Cautious Optimism in Nicaragua

...With the economy deteriorating and goods of every description in declining supply, discontent spread to lower-class supporters of the government...

...A number of businessmen were arrested for "slandering" the regime...

...It called for a large-scale insurrection involving an alliance of anti-Somocista elements...

...No, no, no...

...Of the four, the Miskitos and the Church are proving the more intractable...

...The hope, always carefully qualified, flows from steps taken by the Junta over roughly the past eight months...

...Significantly, too, although attacks by con-tras have increased, their official image has undergone subtle changes: Previously all the anti-Sandinista rebels were portrayed as knaves or fools, lured by false promises and greed or intimidated into joining either the Nicaraguan Democratic Forces in Honduras or the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance in Costa Rica...

...In January 1982 some 10,000 Miskitos were relocated, ostensibly for their own protection yet with little preparation or even explanation...

...Marines, looms far larger than the founders of the First and Third Internationals...

...Our words," he says, "make a dent...

...A regime that promises local capitalists control of 60 per cent of the economy would be hard put to find justification for its actions in Marxist scriptures, Lenin's actual policies (such as the New Economic Policy of the early 1920s), or the experiences of East European "People's Democracies...

...I asked...

...According to Blandon's boss, Tomas Borge, she too has made mistakes...

...We acted with considerable weakness toward those of our comrades who committed violent crimes," Interior Minister Borge acknowledged to me...

...If Sandinista admirers viewed the radicaliza-tion of the Revolution as progress, others tasted the bile of betrayal...

...Like the majority of apologias, these contain kernels of truth...

...The Sandinistas are clearly in control of what Lenin used to call" the commanding heights"—the Army, police, government apparatus, and (through its control of banks and foreign trade) a considerable segment of the economy...

...The harvest of death and destruction sown by the CIA-supported forces in Honduras and Costa Rica, say the critics, is not only morally reprehensible (nearly 1,000 people were killed in 1983, some of them hideously tortured first), it is also manifestly self-defeating...

...This would have given the opposition more time to build up its bases of support...

...The four maj or internal issues on which the aperturas have a direct bearing are the Miskito Indians, the Church, censorship, and the elections...

...Because decisions about what may impinge on "national security" or "economic stability" are by their nature arbitrary, one also can easily find censored items that by no reasonable standard could endanger the wellbeing of Nicaragua's government or citizens...

...One month later its 160 articles were approved, following heated debates and a few walkouts by some opposition parties...

...But those are largely shifts in tone...

...In short, this aper-tura, as one Nicaraguan put it, "offers opportunities...

...One answer to this question is that the aperturas are sham...

...But the government has dug in its heels, preferring rhetoric against U.S...

...a censorship seemingly discomfited by its own existence...

...Similarly, the radical farm nationalization plan announced shortly after the takeover was substantially scaled down...

...There have been some minor but decidedly welcome developments...

...But she's maturing very quickly...

...Sandino's theories did not go beyond a few general commitments—to justice for oppressed workers and campesinos, to the need for comprehensive land reform and, above all, to eliminating a North American presence that in 1933 took the form of surrogate despot Anas-tasio Somoza Garcia...

...others, Monsignor Vega among them, are not without hope of reconciliation...

...Many people in the United States and Western Europe," he said, "who sympathize with my hopes and the hopes of thousands of people like me, seem to take it for granted that military pressure has forced the FSLN into all the recent aperturas...

...Eventually the lines themselves may be expanded or redefined...

...They were concerned —not unreasonably—that they did not stand much of a chance to alter an electoral law drafted by the FSLN and discussed in an FSLN-dominated Council...

...Since the government owns or controls most of the 30-odd radio stations and the two television stations, none of them gives Lieutenant Blandon any sleepless nights...

...East Germany and Bulgaria were invited to offer comradely advice on how to organize Nicaragua's security services...

...Still, as the first anniversary of the Revolution approached the atmosphere began to change...

