNO can easily muster a majority as long as the fractious coalition remains united...
...There was no "Managuazo" comparable to the "Caracazo" riots last year in Venezuela, but there was a decline in social participation and, finally, a "domingazo" on Sunday, February 25...
...Because of bureaucratic delay by the Sandinista government, as well as UNO's ineptness in drawing up their plans and in setting up the institutions for channeling the funds, the money did not arrive until the beginning of 1990, when the electoral campaign was already well under way...
...The people voted against that...
...1989...
...2 Several candidates for municipal posts in some departments had recently been members or collaborators of the Contras...
...The ethnic communities of the Atlantic Coast have come an enormous way toward the establishment of .autonomous government...
...All those who lost something with the fall of Somoza will now return seeking what they consider rightfully theirs...
...2 2 The UNO campaign held the Sandinista government responsible for the economic disaster because of its "communist" leanings, administrative corruption, and what they considered excessive military expenditures...
...After I moved out of the barrio I did not see him as often, but two or three times a year I would visit him at his house, next to his carpentry shop where he had organized his books into a small library for the students of the neighborhood...
...3 ' In any case, now the regional outlook presents a much more stable picture for Washington...
...Changes could be made that alter the FSLN's concept of the state: military service, budgetary allocation of funds, the scope of agrarian reform, etc...
...Her style appealed to and drew on all facets of Nicaraguan collective identity, and triggered, perhaps unconsciously, the deepest motherassociations of a macho society...
...trade embargo are certainly to blame for the extremely precarious state of the Nicaraguan economy...
...It was not anticommunist ideology or sympathy with the counterrevolution and the United States that drove many of those who took part with such enthusiasm in the extraordinary FSLN closing rally on the night of February 21, to vote for UNO on the morning of the twenty-fifth...
...The precise amount of foreign contributions received by either UNO or the FSLN is difficult to calculate...
...1, 1989...
...It represents an undeniable advance over the ways and styles of the traditional political culture of families and relationships, even though these are coloring the spectrum of national politics more and more in the case of both UNO and the upper reaches of the FSLN...
...The Sandinista media, including the daily Barricada, edited by her son Carlos Fernando, attempted to divest Dofia Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of her married name whenever she was mentioned (an implicit recognition of the reverence many Nicaraguans have for her dead husband...
...Unquestionably, the greatest error was placing disproportionate importance on external factors--U.S...
...In return, Ortega obtained a paragraph in which the presidents ratified "their most energetic condemnation of the armed actions and terrorism carried out by the irregular forces in the region...
...There is as yet no consensus in UNO regarding the question of expropriated or confiscated property claimed by former owners...
...8,364 were professionals and technicians, 45% of whom were engineers and teachers...
...I N THE COMING MONTHS, NEGOTIATION WILL be the name of the game...
...Gen...
...At the same time, young people who received scholarships to study abroad were returning after five or six years of college and graduate school to join the ranks of the unemployed...
...You're still driving the same car...
...money was sent early on through their governments...
...The Sandinista government was VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER I (JUNE 1990) 17Nicaraguaor 4o Ac Nicaragua showing signs of increasing moderation in this terrain...
...They quote figures from the Health Ministry's Epidemiology Department, the state ENABAS sugar corporation, and the state NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36 Dairy Industry Corporation...
...This will be the common ground for negotiations between the group of advisers around Dofia Violeta and their Sandinista cousins...
...A rapid decline of the figure of Daniel Ortega is also likely...
...T HE ELECTIONS RETURNED CENTRAL AMERica to a state of political homogeneity non-existent during all of the 1980s...
...In March 1990 the agencies advertising fluctuated between four and six...
...A few months earlier, the public elementary school my youngest child attends dropped geometry from the curriculum because practically none of the children (that is to say, their families) could buy a compass or a ruler...
...18, 1989...
...Such things were not introduced by the Sandinistas, but are part and parcel of the traditional perks of the state and army in power in most if not all societies, especially underdeveloped ones...
...The constitution promulgated in 1987 by the Sandinistas did establish a strong Mexican-style presidency, but many of the reforms proposed by UNO call for constitutional amendments requiring a 60% majority in the National Assembly, which UNO does not have...
...Dofia Violeta was in the first junta of the Government of National Reconstruction...
...Osvaldo Lacayo Gabuardi, also the son of a traditional elite family, who happens to be married to Joaquin's sister...
...Of its three big problems in the Caribbean Basin-Noriega, the Sandinista government, Cuba--only one remains...
...I hadn't seen him for a couple of years when we ran into each other in February, two weeks before the elections...
