[News] Et Tu, Daniel? The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed
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Sat Mar 7 12:21:31 EST 2009
Et Tu, Daniel? The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20798
March 07, 2009 By Roger Burbach
Source: CENSA
Upon his inauguration as Nicaraguan president in
January 2007, Daniel Ortega asserted that his
government would represent "the second stage of
the Sandinista Revolution." His election was full
of symbolic resonance, coming after 16 years of
electoral failures for Ortega and the party he
led, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation
(FSLN). The Sandinistas' road to power was paved
with a series of previously unthinkable pacts
with the old somocista and Contra opposition. The
FSLN's pact making began in earnest in 2001,
when, in the run-up to that year's presidential
election, Ortega forged an alliance with Arnoldo
Alemán, an official during the Somoza regime who
had been elected president in 1997.
But even with Alemán's backing, Ortega was unable
to win the presidency. So, before the 2006
election, he publicly reconciled with his old
nemesis, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a potent
symbol of the counterrevolutionary movement in
the 1980s. Ortega and his longtime companion,
Rosario Murillo, announced their conversion to
Catholicism and were married by the cardinal.
Just before his election Ortega supported a
comprehensive ban on abortion, including in cases
in which the mother's life is endangered, a
measure ratified by the legislature with the
crucial votes of Sandinista deputies. To round
out his pre-election wheeling and dealing, Ortega
selected Jaime Morales, a former Contra leader,
as his vice presidential candidate.
Even with these concessions to the right, Ortega
won the presidency with just 37.9% of the votes.
Once in power, he announced a series of policies
and programs that seemed to hark back to the
Sandinista years. Educational matriculation fees
were abolished, an illiteracy program was
launched with Cuban assistance, and an innovative
Zero Hunger program established, financed from
the public budget and Venezuelan aid, that
distributed one cow, one pig, 10 hens, and a
rooster, along with seeds, to 15,000 families
during the first year. Internationally, Nicaragua
joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas (ALBA), a trade and economic cooperation
pact that includes Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela.
But the Ortega government's clientelistic and
sectarian nature soon became evident when Ortega,
by presidential decree, established Councils of
Citizen Power under the control of the Sandinista
party to administer and distribute much of the
social spending. Even more importantly, under the
rubric of ALBA, Ortega signed an accord with
Venezuela that provides an estimated $300 million
to $500 million in funds personally administered
by Ortega with no public accountability.
As Mónica Baltodano, the leader of Resacte, a
dissident Sandinista organization, argued in a
recent article, Ortega's fiscal and economic
policies are, in fact, continuous with those of
the previous governments, despite his
anti-imperialist rhetoric and denunciations of
neoliberalism.(1) The government has signed new
accords with the International Monetary Fund that
do not modify the neoliberal paradigm, while the
salaries of government workers remain frozen and
those of teachers and health workers are the
lowest in Central America. According to the
Central Bank of Nicaragua, the average salary has
dropped the last two years, retrogressing to 2001 levels.(2)
Moreover, the government and the Sandinista party
are harassing and repressing their opponents.
During an interview in January, Baltodano told me
the right to assembly has been systematically
violated during the past year, as opposition
demonstrations are put down with goon squads.
"Ortega is establishing an authoritarian regime,
sectarian, corrupt, and repressive, to maintain
his grip on power, betraying the legacy of the
Sandinista revolution," she said.
The core of this legacy was the revolution's
commitment to popular democracy. Seizing power in
1979 from the dictator Anastasio Somoza, the
Sandinista movement comprised Nicaragua's urban
masses, peasants, artisans, workers, Christian
base communities, intellectuals, and the
muchachosthe youth who spearheaded the armed
uprisings. The revolution transformed social
relations and values, holding up a new vision of
society based on social and economic justice that
included the poor and dispossessed. The
revolution was muticlass, multiethnic,
multidoctrinal, and politically pluralistic.
While socialism was part of the public discourse,
it was never proclaimed to be an objective of the
revolution. It was officially designated "a
popular, democratic, and anti-imperialist
revolution." Radicalized social democrats,
priests, and political independents as well as
Marxists and Marxist-Leninists served as cabinet
ministers of the Sandinista government. Images of
Sandino, Marx, Christ, Lenin, Bolívar, and Carlos
Fonseca, the martyred founder of the Sandinista
movement, often hung side by side in the cities and towns of Nicaragua.
A central attribute of the revolution that has
made its legacy so powerful is that it was a
revolución compartida, a revolution shared with
the rest of the world.(3) As Nicaragua, a country
with fewer than 3 million inhabitants, defied the
wrath of the U.S. imperium, people from around
the world rallied to the revolution's support. In
a manner reminiscent of the Spanish civil war
half a century earlier, the Sandinista revolution
came to be seen as a new political utopia,
rupturing national frontiers. It marked a
generation of activists around the globe who
found in the revolution a reason to hope and believe.