...Some Nicaraguans I have spoken to see the Leftward lurch as the inexorable drift into totalitarianism characteristic of all regimes dominated by Marxist-Leninists...

...After all, Comandante Daniel Ortega, head of the Junta and the FSLN's Presidential candidate, bluntly warned last December that "neither votes nor bullets will ever abolish the power of the people...

...The most delicate allusions to similarities between FSLN policies and those of its predecessor (e.g., subordination of the judiciary to the executive power, or the creation of a blatantly politicized army) are struck out...

...Economically, the government faced a catastrophic situation...

...Whereas the Sandinistas had given the impression of wanting to establish legitimacy through consensus, they now seemed bent on eliciting compliance through subterfuge and intimidation...

...In the last year or so I have gradually come to believe I can do something to avert a disaster...

...Nevertheless, the area circumscribed by those lines leaves room for gradual improvement...

...The inner dynamics of revolutionary Nicaragua do not exist in isolation...

...What the Terceristas advocated, in fact, was a species of pluralism: The FSLN would remain the "vanguard" of the Revolution, but all other political forces would be welcome, provided they "fought responsibly against the dictatorship" and accepted the basic FSLN program of partial nationalization, agrarian reform and a mixed economy...

...This was a response to outside pressure...

...A Nicaraguan who had been high in the FSLN leadership summed up what happened for me: "Both expediency and revolutionary principles, these comandantes successfully argued, dictated a close alliance with the Soviet Union and the discarding of previous moderate, accommo-dationist policies...

...Luis Sanchez Sancho, General Secretary of the Socialist Party (once staunchly pro-Moscow, now at loggerheads with the madly pro-Soviet Communist Party), criticized the FSLN for its "hegemonistic tendencies" when I talked with him...

...to "vie for political power" (as the new Electoral Law proclaims) is not exactly compatible with a "dictatorship of the proletariat...

...When I asked the redoubtable Lieutenant Blandon whether "the people" might not register their objections to the FSLN via the ballot, she dismissed the very possibility: "The elections will ratify the people's support for sandinismo...

...What about politics...

...Norman Brent, a Moravian pastor and himself half-Miskito, calls them "patching up the holes...

...He has lately been challenging his erstwhile ally on a number of issues, including the right of all political parties to buy as much media time as they can afford...

...And Comandante Jaime Wheelock has said that "either Nicaragua remains Sandinist and revolutionary, or there won't be any Nicaragua...

...Direccion Nacional—Or-dene...

...The official rhetoric has become less strident and no longer equates dissent with treason...

...Whatever the Sandinistas' commitment to political pluralism, they are not about to relinquish their "right" to define the parameters of their "historic project...

...There were summary executions of Somoza's hated National Guard in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, but these, it is generally acknowledged, came to an end by late 1979...

...So it was something of a surprise, during a three-week visit here, to find many Nicaraguans who are decidedly unsympathetic to the revolutionary government expressing more hope than fear about the future...

...The Sandinistas avoided the reign of terror that usually characterizes revolutionary regimes, too...

...The baneful results of deliberate decisions made by the government were compounded by its contradictory aims: to maintain a tight grip on the direction of the economy while allowing a degree of laissez-faire...

...The provision applies to the FSLN, too, but few doubt that Sandinista television and radio stations can get around it...

...Augus-to Cesar Sandino, an anti-Communist farmer and mining engineer who actually launched the Revolution early in this century to rid his country of occupying U.S...

...The Tercerista strategy, in short, was a thundering success...

...Shortly after it was finally approved a year later, with many strings attached, a blatantly hostile Ronald Reagan took up residence in the White House and suspended most of the programs...

...Dr...

...As outlined by Minister of Agriculture Jaime Wheelock, 25 per cent of all arable land would become state farms, 20 per cent would become "production cooperatives" (where farmers pooled land, equipment and livestock, while setting their own rules on how to divide profits), 20 per cent would be turned over to "credit cooperatives" (with farmers owning their land individually, but joining together to buy fertilizer, seed, etc...