...war and financing of the UNO campaign) is as incomplete an explanation as its counterpart on the Right (the people's repudiation of corrupt Sandinista leadership...
...What Went Wrong 1. The FSLN National Directorate did discuss whether to announce the end of the draft at their closing rally on February 21...
...104 (Nov./Dec...
...Carlos Fernando Chamorro published open letters written by his sister Claudia, an official of the Sandinista government, in which she criticized her mother's association with the Contras and former officers of the National Guard, like Enrique Bermfidez, reminding her that they were the ones During 1988, milk consumption fell by 50%, and infant mortality due to diarrhea doubled involved in Pedro Joaquin Chamorro's assassination...
...Venezuelan and Costa Rican officials admitted off the record, however, that some of UNO's U.S...
...17, 1989...
...The declaration continued, "In the same manner, they [the presidents] demand most energetically that the FMLN publicly renounce all sort of violent action that directly or indirectly affects the civilian population...
...On April 25, when Daniel Ortega handed over the reins of government to Dofia Violeta Chamorro, the vast majority of the counterrevolutionary groups had not even begun the process of demobilization, the culmination of which by then had been postponed to June 10...
...Barricada, June 20, 1988...
...La Naci6n (San Jos6), Sept...
...UNO, on the other hand, presented a candidate who was a housewife, a mother, the widow of an eminent figure...
...May 22, 1989...
...Nearly a decade of counterrevolutionary war and five years of U.S...
...We've been through a lot together...
...I froze...
...It is probable that officials will try to convince the technicians and professionals who abandoned Nicaragua over the past decade to return to take part in efforts to reactivate the economy...
...He is the cousin of second-in-command Col...
...It will depend on the capacity of the society to resist attempts to turn these back or neutralize them...
...See declarations by Daniel Ortega in Barricada, Dec...
...Carlos M. Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986) ch...
...It was because when they returned home they had to face the empty rice dish, the vacant place of the son recruited into the army, the photo of the son killed by the Contras, or the neighbor's shiny new car...
...Envfo, special edition for the tenth anniversary of the revolution (Managua, July 1989...
...invasion of Panama, the General Command of the Sandinista Popular Army issued a public directive to all its units and to "state and government institutions at all levels": "Upon initiation of a Yankee intervention, all units of the regular armed forces, reserves, Sandinista People's Militia, and organs of military counterintelligence, in close cooperation with organs of State Security, shall carry out neutralization plans of arrest and execution of all the most diehard traitorous elements who have been either overtly or covertly abetting the Yankee intervention.'"4 Since the Sandinista media had consistently identified UNO with the Somoza National Guard, the White House, and even with the interventionist troops in Panama, it is no surprise that the image of a bloodbath was on the minds of many...
...Those whose property was confiscated for abandoning the country, even if they did not join the counterrevolution, will also seek revenge, or at the least compensation...
...Unending lines for food and fuel, the lack of basic supplies in hospitals and health centers, the collapse of the educational system, were all part of the daily horizon for an enormous number of people...
...They are not that kind nor are they against the revolution, but rather they thought that with the opposition [in power] they could better their situation...
...But the Sandinistas did little to do away with them, and in many cases encouraged them...
...38, No...
...Something similar is to be expected in the Sandinista mass organizations, primarily the urban labor movement, since the Sandinista Labor Federation has been largely ineffective as a bargaining agent in past years, and the new political climate will benefit those unions formerly in the opposition...
...He was one of the "data" I relied on when I began studying the insurrection for my book The Sandinista Revolution...
...The San Isidro Coronado declaration last December-in which Daniel Ortega joined his Central American colleagues in expressing "their decided support for the president of El Salvador," while the ruins of San Salvador's poor neighborhoods were still smoking from military bombardment-was quite explicit in that respect...
...The impact of the U.S...
...We greeted each other with affection, but the old enthusiasm was gone...
...Even when they do not come out victorious, or suffer reverses, nothing reverts to what it was before, notwithstanding the nightmares of the vanquished or the fantasies of the victors...
...El Nuevo Diario, April 27, 1989...
...For example, in December the FSLN's official organ Barricada referred to the commemoration of the nationalization of foreign trade, as the "tenth anniversary of the nationalization of certain exportable products...
...104 (Nov./Dec...
...T HE CHOICE OF CANDIDATES MUST ALSO have played a part in the results...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10"OK, hermano," he answered laconically...
...UNO will support those measures already adopted by the Sandinistas aimed at cutting back the government's role in the economy, but the influx of fresh moneys will allow for a certain reactivation of public expenditure...
...He was in his early fifties back then, with more political experience than most...
...To assume this was all the more ludicrous considering the recent history of the revolution...
