A Spider's Web
Vickers, George R.
AT TEN O'CLOCK ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUary 25, Rafael Solis, first secretary of the Nicaraguan National Assembly and a prominent Sandinista, was roaming among banks of telex machines at the...
...With the decontrol of retail food prices, there came a point in 1986 when the subsidized price of a pound of beans was 300 c6rdobas, while the retail market price reached 8,000 c6rdobas...
...At formal ceremonies on weekends, Daniel Ortega would hand out land titles along with a rifle and a speech telling the peasants that the revolution gave them land and they must now defend it...
...and the unions of small and medium-sized agricultural proprieters,journalists, professionals and technicians, intellectuals and artists, and religious workers...
...As recently as this January, for example, health workers in a Managua hospital met to elect a new administrator...
...It has also been an object lesson in the historical limitations of revolutionary movements that emerge under conditions of economic, political and social underdevelopment...
...His comments were made in an interview by Sergio Ferrari that appeared in Barricada on March 20, 1990...
...Economic reforms put into effect in February 1988 hit with full force, and were followed by even more severe changes in June...
...For a good overview of LIC doctrine, see Michael T. Klare and Peter Komrnbluh eds., Low Intensity Warfare: Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency, and Antiterrorism in the Eighties (New York: Pantheon, 1988...
...Issues are debated throughout the party, but once the Directorate proclaims a position all are required to defend and implement it...
...Solis kept repeating, "The Managua returns aren't in...
...35-46...
...While the National Directorate provided a mechanism for reaching consensus and avoiding factionalism, only the vertical structure, it was felt, could ensure that the consensus achieved at the top would be implemented and accepted at lower levels...
...The decision to hold elections, announced in December of 1983, two months after the United States invaded Grenada, clearly came in response to growing fears that Nicaragua would be next...
...Fitzgerald, "An Evaluation of the Economic Costs to Nicaragua of U.S...
...Non-FSLN workers tried to prevent his election by nominating a widely respected Sandinista, but she bowed to party discipline and declined to run.' 2 Another factor which impeded the effectiveness of the mass organizations as vehicles of participatory democracy, was the notion that mobilizing is the same as organizing...
...All of these, however, functioned as the machines of elite caudillos, depending more on personal loyalty and patronage, than on grassroots involvement...
...the neighborhood, women's and youth organizations...
...FSLN leaders have talked about, but not yet adopted, a policy of not formally proposing party nominees for leadership in mass organizations...
...The World Bank estimated capital flight at $500 million in October 1980, and the banking system was completely decapitalized...
...This shift also served an economic purpose...
...Each faction enjoyed equal representation: Tomds Borge, Bayardo Arce, and Henry Ruiz for the GPP...
...In short, the FSLN is structured along classical Leninist lines...
...The ending of subsidies led to much higher retail prices, which generated new problems...
...This means that [in] this new phase, after victory,...the main emphasis [will be] on the defense of the nation, on the struggle to have our national sovereignty respected, on the right of self-determination, and on the need to unite all Nicaraguan patriots to confront a huge and cruel enemy...
...In such a period, the prospects for the FSLN are certainly more promising than for many other revolutionary movements, but they are hardly bright...
...Would they have retained sufficient international support to hold on against Tens of thousands received title to land, but from the beginning agrarian reform was an uneasy balancing act VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER I (JUNE 1990) 2; co 0 '2 0 U.S...
...While exTercerista Victor Tirado tried to reassure the private sector about Sandinista commitment to a mixed economy, for example, ex-Proletarian Jaime Wheelock was writing open-ended or downright threatening language into the agrarian reform statutes...
...By 1988 the Sandinistas were no longer able to shield their constituent base from the full effects of the economic crisis...
...Victor Tirado was given the responsibility for overseeing Sandinista unions and farmers' associations, while Bayardo Arce was responsible for mass organizations and the party apparatus...
...Daniel Ortega was coordinator of the executive committee of the National Directorate and later president of Nicaragua, while Carlos Ntifiez became president of the Council of State and later of the National Assembly...