...The aperturas seem to signify a return to the earlier pragmatic policies...

...By March 1982 a State of Emergency formally established a preventive censorship apparatus under the control of the Minister of Interior, Comandante Tomas Borge, and outdoor rallies were prohibited...

...The hierarchy is as divided in its sympathies to the Sandinista' s goals as the rest of society...

...They pushed (albeit never in public) for a determined march toward "full socialism...

...Nicaraguans will choose, by direct and secret ballot, a president, a vice president and a National Assembly that is to draw up a new constitution...

...There have been incidents enough to fuel the tensions: skirmishes between turbos and priests considered hostile to the Revolution on the one hand, sweeping accusations on the other...

...Pressure from our own opposition, pressure from outside...

...After three years, the contradictions were embedded in the substance and style of Sandinista rule...

...Indeed, it openly proclaimed its affinity with Christianity and installed several priests and laymen in government posts...

...The following year, Somoza invited the legendary guerrilla leader to a peace meeting and killed him...

...La Prensa's editors are not loath to emend the censor's assertions...

...A government official pointed out that the Northern recruits "are the poorest of the poor," and admitted that, due to the isolation of their farms and limits on Managua's resources, their living conditions were unlikely to improve over the next five years or more...

...The result was anger, fear, polarization...

...became the battle cry of the Sandinista Republic, and roving groups of hotheaded youths, known as turbas, spread the message of the Revolution throughout the country, often with the aid of rocks hurled at the homes of those most reluctant to hear it...

...I may be proved wrong...

...To the Sandinistas, this kind of talk smacks of a crafty attempt to "delegiti-mize the Revolution...

...Those who place all the blame for the Leftward surge of 1980-83 on both the Carter and Reagan Administrations do not have much of a case...

...Lieutenant Nelba Blandon says censored subjects include international news'' that may harm our relations with other governments," military information not approved by the Ministry of Defense, and economic items that "might incite panic and disarray...

...Important as these proposals may be, though, it is the aperturas admittedly designed by the Sandinista leaders to satisfy their domestic critics that generate most of the optimism...

...trade union federations, including those opposed to the FSLN, were legalized...

...In the meantime, the upsurge of electoral activity and the increasingly open political debates (some of the opposition parties are even interviewed in the pages of Barricada) are serving to re-establish the line between dissent and "treason...

...Neither, however, is Nicaragua the very model of a new type of democracy, as its unabashed apologists—domestic and foreign—would have it, nor is it likely to become one the day after tomorrow...

...Four months and 50,000 corpses later the FSLN emerged victorious, with enhanced prestige and the loyalty of most Nicaraguans...

...Except for one individual, the severest critics of the FSLN with whom I spoke were opposed to military actions, covert or overt...

...The regime tackled these problems with vigor and a supple sense of realism...

...Whether it will lead to any meaningful dialogue remains an open question...

...What with having just pushed through a bill enfranchising 16-year-olds—the Revolution's most ardent disciples—it need not worry too much that its "historic project" will be spurned...

...At the moment the opposition is numerically small and badly splintered...

...Since last autumn, though, censorship has grown progressively less onerous...

...It is a dangerous delusion...

...And Nicaraguan society was more divided than ever...

...Nicaragua is overwhelmingly Catholic, and the regime knew from the start that it could not profit from wholesale attacks on the people's faith...

...High marks also have been earned by a campaign to teach about 500,000 campesinos to read and write, and by a health program that has sharply reduced the incidence of malaria, polio and infant mortality...

...We asked that those resettled be repatriated and indemnified for their losses...

...Excesses," they will say, have been committed by the led, not the leaders...

...She tries to make us feel guilty," says Pedro Chamorro Jr...

...Lino Hernandez Trigueros, Director of the Legal Department of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights in Managua (a group cordially disliked by the FSLN), argues that "armed attacks merely serve as a pretext for violations of human rights and for repressive measures...

...At the same time, the Sandinistas have agreed to several significant concessions...

