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Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution Still Rocks
By Enrico
Tortolano
It is 30 years since the Nicaraguan revolution first
swept the Sandinistas to power, offering the people
of Latin America hope in an era characterized by
violent right-wing military dictatorships.
On July 19 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation
Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional –
FSLN) overthrew the brutal and corrupt dictator
Anastasio Somoza, whose family dynasty had ruled for
43 years (1936-1979).
After the fall of Managua, spirits were high and
hope was infectious. An opportunity had opened to
build a new Nicaragua underpinned by social justice
and co-operation. In the months that followed, the
FSLN enjoyed broad support for its policies,
especially the initiatives in the cultural sector
that led to an explosion of creative events.
However, the Sandinistas inherited huge problems.
The war to oust Somoza had killed as many as 50,000
people. Most of the population lived in grinding
poverty, hundreds of thousands were homeless or
refugees in neighbouring countries, the cities were
in ruins and Somoza had made off with the country’s
reserves, leaving a foreign debt of about $1.6
billion.
The Sandinistas launched a series of initiatives to
help rebuild the country and develop their
revolutionary goals. To promote citizen involvement,
local defence committees and public sector trade
unions were formed in urban areas. In the
countryside, unions were formed for farmers and
agricultural workers.
A national literacy campaign was started in 1980
that greatly impressed international educational
experts. In just five months, the Popular Literacy
Army, consisting of nearly 100,000 Nicaraguan
students, teachers, health workers, and women’s
groups, worked together with the most impoverished
sectors of society to reduce the illiteracy rate
from 51 per cent to less than 13 per cent. Education
spending expanded and the number of schools,
teachers and students dramatically increased.
Universal healthcare became available, new public
hospitals and clinics were built. Brigades of
community volunteers carried out vaccination
campaigns. Infant mortality rates and diseases were
also significantly reduced.
In 1984, the first elections under the Sandinistas
were won by its leader, Daniel Ortega, with a 67 per
cent majority. This was the first time most
Nicaraguans had ever voted and the first time since
1928 that the United States did not manage to
distort the electoral process. However, the
Sandinistas were not universally popular,
particularly in the Atlantic Coast region where the
Miskito, Rama and Creole people never really got
behind the revolution, especially after the
Sandinistas made attempts to bring about the
forcible relocation of indigenous groups.
Convinced that Nicaragua’s socialist policies and
friendship with Cuba and the Soviet Union meant the
spread of communism in the “backyard” of the US,
Ronald Reagan’s administration suspended aid to
Nicaragua in 1981 and thereafter unleashed
unparalleled military and economic aggression
against the Sandinistas. Determined to overthrow
Ortega but wary of public opinion in the US after
the failure in Vietnam, the CIA – with presidential
backing – gave military training and weaponry to the
Contras, the exiled opponents of the Sandinistas.
The Contra war was launched with nearly $20 million
of US military aid. The troops, based in training
camps in Honduras, were mostly made up of Somoza’s
National Guard, who had fled the country on his
departure. By the end of 1985, the Contras had
killed 4,000 civilians and kidnapped almost 6,000.
Ludicrously, Reagan described the Contras as “the
moral equivalent of our founding fathers”.
Exhausted by war and deprivation, the Sandinistas
were defeated by US-backed candidate Violeta
Chamorro in the 1990 elections. The US had perfected
its strategy of low-intensity conflict in Nicaragua.
Much has been written about the $12.5 million the US
Congress allocated for distribution through the
National Endowment for Democracy in 1989-1990 to
internal opposition groups, but less on the
clandestine channels used by the CIA and other US
agencies to provide the opposition with another $18
million. The administration of the first George Bush
spent about $20 per voter in Nicaragua, compared to
$4 per voter in the US elections of 1988.
Since 1990, World Bank and International Monetary
Fund policies of privatization and deregulation,
supported by the local oligarchy, have created mass
unemployment and poverty, reduced welfare spending
and created unsustainable foreign debts. More than
400 essential state services were privatized between
1990 and 2006 under so-called “efficiency savings”.
Illiteracy, which the revolution managed to reduce
to less than 13 per cent, climbed to 34 per cent.
In 1989, despite the economic embargo and
devastation of the war, the Sandinista government
invested $35 per person annually in health services.
By 2005, health spending had declined to $16 per
person.
As a consequence, on November 5 2006, the Nicaraguan
people voted Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas back
into power. Across the country, hundreds of
thousands of people took to the streets in
jubilation. The celebrations went on for days until
it was clear that all the main political forces
contending the election – and Washington, too, –
would accept the FSLN victory.
“It has been 16 years in which the people have paid
a big cost with the economic policies known as
neo-liberalism”, Ortega told a vast crowd gathered
at the Plaza La Fe in Managua. “Now we have the
challenge to open a new road – a road that will
permit Nicaraguan families to live in dignity.”
Ortega celebrated the victory with Venezuela’s Hugo
Chávez and Bolivian leader Evo Morales. Ortega’s
first official act was to sign up to the Alternativa
Bolviariana para las Americas (ALBA): an agreement
based on the principles of co-operation and
solidarity. Morales pledged that he, Chávez, Ortega
and other Latin American presidents would
nationalize their countries’ industries and “bring
death to American imperialism”.
A plethora of anti-poverty programmes such as Cero
Pobreza are now being developed to help eradicate
the extreme poverty that haunts Nicaragua. In a
process similar to the national crusade that took
Nicaragua’s poor barrios by storm in 1980, thousands
of young people are again involved in a struggle to
eliminate illiteracy.
Predictably, outside interference and violence from
opposition groups is on the rise. As a result,
Ortega wants to see a permanent Sandinista
insurrection to “struggle constantly” against “the
neo-liberal enemy”. He has called for a permanent
Sandinista mobilization in the streets. “The enemy
is still the same and we cannot trust them. The
enemy is mobilized because it can’t accept a
government of the poor.”
The permanent mobilization is part of the
Sandinistas’ 30th anniversary of the revolution
celebrations. However, the biggest source of joy
springs from the recognition that there really are
alternatives to neo-liberal capitalism and the
depressing panorama of social disintegration and
permanent economic crisis. In conjunction with other
Latin American governments and international
grassroots movements, the Sandinistas are beginning
a genuine programme of fundamental economic change
that places the economy at the service of collective
welfare and social development. Who knows where this
will lead? But there are hopeful signs.
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