...This was not a rationing system, but was intended as a kind of safety net to insure against real hunger...
...From the beginning, however, the program was an uneasy balancing act which sought to achieve both economic development and redistribution...
...9. Ruchwarger (People in Power...
...The government alsosought to increasecredit available tothe rural poor to purchase seed and fertilizer, and to carry them through to harvest...
...The same World Bank report said that "per capita income levels of 1977 will not be attained, in the best of circumstances, until the late 1980s...
...3524-NI (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1981...
...hostility altered their short-term agenda and prevented them from moving rapidly from the struggle for national liberation to the struggle to build a new social order...
...a belief that the vast resources of the United States permit it to "outlast" any hostile Third World country in a contest of wills, but that frequently opposition within the United States erodes U.S...
...The prices Nicaragua received for exports fell by 11.9% from 1981 to 1983...
...To their own constituency, the Sandinistas rationalized this decision by arguing that popular organizations would still have influence through the party, and that the The vast resources of the United States allowed it to outlast Nicaraguans' revolutionary will constitution-drafting process that would follow the elections would provide an opportunity to institutionalize mechanisms of popular power...
...7 These organizations were central to the Sandinista conception of participatory democracy-they were to be the organs through which "the people" influenced government policy and the direction of the revolution...
...12...
...Those who remained in control of the national party apparatus became a third faction: the Tercerista (third-way) or "insurrectional" grouping...
...occupation and 80 of intermittent civil war between the Liberal and Conservative parties of the oligarchy, highlighted by frequent and continuing intervention by the United States and European powers...
...For a more complete discussion of the economic dimensions of the past eight years see Michael E. Conroy, "The Political Economy of the 1990 Nicaraguan Elections," in the forthcoming International Journal of Political Economy (Fall 1990...
...8, 1984...
...Participation declined significantly...
...Nor is it clear that, if the Sandinistas had insisted on a government structure based on participatory rather than representative processes and institutions, they would have held on to power...
...36-40...
...Housewives were outraged...
...Those who operate in command environments, such as the executive branch, the military and the party apparatus, are more likely to prefer maintaining the existing structures intact...
...World Bank, Nicaragua: The Challenge of Reconstruction, Report No...
...In addition, income foregone because of the insurrection and war damage from late 1978 into early 1980 exceeded $2 billion (the value of a full year of GDP...
...By the time Somoza was overthrown in 1979, the political parties and traditions which had developed were particularly unsuitable for building a participatory democracy...
...A Spider's Web 1. Those claims were made by several key Sandinistas during meetings with international observers in the months preceding the election...
...The results also seem to confirm the fundamental assumptions behind the U.S...
...Long before the overthrow of Somoza, the Sandinistas envisioned the revolution as a two-stage process...
...The FSLN caucus put forth a candidate who was widely viewed as authoritarian and unpopular, but who was well connected in the party bureaucracy...
...Nor was it clear that a structure developed for clandestine struggle was adequate or appropriate for governing...
...7. For an excellent description of the history and development of the mass organizations, see Gary Ruchwarger, People in Power: Forging a Grassroots Democracy in Nicaragua (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1987...
...3 EVEN WITHOUT THE CONSTRAINTS GENERated by internal contradictions and the historical legacy of political underdevelopment, the Sandinistas faced severe limits on what they could have done to promote economic growth and equality...
...Echoing Vilas, FSLN Commander Victor Tirado argued not long ago that the cycle of anti-imperialist revolutions is closing...
...to r.) Henry 1 Ruiz, Sergio Ramirez, Carlos Nufiez, Jaime ' Wheelock, Tombs Borge, Bayardo Arce, Luis Carri6n, Humberto Ortega and Mois6s Hassin Inset, 1929: Augusto C6sar Sandino Bottom, 1920s: Women guerrillas of the Liberal Party, who first fought United States occupation VOUEXIV UBR JNL19)2 F v I...
...In the face of unending war, continuing economic decline, and unremitting pressure from the United States, it was unreasonable to expect people to eternally sacrifice the present for the hope that tomorrow "everything will be better," as the Sandinista campaign slogan put it...