...The opposition's most serious defeat was on the issue of free access to public media during the campaign...

...One bishop told me the Sandinistas were out to "destroy the nuclear family and imbue our children with a totalitarian-atheistic mentality...

...A system that allows parties Abraham Brumberg, a frequent contributor, is editor of the recently published Poland: Genesis of a Revolution...

...Occasionally, tired of "arguing interminably" with the chief censor, the editors reach for the phone and make their case to Comandante Borge...

...Our government," declares the young, attractive and articulate head of the Media Office, "has never relished the idea of censorship...

...He says: "We sent the government a letter urging it to extend the amnesty to all of Zelaya [the province where many Indians live], not just northern Zelaya...

...Damage to industrial plants and equipment was estimated at $481 million, and the inherited foreign debt stood at $1.6 billion...

...It was a welcome shock, therefore, when parts of the middle-class came to share this view and the Catholic Church (through its Nicaraguan Archbishop, Miguel Oban-do y Bravo) conceded in late 1978 that under some circumstances armed resistance was legitimate...

...That September, a decree was passed postponing until 1985 the elections the FSLN had said it would hold "as soon as possible" when it was on the verge of triumph...

...The phrase grew out of two meetingsof Latin American bishops, in 1968 and 1979, which embraced the teachings of Vatican II...

...Lieutenant Blandon explains the present relaxation of censorship rather disarmingly: "We had to put an end to all those foreign allegations that we were persecuting the opposition...

...In several conversations, both in Managua and the northern reaches of the country near the Honduran border, I was given a picture of contras startling-ly at odds with the sinister one drawn in the past...

...and relations with the Church were reasonably cordial...

...Themany works onSandino, on the other hand, are published by FSLN's Department of Propaganda and Political Education...

...About 40,000 middle-class Nicaraguans left the country...

...The most important apertura, in that it involves the FSLN's commitment to political pluralism, is the election scheduled for this November...

...Cuba, despite its dedication to spreading revolution beyond its borders, cautioned restraint...

...Representatives of various organizations—such as the Socialist Internationals, the UN and the Contadora Group (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama)—will be invited to observe the balloting...

...A fresh attempt has been made to mend relations with the Church...

...Sandinista policies vis-a-vis the Miskitos had included land-grabs involving traditional Miskito hunting and fishing territory, and the forcible resettlement of Miskito communities close to Honduras...

...The schism runs deep, with inflammatory rhetoric on all sides...

...Sandinista leaders are not particularly eager to discuss their ideology with foreign visitors, but it can be readily inferred from the numerous books and pamphlets available in Managua's bookstores and the capital's haven for journalists, the Hotel Inter-Continental...

...Nevertheless, on the basis of my observations and my numerous discussions with Sandinistas, anti-Sandi-nistas and agnostics alike, I think there is reason to believe that the FSLN does not quite fit the traditional Leninist mold, and that the current conciliatory spirit is rooted in features endemic to the Sandinista Revolution...

...Skepticism about the Sandinistas' acceptance of free elections continues to run high...

...Nationalism still casts a powerful spell in Nicaragua, and the Sandinistas can and will take advantage of it...

...The pragmatism displayed by the Sandinistas in the past—only to be engulfed in bloody-minded radicalism— is reasserting itself...

...Press censorship has been relaxed...

...Soon afterward, Godoy resigned from his post, and his party quit the FPR and chose him as its Presidential candidate...

...I am older and have more political experience...

...But even the moderate Church leaders do not take kindly to a "libertarian theology" that espouses class struggle and that has spawned a "progressive Church" claiming sole rights to the "option for the poor...

...Under propitious circumstances it could lead to a new national consensus, one that would both strengthen the security and legitimacy of the regime and provide—as its adversaries are wont to put it—"political space" for its critics...

...The following September censorship was tightened...

...Whatever the FSLN's intentions, the floodgates have opened...

...The rich are also children of God...

...one consequence may be strong opposition presence in the National Assembly...

...Dispatches told of stepped up attacks against Nicaragua by CIA-financed and directed contras based in Honduras...

