THE WAY OF THE SANDINISTAS

...The Sandinistas discourage the accumulation of large estates and have handed the titles for small parcels to some 100,000 landless people...

...The Sandinistas know that Obando and the publishers of La Prensa are committed to the overthrow of the government...

...The battle rages in the censored press, in conversations and shouting matches on the streets, in slogans, on billboards, within the Catholic Church in Rome, Managua, and remote villages, and ultimately on the front, with bullets and artillery...

...The military front is the Sandinistas* one clear success story...

...A Sandinista official told me that the CIA began its war against the Nica-raguan people even before the triumph of the revolution...

...Yet the implacable opposition ignores the constitution...

...About 8 p.m., at a bus stop in Managua, a woman is complaining to a Sandinista officer about mismanagement and corruption...

...Government has waged low-intensity warfare for five years against the government of a destitute country, and the war has added immensely to the suffering of the poor...

...at least they appear to be...

...Agrarian reform has created a new peasant class rather than push people onto state or collective farms...

...There is an embarrassing photograph, taken in the mid-1970s, of Obando being embraced by Somoza...

...The man mutters: "Look how well she speaks Spanish...

...They tend to behave with a certain arrogance, coming as most do with more education, from more developed societies...

...Such international class interests provide the thread that ties Nicaragua's internal opposition to the U.S...

...You're an old reactionary," she tells him...

...Intelligence agents, that's all they are...

...I can talk with tranquility to the piricuaco and so can you...

...I forget to store my water up the night before the pumps are to be worked on [two days each week] and then I go to the store and there is no bread, no eggs, no milk...

...Common interests unite the White House in Washington with the businessmen and Cardinal Obando y Bravo in Managua...

...How can I prove to Colonel Bermudez that I am anti-Sandinista...

...So if they come back how will it change...

...It is also anti-Yankee and anti-imperialist—one and the same in Latin America...

...The most serious suffering is death—not only for the dead, the teen-agers who fall to contra fire at the front, but also for the mothers, wives, families...

...In direct fighting between Sandinista forces and U.S.-paid contras, everyone agrees that the government troops are—to quote an American clergyman—"kicking contra ass...

...Speculators, hustlers, and hoarders abound...

...A Sandinista comandante in his early fifties recalls that the most ardent espous-ers of democracy and civil liberties for Nicaragua today had little interest in those subjects during the Somoza years...

...They do not see their interests as coinciding with the older, larger farmers, but they share a common concern for the prices paid for agricultural goods...

...The Aeronica attendant interrupts the argument to announce the flight's boarding...

...been murdered...

...One CIA adventurer whisked away more than a hundred Guard officers in July 1979, under cover of the Red Cross, just as the revolutionaries marched victoriously into Managua to take power...

...Nicaragua is not only engaged in a multi-front war against the United States...

...He has proposed no clear programmatic alternative to the Sandinistas, apart from advocating dialogue with the contras and the lifting of all restrictions on the Church, press, and radio...

...On the street in Managua, Masaya, Leon, and Chinandega, the names of Alfonso Robelo and Arturo Cruz—two of the contras'more liberal leaders—are virtually unknown...

...The bus is so crowded that I think I have cracked a rib by the time I get off, and then my phone isn't working...

...They will lose much of the power and privilege they enjoyed under the Somoza dynasty...

...In Managua, it is difficult to imagine the realization of the classic scene from the film Red River, in which enterprising cattle baron John Wayne puts his arm on the shoulder of young Montgomery Clift, motions to the vast expanse of land all around them, and says: "Son, one day all of this is gonna be yours...

...The oped pages and letters columns of major U.S...

...The United States is culturally important to Nicaragua and has been for more than a century...

...everyone agrees that the government's troops are 'kicking contra ass' "So," I ask, "what's your solution...

...But somehow I manage to get through the day and start again the next morning...

...Unlike last year's, this year's coffee harvest—vital to Nicaragua's balance of trade-proceeded without serious contra destruction...