...The incident undermined the credibility of Sandinista pledges to respect the rule of law, and provided powerful propaganda for the opposition and the United States...
...By 1977, most of the GPP faction was dead, in jail or in the mountains...
...With the initial seizure of state power, economic realities quickly confirmed the enormous constraints on revolutionary aspirations...
...willpower before that resource imbalance can be decisive...
...Although the FSLN has tried in recent years to reinvigorate the mass organizations, the vertical and bureaucratic character of the party still presents obstacles...
...For many in the GPP, for example, the goal included the creation of a "new man" motivated by moral incentives and willing to sacrifice, while for some of the Terceristas improving the standard of living of poor Nicaraguans was a sufficiently ambitious goal...
...Between June and December of that year more than 136,000 manzanas (about 235,000 acres) were distributed, representing about 75% of all the land distributed to individual peasants since 1981.21 Ironically, this change was less a Sandinista social reform than a political response to the Contras, who were telling rural campesinos that the Sandinistas would never really give them title...
...Direct material damages of the war against Somoza amounted to $480 million...
...pressure, Western financial assistance steadily declined from 1981 on, but contributions from NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS I 26socialist countries took up the slack...
...The producers responded with great caution...
...Are we certain that the internal political opposition would not have allied more directly with the armed Contras...
...Nicaragua: The First Five Years (New York: Praeger, 1985...
...First it was put off until after the elections, then until after the transition, and now until after Contra demobilization is complete...
...This notion was quite foreign to the experience of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, and it is not surprising that they did not assimilate this new role, particularly during the turbulent first years of the revolution...
...6 The priorities of the programs carried out by each ministry often reflected the ideological vision of the minister-particularly regarding the centrality of different sectors of the population in the revolutionary process-and the policies of one sector of government were sometimes undermined by those of others...
...The government provided incentives and sought to reassure them that their property would be protected...
...2 2 Socialist country assistance reached a high of over $1 billion in 1985 (the year the U.S...
...How could a party that boasted of having 120,000 campaign activists in weekly contact with practically every household in Nicaragua have been so totally unprepared for the results on election night?' The dramatic upset was a stunning reminder of how easy it is to project onto others our own hopes and convictions, and to assume that when others share our goals they also agree with our methods...
...the government used subsidies to ameliorate suffering they caused...
...Gilbert quotes a 1981 speech by Humberto Ortega: "We want to see the day when all our people can eat ham and they can have television sets and take vacations...
...During the Council of State debate on a new electoral law in January 1984, those parties likely to consider participating in elections made it abundantly clear that they would not accept a system that included "sectoral" representation.' 0 The opposition political parties and the private sector bitterly opposed legal empowerment of the mass organizations, and correctly identified them as strongholds of Sandinista influence and support...
...In addition, Nicaragua's economic prospects reflected the country's dependent status in the world economy...
...That's what we want...
...Forty years of Somoza family dictatorship followed on 21 of U.S...
...Foreign assistance was the key to the fate of the revolution...
...24 The imminent disappearance of the socialist world, the current hegemony of the ideology of the marketplace, and the delegitimation of vanguardist parties that claimed to represent the popular will without need for public choice, suggest that we are entering a period characterized more by the limits on revolutionary possibilities than by prospects for revolutionary development...
...6. See, for example, Gabriele Invemrnizzi, Francis Pisani and Jesus Ceberio, Sandinistas: Entrevistas a Humberto Ortega Saavedra, Jaime Wheelock Romdn y Bayardo Arce Castano (Managua: Editorial Vanguardia, 1986), pp...
...Rooted in the Sandinistas' analysis of Nicaraguan underdevelopment and dependency, one goal of the reform was to expand agricultural exports by encouraging investment and production on the larger private farms...
...Jaime Wheelock, Luis Carri6n and Carlos Nfiiez for the Proletarians...
...AT TEN O'CLOCK ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUary 25, Rafael Solis, first secretary of the Nicaraguan National Assembly and a prominent Sandinista, was roaming among banks of telex machines at the national election center and muttering to himself...
