The
Sandinista National Liberation Front (, or
FSLN) is a
socialist political party in
Nicaragua. Its members are called
Sandinistas in both English and Spanish. The party is named after
Augusto César Sandino who led the Nicaraguan resistance against the
United States occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s.
The FSLN overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending the Somoza dynasty, and established a revolutionary government in its place. Following their seizure of power, the Sandinistas ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as part of a Junta of National Reconstruction. Following the resignation of centrist members from this Junta, the FSLN took exclusive power in March 1981. They instituted a policy of mass literacy, devoted significant resources to health care, and promoted gender equality. Oppositional militias, known as Contras, formed in 1981 to resist the Sandinista's Junta and received support from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The 1984 elections, described by international observers as fair and free, were nevertheless boycotted by the main opposition. The FSLN won the majority of the votes. Those who did oppose the Sandinistas won approximately a third of the seats. Despite the clear electoral victory for the Sandinistas, the Contras continued their violent attacks on both state and civilian targets, until 1989. The FSLN lost elections in 1990 to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, after revising the constitution in 1987 and after years of resisting the United States-supported Contras, but they retained a plurality of seats in the legislature.
The FSLN remains one of Nicaragua's two leading parties. The FSLN often polls in opposition to the Constitutional Liberal Party, or PLC. In the 2006 Nicaraguan general election, former FSLN President Daniel Ortega was re-elected President of Nicaragua with 38.7% of the vote compared to 29% for his leading rival, bringing in the country's second Sandinista government after 16 years of the opposition winning elections.
History
Early history
The Sandinistas took their name from
Augusto César Sandino (1895–1934), the charismatic leader of Nicaragua's nationalist rebellion against the US occupation of the country during the early 20th century (ca. 1922 - 1934). Sandino was
assassinated in 1934 by the
National Guard (), the US-equipped police force of
Anastasio Somoza, whose
family ruled the country from 1936 until they were overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979.
Founding, 1961–1970
The FSLN originated in the milieu of student and Marxist groups in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The University of
Léon, and the
National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) in
Managua were two of the principal centers of activity.
The FSLN itself was founded in 1961 by
Carlos Fonseca, Silvio Mayorga,
Tomás Borge and others as The National Liberation Front (FLN). Only
Tomás Borge lived long enough to see the Sandinista victory in 1979.
The term "Sandinista", was added two years later, establishing continuity with Sandino's movement, and using his legacy in order to develop the newer movement's ideology and strategy. By the early 1970s, the FSLN was launching limited military initiatives.
Rise, 1970-1976
On December 23, 1972, a
powerful earthquake leveled the capital city,
Managua. The earthquake killed 10,000 of the city's 400,000 residents and left another 50,000 homeless. About 80% of Managua's commercial buildings were destroyed. President
Anastasio Somoza Debayle's National Guard embezzled much of the international aid that flowed into the country to assist in reconstruction, and several parts of downtown Managua were never rebuilt. The president gave reconstruction contracts preferentially to family and friends, thereby profiting from the quake and increasing his control of the city's economy. By some estimates, his personal wealth soared to US$400 million in 1974.
In December 1974, a guerrilla group affiliated with FSLN seized government hostages at a party in the house of the Minister of Agriculture in the Managua suburb Los Robles, among them several leading Nicaraguan officials and Somoza relatives. The siege was carefully timed for after the departure of the US ambassador from the gathering. At 10:50 pm, a group of 15 young guerrillas and their commanders, Pomares and Contreras, entered the house. They killed the Minister, who tried to shoot them, during the takeover. The group also lobbied for an increase in wages for National Guard soldiers to 500 córdobas ($71 at the time). The Somoza government responded with further censorship, intimidation, torture, and murder.
In 1975, Somoza imposed a state of siege, censoring the press, and threatening all opponents with internment and torture.
Split, 1977-1978
Following the FSLN's defeat at the battle of Pancasán in 1967, the organization adopted the "Prolonged Popular War" (
Guerra Popular Prolongada, GPP) theory as its strategic doctrine. The GPP was based on the "accumulation of forces in silence": while the urban organization recruited on the university campuses and collected funds through bank holdups, the main
cadres were to go permanently to the north central mountain zone. There they would build a
grassroots peasant support base in preparation for renewed rural
guerrilla warfare.
As a consequence of the repressive campaign of the National Guard, in 1975 a group within the FSLN's urban mobilization arm began to question the viability of the GPP. In the view of the young orthodox Marxist intellectuals, such as Jaime Wheelock, economic development had turned Nicaragua into a nation of factory workers and wage-earning farm laborers. Wheelock's faction was known as the "Proletarian Tendency".
Shortly after, a third faction arose within the FSLN. The "Insurrectional Tendency", also known as the "Third Way" or Terceristas, led by Daniel Ortega, his brother Humberto Ortega, and Mexican-born Victor Tirado Lopez, was more pragmatic and called for tactical, temporary alliances with non-communists, including the right-wing opposition, in a popular front against the Somoza regime. By attacking the Guard directly, the Terceristas would demonstrate the weakness of the regime and encourage others to take up arms.
In October 1977, a group of prominent Nicaraguan professionals, business leaders, and clergymen allied with the Terceristas to form "El Grupo de los Doce", (The Group of Twelve) in Costa Rica. The group's main idea was to organize a provisional government from Costa Rica. The new strategy of the Terceristas also included unarmed strikes and rioting by labor and student groups coordinated by the FSLN's "United People's Movement" (Movimiento Pueblo Unido - MPU).
1978 Insurrection
On January 10, 1978,
Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the popular editor of the opposition newspaper
La Prensa and leader of the "Democratic Union of Liberation" (Unión Democrática de Liberación - UDEL), was assassinated. Although his assassins were not identified at the time, evidence implicated President Somoza's son and other members of the National Guard. Spontaneous riots followed in several cities, while the business community organized a general strike demanding Somoza's resignation.
The Terceristas joined the turmoil in early February with attacks in several Nicaraguan cities. The National Guard responded by further increasing repression and using force to contain and intimidate all government opposition. The nationwide strike that paralyzed the country for ten days weakened the private enterprises and most of them decided to suspend their participation in less than two weeks. Meanwhile, Somoza asserted his intention to stay in power until the end of his presidential term in 1981. The United States government showed its displeasure with Somoza by suspending all military assistance to the regime, but continued to approve economic assistance to the country for humanitarian reasons.
In August, the Terceristas staged a spectacular hostage-taking. Twenty-three Tercerista commandos led by Edén Pastora seized the entire Nicaraguan congress and took nearly 1,000 hostages including Somoza's nephew José Somoza Abrego and cousin Luis Pallais Debayle. Somoza gave in to their demands and paid a $500,000 ransom, released 59 political prisoners (including GPP chief Tomás Borge), broadcasted a communiqué with FSLN's call for general insurrection and gave the guerrillas safe passage to Panama.
A few days later six Nicaraguan cities rose in revolt. Armed youths took over the highland city of Matagalpa. Tercerista cadres attacked Guard posts in Managua, Masaya, León, Chinandega and Estelí. Large numbers of semi-armed civilians joined the revolt and put the Guard garrisons of the latter four cities under siege. The September Insurrection of 1978 was subdued at the cost of several thousand, mostly civilian, casualties. Members of all three factions fought in these uprisings, which began to blur the divisions and prepare the way for unified action.
Reunification, 1979
In early 1979, President
Jimmy Carter and the United States no longer supported the
Somoza regime, but did not want a left-wing government to take power in Nicaragua. The moderate "Broad Opposition Front" (
Frente Amplio Opositor - FAO) which opposed Somoza was made up of a conglomeration of dissidents within the government as well as the "Democratic Union of Liberation" (UDEL) and the "Twelve", representatives of the Terceristas. The FAO and Carter came up with a plan that would remove Somoza from office but left no part in government power for the FSLN. The FAO's efforts lost political legitimacy, as Nicaraguans protested that they did not want "
Somocismo sin Somoza" (Somocism without Somoza).