...Adolfo Cal-ero, former chief of Coca-Cola in Managua and also part of the contra political leadership, is also dismissed by top Sandinista officials as a CIA agent, an assertion they say was confirmed recently by a high U.S...

...Obando wants orthodoxy and, like the Pope, eschews class struggle...

...The difference in currency rates troubles me...

...The poor, who constitute the vast majority of the population, have first place on the national agenda, and their needs are at odds with those of big business...

...He has prestige among all classes in this most Catholic of nations, and he maintains a broad following based on personal status and demands for loyalty to the Pope...

...Government's war...

...The contra military command was picked by the CIA...

...But most Nicaraguans never had comforts or conveniences...

...The erosion of comfort and convenience wears worst on people who were used to the material benefits of the middle class...

...Cabbage, green peppers, carrots, onions, melons, citrus fruit, squash, tomatoes are plentiful—but the supply of staples like rice and beans, which are state-controlled, fluctuates...

...The CIA had agents throughout the National Guard's high command when Somoza was in power...

...Cardinal Obando appeared at a May Day mass at Calvario Church, opposite the old Thieves' Corner, near the Eastern Market, half a mile from the Plaza where President Daniel Ortega was giving a speech...

...Such encouragement is needed...

...There is no visible alternative to Sandinista rule...

...The posts of secondary leadership that many of them once occupied now belong to Nicaraguans, some of them clearly less competent...

...In the wars, foreigners often play crucial roles...

...diplomatic bullying...

...The way you are doing it now, this slow war of attrition, is pure mierda, man...

...Members of the urban business class remember Robelo as one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs...

...On each visit, I have noticed a gradual deterioration of the quality of everyday life...

...I think you people are making very bad mistakes...

...The revolution is consciously class-oriented...

...And so, in Nicaragua, foreigners who have loyally braved the daily travails of revolutionary life find themselves shunted aside...

...The church of the poor, with its liberation theology, views the world through the prism of class and casts its lot with the have-nots...

...Except for the last year of Somoza rule, little attention was paid by the official church and business sectors in general to the Somoza abuses...

...Members of this new peasantry, whose holdings allow them to be self-sufficient and also produce for market, coexist with the shrinking rural proletariat, many of whom await the titles to their own small parcels of land...

...Daily life is an ordeal for the typical resident of Managua...

...national-security figure...

...Nicaragua has plenty of food, but some days it's hard to find...

...Police defused the situation, blocking the passage of the most provocative groups, but the anger lingered...

...To use the word "mixed" confuses meaning, since it connotes a neutrality that is not present...

...That's the only way to defeat these people...

...They are cosmopolitans...

...But they do want to control their operations, handle foreign-exchange transactions, regulate wages, and ensure the ecological health of their country—hardly the traditional formula for a long-term future for big business...

...little has appeared in La Prensa and the bishops barely mention it in their sermons...

...newspapers did not carry items from Cardinal Obando attacking repression or from leaders of the business sector and right wing complaining of the gross violations of civil liberties perpetrated by the Somozas for almost half a century...

...Revolution is the supreme test of will, and it rarely occurs without war—insurrectionary, counterrevolutionary, or both...

...The bus arrives...

...About 1,000 squeezed into the church to hear the Cardinal, but the figures are deceptive: Obando has proved himself a tough and wily enemy, the only man in Nicaragua with the name recognition and stature to unify an opposition...

...You are not beaten, shot, or even arrested...

...This piricuaco has not said a word, or unhol-stered the pistol," she says, pointing to the officer...

...In what way...

...The U.S...

...The Pope chose Obando y Bravo to be the Church's standard-bearer in Nicaragua, the keeper of orthodoxy...

...In part, the shortages of consumer goods can be blamed on the United States—the U.S...

...The temperature has dropped by this hour to the high eighties, but it is several degrees warmer inside the bus...

...The hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who now live on their own land as a result of the reform do not look favorably on this suggestion...

...My car won't start and I know that it will take months before I can find a spare part if that is the cause of it...

...He is drinking imported whisky at an outlandish price...

...The trip lasts about forty-five minutes...