...There was more...

...That act set off the large-scale insurrection, and less than a year later the National Guard bombed La Prensa's building out of existence...

...But he worries about his friends in the West...

...The same decree proscribed "public campaigning" for office on the grounds that not until the country was economically and socially "reconstructed" could it afford the luxury of shaping its political future...

...FSLN spokesmen, though conceding "mistakes," arefarmoreinclined to look for scapegoats than for honest explanations...

...The recently appointed president of the Bishops Conference, Mon-signor Pablo Antonio Vega, a gentle man, gets testy on this subject: "We, too, have accepted the option for the poor," he insists...

...In contrast, President Carter's $75 million economic aid package, proposed in September 1979, was running into trouble in Congress...

...Unlike Somoza's middle-class opponents, the FSLN as a whole had decided early on that Somoza could only be ousted by force...

...Tactical compromises and "strategic retreats" are the stuff of Leninist politics...

...The government currently plans to arm about 100,000 men...

...In one instance, Blandon confirms, she apologized to the editors for calling them So-mocistas...

...The FSLN gave economic reasons for rejecting this...

...It would make the most sense, say many Nicaraguans, for the parties to stop bickering among themselves and unite behind one program and one Presidential candidate...

...In either case we would accept the verdict...

...She admits that "dreadful errors" were made back in 1982, attributing them to "inexperienced officials" who were properly reprimanded...

...Of the other two dailies (edited by one or another Chamorro), Barricada is the FSLN's official mouthpiece and El Nuevo Diario is generally considered plus royalist que le roi...

...Those who maintain that Carter's vacillations and Reagan's openly hostile policies did help to stiffen the back of the Sandinista leaders are on firmer ground...

...Businessmen and private landowners found guilty of "sabotage" were subjected to "anti-capitalization" measures —that is, their property was seized, frequently at the instigation of sundry mass organizations such as FSLN trade unions and the CDSs...

...Most striking of all is its grab-bag nature, with populism and heady anti-Yankee nationalism receiving pride of place over the theories of both Carlos Marx and his foremost Russian pupil...

...the presence of a capitalist class that is certainly harassed, but still active and even prosperous—all these are not the hallmarks of a totalitarian system...

...A few of them point the finger at Nicaragua's upper crust (about 2 per cent of the population), charging that the loss of its economic and political privileges prompted it to foment panic among the much larger class of small entrepreneurs and landowners...

...This is why there are hundreds of Sandinistas in jail...

...to do otherwise would be a violation of our principles...

...Many of them, he added, have kin in the National Guard (also recruited from the regions) and are subject to family pressure to boot...

...But the continued employment of military "pressure" and massive economic sanctions conjures up a more ominous scenario: severe economic hardship and burgeoning discontent, which are likely to spur the government to harsh repressive policies...

...In the course of a long interview Vir-gilio Godoy Reyes, Minister of Labor and head of the Independent Liberal Party, stressed the serious differences his party has with the FSLN...

...Pressure, however, must include incentives and rewards no less than sanctions...

...Lieutenant Blandon vigorously shakes her head, denying any tampering in this area...

...The radical euphoria that swept the country in 1981 -83 was the product of myriad factors, not least among them differences within the FSLN leadership...

...aggression to any real effort to win the trust of thousands of aggrieved Miskitos...

...yet several of them were uncomfortable with its moderation...

...With Godoy's candidacy, and possibly one more, the country may well face a three-pronged Presidential race...

...It presents a formidable problem," he said, "that we are trying to understand and deal with appropriately...

...They could turn out no less mendacious and cynical than any of Lenin's other disciples...

...Military aid arrived chiefly from the Soviet Union...

...They may actually prefer the current benevolent hostilities, as I suspect, to a rigorously restraining " law on the media" that will presumably take effect when the State of Emergency is lifted...

...As some pro-regime Nicaraguans will privately admit, the reality is more complex...