The "Twelve" abandoned the coalition in protest and formed the "National Patriotic Front" (Frente Patriotico Nacional - FPN) together with the "United People's Movement" (MPU). This strengthened the revolutionary organizations as tens of thousands of youths joined the FSLN and the fight against Somoza. A direct consequence of the spread of the armed struggle in Nicaragua was the official reunification of the FSLN that took place on 7 March 1979. Nine men, three from each tendency, formed the National Directorate which would lead the reunited FSLN. They were: Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega and Víctor Tirado (Terceristas); Tomás Borge, Bayardo Arce, and Henry Ruiz (GPP faction); and Jaime Wheelock, Luis Carrión and Carlos Núñez.
On June 4, a general strike was called by the FSLN to last until Somoza fell and an uprising was launched in Managua. On June 16, the formation of a provisional Nicaraguan government in exile, consisting of a five-member Junta of National Reconstruction, was announced and organized in Costa Rica. The members of the new junta were Daniel Ortega (FSLN), Moisés Hassan (FPN), Sergio Ramírez (the "Twelve"), Alfonso Robelo (MDN) and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of La Prensa's director Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. By the end of that month, with the exception of the capital, most of Nicaragua was under FSLN control, including León and Matagalpa, the two largest cities in Nicaragua after Managua.
On July 9, the provisional government in exile released a government program, in which it pledged to organize an effective democratic regime, promote political pluralism and universal suffrage, and ban ideological discrimination, except for those promoting the "return of Somoza's rule". On July 17, Somoza resigned, handed over power to Francisco Urcuyo, and fled to Miami. While initially seeking remain in power to serve out Somoza's presidential term, Urcuyo seceded his position to the junta and fled to Guatemala two days later.
On July 19, the FSLN army entered Managua, culminating the first goal of the Nicaraguan revolution. The war left approximately 50,000 dead and 150,000 Nicaraguans in exile. The five-member junta entered the Nicaraguan capital the next day and assumed power, reiterating its pledge to work for political pluralism, a mixed economic system, and a nonaligned foreign policy.
Sandinista rule (1979–1990)
The Sandinistas inherited a country in ruins with a debt of 1.6
billion dollars (US), an estimated 50,000 war dead, 600,000 homeless, and a devastated economic infrastructure. To begin the task of establishing a new government, they created a Council (or ) of National Reconstruction, made up of five appointed members. Three of the appointed members belonged to FSLN, which included – Sandinista militants
Daniel Ortega, Moises Hassan, and novelist
Sergio Ramírez (a member of
Los Doce "the Twelve"). Two opposition members, businessman
Alfonso Robelo, and
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro), were also appointed. Only three votes were needed to pass law.
The FSLN also established a Council of State, subordinate to the junta, which was composed of representative bodies. However, the Council of State only gave political parties twelve of forty-seven seats, the rest of the seats were given to Sandinista mass-organizations. Of the twelve seats reserved for political parties, only three were not allied to the FSLN. and Milpistas, former anti-Somoza rural militias, which eventually formed the largest pool of recruits for the Contras. Although independent and often at conflict with each other, these guerrilla bands—along with a few others—all became generally known as "Contras" (short for "", en. "counter-revolutionaries").
The opposition militias were initially organized and largely remained segregated according to regional affiliation and political backgrounds. They conducted attacks on economic, military, and civilian targets. During the Contra war, the Sandinistas arrested suspected members of the Contra militias and censored publications they accused of collaborating with the enemy (i.e. the U.S., the FDN, and ARDE, among others).
1982 – 1988 State of Emergency
In March 1982 the Sandinistas declared an official State of Emergency. They argued that this was a response to attacks by counter-revolutionary forces. The State of Emergency lasted six years, until January 1988, when it was lifted.
Under the new "Law for the Maintenance of Order and Public Security" the "Tribunales Populares Anti-Somozistas" allowed for the indefinite holding of suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial. The State of Emergency, however, most notably affected rights and guarantees contained in the "Statute on Rights and Guarantees of Nicaraguans. Many civil liberties were curtailed or canceled such as the freedom to organize demonstrations, the inviolability of the home, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and, the freedom to strike.
The rights affected also included certain procedural guarantees in the case of detention including habeas corpus.
On October 5, 1985 the Sandinistas broadened the 1982 State of Emergency and suspended many more civil rights. A new regulation also forced any organization outside of the government to first submit any statement it wanted to make public to the censorsip bureau for prior censorship.
Some emergency measures were taken before 1982. In December 1979 special courts called "Tribunales Especiales" were established to speed up the processing of 7,000-8,000 National Guard prisoners. These courts operated through relaxed rules of evidence and due process and were often staffed by law students and inexperienced lawyers. However, the decisions of the "Tribunales Especiales" were subject to appeal in regular courts. Many of the National Guard prisoners were released immediately due to lack of evidence. Others were pardoned or released by decree. By 1986 only 2,157 remained in custody and only 39 were still being held in 1989 when they were released under the Esquipulas II agreement. This was shortened to Contras, a label the anti-Communist forces chose to embrace. Edén Pastora and many of the indigenous guerrilla forces, who were not associated with the "Somozistas", also resisted the Sandinistas.
The Contras operated out of camps in the neighboring countries of Honduras to the north and Costa Rica (see Edén Pastora cited below) to the south. As was typical in guerrilla warfare, they were engaged in a campaign of economic sabotage in an attempt to combat the Sandinista government and disrupted shipping by planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's Corinto harbour, an action condemned by the World Court as illegal. The U.S. also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinistas, and, as with Cuba, the Reagan administration imposed a full trade embargo.
The armed resistance to the Sandinistas in Costa Rica initially called itself the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) and was known as the 15th of September Legion. It later formed an alliance, called the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), which comprised other groups including MISURASATA and the Nicaraguan Democratic Union. Together, the members of these groups were generally called Contras. The Sandinistas condemned them as terrorists, and human rights organizations expressed serious concerns about the nature and frequency of Contra attacks on civilians. In 1982, the Congress, passed the Boland Amendment. This meant the US could no longer openly support the Contras with U.S. government funds.
After the U.S. Congress prohibited federal funding of the Contras in 1983, the Reagan administration continued to back the Contras by raising money from foreign allies and covertly selling arms to Iran (then engaged in a vicious war with Iraq), and channelling the proceeds to the Contras (see the Iran-Contra Affair). When this scheme was revealed, Reagan admitted that he knew about Iranian "arms for hostages" dealings but professed ignorance about the proceeds funding the Contras; for this, National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver North took much of the blame.
Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on links between the Contras and drug imports to the US concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, the US-backed president of Panama. The Reagan administration's support for the Contras continued to stir controversy well into the 1990s. In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published a series titled Dark Alliance, linking the origins of crack cocaine in California (largely aimed at its African-American population) to the CIA-Contra alliance. Freedom of Information Act inquiries by the National Security Archive and other investigators unearthed a number of documents showing that White House officials, including Oliver North, knew about and supported using money raised via drug trafficking to fund the Contras. Sen. John Kerry's report in 1988 led to the same conclusions. However, the Justice Department denied the allegations, and the mainstream US media downplayed them.
The Contra war unfolded differently in the northern and southern zones of Nicaragua. Contras based in Costa Rica operated on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast, which is sparsely populated by indigenous groups including the Miskito, Sumo, Rama, Garifuna, and Mestizo. Unlike Spanish-speaking western Nicaragua, the Atlantic Coast is predominantly English-speaking and was largely ignored by the Somoza regime. The costeños did not participate in the uprising against Somoza and viewed Sandinismo with suspicion from the outset.
American funding and the Iran/Contra Affair
The FDN’s (Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense, the main opposition group of those armed organizations referred to as 'Contras') chief of intelligence, Ricardo Lau, had, according to the former Salvadoran intelligence chief Col. Roberto Santivanez, ‘received payment of $120,000’ for organizing the murder of Archbishop Romero of El Salvador in 1980. The fact that a high contra official had executed the archbishop of El Salvador did not diminish the White House’s zeal for its fledgling ‘democratic resistance’.”
Like Gilbert, Cockburn writes about the infamous manual issued to the contras by the CIA. She writes that the CIA was encouraging Contra terror and then indirectly by the U.S. government and President Reagan, violating Reagan’s own Presidential Directive.