...Production of basic grains was not keeping up with population growth, while dwindling export earnings were reducing the government's ability to import foodstuffs...
...Tomis Borge, "This Revolution Was Made to Create a New Society," in Nicaragua: The Sandinista People's Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1985...
...Confusion of roles was not the only factor that weakened the mass organizations...
...3 T HE FACTIONAL INFIGHTING AMONG THE fourteen political parties of the National Opposition Union (UNO), both during the electoral campaign and since, underscores an important characteristic of Nicaraguan society: its political underdevelopment...
...THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE PARTY and the ambiguous relationship of the party to the state proved to be far more important in constraining the development of the Sandinista Revolution than ideological divisions...
...Although the FSLN criticized the "caudillo" style of personalistic politics which typified political systems throughout Central America from the 1930s onward, and prided themselves on their collective leadership, the fact is that the different ministries tended to be fiefdoms for the individual ministers as well as strongholds for the different tendencies...
...One high-ranking Sandinista believes the debate will never happen...
...Aggression: 1980-1984," in Rose J. Spalding (ed...
...7 Despite this recognition, the Sandinista government did move quickly in some areas to lay the foundation for long-term social transformation...
...As the FSLN developed after 1979 from a guerrilla band with few trained political operatives to a political party which was in most ways also the state, traditional politics colored every stage...
...economic warfare and military pressure magnified all problems and drained away scarce resources intended to address them...
...Faced with the prospect of victory and calls to provide leadership to the growing insurrection, the three factions met in March 1979 to reunify the FSLN under a new National Directorate...
...Luis H6ctor Serra provides a more critical appraisal in "The Grass-Roots Organizations," in Thomas W. Walker (ed...
...In the years immediately following the overthrow of Somoza more than 20% of the arable land was redistributed, and ultimately tens of thousands of peasants received title to land...
...However, the program did seek to ameliorate the most exploitative features of the old land tenure system by reducing and limiting ground rents and by encouraging unions and increasing the salaries of agricultural workers.s 8 These measures-which were carried out with considerable unevenness and artificiality--combined with setting the prices producers received for their commodities, sent mixed signals to the private agro-export sector the program hoped to encourage...
...The confiscated properties of Somoza and his close associates were reorganized as either state farms or cooperatives...
...4 The Sandinista National Liberation Front, which emerged from the struggle against Somoza as the nation's leading political force, was not immune to the influence of the dominant political culture...
...2 (April/May 1986) provides an excellent summary of the development of the doctrine within the U.S...
...During 1980-1981, for example, the cotton harvest, which normally lasts from December through March, was not completed until the beginning of May...
...As Jaime Wheelock put it, the Sandinistas envisioned a private sector of medium and small producers that would "limit themselves to exploiting their means of production and use these means of production to live, not as instruments of power, of imposition...
...One program, for example, had guaranteed urban families a minimum amount of basic foodstuffs at highly subsidized prices...
...military and its application to Central America...
...The problem with this logic was that the ideological divisions of 1979 did not remain static afterwards...
...T HE VERY SUCCESS OF THE AGRARIAN REform in alleviating exploitation placed limits on the program's capacity to develop the economy...
...For this reason, the first phase of the program did not encourage redistribution to individual peasants...
...Many of the top leaders of mass organizations were members of the FSLN, and most FSLN activists belonged to at least one mass organization...
...a conviction that the introduction of U.S...
...The telegrams piling up all reported huge margins of victory for the opposition...
...Power and authority reside in the National Directorate, which appoints lower level leadership and delegates responsibility...
...We're not going to promote a mentality that says we should live like nuns or under socialism with a Christian character...
...Nicaraguans have demonstrated more than once in this century how powerful a drive is the desire for selfdetermination and national liberation...
...The electoral campaign was a model of this type of mobilization, culminating in a final rally of close to 400,000 people in Managua four days before the election...
...The first plank in the 1984 FSLN campaign platform, for example, pledged: "The Sandinista Front will guarantee that the inexhaustible source of revolutionary power will always be the trade unions of the workers and agricultural laborers...
...This was most evident between 1980 and 1984 in regard to the mass organizations...