...It is the intention of the government to lift some of the restrictions, inasmuch as the people of Nicaragua have acquired a profound understanding of who their real enemies are, and are sufficiently mature by now to distinguish between malicious propaganda and truth...

...Official rhetoric became shriller, with the burgesia—a shorthand term for all opponents of the regime, whatever the size of their bank accounts—regularly attacked as counterrevolutionaries or CIA agents...

...This allows some exiles—such as Arturo Cruz, ex-Ambassador to the United States and former member of the Junta—to return and seek office...

...Nor is it pleasant for me to do what I do...

...A number of comandantes learned first-hand in Moscow that the Soviet Union was neither able nor ready to supply all the aid Nicaragua needed...

...Few Nicaraguans believe that these men will be used to "export" revolution or to invade a neighboring country...

...In February an electoral bill was presented to that body...

...Their eclecticism can largely be explained by the peculiar history of the present movement...

...There has been an amnesty for Nicaraguans who have left the country since the Sandinista National Liberation Front's (FSLN) 1979 ouster of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, including members of the contras, plus a second amnesty for Miskito Indians in the antigovernment guerrilla movements based in Honduras and Costa Rica...

...to stimulate "popular participation" through the creation of mass organizations while preserving a traditional multiparty system...

...of additional arms arriving from the Soviet bloc nations...

...These proportions have been adhered to, and the agrarian reform is widely deemed quite successful...

...So did Mexico and Venezuela, Nicaragua's major suppliers of oil...

...Her office, she says, always allowed the publication of articles ideologically hostile to the FSLN...

...The apertura is no more than that— an opening...

...LaPrensa has been able to publish articles unthinkable a year ago, some of them acidly critical of the regime...

...The Socialist International warned that it would abandon support...

...At issue, almost exclusively, is the newspaper La Prensa...

...20,000 in the regular Army, the rest in the militia...

...Its general principles were then enshrined in the Fundamental Statutes enacted a day after the Sandinistas came to power...

...San-cho implied that his party may quit the FPR and present its own electoral platform...

...The present arrangement allows greater room to maneuver, and has certainly resulted in concessions by the government...

...Nonetheless, in a steadily polarized society an older affinity—that between the traditional elements of the Church hierarchy and the conservative elements of the political opposition— was more decisive...

...After all, she's young," he told me...

...In time, of course, the bubble of confidence burst...

...Unless the Sandinistas are driven into a corner, it may produce even more...

...The mm comandan tes de la Revolution who constitute the Sandinista National Directorate had, to be sure, accepted the Terceristas' coalition strategy...

...X—"who will be the first victims...

...And it is people like myself," said a prominent Nicaraguan intellectual—let us call him Dr...

...One of them, the neighborhood Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), clearly inspired by the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, quickly became an instrument of political control, in charge of—among other things—the distribution of ration cards...

...Guarantees can be solemnly proffered—and then unceremoniously canceled...

...They are not shy to reciprocate...

...Others observe that the FSLN justifies the State of Emergency on the grounds that no country—especially not one that is poor, small and vulnerable—can tolerate "business as usual" when under military attack by a powerful neighbor...

...Criticism of Communist countries became tabu...

...The control of information and ideas continues to be a sensitive matter here...

...The collected works of Marx and Lenin are printed in and provided by Moscow, not for foreign currency (woefully scarce here) but as part of the USSR's regular barter trade with Nicaragua...

...We were forced into censorship by the escalation of economic and military aggression against Nicaragua...

...of skirmishes triggered by the Sandinista regime along the once quiet Costa Rican border...

...The Latin American countries know it, the Socialist International knows it—so why not our most formidable potential ally, the United States...

...two non-Sandinistas were members of the original five-person Junta of National Reconstruction, the country's putative collective presidency...

...To anyone familiar with the censorship apparatus of, say, the Soviet Union or Poland, Nicaragua's is in fact fairly bizarre...

...Copies of censored articles, posted on an outside bulletin board and proffered to the inquiring foreigner, show that many political stories have been censored in part or in full...