“The manual, Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, clearly advocated a strategy of terror as the means to victory over the hearts and minds of Nicaraguans. Chapter headings such as ‘Selective Use of Violence for propagandistic Effects’ and ‘Implicit and Explicit Terror’ made that fact clear enough...The little booklet thus violated President Reagan’s own Presidential Directive 12333, signed in December 1981, which prohibited any U.S. government employee-including the CIA-from having anything to do with assassinations.”
The manual was, according to Dennis Gilbert “apparently part of an effort [by the C.I.A.] to persuade the contras to use terror in a less random, more calculated fashion.” Whether they became more calculated regarding their deeds of terror is unclear, but they remained horrific: “[Benjamin] Linder was out with his crew, knee deep in a stream, measuring the water flow to see whether it was suitable to power a plant for San José de Bocay. Five grenades suddenly exploded around him and his helpers, followed by gunfire. One of the grenades wounded Linder, and as he lay there a contra came up and blew his brains out...’[my son Ben was killed] by somebody paid by somebody paid by somebody paid by President Reagan.’” Linder’s father has a valid point since Reagan himself had stated “I’m a contra too”, issued just in 1986 to the contras. There is more: “It was December 24, 1984. My son and his girlfriend had celebrated their wedding at 6 p.m...They took seven bodies out of the truck...three were children-Yolanda’s daughters, twelve, thirteen and fourteen years old.”
With this in mind, Cockburn’s claim seems valid: “The U.S. problem with the contras was that they were by and large the very same group who had been trained by the United States to protect the interests of the Somozas. Methods and techniques developed for a ruthless dictatorship already in power are not necessarily the best way to create a popular insurgency.”
The strong ties to Somoza decreased the potential to gain domestic support for the FDN, and prevented the U.S. guided unification operation, UNO: “The contra war had to be sold to Congress and the public as the struggle of an opposition united against the regime in Managua.” The revolutionary hero and commander of the contra force of southern Nicaragua ARDE (Nicaraguan Democratic Revolutionary Alliance), Eden Pastora, refused to cooperate with the FDN. When it comes to Pastora, we can see two contrasting images. Pardo-Maurer writes about a problem, a loose gun out of control, someone that has made himself a lot of enemies.
“Pastora, who cherished his independence, was perceived as the biggest obstacle to this plan [the unification under UNO]. His maverick vision made all his alliances unstable, ultimately costing him the support of his commanders... Everybody had an interest in getting rid of Pastora: his commanders, the Americans, the Sandinistas, the other contras.”
In contrast, Cockburn is writing about a very likable man, independent and true to his ideals.
“He [Pastora] was a larger-than-life figure, handsome, provocative, and difficult to pin down. However, while adamantine in his opposition to the Sandinistas, he absolutely refused to have anything to do with the much larger contra group in Honduras, the FDN. The FDN was controlled by former ‘Somocista’ (as Pastora called them) officers and men of the infamous National Guard. Pastora had fought for years [even since the 60’s] against the Guardia, who were now enjoying the lavish support of the CIA.” The witness of Jack Terrell, a disillusioned American contra official corroborates this:
“You’ve got the hierarchy of the FDN sitting there; you’ve got a representative, this guy Owen, from the NSC, CIA. So, you ask me if the U.S. government knew what was going on? They had to know from that meeting.”
Yet, U.S. interventionism reached further than favoring some contras while neutralizing others. In 1983 the CIA decided to create a group of “Unilaterally Controlled Latino Assets”. These UCLA’s would “sabotage ports, refineries, boats and bridges, and try to make it look like the contras had done it.” In January 1984, these UCLA’s performed their most famous, or infamous, operation, the last straw that led to the ratifying of the Boland Amendment, the mining of several Nicaraguan harbors
“The mines sank several Nicaraguan boats, damaged at least five foreign vessels, and brought an avalanche of international condemnation down on the United States. But from the administration’s point of view, the mines did their worst damage on Capitol Hill [the ratifying of the Boland Amendment].”
This time no one was under the illusion that it was a deed by the FDN, ironically the event came as a surprise for them as well.
“The contras, it transpired, had been informed only after the fact of what the CIA was doing and were instructed to take credit. One contra leader was dragged from his bed at two a.m., handed a press release by a CIA contact, and told to read it over the contra radio before the Sandinistas broke the news.”
After the ratification of the Boland Amendment, the secret supply network directed by Lt. Col. North became active.
“North had coordinated a secret contra supply operation from his office in the basement of the White House, in legal defiance of existing legislation but with the support of senior administration officials... North had also been deeply involved in shaping contra military and political strategy and in off-the-books schemes to pay for the supply flights and the munitions they carried. In Absence of Congressional appropriations, donations were gathered from private individuals and profits were diverted from the secret sales of arms to Iran. But the most significant unofficial funding for the contras came in the form of secret payments from conservative Third World governments solicited by senior American officials. Saudi Arabia alone contributed $32 million.”
However, Cockburn claims that the result of the supply network wasn’t military success but increased living standards for the contra leaders.
“You’ve got estimates ranging between five thousand and thirty thousand tough contra soldiers on this border, yet they do not hold an inch of dirt. The only progress they’ve made is in purchasing condominiums... Why do you stop a war when people are getting very well off?”
This was corroborated by an aid to LT. Col. North:
“ I’ve been in their accounting office. I’ve seen filing cabinets full of hundred-dollar bills, suitcases full of money... They were laundering money...These people don’t know they are even in a war, they think they are running a business.”
There are even sources that say some of the American weapons intended for the contra effort were sold by contra leaders on the black market to the leftist guerrilla in El Salvador. Which is ironic since the first reason for American interventionism with the Sandinistas was to prevent them to supply weapons to the Salvadoran guerillas. It seems that the resources available to the contras was squandered, abused, and used for the personal gain of the leadership. And the resources that actually went all the way to the front line was used on civilian targets in bloody, meaningless acts of terror. The few, successful “contra” operations, such as the harbor mining, were performed by the CIA.
Oliver North came into the public spotlight as a result of his participation in the Iran-Contra affair, a political scandal of the late 1980s, in which he claimed partial responsibility for the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua. He was reportedly responsible for the establishment of a covert network used for the purposes of aiding the Contras. U.S. funding of the Contras by appropriated funds spent by intelligence agencies had been prohibited by the Boland Amendment. Funding was facilitated through Palmer National Bank of Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1983 by Harvey McLean, Jr., a businessman from Shreveport, Louisiana. It was initially funded with $2.8 million dollars to McLean from Herman K. Beebe. Oliver North supposedly used this bank during the Iran-Contra scandal by funneling money from his shell organization, the "National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty", through Palmer National Bank to the Contras.
According to the National Security Archive, in an August 23, 1986 e-mail to John Poindexter, Oliver North described a meeting with a representative of Panamanian President Manuel Noriega: "You will recall that over the years Manuel Noriega in Panama and I have developed a fairly good relationship", North writes before explaining Noriega's proposal. If U.S. officials can "help clean up his image" and lift the ban on arms sales to the Panamanian Defense Force, Noriega will "'take care of' the Sandinista leadership for us."
North tells Poindexter that Noriega can assist with sabotage against the Sandinistas, and supposedly suggests paying Noriega a million dollars cash; from "Project Democracy" funds raised from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran – for the Panamanian leader's help in destroying Nicaraguan economic installations.
In November 1986 as the sale of weapons was made public, North was fired by President Ronald Reagan, and in July 1987 he was summoned to testify before televised hearings of a joint Congressional committee formed to investigate Iran-Contra. The image of North taking the oath became iconic, and similar photographs made the cover of Time and Newsweek, and helped define him in the eyes of the public. During the hearings, North admitted that he had lied to Congress, for which he was later charged among other things. He defended his actions by stating that he believed in the goal of aiding the Contras, whom he saw as freedom fighters, and said that he viewed the Iran-Contra scheme as a "neat idea."
North was tried in 1988 in relation to his activities while at the National Security Council. He was indicted on sixteen felony counts and on May 4, 1989, he was initially convicted of three: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and destruction of documents (by his secretary, Fawn Hall, on his instructions). He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell on July 5, 1989, to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines, and 1,200 hours community service.