...In the absence of effective central government administration at regional and local levels after 1979, they assumed important tasks of communicating local needs to the government and channeling or providing government services...
...Total assistance from the socialist bloc from 1979 through 1987 amounted to $3.3 billion...
...This argument was reinforced as the United States moved to actively try to overthrow the Sandinistas...
...Revolutions are not made in study groups, but in real world settings where imperfect knowledge, "false consciousness," and faulty historical analyses are as much a part of the objective conditions which constrain possibilities, as are economic circumstance and the political legacy of underdevelopment...
...opponents abroad to play upon nationalist and VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER I (JUNE 1990) 37 Report0 o 4 AozercMA Nicaragua patriotic themes to rally support for their cause...
...Prices for these products remained low throughout the decade...
...It remains so today...
...This is obviously an oversimplification of a complex and subtle problem...
...An extreme example of this occurred in 1987, when the Supreme Court declared one confiscation carried out under the agrarian reform to be unconstitutional, and ordered the property returned to its original owner...
...The FSLN leadership realized that U.S...
...The party was to be the vanguard of this transformation, and would use its hegemony within the governing alliance to gradually shift into the second stage...
...The decision to hold national elections in 1984 and, more importantly, the decision to replace the Council of State with a National Assembly constituted by political party representatives, drastically undermined the role of the mass organizations in shaping the course of the revolution...
...The lessthan-radical measures they took, which did change the direction of the revolution, may have postponed a worse fate...
...In 1985 the agrarian reform underwent a dramatic shift in focus, emphasizing distribution of smaller plots of land to individual peasants...
...The original founders were inspired by Augusto C6sar Sandino's struggle in the 1920s and 1930s against the United States occupation, as well as by the more recent example of the Cuban Revolution...
...2 0 The reduction in rents, greater access to credit, and improved prices for basic grains made small peasants less willing to do the backbreaking work of harvesting the export crops on the large farms...
...This was particularly true of the agrarian reform program, and the problems of that reform are illustrative of the way in which social and political underdevelopment limited the progress of the revolution...
...Nevertheless, these subsidized prices became the subconscious standard by which people evaluated market prices...
...Only after this first stage would it be possible, the Sandinistas argued, to launch a social revolution to transform Nicaragua's backwardness by redistributing wealth and providing the conditions for a better life...
...hunger and malnutrition among the very poor rose dramatically...
...Exposicidn de motivos de la Comisi6n Electoral sobre el anteproyecto de 'Ley Electoral'," Managua, Feb...
...This was reflected in their membership on the Council of State, which functioned as a kind of national legislature from NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 1980 to 1984...
...Nevertheless, a profound debate has emerged among the FSLN rank and file, which has yet to find any formal outlet for resolution...
...Over the years the party developed a very effective logistical capacity to turn out large numbers in support of government and party policies...
...The 1988 reforms bankrupted the informal sector of the economy and generated widespread resentment...
...Differing perspectives on these issues do not correspond to the pre-1979 tendencies that provided the basis for the division of power and authority within the party and government...
...Despite adjustments in the agrarian reform to try to remedy the problem, labor shortages became more critical as the Contra war and resulting mobilization of military forces took additional thousands of rural workers away from the fields...
...In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Christian revolutionaries motivated by liberation theology, rather than Marxism, joined the group...
...6 The government inherited from Somoza a debt of $1.6 billion, the highest per capita in Central America...
...The Nicaraguan Revolution has entered a new phase...
...By the 1980s the National Directorate had a staff of 600 organized into departments that paralleled and overlapped with the government bureaucracy, making for a confusion of roles that undermined both the party and the state...
...3. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), p. 10...
...Aware of this danger, the directorate had distributed control of government ministries among the pre-1979 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20 I - - E 0 ) P-u-I A Top, 1980: (I...
...Author's interview a few days after the election...
...2 Much as its proponents expected, the Reagan and Bush administrations effectively used their overwhelming advantage in economic, military and political resources to wear Nicaragua down...
...The Sandinista conception of revolutionary participatory democracy began to give way to the more traditional notion of democracy based on political parties and representative elections...