...Worse, Nicaragua's non-Communist friends began to make threatening noises...

...The split could make the Sandinista mandate seem larger than life, but there is nothing to prevent the opposition parties from uniting into a single bloc once the elections are over...

...A corresponding legacy of mistrust plagues the FSLN's relations with the Church...

...The Salvadoran offensive got stuck...

...Under the terms of the recent amnesty, over 300 Miskitos arrested for "counterrevolutionary activities" have been released and sent home...

...Several consist of initiatives aimed at achieving a political settlement of Nicaragua's differences with its neighbors and with the United States...

...Formally established in 1961, the FSLN for years consisted of a handful of youthful guerrillas waging a lonely and largely unsuccessful struggle against the third brutish Somoza to assume power, and engaging in internecine feuds about what specific strategy might best gain their objective...

...But the Gospel preaches love and reconciliation...

...X, a man with impeccable anti-Somocista credentials, tries to do whatever he can to "nudge this government toward greater pluralism...

...State Department that the Sandinistas could be dealt with...

...Further, theOrganization of American States' Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Republic of Nicaragua, published in 1981, confirmed that the executions had been carried out without the knowledge of the central authorities, who had abolished the death penalty even for Somocistas accused of war crimes...

...As in Somoza's days, it plays a double role as purveyor of information and political opponent of the regime...

...The interesting question, rather, is what political processes will be stirred now that the opposition's hands have been untied...

...it can equally be seen as a warning against transgressing the lines drawn by the Revolution...

...That may yet happen...

...Perhaps most important, the national elections originally scheduled for 1985 have been moved up to November of this year...

...The editors of La Prensa intend to press on with their offensive...

...Costa Rica, which had given refuge to Sandinista rebels in the late 1970s, registered its displeasure with the course the Revolution was taking...

...Even a year ago, many foreign visitors felt sure that the promise of elections would never be honored...

...Faith admits of no "internal contradictions...

...A lively, if frustrated, opposition...

...The FSLN's measures to win back the confidence of the Miskitos fall far short of what is needed, however...

...The turbos, for instance, are conspicuous by their absence...

...The Salvadoran insurgents, meanwhile, seemed close to victory, promising Nicaragua a new revolutionary ally...

...In March 1979, the FSLN united around the platform of the faction known as the "InsurrectionalTendency," or Terceristas...

...A policy based on the threat or use of force alone can bring unmitigated disaster...

...It was applauded by many Latin American countries and West European Social Democrats, and appeared to persuade the U.S...

...And that's what we need...

...Perhaps most astonishing is the spirit of independence evinced by parties long associated with the FSLN...

...Our people could decide to terminate the revolutionary process, or could decide that another party is more qualified to lead it...

...All parties will have to share 15 minutes per day on state-controlled television, and 30 minutes on state- and private-owned radio...

...They have abolished, for example, the January 1984 residency requirement for participating in the election...

...In Poland structural economic reforms are virtually a dead letter, and the much-touted Hungarian "new economic mechanism," while innovative, has not returned land to private farmers or placed factories in the hands of private entrepreneurs...

...National Directorate—Give Us the Order...

...The editors of LaPrensa note that not a day passes without some vigorous arguments between them and Lieutenant Blandon...

...Some members of the hierarchy see no possibility of compromise with the FSLN...

...The ubiquitous No Pasaranl that one sees on billboards may refer to enemies bent on destroying the Revolution by fire and sword...

...Initially repudiating loans " imposed on the country by the Yankee monopolies or those of any other power," it soon realized that its recovery program depended on external financing and assumed full responsibility for all foreign debts...

...They would be guaranteed full independence to pursue their own political and ideological goals...

...Any such attempt would be suicidal, they insist...

...came the heated reply...

...Elections can be rigged—have, indeed, been rigged in the Soviet Union since 1918 —and "parties" can be as fictitious as those in Eastern Europe, which are but fig leaves for squalid police dictatorships...

...The Church's truce with the FSLN turned sour...