However, on July 20, 1990, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), North's convictions were vacated, after the appeals court found that witnesses in his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized congressional testimony.[8] Because North had been granted limited immunity for his Congressional testimony, the law prohibited the independent counsel (or any prosecutor) from using that testimony as part of a criminal case against him. To prepare for the expected defense challenge that North's testimony had been used, the prosecution team had - before North's congressional testimony had been given - listed and isolated all its evidence[citation needed]; further, the individual members of the prosecution team had isolated themselves from news reports and discussion of North's testimony. While the defense could show no specific instance where any part of North's congressional testimony was used in his trial, the Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge had made an insufficient examination of the issue, and ordered North's convictions reversed. The Supreme Court declined to review the case. After further hearings on the immunity issue, Judge Gesell dismissed all charges against North on September 16, 1991, on the motion of the independent counsel.
Elections
1984 election
While the Sandinistas encouraged grassroots pluralism, they were perhaps less enthusiastic about national elections. They argued that popular support was expressed in the insurrection and that further appeals to popular support would be a waste of scarce resources. International pressure and domestic opposition eventually pressed the government toward a national election. On the other hand, the Sandinistas had little to fear from the election given the advantages of incumbency and the restrictions on the opposition, and they hoped to discredit the armed efforts to overthrow them.
A broad range of political parties, ranging in political orientation from far-left to far-right, competed for power. Following promulgation of a new populist constitution, Nicaragua held national elections in 1984. Independent electoral observers from around the world – including groups from the UN as well as observers from Western Europe – found that the elections had been fair. Several groups, however, disputed this: including UNO, a broad coalition of anti-Sandinista activists, COSEP, an organization of business leaders, the Contra group "FDN", organized by former Somozan-era National Guardsmen, landowners, businessmen, peasant highlanders, and what some claimed as their patron, the U.S. government.
Although initially willing to stand in the 1984 elections, the UNO, headed by Arturo Cruz (a former Sandinista) declined participation in the elections based on their own objections to the restrictions placed on the electoral process by the State of Emergency and the official advisement of President Ronald Reagan's State Department, who feared that their participation would legitimize the election process. Among other parties that abstained was COSEP, who had warned the FSLN that they would decline participation unless freedom of the press was reinstituted. Coordinadora Democrática (CD) also refused to file candidates and urged Nicaraguans not to take part in the election, the Independent Liberal Party (PLI), headed by Virgilio Godoy Reyes announced its refusal to participate in October. Consequently, when the elections went ahead the U.S. raised objections based upon political restrictions instituted by the State of Emergency (e.g. censorship of the press, cancellation of habeas corpus, and the curtailing of free assembly).
Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramírez were elected president and vice-president, and the FSLN won an overwhelming 61 out of 96 seats in the new National Assembly, having taken 67% of the vote on a turnout of 75%. When Violetta Chamorro visited the White House in November 1989, the US pledged to maintain the embargo against Nicaragua unless Violeta Chamorro won.
In August 1989, the month that campaigning began, the Contras redeployed 8,000 troops into Nicaragua, after a funding boost from Washington, becoming in effect the armed wing of the UNO, carrying out a violent campaign of intimidation. No fewer than 50 FSLN candidates were assassinated. The Contras also distributed thousands of UNO leaflets.
Years of conflict had left 50,000 casualties and $12b of damages in a society of 3.5m people and an annual GNP of $2b. The proportionately equivalent figures for the US would have been 5 million casualties and $25 trillion lost. After the war, a survey was taken of voters: 75.6% agreed that if the Sandinistas had won, the war would never have ended. 91.8% of those who voted for the UNO agreed with this. (William I Robinson, op cit) The Library of Congress Country Studies on Nicaragua states:
Opposition (1990 - 2006)
In 1987, due to a stalemate with the Contras, the Esquipulas II treaty was brokered by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez. The treaty's provisions included a call for a cease-fire, freedom of expression, and national elections. After the February 26, 1990 elections, the Sandinistas lost and peacefully passed power to the National Opposition Union (UNO), an alliance of 14 opposition parties ranging from the conservative business organization COSEP to Nicaraguan communists. UNO's candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, replaced Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua.
Reasons for the Sandinista loss in 1990 are disputed. Defenders of the defeated government assert that Nicaraguans voted for the opposition due to the continuing U.S. economic embargo and potential Contra threat. Opponents claim that Contra warfare had largely died down, and that the Sandinistas had grown increasingly unpopular, particularly due to forced conscription and crackdowns on political freedoms. An important reason, regardless of perspective, was that after a decade of the U.S. backed war and embargo, Nicaragua's economy and infrastructure were badly damaged and the United States obviously supported only parties in opposition to the Sandinista. The U.S. also helped keep the rightist factions united so there would not be two strong rightist candidates.
After their loss, most of the Sandinista leaders held most of the private property and businesses that had been confiscated and nationalized by the FSLN government. This process became known as the "piñata" and was tolerated by the new Chamorro government. Ortega also claimed to "rule from below" through groups he controls such as labor unions and student groups. Prominent Sandinistas also created a number of nongovernmental organizations to promote their ideas and social goals.
Daniel Ortega remained the head of the FSLN, but his brother Humberto resigned from the party and remained at the head of the Sandinista Army, becoming a close confidante and supporter of Chamorro. The party also experienced a number of internal divisions, with prominent Sandinistas such as Ernesto Cardenal and Sergio Ramírez resigning to protest what they described as heavy-handed domination of the party by Daniel Ortega. Ramírez also founded a separate political party, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS); his faction came to be known as the , who favor a more social democratic approach than the ortodoxos, or hardliners. In the 1996 Nicaraguan election, Ortega and Ramírez both campaigned unsuccessfully as presidential candidates on behalf of their respective parties, with Ortega receiving 43% of the vote while Arnoldo Alemán of the Constitutional Liberal Party received 51%. The Sandinistas won second place in the congressional elections, with 36 of 93 seats.
Daniel Ortega was re-elected as leader of the FSLN in 1998. Municipal elections in November 2000 saw a strong Sandinista vote, especially in urban areas, and former Tourism Minister Herty Lewites was elected mayor of Managua. This significant result led to expectations of a close race in the presidential elections scheduled for November 2001. Daniel Ortega and Enrique Bolaños of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) ran neck-and-neck in the polls for much of the campaign, but in the end the PLC won a clear victory. The results of these elections were that the FSLN won 42.6% of the vote for parliament (versus 52.6% for the PLC), giving them 41 out of the 92 seats in the National Assembly (versus 48 for the PLC). In the presidential race, Ortega lost to Bolaños 46.3% to 53.6%.
Daniel Ortega was once again re-elected as leader of the FSLN in March 2002 and re-elected as president of Nicaragua in November 2006.
2006, back in government
In 2006, Daniel Ortega was elected president with 38% of the vote (see Nicaraguan general election, 2006). This occurred despite the fact that the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement continued to oppose the FSLN, running former Mayor of Managua Herty Lewites as its candidate for president. However, Lewites died just several month before the elections.
The ubiquitous Red and Black Sandinista flag was used during the election process along with the pink as it was one of the colours of a campaign that finished its popular appearances with John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance and the Sandinista Hymn "fighting against Yanqui agressors, enemies of humanity."
The FSLN also won 38 seats in the congressional elections, becoming the party with the largest representation in parliament. The split in the Constitutionalist Liberal Party helped to allow the FSLN to become the largest party in Congress, however it should be noted that the Sandinista vote had a minuscule split between the FSLN and MRS, and that the liberal party combined is larger than the Frente Faction. In 2010, several liberal congressmen raised accusations about the FSLN presumably attempting to buy votes in order to pass constitutional reforms that would allow Ortega to run for office for the 6th time since 1984.
"Zero Hunger project"
The "Zero Hunger Program", which aims to reduce poverty in the rural areas over a five-year period, was inaugurated by President Daniel Ortega and other members of his administration in the northern department of Jinotega. The program was designed to achieve the first objective of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, "to eradicate extreme poverty and reduce hunger to zero."
"Zero Hunger" with its budget of US$150 million plans to deliver a US$2,000 bond or voucher to 75,000 rural families between 2007 and 2012. The voucher will consist of the delivery of a pregnant cow and a pregnant sow, five chickens and a rooster, seeds, fruit- bearing plants and plants for reforestation. The project's short-term objective is to have each rural family capable of producing enough milk, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables and cereals to cover its basic needs while its medium range objective is to establish local markets and export certain products.