With the deepening of the U.S.-backed
counterrevolutionary war from military bases in
Honduras, activists from the United States came
to be the largest contingent to support the
Sandinista revolution. An estimated 100,000
people from the United States visited Nicaragua
in the 1980s, many as simple political tourists.
Some came as part of delegations, but most of
them arrived on their own. It was an experience
totally different from that of Cuba, where the
prohibition of U.S. travel to the island meant
that only organized delegations arrived via
Mexico or Canada with assigned accommodations and
structured tours. But it was not just the travel
arrangements that were different. Those going to
Nicaragua found an "open door" society: They
could talk with anyone, travel to the
countryside, and stay where they pleased with no
interference from the government.
The Sandinista revolution's commitment to
democracy led it down a new political path. This
was not a revolutionary government conducted, in
the classical sense, by a dictatorship of the
proletariat. While the National Directorate of
the FSLN oversaw the revolutionary process, it
was not dictated by a single strongman but by
nine people who reached consensus decisions with
input from popular organizations. The Nicaraguan
Revolution thus responded to internal and
external challenges by deepening its democratic
and participatory content, rather than by declaring a dictatorship.
In October 1983, when a U.S. assault appeared
imminent in the aftermath of the invasion of
Grenada, the National Directorate adopted the
slogan "All Arms to the People" and distributed
more than 200,000 weapons to the militias and
popular organizations. I was there as U.S.
aircraft flew over Managua, breaking the sound
barrier, trying to "shock and awe" the populace.
Bomb shelters and defensive trenches were hastily
built as the country mobilized for war.
We may never know whether the threatened invasion
was a ruse or if the popular mobilization
forestalled a U.S. attack. But it did reaffirm
the revolution's commitment to democracy. In
1984, in the midst a deteriorating economy and
the escalating Contra war, the country held an
election in which seven candidates vied for the
presidency. The election was monitored by "at
least 460 accredited observers from 24
countries," who unanimously described it as
fair.(4) A reported 83% of the electorate
participated, and Ortega won with almost 67% of
the votes.(5) The election demonstrated that a
revolutionary government can solidify its hold on
power in the midst of conflict, not by adopting
increasingly dictatorial powers but by building mass democratic support.
The adoption of a new constitution in 1986 marked
yet another step forward in the democratic
process. The constitution, which established
separation of powers, directly incorporated human
rights declarations, and abolished the death
penalty, among other measures, was drafted by
constituent assembly members elected in 1984 and
submitted to the country for discussion.(6) To
facilitate these debates, 73 cabildos abiertos,
or town meetings, were attended by an estimated
100,000 Nicaraguans around the country. At these
meetings, about 2,500 Nicaraguans made
suggestions for changes in the constitution.
But this bold Sandinista experiment in
revolutionary democracy was not destined to
persevere. As occurred in the Spanish civil war,
the tide of history ran against the heroic people
of Nicaragua, sapping their will in the late
1980s as the Contra war waged on and the economy
unraveled. Often as I departed from the San
Francisco airport on yet another flight to the
Central American isthmus, I would look down on
the Bay Area, with its population roughly the
same size as Nicaragua's and an economy many
times larger, and wonder how the Sandinista
revolution could possibly survive a war with the most powerful nation on earth.
Perhaps the die was cast in neighboring El
Salvador with the failure of the guerrillas there
to seize power as the United States mounted a
counterinsurgency war. The inability to advance
the revolution in Central America seemed to
confirm Leon Trotsky's belief that a revolution
cannot survive and mature in just one
nationespecially in small countries like
Nicaragua with porous borders, which, unlike
island Cuba, lend themselves to infiltration and
repeated forays from well-provisioned military bases.
To end the debilitating war, the Sandinista
leaders turned to peace negotiations. Placing
their faith in democracy, they signed an accord
that called for a ceasefire and elections to be
held in February 1990, in which the Contras as
well as the internal opposition would be allowed
to participate. Once again the popular
organizations mobilized for the campaign, and
virtually all the polls indicated that Ortega
would win a second term as president, defeating
the Contra-backed candidate, Violeta Chamorro,
whose campaign received generous funding from the United States.
Nicaraguans and much of the world were shocked
when Chamorro defeated Ortega with 55% of the
vote. Even people who were sympathetic to the
Sandinistas voted for the opposition because they
wanted the war to end, as the threat of more
U.S.-backed violence remained looming. The day
after the election, a woman vendor passed me by
sobbing. I asked her what was wrong, and she
said, "Daniel will no longer be my president."
After exchanging a few more words, I asked whom
she had voted for. "Violeta," she said, "because
I want my son in the Sandinista army to come home alive."