...Its internal critics notwithstanding, why is the FSLN embarking upon a course so seemingly at odds with its reputed totalitarian or Marxist-Leninist character...

...What they fear is that the Army could easily be used for pernicious domestic purposes—if and when the regime deems this necessary...

...The government is apparently aware of the havoc it caused...

...But Sergio Ramirez, who may run for Vice President on the FSLN ticket, solemnly told me that the FSLN is fully prepared to accept electoral defeat: "If we lose the elections," he said, "this would mean not only the rejection of the FSLN but of an historic project...

...Although his successors have tried to flesh out Sandino's commitments with Marxist analysis and Leninist "teachings" on revolution in underdeveloped countries, they have never succeeded in creating a coherent dogma...

...The outbursts (and consequences) of their mischievous zeal were sometimes curbed by reasonable—or seasoned—comandan-tes, but there is ample evidence that many confiscations and arbitrary land appropriations were encouraged, if not wholly orchestrated, from above...

...the absence of any controls on the arts, literature and book publication in general...

...Upper-class fear may have percolated down to the less wealthy...

...it was hardly spawned by irrational perceptions...

...Thus at the outset political parties were allowed to function...

...of ports mined and vessels damaged...

...Now officials concede that many campesinos have gone over to the rebels because of understandable grievances against the government...

...They are encapsulated in a single word one hears often these days: aperturas (openings...

...Yet last January the Council of State approved a "law of political parties...

...freedom to travel...

...in Lieutenant Blandon's words, "any comparison between us and the Somocistas is criminal...

...Food was in alarmingly short supply, as were medical supplies for the 100,000 people wounded during the last few weeks of hostilities...

...to redistribute wealth for the benefit of the poor while maintaining the active cooperation of those classes needed to finance the redistribution...

...The destruction of their property and their way of life, as well as atrocities committed by individual Sandinista soldiers, bred enormous resentment among the Indians, many of whom fled to neighboring Honduras and joined the contras...

...The present editor's father, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, was murdered by Somoza's gunmen in 1978...

...Sergio Ramirez, a prominent novelist and Junta member, is probably right in noting— as he did during a conversation we had —that "power in our country was seized mostly by young people long fed on revolutionary ideology, who thought a new world could be created in even less than the six days God needed...

...at special prices), and 35 per cent would stay in the hands of private entrepreneurs large and small...

...Of course pressure is required...

...A provision in the original draft of the Electoral Law that would have made it impossible for small parties to put up their candidates was eliminated, too...

...It may be useful to have Ramirez' assurance on record, although its practical significance is moot: By all accounts the FSLN still commands the loyalty of most Nicaraguans...

...But I should like to think that my well-intentioned friends abroad are working for me, not against me...

...The Soviet Union, they claimed, stood ready to provide the economic and military aid required for building Nicaragua's version of "socialism in one country...

...Today's Nicaragua does not strike me as the "totalitarian state" it is so often labeled...

...Relations deteriorated, it appears, less as a result of specific actions taken by the Church or the regime than because of abiding suspicions on both sides...

...In April 1980, on the eve of its inauguration, the Council of State— the legislative body of anti-Somoza elements promised 10 months earlier by the Sandinista National Directorate— was expanded by the addition of 14 new members, all representing "mass organizations" firmly under the FSLN's thumb...

...It would be absurd to deny that possibility...

...The policy of "broad alliances," or coalitions, had caught the fancy of most middle-class groups and won the grudging approval of the Church (as well as the enthusiastic endorsement of such Catholics as the Maryknoll nuns and some Jesuits, smitten by "liberation theology...

...His party belongs to the Sandinista-led Revolutionary Popular Front (FPR), yet it agreed with the opposition's demand that two elections be held—the first for a Constituent Assembly (as stipulated by the Fundamental Statutes), and the second, after the constitution is in effect, for legislative and executive bodies...

...Private businessmen and landowners have been offered new incentives and guarantees, and a foreign investment law is soon to provide similar guarantees to outside companies...