...Whatever Nicaraguans do in the coming years to determine the course of the revolution, they will continue to be acting under a series of internal and external constraints that severely limit their available options...
...Hurricane Joan eliminated whatever chance the 1988 reforms might have had to succeed, and by December of that year inflation was running at an annual rate of 33,000...
...As Tomis Borge noted in May 1982, "It is still necessary to unite the widest possible strata of Nicaraguan society to confront...U.S...
...After much debate, the FSLN agreed to structure the process in traditional party-style representative fashion...
...While the threat of confiscation did lead to expanded production by many who had held back in the first years, it also deepened the producers' distrust of the Sandinistas' ultimate objectives, convincing many that socialism rather than a mixed economy was the FSLN's real goal...
...obviously not everyone at the final rally voted for the FSLN...
...trade embargo began), then dropped by 60% from 1985 to 1986, and declined further in 1987...
...The FSLN was founded in 1961 by Carlos Fonseca, TomBs Borge and a few other young men dissatisfied with the Nicaraguan Socialist Party's (PSN) orthodox interpretation of Marxism...
...16...
...And what more radical economic policies would have fared any better...
...5. For a very thorough description of the development and internal dynamics of the FSLN see Dennis Gilbert, Sandinistas (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988...
...4 All three pre-1979 factions agreed on the essentially socialist character of this second stage, although it is not clear that they agreed on what they meant by socialism...
...However, this was accompanied by the curtailment of government subsidies on food prices, which had fueled growing budget deficits and thus inflation...
...The organizations then came to be seen both by the government and by citizens as party-dominated instruments to mobilize popular support for government policies...
...Even if they had not vitiated the political power of the mass organizations, tensions and contradictions generated by the ambiguous relationship among the party, the state and the organizations themselves were already taking a heavy toll...
...It was this strategy which ultimately prevailed and guided the final phases of the struggle in 1978 and 1979...
...By 1984 food shortages had become serious...
...Two days earlier the chief Sandinista pollster had assured friends that the FSLN could win as much as 60% of the vote...
...Sandinista leaders soon acknowledged that campaign errors and "arrogance" (prepotencia) contributed to their defeat...
...Over the last VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 1 (JUNE 1990) 19Nicaraguaeort oh ACa Nicaragua decade the United States was able to shape and constrain the options available to the Sandinista government in nearly every respect...
...The Political Economy ofRevolutionary Nicaragua (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987...
...At the same time, U.S...
...Sixty percent of export earnings came from four primary products: cotton, coffee, beef and sugar...
...They concurred in the goal of building a "worker-peasant alliance" based primarily among the rural peasantry, a strategy which came to be known as "prolonged popular war" (GPP...
...A number of additional factors shape where individuals stand on these issues-particularly their analysis of the international situation and the conflict with the United States...
...4. The two traditional parties had broken into numerous factions, and the Communist, Socialist and Social Christian parties had come into existence...
...Particularly after the selfdestructive defeat of the Grenadian revolution in 1983, maintaining party unity came to be seen as the first principle of survival...
...Those party activists whose work required them to operate in a politically pluralistic environment, such as the National Assembly, the Supreme Electoral Council, or even certain mass organizations, are more likely to favor a less centralized and vertical party structure and to accept representative institutions as adequate...
...Each of the three subsequent coffee and cotton harvests suffered similarly...
...2 5 The underdeveloped world cannot withstand permanent wars that attack the economic base of the society, he said...
...8. The FSLN would also consistently rotate the responsibilities of party members on the basis of shifting party priorities, and did not always take into account the impact of such changes on the mass organizations when key leaders were suddenly reassigned...
...Wage increases were not a sufficient incentive when peasants were already enjoying improved living standards...
...Some people will write articles in Barricada and some suggestions will be put forth, but in the end a new line will emerge from a series of short-term resolutions of immediate crises...
...they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past...
...8 Those members generally acted as spokespersons for FSLN positions within the mass organizations, and to the extent that FSLN positions were also government positions (which was invariably the case) they became spokespersons for government policy.' As the economic situation of the country worsened and the Contra war expanded by 1983 and 1984, government resources diminished, and with them the ability of mass organizations to resolve problems at the local level...