During the next 16 years, three Nicaraguan
presidents backed by the United States
implemented a series of neoliberal policies,
gutting the social and economic policies of the
Sandinista era and impoverishing the country.
Ortega ran in every election, drifting
increasingly to the right, while exerting an iron
hand to stifle all challengers and dissenters in
the Sandinista party. Surprisingly, Orlando
Nuñez, with whom I wrote a book with on the
revolution's democratic thrust, remained loyal to
Ortega while most of the middle-level cadre and
the National Directorate abandoned the party.(7)
Many of these split off to form the Sandinista
Renovation Movement (MRS), the largest dissident
Sandinista party, founded in 1995.
When I asked Nuñez about his stance, he argued
that only the Sandinista party has a mass base.
"Dissident Sandinistas and their organizations,"
he said, "cannot recruit the poor, the peasants,
the workers, nor mount a significant electoral
challenge." Nuñez, who works as an adviser on
social affairs to the president's office, went on
to argue that Ortega allied with Alemán not out
of political cynicism, but for the sake of
building an anti-oligarchic front. According to
this theory, Alemán and the somocistas represent
an emergent capitalist class that took on the old
oligarchy, which had dominated Nicaraguan
politics and the economy since the 19th
century.(8) A major thrust of Ortega's rhetoric
is bent on attacking the oligarchy, which is
clustered in the opposition Conservative Party.
But it is also true that some of the most famous
Sandinistas, many of whom are in the dissident
camp todaylike Ernesto Cardenal, Gioconda Belli,
Carlos Fernando Chamorro, and othersare
descendents of oligarchic families. Accordingly,
Ortega and Murillo have accused them of being in
league with conservatives in an effort to
reimpose the old order on Nicaragua. While the
dissident Sandinistas have yet to mount a
significant electoral challenge, the Ortega
administration has nonetheless gone after them
with a particular vehemence. Case in point:
Chamorro, the onetime director of the Sandinista
party newspaper, Barricada. In June 2007,
Chamorro aired an investigative report on Esta
Semana, the popular news show he hosts. According
to the report, which included tape-recorded
conversations, FSLN functionaries tried to extort
$4 million from Armel González, a partner in a
tourist development project called Arenas Bay, in
exchange for a swift end to the project's legal
woes, which included challenges from campesino cooperatives over land disputes.
The government's response to the bad publicity
was swift and ruthless. While the district
attorney buried the case, González was charged
and convicted of slander. National Assembly
deputy Alejandro Bolaños, who backed the
denunciation, was arbitrarily removed from his
legislative seat. And Chamorro was denounced in
the Sandinista-controlled media as a
"delinquent," a "narco-trafficker," and a "robber of peasant lands."
The harassment of Chamorro and other government
critics continued during the run-up to
Nicaragua's November 2008 municipal elections,
which were widely viewed as a referendum on the
Ortega administration. The Ministry of Government
launched a probe into NGOs operating in the
country, accusing the Center for Communications
Research (Cinco), which is headed by Chamorro, of
"diverting and laundering money" through its
agreement with the Autonomous Women's Movement
(MAM), which opposes the Ortega-endorsed law
banning abortion. This agreement, financed by
eight European governments and administered by
Oxfam, aims to promote "the full citizenship of
women." First lady Murillo called it "Satan's fund" and "the money of evil."
Cinco's board of directors were interrogated, and
a prosecutor accompanied by the police raided the
Cinco offices with a search warrant. Warned in
advance of the visit, some 200 people gathered in
the building in solidarity, refusing the police
entry. Then as night fell, the police established
a cordon around the building and, in the early
morning, police broke down the door. After
kicking out the protesters, the police stayed in
the office for 15 hours, with supporters and
onlookers gathered outside, shutting down traffic
for blocks around. The police rummaged through
offices, carting off files and computers. Since
then, no formal charges have been filed, but
Chamorro remains under official investigation.
Along with MAM, the broader women's movement in
Nicaragua, which firmly opposes the Ortega
government, was among the first to experience its
repressive blows. In 2007 the government opened a
case against nine women leaders, accusing them of
conspiring "to cover up the crime of rape in the
case of a 9-year-old rape victim known as
Rosita,' who obtained an abortion in Nicaragua
in 2003."(9) In August, Ortega was unable to
attend the inauguration of Paraguayan president
Fernando Lugo because of protests by the
country's feminist organizations; from then on,
women's mobilizations have occurred in other
countries Ortega has visited, including Honduras,
El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Peru.(10)
Charges were levied against other former
Sandinistas who dared to speak out against the
Ortega government, including 84-year-old Catholic
priest Ernesto Cardenal, the renowned poet who
once served as minister of culture. In August,
after Cardenal criticized Ortega at Lugo's
inauguration, a judge revived an old, previously
dismissed case involving a German citizen who
sued Cardenal in 2005 for insulting him.(11)
In addition to harassing critics, the Ortega
government also displayed its penchant for
electoral fraud during the run-up to the November
municipal balloting. Protests erupted in June,
after the Ortega-stacked Supreme Electoral
Council disqualified the MRS and the Conservative
Party from participation. Dora Maria Tellez, a
leader of the renovation movement, began a public
hunger strike that led to daily demonstrations of
support, often shutting down traffic in downtown Managua.