The families that benefit from the project will be required to pay back 20 percent of the amount that they receive in order to create a rural fund that will guarantee the continuity of the program. NGOs and representatives from each community will be in charge of managing the project.
Aid cut off
Since the 2006 elections, Ortega has been condemned in Nicaragua and abroad due to what is regarded as efforts to dominate and control all branches of government.
The 2008 municipal elections, to which Ortega refused international monitoring have been condemned by many as fraudulent, and both European and US aid has been suspended. Two people were killed in post-election clashes.
Ideologies
Through the media and the works of FSLN leaders such as Carlos Fonseca, the life and times of Augusto César Sandino became the unique symbol of this revolutionary force in Nicaragua. The ideology of Sandinismo gained momentum in 1974, when a Sandinista initiated hostage situation resulted in the Somoza government adhering to FSLN demands and publicly printing and airing work on Sandino in well known newspapers and media outlets.
During the long struggle against Somoza, the FSLN leaders' internal disagreements over strategy and tactics were reflected in three main factions:
The (GPP, "prolonged popular war") faction was rural-based and sought long-term "silent accumulation of forces" within the country's large peasant population, which it saw as the main social base for the revolution.
The (TP, "proletarian tendency"), led by Jaime Wheelock, reflected an orthodox Marxist approach that sought to organize urban workers.
The / (TI, "third way/insurrectionist") faction, led by Humberto and Daniel Ortega, was ideologically eclectic, favoring a more rapid insurrectional strategy in alliance with diverse sectors of the country, including business owners, churches, students, the middle class, unemployed youth and the inhabitants of shantytowns. The also helped attract popular and international support by organizing a group of prominent Nicaraguan professionals, business leaders, and clergymen (known as "the Twelve"), who called for Somoza's removal and sought to organize a provisional government from Costa Rica.
Nevertheless, while ideologies varied between FSLN leaders, all leaders essentially agreed that Sandino provided a path for the Nicaragua masses to take charge, and the FSLN would act as the legitimate vanguard. The extreme end of the ideology links Sandino to Roman Catholicism and portrays him as descending from the mountains in Nicaragua knowing he would be betrayed and killed. Generally however, most Sandinistas associated Sandino on a more practical level, as a heroic and honest person who tried to combat the evil forces of imperialist national and international governments that existed in Nicaragua's history.
Principles of government
For purposes of making sense of how to govern, the FSLN drew four fundamental principles from the work of Carlos Fonseca and his understanding of the lessons of Sandino. According to Bruce E. Wright, “the Governing Junta of National Reconstruction agreed, under Sandinista leadership, that these principles had guided it in putting into practice a form of government that was characterized by those principles.” It is generally accepted that these following principles have evolved the “ideology of Sandinismo.” Three of these (excluding popular participation, which was presumably contained in Article 2 of the Constitution of Nicaragua) were to ultimately be guaranteed by Article 5 of the Constitution of Nicaragua. They are as follows:
1. Political Pluralism – The ultimate success of the Sandinista Front in guiding the insurrection and in obtaining the leading fore within it was based on the fact that the FSLN, through the tercerista guidance, had worked with many sectors of the population in defeating the Somoza dictatorship. The FSLN and all those whom would constitute the new provisional government were diverse; “they were plural in virtually all senses”.
2. Mixed Economy – Fonseca’s understanding of the fact that Nicaragua was not, in spite of Browderist interpretations, simply a feudal country and that it had also never really developed its own capitalism surely made it clear that a simple feudalism-capitalism-socialism path was not a rational way to think about the future development of Nicaragua. It was not reasonable, nor was it responsible, to simply believe that the FSLN was the vanguard of the proletariat revolution. Everyone recognized that the proletariat was but a minor fraction of the population. A complex class structure in a revolution based on unity among people from various class positions suggested more that it made sense to see the FSLN as the “vanguard of the people”.
3. Popular Participation and Mobilization – This calls for more than simple representative democracy. The inclusion of the mass organizations in the Council of State clearly manifested this conception. In Article 2 of the Constitution this is spelled out as follows: “The people exercise democracy, freely participating and deciding in the construction of the economic, political and social system what is most appropriate to their interest. The people exercise power directly and by their means of their representatives, freely elected in accord with universal, equal, direct, free, and secret suffrage.”
4. International Non-alignment – This is a clear result of the fundamentally Bolivarist conceptions of Sandino as distilled through the modern understanding of Fonseca. It was clear that the U.S. government and large U.S. economic entities were a significant part of the problem for Nicaragua. But experiences with the traditional parties allied with the Soviet Union had also been unsatisfactory. Thus it was clear that Nicaragua must seek its own road.
It is widely accepted by many scholars that the period of the FSLN guiding the Nicaraguan revolution through the control of the state was a living experiment in an attempt to construct a truly democratic and revolutionary socialism. Bruce E. Wright claims that “this was a crucial contribution from Fonseca’s work that set the template for FSLN governance during the revolutionary years and beyond."
Policies and programs
Foreign policy
Cuban assistance
Beginning in 1967, the Cuban General Intelligence Directorate, or DGI, had begun to establish ties with various Nicaraguan revolutionary organizations. By 1970 the DGI had managed to train hundreds of Sandinista guerrilla leaders and had vast influence over the organization. After the successful ousting of Somoza, DGI involvement in the new Sandinista government expanded rapidly. An early indication of the central role that the DGI would play in the Cuban-Nicaraguan relationship is a meeting in Havana on July 27, 1979, at which diplomatic ties between the two countries were re-established after more than 25 years. Julián López Díaz, a prominent DGI agent, was named Ambassador to Nicaragua. Cuban military and DGI advisors, initially brought in during the Sandinista insurgency, would swell to over 2,500 and operated at all levels of the new Nicaraguan government.
The Cubans would like to have helped more in the development of Nicaragua towards socialism. Following the US invasion of Grenada, countries previously looking for support from Cuba saw that the United States was likely to take violent action to discourage this.
Cuban assistance after the revolution
The early years of the Nicaraguan revolution had strong ties to Cuba. The Sandinista leaders acknowledged that the FSLN owed a great debt to the socialist island. Once the Sandinistas assumed power, Cuba gave Nicaragua military advice, as well as aid in education, health care, vocational training and industry building for the impoverished Nicaraguan economy. In return, Nicaragua provided Cuba with grains and other foodstuffs to help Cuba overcome the effects of the US embargo.
Relationship with East Bloc Intelligence Agencies
Pre-Revolution
According to Cambridge University historian Christopher Andrew, who undertook the task of processing the Mitrokhin Archive, Carlos Fonseca Amador, one of the original three founding members of the FSLN had been recruited by the KGB in 1959 while on a trip to Moscow. This was one part of Aleksandr Shelepin's 'grand strategy' of using national liberation movements as a spearhead of the Soviet Union's foreign policy in the Third World, and in 1960 the KGB organized funding and training for twelve individuals that Fonseca handpicked. These individuals were to be the core of the new Sandinista organization. In the following several years, the FSLN tried with little success to organize guerrilla warfare against the government of Luis Somoza Debayle. After several failed attempts to attack government strongholds and little initial support from the local population, the National Guard nearly annihilated the Sandinistas in a series of attacks in 1963. Disappointed with the performance of Shelepin's new Latin American "revolutionary vanguard", the KGB reconstituted its core of the Sandinista leadership into the ISKRA group and used them for other activities in Latin America.
According to Andrew, Mitrokhin says during the following three years the KGB handpicked several dozen Sandinistas for intelligence and sabotage operations in the United States. Andrew and Mitrokhin say that in 1966, this KGB-controlled Sandinista sabotage and intelligence group was sent to northern Mexico near the US border to conduct surveillance for possible sabotage.
In July 1961 during the Berlin Crisis of 1961 KGB chief Alexander Shelepin sent a memorandum to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev containing an array of proposals to create a situation in various areas of the world which would favor dispersion of attention and forces by the US and their satellites, and would tie them down during the settlement of the question of a German peace treaty and West Berlin. It was planned, inter alia, to organize an armed mutity in Nicaragua in coordination with Cuba and with the "Revolutionary Front Sandino". Shelepin proposed to make appropriations from KGB funds in addition to the previous assistance $10,000 for purchase of arms.