...The leaders of COSEP (Superior Board of Private Enterprise), a group representing the large-scale private owners, understand that a continuation of Sandinista government in Nicaragua is incompatible with their interests...

...The Sandinistas will invest to build a new social infrastructure of mass education, health care, and agrarian reform before spending to secure the fortunes of a handful of business people...

...The Cardinal poses a serious threat...

...The woman ignores the mysterious Polish reference and declares that she is proud to be a Scottish Sandinista...

...The old Liberal and Conservative parties want to abolish key parts of the agrarian reform—their way of stabilizing agriculture and ending the economic crisis...

...Their opposition, except for those on the extreme Left, stands for the rights of the wealthy...

...The Sandinista thanks the woman for her words...

...A rock video followed, Madonna singing "Material World," then a film featuring Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern...

...The old market system—under Somoza a version of Adam Smith's invisible hand coupled with institutional theft by the National Guard—and the new Sandinista controls often conflict with each other, so a kind of distributional chaos reigns...

...He shrugs nonchalantly...

...The man "hhrumphs" and strides away...

...The routine in the Managua airport begins with a required exchange of $60 for 4,200 cordobas, seventy to one, far less than the official exchange rate of 900 or the black-market rate of 1,800...

...THE WAY OF THE SANDINISTAS At the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica, a well-dressed man in his seventies begins a conversation with a young woman as they wait in line to board the Aeronica flight to Managua...

...A man nearby sneers...

...I don't know sometimes if I will have enough energy to get myself to the office," a Mexican technician tells me...

...The Cardinal has not been eloquent on the rights of the poor or on how he would protect them should the Sandinistas be overthrown...

...Under Somoza, the Guard suspected every citizen of being a subversive...

...How can an economy function, I ask myself, with three different exchange rates...

...The woman snaps back, "Perhaps you have forgotten that one never talked to the Guardia, that one couldn't even be out at this hour of the night, that we would be home worrying if our teen-age daughter was not yet back that she would have been raped, or that our teen-age son would have Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C...

...Like most other nationalist revolutions in the Third World, the one in Nicaragua seeks to control and redistribute the nation's wealth...

...The ultra-leftist parties, Trotskyist in orientation, demand immediate socialism, beginning with the nationalization of all productive property, the formation of workers' Soviets, and other remnants of 1917-style bolshevism...

...Then there are the one-legged, one-armed, wheelchair-bound young people, hundreds of them...

...The Sandinistas don't want to eliminate the COSEP immediately, or the large growers of coffee or cotton or cattle...

...Some of the state-controlled markets do not have enough produce to meet demand at the low, controlled price...

...The war is for the will of the people as much as it is for territory and wealth...

...This is not a matter of any one government policy, such as tax incentives, but rather a premise about who controls economic life, and for whose benefit...

...The Sandinistas understand that Obando's strength is his ability to draw a crowd, to mobilize large numbers under religious banners and then turn them to politics with clever use of Biblical texts...

...In one of Managua's wholesale markets, farmers sell their produce to middlemen who then supply vendors at the retail markets, restaurateurs, and speculators...

...trade embargo and blockade of badly needed loans from international lending agencies, the U.S.-sponsored low-intensity war, the U.S...

...Some of this acreage was confiscated by the government from the Somoza clan, and some was purchased from large ranchers who were under-utilizing the land's productive potential...

...television network laughed when I suggested that Ortega's May Day speech be played in the U.S.—an absurd idea...

...To ensure that existing large growers keep producing, the Sandinistas pay them good prices in cordobas and bonuses in dollars...

...Anti-Sandinista sentiment is strong and vocal among some sectors of the middle class...

...The twelve parties of the political opposition in Nicaragua today, seven of which have representatives in the National Assembly, offer little in the way of program...

...But it does not make them pro-contra...

...That was before the current undeclared war that has now dragged on for five years, before the mining of Nicaragua's harbors by the CIA's UCLAs (Unilaterally Controlled Latino Assets), before the CIA wrote and distributed assassination manuals, before the Reagan Administration imposed a trade embargo...

...It is a society in transition from one way of organizing social and economic life to another, and what that other will be like is not yet clear...