...Was their fear of invasion illusory...
...imperialism...
...downplays the extent and significance of this problem, but it seems clear that it had debilitating consequences at least for the CDS and AMNLAE...
...Such changes could not be wished into being...
...After the overthrow of Somoza, the Sandinistas moved quickly to consolidate and expand their support by building large organizations representing sectors of their constituency: the neighborhood-based Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), the Juventud Sandinista student organization (JS), the women's movement (AMNLAE), the rural and urban union federations (ATC and CTS), and the association of small and medium-sized agricultural producers (UNAG...
...All of these problems raised two basic issues: Can "representative democracy," rather than "participatory democracy," provide for the fundamental social restructuring contemplated in the FSLN program...
...By 1983, 80% of the land distributed under the agrarian reform went to groups of families organized as production cooperatives...
...combat forces into Third World conflicts should be a last resort, because such an act generates increased dissent in the United States while at the same time it allows U.S...
...Given the underdeveloped and dependent nature of the Nicaraguan economy, this required a basic restructuring of relationships and of thinking among larger producers and peasants...
...Part of the logic for maintaining the vertical structure after Somoza's downfall was the continued existence of the fundamental ideological divisions, which reunification did not resolve...
...By distributing individual plots of land the government stimulated smallscale production of basic grains, and food did become more readily available...
...This was particularly true of the CDS, which took on local vigilance and militia functions to guard against the counterrevolution at the same time that they helped deliver health services, popular education, and housing to local barrios...
...The new lines of disagreement are more a reflection of the impact of institutions on individual leaders...
...Karl Marx once observed that, "Men make their own history, but they do not make itjust as they please...
...SEVERAL YEARS AGO CARLOS VILAS EXpressed a concern that social revolutions in less developed and highly dependent economies may not be viable without considerable long-term foreign subsidies...
...They have been promising an Women's town meeting, Managua: Mass organizations came to be seen by the FSLN leadership and by citizens, not as organs of grassroots democracy, but as party-dominated instruments to mobilize support for state policies NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 24internal debate since 1979, but it has never happened...
...When Managua comes in the Frente will win...
...strategy of low intensity conflict (LIC...
...In total, some two million acres of land on 2,000 farms owned by Somoza and his allies were confiscated during 1979 and 1980...
...The National Directorate hinted several times in the last year that a formal internal debate on these issues is needed, but always postponed it on the grounds of more imminent crises...
...The success of the LIC strategy, however, can only be fully explained by taking into account the internal dynamics of the revolution which the United States turned to its favor...
...Wheelock's "proletarian" faction was expelled by the dominant GPP grouping in October of that year...
...The Ministry of Agriculture refused, prompting a majority of the Supreme Court (including Sandinista members) to resign in protest...
...Under U.S...
...In the course of trying to consolidate state power and initiate a transformation of Nicaraguan society, the ideological differences among the three factions became institutionalized in government operations, giving rise to contradictory policies and, ultimately, a factionalization of the revolutionary state...
...New agrarian reform statutes adopted in July 1981 moved beyond the confiscation of "Somocista" land and authorized the expropriation of all land that was abandoned or left out of production beyond a certain acreage...
...The economic deterioration in Nicaragua during 1988 and 1989 in the face of continuing economic warfare offers support for his conclusion that, "Without them, such economies collapse....[T]he effort of the people is the most powerful weapon a poor nation has, but it is not enough...
...For a very thorough discussion of the impact of the reforms and their implications for the 1990 elections, see ibid...
...The revolutionaries' efforts were repeatedly set back by the harsh and indiscriminate repression of Somoza's National Guard, which nearly wiped them out on several occasions...
...From July 1979 through December 1987, the country received almost $6 billion in credits and donations...
...If elections were going to establish enough international legitimacy to stymie the United States, the FSLN realized, Nicaragua's opposition parties would have to take part...
...pressures...