...Estimates suggest that the FSLN got no more than $1 million...
...3 & 4. 13...
...Nearly 63,000 of these were adult members of the work force...
...One hard-line FSLN cadre offered this acid overstatement: "The cabinet moved from the southern side of Granada's Calle Atravesada to the northern one...
...dilapidated public buses alongside the manager's air-conditioned car...
...See speeches of President Ortega: announcing the June 1988 adjustment program (Barricada, June 15, 1988...
...Sugar consumption fell from 200,000 hundredweight per month in 1988 to 124,000 at the beginning of 1989...
...The future of the collective National Directorate and the Sandinista Assembly-and even the rank and file-is laden with enigmas...
...4 12 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASCL z w .5 T Militia boys at the front, 1983: What the FSLN viewed as treason, perhaps was a simple instinct of self-preservation In other words, the Sandinistas' program of structural adjustment was no different from anyone else's: It favored the rich and hurt the poor...
...As the economic crisis worsened, subsidies to middleclass and wealthy entrepreneurs were increasingly financed by cutting back the consumption, income, and living conditions of the revolution's natural base of support, the workers and peasants...
...We have to recognize that the revolutionary process got stuck in its own internal tensions and ambiguities long before the Sandinistas were defeated at the polls...
...11, 1989...
...I didn't know whether he was scolding or praising me...
...The shrinkage of consumption, the rising debt burden on the peasantry, and the plummeting of wages-all normal effects of such strategies-followed on years of negative economic developments for the poor...
...See Secretaria de Planificaci6n y Presupuesto, "Las migraciones intemrnacionales y su impacto en la fuerza laboral," (Managua, Aug...
...1989...
...On both sides, some of the money was delivered in cash, allowing them to evade the requirement of giving half to the Supreme Electoral Council...
...These aspects have been dealt with in many specialized papers...
...However, the official line did have a significant impact on certain groups within the progressive Church, who took the official rhetoric at face value, assuming that in fact the Sandinista experience was a socialist one...
...Xabier Gorostiaga, "Legados, retos y perspectivas del sandinismo 1979-1989," Nueva Sociedad, No...
...Over the last three-year period, gross domestic product declined 11.7%, a per capita drop of 21.5...
...NEGOTIATIONS AND DEALS WILL IN ANY case be worked out among those social groups at the top...
...In particular, the lavish handouts of imported presents-articles of clothing, toys for the children, emblems, toiletries, etc.-during campaign rallies and tours by Sandinista candidates, contrasted sharply with the population's deep poverty...
...In the early years of the revolution such activity NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14was considered "bourgeois" and "sowing ideological confusion...
...When production cooperatives-which represent 50% of industrial employment and 21% of production-protested exorbitant interest rates, the Ministry of Finance responded that unless they adjusted to the new policy, many of the cooperatives would "irremediably disappear...
...Ah, hermano, the vote is secret...
...Nearly 35% of the population was unemployed or underemployed...
...The National Assembly will certainly be a much more dynamic arena of struggle than during the last six years, when it was little more than an appendix of the Sandinista executive...
...But at the same time the United States will probably seek to co-opt or seduce those Sandinista leaders and cadre least likely to stand firm-those linked to the traditional elite and to the implementation of the economic and social policies of the past few years...
...27, for example, following the U.S...
...Though on this point the most the FSLN could promise was to "study the issue," Ortega's U.S...
...2 9 This tightly woven network of family relationships, of which these are but a few examples, blurs the boundary between the Sandinistas and UNO...
...While some of Dofia Violeta's advisers favor out-and-out return, others with keener political sense propose payment of adequate compensation...
...28, 1989...
...Running on the Sandinista slate, for instance, were the father of Commander Luis Carri6n Cruz (a member of the National Directorate), the daughter, wife and brother of Sergio Ramirez, and the wife of Commander Carlos Ntitfez (another Directorate member...
...And on the capacity of the FSLN to reassume leadership of the people's aspirations, which Dofia Violeta's government is unlikely to satisfy...
...The new government will have to make decisions on concrete questions such as interest rates, credit eligibility, prices, input availabilities, etc...
...on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the revolution (Barricada, July 20, 1988...
...At the time it was pejoratively dubbed "SoIn Matiguds: "President Daniel, Here Are Your People" I mocismo without Somoza" by some, or more enthusiastically "scientific Somocismo" by others...
...Increasingly, these once-autonomous pressure groups came to act as part of the state apparatus, as mechanisms of control subordinate to the FSLN...
...and Nicaraguan handlers did all they could to wipe out anything that would remind voters of his guerrilla past, of the war, and eventually of the revolution itself.' He doffed his spectacles and olive green uniform, switching to jeans and cowboy boots-a youthful, debonair image, known by all as the "Danny look...