Khrushchev sent the memo with his approval to his deputy Frol Kozlov and on August 1 it was, with minor revisions, passed as a CPSU Central Committee directive. The KGB and the Soviet Ministry of Defense were instructed to work out more; specific measures and present them for consideration by the Central Committee.
Cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies during the 1980s
Other researchers have documented the contribution made from other Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies to the fledgling Sandinista government including the East German Stasi, by using recently declassified documents from Berlin as well as from former Stasi spymaster Markus Wolf who described the Stasi's assistance in the creation of a secret police force modeled on East Germany's
Educational assistance
Cuba was instrumental in the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign. Nicaragua was a country with a very high rate of illiteracy, but the campaign succeeded in lowering the rate from 50% to 12%. The revolution in Cuban education since the ousting of the US-backed Batista regime not only served as a model for Nicaragua but also provided technical assistance and advice. The Literacy Campaign was one of the success stories of the Sandinistas' reign and Cuba played an important part in this, providing teachers on a yearly basis after the revolution. Prevost states that "Teachers were not the only ones studying in Cuba, about 2,000 primary and secondary students were studying on the Isle of Youth and the cost was covered by the host country (Cuba)".
Health care
Health care was another area where the Sandinistas made incredible gains and are widely recognized for this accomplishment, e.g. by Oxfam. In this area Cuba also played a role by again offering expertise and know-how to Nicaragua. Over 1,500 Cuban doctors worked in Nicaragua and provided more than five million consultations. Cuban personnel were essential in the elimination of polio, the decrease in whooping cough, rubella, measles and the lowering of the infant mortality rate. Gary Prevost states that Cuban personnel made it possible for Nicaragua to have a truly national health care system reaching a majority of its citizens.
Vocational assistance
Cuba has participated in the training of Nicaraguan workers in the use of new machinery imported to Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan revolution put the country's government on the United States' black book; therefore the Sandinistas would not receive any aid from the United States. The United States embargo against Nicaragua, imposed by the Reagan administration in May 1985, made it impossible for Nicaragua to receive spare parts for US-made machines, so this led Nicaragua to look to other countries for help. Cuba was the best choice because of the shared language and proximity and also because it had imported similar machinery over the years. Nicaraguans went to Cuba for short periods of three to six months and this training involved close to 3,000 workers. Many countries, including Canada and the UK, sent farm equipment to Nicaragua.
Industry and infrastructure
Cuba helped Nicaragua in huge projects such as building roads, power plants and sugar mills. Cuba also attempted to help Nicaragua build the first overland route linking Nicaragua's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The road was meant to traverse 260 miles of jungle, but completion of the road and usage was hindered by the Contra war, and it was never completed.
Another significant feat was the building of the Tipitapa-Malacatoya sugar mill. It was completed and inaugurated during a visit by Fidel Castro in January 1985. The plant used the newest technology available and was built by workers trained in Cuba. Also during this visit Castro announced that all debts incurred on this project were absolved. This extended to various art forms, including dance, music, art, theatre and poetry. The aim of the ministry was to "democratize art" by making it accessible to all social classes as well as protecting the right of the oppressed to produce, distribute and receive art.
The objective of the workshops was to recognize and celebrate neglected forms of artistic expression.
The ministry also developed a new anthology of Ruben Dario, a Nicaraguan poet and writer, established a Ruben Dario prize for Latin American writers, the Leonel Rugama prize for young Nicaraguan writers, as well as public poetry readings and contests, cultural festivals and concerts. The Sandinista regime tried to keep the revolutionary spirit alive by empowering its citizens artistically. They argued that young writers should be exposed to different poetic styles of writing and resources developed in Nicaragua and elsewhere.
However, the ideology of the Sandinistas put the future of the private sector and of private ownership of the means of production in doubt. Even though under the new government both public and private ownership were accepted, government spokespersons occasionally referred to a reconstruction phase in the country's development, in which property owners and the professional class would be tapped for their managerial and technical expertise. After reconstruction and recovery, the private sector would give way to expanded public ownership in most areas of the economy. Despite such ideas, which represented the point of view of a faction of the government, the Sandinista government remained officially committed to a mixed economy. This, in turn, reduced the great burdens that the women of Nicaragua were faced with prior to the revolution. During the Sandinista government, women were more active politically. The great majority of members of the neighborhood committees (Comités de Defensa Sandinista) were women. By 1987, 31% of the executive positions in the Sandinista government, 27% of the leadership positions of the FSLN, and 25% of the FSLN's active membership were women.
Supporters of the Sandinistas see their era as characterized by the creation and implementation of successful social programs which were free and made widely available to the entire nation. Some of the more successful programs for women that were implemented by the Sandinistas were in the areas of Education Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign, Health, and Housing. Providing subsidies for basic foodstuffs and the introduction of mass employment were also memorable contributions of the FSLN. The Sandinistas were particularly advantageous for the women of Nicaraguan as they promoted progressive views on gender as early as 1969 claiming that the revolution would "abolish the detestable discrimination that women have suffered with regard to men and establish economic, political and cultural equality between men and women." This was evident as the FSLN began integrating women into their ranks by 1967, unlike other left-wing guerilla groups in the region. Considering the Feminist Ideology During the Sandinista Revolution however, demonstrates that this goal was not fully reached because the roots of gender inequality were not explicitly challenged or deconstructed. Women's participation within the public sphere was also substantial, as many took part in the armed struggle as part of the FSLN or as part of counter-revolutionary forces.
Nicaraguan women also organized independently in support of the revolution and their cause. Some of those organizations were the Socialist Party (1963), Federación Democrática (which support the FSLN in rural areas), and Luisa Amanda Espinoza Association of Nicaraguan Women (, AMNLAE). However, since Daniel Ortega, was defeated in the 1990 election by the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) coalition headed by Violeta Chamorro, the situation for women in Nicaragua was seriously altered. In terms of women and the labor market, by the end of 1991 AMNLAE reported that almost 16,000 working women- 9,000 agricultural laborers, 3,000 industrial workers, and 3,800 civil servants, including 2,000 in health, 800 in education, and 1,000 in administration- had lost their jobs. The change in government also resulted in the drastic reduction or suspension of all Nicaraguan social programs, which brought back the burdens characteristic of pre-revolutionary Nicaragua. The women were forced to maintain and supplement community social services on their own without economic aid or technical and human resource.
Relationship with the Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Church's relationship with the Sandinistas was extremely complex. Initially, the Church was committed to supporting the Somoza regime. The Somoza dynasty was willing to secure the Church a prominent place in society as long as it did not attempt to subvert the authority of the regime. Under the constitution of 1950 the Roman Catholic Church was recognized as the official religion and church-run schools flourished. It was not until the late 1970s that the Church began to speak out against the corruption and human rights abuses that characterized the Somoza regime.
The Catholic hierarchy initially disapproved of the Sandinistas' revolutionary struggle against the Somoza dynasty. In fact, the revolutionaries were perceived as proponents of "godless communism" that posed a threat to the traditionally privileged place that the Church occupied within Nicaraguan society. Nevertheless, the increasing corruption and repression characterizing the Somoza rule and the likelihood that the Sandinistas would emerge victorious ultimately influenced Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo to declare formal support for the Sandinistas' armed struggle. Throughout the revolutionary struggle, the Sandinistas enjoyed the grassroots support of clergy who were influenced by the reforming zeal of Vatican II and dedicated to a "preferential option for the poor" (for comparison, see liberation theology). Numerous Christian base communities (CEBs) were created in which lower level clergy and laity took part in consciousness raising initiatives to educate the peasants about the institutionalized violence they were suffering from. Some priests took a more active role in supporting the revolutionary struggle. For example, Father Gaspar García Laviana took up arms and became a member of FSLN.
Soon after the Sandinistas assumed power, the hierarchy began to oppose the Sandinistas government. The Archbishop was a vocal source of domestic opposition. The hierarchy was alleged to be motivated by fear of the emergence of the 'popular church' which challenged their centralized authority. The hierarchy also opposed social reforms implemented by the Sandinistas to aid the poor, allegedly because they saw it as a threat to their traditionally privileged position within society. In response to this perceived opposition, the Sandinistas shut down the church-run Radio Católica radio station on multiple occasions.