...A record coffee profit might have been made, had the government not already pledged part of this year's crop against prior loans and had the shortage of foreign exchange not curtailed outlays for imported pesticides and fertilizer...

...And that is the most important political point in Nicaragua...

...In the first five months of 1986, the Sandinistas claim to have inflicted more than a thousand casualties on the contras and to have inspired the desertion of more than a thousand others...

...Stress and mental illness have become understandably more common...

...As the contra war drags on, the National Assembly debates a new Nicaraguan constitution...

...Discussion about the nature of the future government takes place formally and informally...

...Elite units acting in coordination with regular army and militia teams have routed the CIA forces from several provinces where they had been well-entrenched...

...On my last night there, at dinner with two Sandinista officials, we heard complaints from the next table, two other officials griping about corruption and bureaucracy...

...Nicaragua today is a Third World society in transition from the So-moza "kleptocracy"—as the Kissinger Commission described the dynasty that ruled from 1933 to 1979—to a more egalitarian model...

...A culture that preaches individualism and personal accumulation or one that finds the common good in collective cooperation to better the lot and establish the rights of the poor...

...For all of their errors and misfortunes, the Sandinistas have a vision of a good society that remains unchallenged by any political imagination among their enemies...

...Still, the harvest boosted morale and showed that cooperative work and defense efforts can succeed...

...The military absorbs half the budget, and its needs continually disrupt productive life by removing people from civilian jobs and transferring other resources to the war...

...Neither efficient capitalism nor equitable socialism is at work...

...The war, the economic breakdowns, the inability of Managua's old pumps to keep pushing water through the taps seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, the corruption that seeps from the old bureaucracy and parts of the new, the accelerated pace of life without a corresponding catchup in resources and technology—all of this turns daily life into an endurance contest, especially for those who have known better times...

...They know that Colonel Enrique Bermudez and most of those in the contra command structure used to be officers in Anastasio Somoza's National Guard...

...Sandinista leaders are committed to independence and social justice as the primary goals of their revolution, an orientation that does not bode well for the future of capitalism in their country...

...it is also in the midst of a profound social revolution...

...These incentives, however, are temporary measures designed to maintain some stability in agricultural production during the transition to a different agrarian model...

...And, of course, the war dominates the economic equation...

...If the contras would win by some miracle," confides an elegantly dressed lawyer in the bar of Managua's Intercontinental Hotel, "we would have to prove ourselves to them"—here he runs his finger across his throat—"that we actively opposed the Sandinistas, that we belonged to the underground, wherever it is...

...It should be clear to any observer that the Sandinistas stand for the rights of the poor...

...rum drinks are cheaper...

...He reminded me that the National Guard and CIA worked together to launch the Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961, and he claimed that the Agency regularly provided information to the Guard's intelligence arm in exchange for a free hand in Nicaragua...

...In any case, they are dismissed as cosmetics to hide the CIA's right-wing agenda...

...Nicaragua is in transition from one way of organizing social and economic life to another—what that other will be is not yet clear Nicaragua today is neither capitalist nor socialist...

...They recall the scenario played out in Chile to destabilize Salvador Allende, involving both press and segments of the Church as key opposition elements...

...Lawyers and barely literate workers and peasants are exposed for the first time to dialogue about the ideal form of government for Nicaragua...

...In part, the shortages can also be attributed to the disruption of the old economic system...

...If the United States will allow the transition to continue...

...Some of the foreigners who have worked for the revolution, even those who fought in the guerrilla war, now show signs of fatigue...

...But I don't believe that you will ever carry out the kind of brutality that we once had...

...For them, life is ambiguously better...

...The Sandinistas are clear on their economic priorities, and these are linked to substantive human rights...

...Everyone laughed...

...Cruz has spent most of his adult life outside Nicaragua and has wider name recognition in Washington than in Managua...

...some become rich overnight...

...The big growers who cooperate with the government receive state credit, machinery, and other resources...

...the shortages of basic goods, the transportation difficulties, and the frustrations of dealing with bureaucracy and corruption all make survival for one more day a reason to celebrate...