...government...
...Policies favoring middle-income and wealthy people had been introduced years ago, but their impact sharpened after the middle of 1988...
...Although the Sandinistas continue to be by far Nicaragua's major political party, it remains to be seen how they will adapt to life on the outside...
...When revolutions are authentic, and the Sandinista Revolution certainly was, they stamp an indelible seal on society's entire expanse...
...This 40% makes the FSLN the strongest single political party in Nicaragua, and constitutes a necessary if not sufficient basis for remaking the party for a comeback in the 1996 elections...
...7 A drastic adjustment program, characterized by the U.N.'s Economic Commission on Latin America as "Draconian," brought hyperinflation down from over 33,000% in 1988 to somewhat less than 1700% in 1989, reduced the fiscal deficit from 25% of GDP in 1988 to just under 5% in 1989, and provided some stimulus to exports.8 The adverse effects included a severe slump in productivity, lack of liquidity, and further deterioration of social services...
...Elections are extremely complex phenomena, because their outcome depends on a host of simultaneous microlevel, individual decisions...
...aggression, the world crisis, the reluctance of international and governmental agencies to finance economic development...
...See, for example, William I. Robinson and Kent Norsworthy, "Comment on Vilas," Monthly Review, Vol...
...Negotiation will occur more out of necessity than by choice...
...After the elections Barricada named the nationalization of foreign trade as one of the revolutionary achievements of Sandinismo (Barricada, Feb...
...But neither is it the Nicaragua of July 18...
...Who knows...
...Excilsior (Mexico), Feb...
...They promoted above all the figure of their presidential candidate, painting her with maternal and religious overtones...
...This was no gift from the revolutionary state...
...three for the Communist Party...
...Their own economic proposals were relatively moderate and generally vague--except for the ravings of certain advisers-particularly in reference to the agrarian reform and properties confiscated or expropriated by the Sandinistas...
...When teachers and health workers called for higher pay, President Ortega lectured them on their moral obligations to the people...
...6 (Nov...
...What the FSLN viewed as a kind of treason to the fatherland was perhaps no more than a simple instinct of self-preservation: Parents did not want their sons sent to war, and the boys themselves did not want to go...
...That helped him make balanced judgments and keep sectarianism at bay...
...Jan...
...This smear campaign must have provoked reactions of solidarity with Dofia Violeta among people who saw this as a typical case of a mother being mistreated by her children...
...Observers and analysts, above all those closest to the FSLN, projected the rationality of the Sandinista line onto the electorate, assuming voters would choose on the basis of general ideological reasoning rather than on the concrete and specific issues of living conditions...
...At the beginning of September 1989, in her first speech-which the right-wing Costa Rican daily La Naci6n termed "very modest"-Dofia Violeta answered the campaign being waged by Barricada and El Nuevo Diario...
...Ideology has little, if anything, to do with these...
...And he is the brother-in-law of Alfredo VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 1 (JUNE 1990) 15Mothers march against the war: Some settling of accounts will undoubtedly precede any attempt at co-existence C6sar, member of the Sandinista government until 1982, member of the National Resistance until 1988, and now an UNO congressman and another of Dofia Violeta's closest advisers...
...Nicaraguan Institute of Public Opinion (INOP...
...The Sandinista slogan was upbeat: Todo serd mejor (Everything's Going to be Better...
...6 The possibility that UNO could win the elections, it seems, was rejected a priori by the Sandinistas, since it implied that the people's sympathy lay with the foreign aggressor...
...Daniel Ortega seems to have taken note of it late, two days after the elections: "But what is happening is that there is another important sector of the population whom we must respect because it is not a sector ofextremists and scoundrels...
...Letter to author...
...But UNO made no attempt to hide the presence of former Somocistas in their ranks, nor did they try to paper over their status as Washington's favorite...
...Their access to basic resources, land first of all, is incomparably broader than before the revolution, and if this is not irreversible, the political and social cost of an agrarian counter-reform would be greater than what the UNO government could bear...
...Calle Atrevesada in Granada is the traditional address of Nicaragua's Conservative elite...
...A decade of Sandinista rule has developed a sense of political empowerment and popular participation which constitutes one of the greatest achievements of this period...
...11, 1989...
...14, 1989 and by Sergio Ramirez in La Jornada (Mexico), Feb...
...With the resignation of his brother Humberto from the Sandinista Directorate and the Sandinista Assembly-to better his chances of staying on as head of the army under Dofia Violeta-Daniel Ortega's position in the party seems quite precarious...
Vol. 24 • June 1990 • No. 1