Meanwhile, bands of young Sandinista-linked
thugs, claiming to be the "owners of the
streets," attacked demonstrators while the police
stood idly by. Then, to prevent more
demonstrations, Ortega supporters set up
plantones, permanent occupation posts at the
rotundas on the main thoroughfare running through
Managua. Those who camped out there were known as
rezadores, or people praying to God that Ortega
be protected and his opponents punished.
Besides the FSLN, two major political parties
remained on the ballot, the Liberal
Constitutionalist Party and the Nicaraguan
Liberal Alliance. While independent surveys
indicated that the opposition candidates would
win the majority of the seats, the Supreme
Electoral Council, which had prohibited
international observers, ruled that the
Sandinista candidates won control of 105
municipalities, the Liberal Constitutionalist
Party won 37, and the Alliance won the remaining
six. An independent Nicaraguan group, Ethics and
Transparency, organized tens of thousands of
observers but was denied accreditation, forcing
them to observe the election from outside polling
stations. But the group estimates that
irregularities took place at a third of the
polling places. Their complaints were echoed by
Nicaraguan Catholic bishops, including Managua's
archbishop, who said, "People feel defrauded."(12)
After the election, militant demonstrations
erupted in Nicaragua's two largest cities,
Managua and León, and were quickly put down with
violence. The European Economic Community and the
U.S. government suspended funding for Nicaragua
over the fraudulent elections. On January 14,
before the election results were even officially
published by the electoral council, Ortega swore
in the new mayors at Managua's Plaza de la
Revolución. He declared: "This is the time to
strengthen our institutions," later adding, "We
cannot go back to the road of war, to
confrontation, to violence." Along with the
regular police, Ortega stood flanked by camisas
rosadas, or redshirts, members of his personal
security force. A huge banner hung over the plaza
depicting Ortega with an up-stretched arm and the
slogan, "To Be With the People Is to Be With God."
"This despotic regime is bent on destroying all
that is left of the Sandinista revolution's
democratic legacy," Chamorro told me in January.
"Standing in the way of a new dictatorship," he
continued, "are civil society organizations, the
independent media, trade unions, opposition
political parties, women's organizations, civic
leaders and othersmany of whom can trace their
roots back to the resistance against Somoza."
As the Nobel-winning novelist José Saramago put
it: "Once more a revolution has been betrayed
from within." Nicaragua's revolution has indeed
been betrayed, perhaps not as dramatically as
Trotsky depicted Stalin's desecration of what was
best in the Bolshevik revolution. But Ortega's
betrayal is a fundamental political tragedy for
everyone around the world who came to believe in
a popular, participatory democracy in Nicaragua.
Notes
1. Mónica Baltodano, "El nuevo sandinismo' es de
la izquierda? Democracia pactada en Nicaragua,"
Le Monde diplomatique, Southern Cone edition (December 2008): 16-17.
2. Ibid.
3. The concept of revolución compartida is
developed in Sergio Ramírez, Adios muchachos: una
memoría de la revolución sandinista (Mexico City: Aguilar, 1999).
4. Rosa Marina Zelaya, "International Election
Observers: Nicaragua Under a Microscope," Envío
103 (February 1990), envio.org.ni/articulo/2582.
5. BBC, "1984: Sandinistas Claim Election
Victory," available at news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday.
6. Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost, Democracy
and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), 84-85.
7. Roger Burbach and Orlando Nuñez, Fire in the
Americas, Forging a Revolutionary Agenda (Verso, 1987).
8. Nuñez develops this argument in his book La
Oligarquia en Nicaragua (Managua: Talleres de
Grafitex, 2006). See also Nuñez, "La Agonía
política de la oligarquia," El 19 no. 14,
November 27-December 3, 2008, available at sepres.gob.ni.
9. Human Rights Watch, "Nicaragua: Protect Rights
Advocates from Harassment and Intimidation,"
October 28, 2008, available at hrw.org.
10. Baltodano, "El nuevo sandinismo' es de la izquierda?"
11. CBC News, "Latin American Artists Protest
Persecution of Nicaraguan Poet," September 6, 2008, available at cbc.ca.
12. "How to Steal an Election," The Economist, November 13, 2008.
*This article appears in the NACLA Report on the
Americas, Revolutionary Legacies in the 21st Century, March/April, 2009.
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