The Sandinistas' relationship with the Roman Catholic Church deteriorated as the Contra War dragged on. The hierarchy refused to speak out against the counterrevolutionary activities of the contras and failed to denounce American military aid. State media accused the Catholic Church of being reactionary and supporting the Contras. According to former President Ortega, "The conflict with the church was strong, and it costs us, but I don't think it was our fault... ...There were so many people being wounded every day, so many people dying, and it was hard for us to understand the position of the church hierarchy in refusing to condemn the contras." The hierarchy-state tensions were brought to the forefront with Pope John Paul II 1983 visit to Nicaragua. Hostility to the Catholic Church became so great that at one point, FSLN militants shouted down Pope John Paul II as he tried to say Mass. Therefore, while the activities of the 'popular church' contributed to the success of the Sandinista revolution, the hierarchy's opposition was a major factor in the downfall of the revolutionary government.
Reported human rights violations by the Sandinistas
Time magazine in 1983 published reports of human rights violations in an article which stated that "According to Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights, the regime detains several hundred people a month; about half of them are eventually released, but the rest simply disappear." Time also interviewed a former deputy chief of Nicaraguan military counterintelligence, who stated that he had fled Nicaragua after being ordered to eliminate 800 Miskito prisoners and make it look like they had died in combat. Another article described Sandinista neighbourhood "Defense Committees", modeled on similar Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which according to critics were used to unleash mobs on anyone who was labeled a counterrevolutionary. Nicaragua's only opposition newspaper, La Prensa, was subject to strict censorship. The newspaper's editors were forbidden to print anything negative about the Sandinistas either at home or abroad. The IACHR also stated that: "The Commission is of the view that the new regime did not have, and does not now have, a policy of violating the right to life of political enemies, including among the latter the former guardsmen of the Government of General Somoza, whom a large sector of the population of Nicaragua held responsible for serious human rights violations during the former regime; proof of the foregoing is the abolition of the death penalty and the high number of former guardsmen who were prisoners and brought to trial for crimes that constituted violations of human rights." In late 1981, the CIA conspiracy "Operation Red Christmas" was exposed to separate the Atlantic region from the rest of Nicaragua. Red Christmas aimed to seize territory on Nicaragua's mainland and overthrow the Nicaraguan government. The Nicaraguan government responded to the provocations by transferring some 8500 Miskitos 50 miles south to a settlement called Tasba Pri. The U.S. government accused Nicaragua of "genocide". The U.S. government claimed to have produced a photo he said showed Miskito bodies being burned by Sandinista troops. However, the photo was of people killed by Somoza's National Guard in 1978.
The 1991 annual report by the same organization, "In September 1990, the Commission was informed of the discovery of common graves in Nicaragua, especially in areas where fighting had occurred. The information was provided by the Nicaraguan Pro Human Rights Association, which had received its first complaint in June 1990. By December 1991, that Association had received reports of 60 common graves and had investigated 15 of them. While most of the graves seem to be the result of summary executions by members of the Sandinista People's Army or the State Security, some contain the bodies of individuals executed by the Nicaraguan Resistance."
The 1992 annual report by the same organization contains details of mass graves and investigations which suggest that mass executions had been carried out. One such grave contained 75 corpses of peasants who were believed to have been executed in 1984 by government security forces pretending to be members of the contras. Another grave was also found in the town of Quininowas which contained six corpses, believed to be an entire family killed by government forces when the town was invaded. A further 72 graves were reported as being found, containing bodies of people, the majority of whom were believed to have been executed by agents of the state and some also by the contras.
Politicization of human rights
The issue of human rights also became highly politicised at this time as human rights is claimed to be a key component of propaganda created by the Reagan administration to help legitimise its policies in the region. The Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA) in its Newsletter stated in 1985 that: "The hostility with which the Nicaraguan government is viewed by the Reagan administration is an unfortunate development. Even more unfortunate is the expression of that hostility in the destabilization campaign developed by the US administration... An important aspect of this campaign is misinformation and frequent allegations of serious human rights violations by the Nicaraguan authorities." Among the accusations in the Heritage Foundation report and the Demokratizatsiya article are references to alleged policies of religious persecution, particularly anti-semitism. The ICCHRLA in its newsletter stated that: "From time to time the current U.S. administration, and private organizations sympathetic to it, have made serious and extensive allegations of religious persecution in Nicaragua. Colleague churches in the United States undertook onsite investigation of these charges in 1984. In their report, the delegation organized by the Division of Overseas Ministries of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States concluded that there is 'no basis for the charge of systematic religious persecution'. The delegation 'considers this issue to be a device being used to justify aggressive opposition to the present Nicaraguan government.'"
Human Rights Watch also stated in its 1989 report on Nicaragua that: "Under the Reagan administration, U.S. policy toward Nicaragua's Sandinista government was marked by constant hostility. This hostility yielded, among other things, an inordinate amount of publicity about human rights issues. Almost invariably, U.S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U.S.-supported insurgents, known as the contras."
In 1987, a report was published by the UK based NGO Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR, now known as "Progressio"), a human rights organization which identifies itself with Liberation theology. The report, "Right to Survive - Human Rights in Nicaragua", discussed the politicisation of the human rights issue: "The Reagan administration, with scant regard for the truth, has made a concerted effort to paint as evil a picture as possible of Nicaragua, describing it as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. Supporters of the Sandinistas ... have argued that Nicaragua has a good record of human rights compared with other Central American countries and have compared Nicaragua with other countries at war." The CIIR report refers to estimates made by the NGO Americas Watch which count the number of non-battle related deaths and disappearances for which the government was responsible up to the year 1986 as "close to 300".
According to the CIIR report, Amnesty International and Americas Watch stated that there is no evidence that the use of torture was sanctioned by the Nicaraguan authorities, although prisoners reported the use of conditions of detention and interrogation techniques that could be described as psychological torture. The Red Cross made repeated requests to be given access to prisoners held in state security detention centers, but were refused. The CIIR was critical of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights (PCHR or CPDH in Spanish), claiming that the organisation had a tendency to immediately publish accusations against the government without first establishing a factual basis for the allegations. The CIIR report also questioned the independence of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, referring to an article in the Washington Post which claims that the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization funded by the US government, allocated a concession of US$50,000 for assistance in the translation and distribution outside Nicaragua of its monthly report, and that these funds were administered by Prodemca, a US-based organization which later published full-page adverisments in the Washington Post and New York Times supporting military aid to the Contras. The Permanent Commission denies that it received any money which it claims was instead used by others for translating and distributing their monthly reports in other nations.
The Nicaraguan based magazine Revista Envio, which describes its stance as one of "critical support for the Sandinistas", refers to the report: "The CPDH: Can It Be Trusted?" written by Scottish lawyer Paul Laverty. In the report, Laverty observes that: "The entire board of directors [of the Permanent Commission], are members of or closely identify with the 'Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinating Committee' (Coordinadora), an alliance of the more rightwing parties and COSEP, the business organization." He goes on to express concern about CPDH's alleged tendency to provide relatively few names and other details in connection with alleged violations. "According to the 11 monthly bulletins of 1987 (July being the only month without an issue), the CPDH claims to have received information on 1,236 abuses of all types. However, of those cases, only 144 names are provided. The majority of those 144 cases give dates and places of alleged incidents, but not all. This means that only in 11.65% of its cases is there the minimal detail provided to identify the person, place, date, incident and perpetrator of the abuse." The IACHR also continued to meet with representatives of the Permanent Commission and report their assessments in later years.
The Heritage Foundation stated that: "While elements of the Somoza National Guard tortured political opponents, they did not employ psychological torture." The International Commission of Jurists stated that under the Somoza regime cruel physical torture was regularly used in the interrogation of political prisoners.
US government allegations of support for foreign rebels
The United States State Department accused the Sandinistas of many cases of illegal foreign intervention.
The first allegation supporting the FMLN rebels in El Salvador with safehaven; training; command-and-control headquarters and advice; and weapons, ammunition, and other vital supplies. As evidence was cited captured documents, testimonials of former rebels and Sandinistas, aerial photographs, tracing captured weapons back to Nicaragua, and captured vehicles from Nicaragua smuggling weapons.