...Only those with autos or motor bikes can avoid this kind of daily exercise in crowding, and the woman who complained had been unable to find a part for her car...

...The real issue is what kind of culture will Nicaragua develop: elitist or egalitarian...

...But the government, after negotiating with the growers, manages the labor force and controls some of the marketing and prices...

...he asks...

...The straining vehicle belches out a cloud of acrid black smoke as it carries off its human cargo...

...I can leave the country for Miami, where I have a sister," he says...

...Piricuaco is a pejorative Indian word meaning "dog from hell...

...On television, a co-op leader from Minnesota sang the praises of the agrarian reform and pledged to buy Nicaraguan agricultural products to sell in the United States...

...Talking to a piricuaco in public...

...But then there comes a time when nationalism prevails and the foreigners become objects of resentment...

...I am not with the FSLN," she replies...

...Coffee prices are high, thanks to frost in Brazil...

...Salaries are not changed, but perquisites and power relations are altered in favor of the natives...

...Have you no shame...

...There is a tale, now legendary, of an airplane pilot who quit his high-status, high-salary job to sell cheese in one of the markets because he could make so much more money...

...The definition of substantive human rights, or of a democracy involving real participation in the allocation of national wealth, is still rejected by the people Ronald Reagan refers to as the democratic opposition, the "freedom fighters...

...They now enjoy basic rights in certain areas but have had to postpone their hopes for rapid improvements in material well-being...

...They occupy positions that should be held by natives...

...So the Sandinistas keep controls on him to prevent the religious demonstrations from turning into militant political rallies...

...Ortega drew 75,000 people on a very hot day...

...You're an intelligence agent for those communists," he shouts...

...Instead, they argue the indivisibility of civil liberties and electoral democracy, free from the language of class conflict...

...Ironically, the military front is the Sandinistas' one clear success story...

...The Sandinistas say the war thus far has taken 16,000 casualties, military and civilian, most of them under thirty years of age...

...I can learn to live with the Sandinistas, or hope that your country will change its policy...

...propaganda bashing of the Sandinistas, and the U.S...

...Yet, after seven visits to the Central American nation, I cannot understand why the U.S...

...Nicaraguans understand that the contras, should they win, will not form a benevolent democratic government...

...She comes from Scotland, she says, and is eager to begin her volunteer work in Nicaragua...

...The less tangible benefits can be important...

...I'm a Nicaraguan, and I know that when you start giving out land the next thing you have is communism...

...The old man grows angry...

...Provincial celebrations brought out another 200,000...

...Some of the people I work with are un-derqualified by ten times and screw up every operation and cover it up with militant slogan-shouting...

...What the future holds for the people at the bottom—the unemployed, the landless—remains unclear, but there is no question for the country's big-business types...

...That's why they favor the overthrow of the Sandinistas and the installation of a regime friendly to both traditional capitalism and the United States...

...People in the pro-Sandinista crowd passed CalvaricChurch on their way home from the May Day rally...

...It is class-based and fueled by personal grudges and deep-seated feelings of righteousness on both sides...

...The hostilities between some of the elite of the official Church on the one side, and the revolution and "popular" or "church of the poor" on the other, symbolize an international struggle within Catholicism...

...This is my seventh trip to revolutionary Nicaragua...

...It is filled to capacity, jammed so tightly that the shapes of individual bodies melt together...

...Either property interests or human interests will define the social system, but few of the anti-Sandinistas state their cause this way...

...I've been to Warsaw...

...Armed Sandinistas and volunteer pickers brought in a sizable crop—a feat they could not have accomplished two years ago in, say, Matagalpa...

...Government should be in such a sweat over a pauperized land of fewer than three million people—save for the remote possibility that its experiment in social reform and independence might produce some positive results if left alone...

...Tension developed quickly when some of them exchanged words and slogans with placard-carrying members of Obando's congregation...

...Send the Marines...

...In Nicaragua last March, President Reagan's speech against the Sandinistas was played in its entirety, but a reporter from a U.S...