...Formed under conditions of clandestine struggle, the structure of the reunified FSLN became highly centralized, bureaucratic, and vertical...
...The Sandinista vision of a mixed economy-guided by the needs and interests of the peasantry and the poor, VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER I (JUNE 1990) 25Nicara o Arguaias Nicaragua A former hacienda, Jinotega: The agrarian reform got caught in its own contradictions but harnessing the skills and organizing ability of the private sector-was a far cry from the traditional assumptions and prerogatives of Nicaragua's businessmen...
...See Carlos M. Vilas, "Troubles Everywhere: An Economic Perspective on the Sandinista Revolution," in Rose J. Spalding (ed...
...5 Jaime Wheelock was made minister of agriculture and oversaw the agrarian reform program, while Henry Ruiz was put in charge of coordinating foreign assistance...
...That they have yet to fully satisfy that desire demonstrates just how powerful are the limits that must be overcome...
...See, for example, Laura Enriquez, "The Dilemmas of Agroexport Planning," in Thomas W. Walker (ed...
...Humberto Ortega became head of the army, but Tomds Borge was made minister of the interior which controlled police and security forces...
...Jaime Wheelock, El Gran Desafio (Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, 1983...
...See Gilbert, Sandinistas, pp...
...The problem of food price subsidies highlights the fundamental crisis that undermined Sandinista political support after 1985...
...In fact, they became important vehicles for popular participation as well as for recruiting members into the FSLN...
...In light of Nicaragua' s total dependence on the United States, they reasoned, the first priority of the revolution would be to unite all sectors of society (including small and medium-sized private producers) to achieve national liberation...
...Arguing that Somoza's extensive repression and greed had turned all sectors of society against him, this group called for building a popular front across class lines to achieve a general insurrection of the entire population...
...Sandinista economic policy in the early years of the revolution was geared toward long-term development...
...It is too early to know with certainty whether this is the beginning of the end, or simply a hiatus to regroup and consolidate...
...and Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega, and Victor Tirado for the Terceristas...
...2. Those assumptions include: a recognition that wars are fought to achieve political objectives, and that military power must be integrated with economic and political pressure to achieve maximum political results...
...By contrast, the prices Nicaragua paid for imports increased by the same percentage during that period, and by 35% from 1980 to 1983...
...A B C Ljr VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 1 (JUNE 1990) 21 `S FNicaraguaepot n Ae Nicaragua factions in such a way as to create an elaborate system of checks and balances...
...A wage increase of 30% in June only underlined the dilemma, since the same package of reforms raised food and medicine prices by 300% or more...
...An English version appeared under the title "The Great Challenge" in Nicaragua: The Sandinista People's Revolution...
...As valuable an asset as this capacity will be for the party in opposition, it must not be confused with the active support that grows out of grassroots organizing...
...The Political Economy...
...For a detailed examination of the macroeconomic impact of the war see E.V.K...
...The struggle of the last ten years has not simply been a test of strength between the material resources of the United States and the revolutionary will of the Nicaraguan people...
...Certain govemVOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 1 (JUNE 1990) 23Nicaragua A#eis Nicaragua ment leaders were overheard at that rally expressing pleased amazement at the "spontaneous" outpouring of support, either unaware or incapable of acknowledging that the entire party apparatus had been gearing up for a month to produce exactly such a turnout...
...To argue that the Sandinistas would still be in power if only they had been more radical is a tricky, if appealing, proposition...
...Ibid...
...Sara Miles, "The Real War: Low Intensity Conflict in Central America," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol.XX, No...
...Carlos M. Vilas, "Troubles Everywhere...
...In 1975, Jaime Wheelock challenged the GPP strategy, arguing that the FSLN should concentrate its organizing efforts among urban workers and agricultural wage-earners in the countryside, a strategy rooted in a more orthodox Marxist analysis of the central revolutionary role of the proletariat...
...The Sandinistas interpreted this as resistance and proceeded to undertake a much more aggressive reform...
...And should the FSLN shed its Leninist structure and accept a pluralist political environment as a matter of principle, not simply of tactics...
Vol. 24 • June 1990 • No. 1