In recent times, there has been a dispute between the FSLN and the dissident Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) about the use of the red and black flag in public activities. Although the MRS has its own flag (orange with a silhouette of Sandino's hat in black), they also use the red-and-black flag in honor of Sandino's legacy. They state that the red-and-black flag is a symbol of Sandinismo as a whole, not only of the FSLN party.
Popular culture
Since the conflict with Nicaragua in the 1980s, variations of the term "Sandinista" are now sometimes used in the United States to refer to fanatical supporters of a certain cause. In the Spanish language, the suffix "-ista" is used to indicate a predilection towards the root. (It is the equivalent of "-ist" in English)
As a reaction to an anti-Sandinista statement by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her proposal to ban the use of the word itself, punk rock group The Clash used the title Sandinista! for their 1980 triple album. The album contains the song "Washington Bullets" which references the Sandinistas and other events and groups involved in Latin American history, starting from 1959.
English anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba recorded the song "An Interlude: Beginning To Take It Back" on their album "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records". The song chronicles the history of the Sandinistas, as well as their conflict with the Contras, and reflects an optimistic hope for the future of Nicaragua.
Chilean social rock group Los Prisioneros mention the Sandinistas in their song ¿Quién mató a Marilyn?, in a passage asking who killed Marilyn Monroe.
In 2007, the popular Puerto Rican Reggaeton–rap band Calle 13 mentioned the Sandinista movement in their song "Llegale a mi guarida". The lyrics claimed: "Respeto a Nicaragua y a la lucha sandinista" ("I respect Nicaragua and the Sandinista struggle").
In an episode of the 1980s American sitcom The Golden Girls, Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose return home to find Sophia bound, gagged, and tied to a chair. When Dorothy removed the gag and asked who had done this to her, Sophia replied "the Sandinistas!" (It was really a released prisoner named Merrill, who was searching for Blanche.)
The 1983 film Last Plane Out about journalist Jack Cox's experiences in Nicaragua portrayed the Sandanistas as crazed communist psychopaths while making Anastasio Somoza Debayle look like a sympathetic hero.
The 2010 video game includes a fictional group of FSLN Revolutionaries forced into Costa Rica as an important group of supporting characters. The Anti-Somoza revolution itself figures prominently into the plot of the game as well, being described within the game's narrative as being started by the fictional KGB agent Vladimir Zadornov in order to make Nicaragua a communist state so the Soviet Union could force the United States out of Central America entirely.
Prominent Sandinistas
Bayardo Arce, hard-line National Directorate member in the 1980s
Patrick Arguello, a Sandinista involved with the Dawson's Field hijackings
Nora Astorga, Sandinista UN ambassador
Idania Fernandez, member of the Rigoberto López Pérez Regional Command; killed in action
Gioconda Belli, novelist and poet, handled media relations for the FSLN government
Tomás Borge, one of the FSLN's founders, leader of the Prolonged People's War tendency in the 1970s, Minister of Interior in the 1980s
Omar Cabezas, Sandinista leader; also an author and politician
Ernesto Cardenal, poet and Franciscan priest; Minister of Culture in the 1980s
Fernando Cardenal, a Jesuit priest and brother of Ernesto, directed the literacy campaign as Minister of Education
Luis Carrión, 1980s National Directorate member
Rigoberto Cruz (aka Pablo Ubeda), early FSLN member
Joaquín Cuadra. internal front leader, later chief of staff of the army
Miguel D'Escoto, a Maryknoll Roman Catholic priest; served as Nicaragua's foreign minister
Carlos Fonseca, one of the FSLN's principal founders and leading ideologist in the 1960s
Herty Lewites, former mayor of Managua, opponent of Daniel Ortega in 2005
Silvio Mayorga, FSLN co-founder
Daniel Ortega, post-revolution junta head, then President from 1985, lost presidential elections in 1990, 1996, and 2001, but continues to control the FSLN party
Humberto Ortega, leader of the FSLN Insurrectional Tendency (Tercerista) in the 1970s, chief strategist of the anti-Somoza urban insurrection; Minister of Defense in the 1980s during the Contra war
Edén Pastora "", social democratic guerrilla leader who joined the Terceristas during the anti-Somoza insurrection, broke with FSLN to lead center-left ARDE contra group based in Costa Rica during the early 1980s
Sergio Ramirez, novelist and civilian Sandinista, architect of alliance with moderates in 1970s, Vice President in 1980s, opponent of Daniel Ortega in 1990s
Henry Ruíz, "", FSLN rural guerrilla commander in the 1970s, member of the National Directorate in the 1980s
Arlen Siu, killed in action
Dora María Téllez
Jaime Wheelock, leader of the FSLN Proletarian Tendency, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development
See also
Iran-Contra Affair
Nicaragua vs. United States
Carlos Mejía Godoy
List of Films and Books about Nicaragua
References
Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. Basic Books (2005)
Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books (2001)
Arias, Pilar. . Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1980.
Asleson, Vern. Nicaragua: Those Passed By. Galde Press ISBN 1-931942-16-1, 2004
Belli, Humberto. Breaking Faith: The Sandinista Revolution and Its Impact on Freedom and Christian Faith in Nicaragua. Crossway Books/The Puebla Institute, 1985.
Beverley, John and Marc Zimmerman. Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. ISBN 9780608208626
Christian, Shirley. Nicaragua, Revolution In the Family. New York: Vintage Books, 1986.
Cox, Jack. Requiem in the Tropics: Inside Central America. UCA Books, 1987.
Dawes, Greg. Aesthetics and Revolution, Nicaraguan Poetry 1979-1990. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. ISBN 9780816621460
Gilbert, Dennis. Sandinistas: The Party And The Revolution. Blackwell Publishers, 1988.
Hayck, Denis Lynn Daly . Life Stories of the Nicargauan Revolution. New York: Routledge Publishing. 1990.
Hodges, Donald C. Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Kinzer, Stephen. , Putnam Pub Group, ISBN 0-399-13594-4, 1991.
Kirkpatrick, Jean. Dictatorships and Double Standards. Touchstone, 1982.
Miranda, Roger, and William Ratliff. The Civil War in Nicaragua: Inside the Sandinistas. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993.
Molero, Maria. "Nicaragua Sandinista: del sueno a la realidad". Institute of Political Science.(1999).
Moore, John Norton, The Secret War in Central America: Sandinista Assault on World Order. university Publications of America, 1987.
Nolan, David. The Ideology of the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1984.
Palmer, Steven. "Carlos Fonseca and the Construction of Sandinismo in Nicaragua". Latin American Research Review. Vol. 23. No. 1 (1988). 91-109.
Prevost, Gary. "Cuba and Nicaragua: A special Relationship?". The Sandinista Legacy: The Construction of Democracy, Latin American Perspectives.17.3 (1990)
Smith, Hazel. Nicaragua: Self-determination and Survival. Pluto Press, 1991. ISBN 0-7453-0475-3
Sirias, Silvio. Bernardo and the Virgin: A Novel. Northwestern University Press, 2005.
The Dream of Sandino. Dir. Leuten Rojas. Latin American Review Series. c. 1983.
Wright, Bruce E. Theory in the Practice of the Nicaraguan Revolution. New York: Latin American Studies. 1995.
Zimmermann, Matilde. Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Duke University Press, 2001.
Notes
External links
FSLN-Nicaragua.com (Probably not the official Sandinista web page.)
25th Anniversary Celebration of the Sandinista Revolution at NicaNet
History of the Sandinista Revolution: the union of a whole nation at ViaNica.
Revista Envío - Nicaraguan magazine, "critically supportive" of the Sandinistas, with archive documenting events throughout the 80s
Art, Truth & Politics — Harold Pinter delivers Nobel Prize in Literature lecture in which he explains the Sandinista conflict and condemns the U.S.
Daniel Ortega interview highlights, March 10, 2009
Many Nicaragua Revolutionaries feel Betrayed by the Revolution by Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2009
Category:Sandinista National Liberation Front
Category:Revolutions
Category:Political parties in Nicaragua
Category:History of Nicaragua
Category:Socialist International
Category:Far-left politics
Category:Political parties established in 1961
Category:Cold War
Category:Nicaraguan revolution
Category:Democratic socialist parties
