Hostility to the U.S. a costly mistake
20 years after the revolution, Nicaraguans
wonder how it all could have gone so wrong
By GLENN GARVIN
Herald Staff Writer
MANAGUA -- It was hard to say which was shining more brightly,
Moises Hassan
thought, as his makeshift military caravan rolled down the highway:
the sun in the
sky, or the faces of the people crowded along the road, shrieking
``Viva!'' to his
troops.
It was the morning of July 19th, 1979, and Nicaragua had just
awakened to find
itself abruptly, stunningly free of a dictatorship that, for
more than 40 years, had
passed the country around from generation to generation like
a family cow.
Hassan, as a senior official in the Sandinista National Liberation
Front, the
guerrilla movement that had spearheaded the rebellion against
the dictatorship,
had played a key role in ousting it. But now, as he waved to
the crowds lining the
highway, he realized that it was what came next that would really
count.
``You could see the happiness in the people's faces,'' he recalled.
``And you could
see the hope, too. And I told myself, `damn, we've taken a lot
of responsibility on
ourselves . . . We cannot let these people down.' ''
Twenty years later, neither Hassan nor any other Sandinista leader
denies that
the revolution they led did let Nicaraguans down. It would reel
headlong into a
decade of confrontation with the United States, a catastrophic
economy where
peasants literally preferred toilet paper to the national currency,
and a civil war
that would
take 25,000 lives and send perilously close to a million others
into exile.
It would end 11 years later in an ignominious electoral defeat
from which the
Sandinistas still haven't recovered, and, some say, never will.
And it is still a
source of wonder to them how everything could have gone so disastrously
wrong.
``We believed -- it was one of our many errors -- that we were
going to hold power
until the end of the centuries,'' mused Tomas Borge, who helped
found the
Sandinista Front in 1961. ``It didn't work out that way.''
Just as the Sandinista victory in 1979 echoed around the world,
ushering in a new
chapter of the Cold War, its collapse sent a tidal wave washing
through the
international left.
Leftist theoreticians who could no longer defend the bureaucracy
in the Soviet
Union or Fidel Castro's erratic military adventures abroad pinned
their hopes on
the Baby Boomer regime in Nicaragua. They were devastated when
it fared no
better than the graying revolutions in Cuba and the USSR.
``It's like saying we had a project to make the world over with
greater justice and
greater fairness, and we failed,'' said Margaret Randall, an
American academic
who lived in Nicaragua during the first four years the Sandinistas
governed and
wrote four adulatory books about them.
``It's been very, very hard for those of us who gave our best
years to Nicaragua,
our greatest energies to Nicaragua, who had friends who died
there . . . It's one
thing to say the people are gone, but the project is still there.
But now there's
nothing. We're still picking up the pieces.''
ALL WAS CONFUSION
Chaos left Sandinistas
a blank slate for country
On that day 20 years ago, it was a little hard to imagine that
any government
would emerge from the debris left behind when Anastasio Somoza
-- the last of
three family members to rule Nicaragua -- slipped away in the
middle of the night.
Within hours of Somoza's departure, the entire senior officer
corps of the National
Guard, the army on which the dictatorship was built, bolted for
the border. On the
morning of July 19, Managua's streets were littered with cast-off
uniforms of
panicky junior officers and enlisted men who were making their
own getaways in
civilian clothes.
Chaos was everywhere. Children lurched about the parking lot of
the
Inter-Continental Hotel, spraying the air with bullets from automatic
rifles left
behind by the soldiers. Inside the hotel, the last of the foreign
mercenaries
Somoza employed as bodyguards was going room to room, robbing
reporters
(including one from The Miami Herald) at gunpoint.
At the airport, clogged with government officials and Somoza cronies
trying to
catch the last plane out, an armed band of teenage Sandinista
sympathizers
climbed into the tower to try to arrest the air traffic controllers,
who were still
wearing their National Guard uniforms. Only the intervention
of a Red Cross official
prevented a complete disaster.
Elsewhere in the city, those who couldn't or wouldn't leave were
nervously
preparing peace offerings to the revolutionary army that was
headed for Managua.
One elderly couple spray-painted FSLN -- the Spanish initials
by which the
Sandinistas were known -- across the sides of their new Mercedes
Benz.
But as Sandinista forces poured into the city over the next few
days, the situation
quickly stabilized. And as FSLN leaders admit, the anarchy they
found actually
offered them a marvelous opportunity to start a country from
scratch.
``The state dissolved completely,'' said novelist Giaconda Belli,
who delivered the
first newscast over Sandinista television. ``No army, no judges,
no congress, no
nothing. . . . It was like a clean slate for us.''
What the Sandinistas had promised -- to the Organization of American
States
and the U.S. government, as they tried to mediate the war against
Somoza -- was
a pluralist, non-aligned democracy with a mixed economy. Many
Sandinistas still
say that was what they tried to build.
``We were not trying put a communist government in Managua,''
Belli insisted.
``We were very critical of the Soviet model and the Cuban model.
We never
closed our borders, we never prohibited organized religion.''
But though there many members of the FSLN who rejected communist
dogma,
the nine men who composed the Sandinista directorate -- the central
committee --
were committed Marxist-Leninists.
``All the top leadership was Marxist-Leninist,'' agreed Hassan,
who wasn't. ``And I
knew that if they had their way, Nicaragua would be a Marxist
state. But I wasn't
too worried about it. I didn't think they would be able to brush
aside the rest of
us.''
Hassan was part of the five-member junta -- which included two
non-Sandinista
members -- that was theoretically governing Nicaragua until free
elections could
be held. But, he soon realized, all the important decisions were
being made by
the party leadership. The junta was little more than a rubber
stamp.
``I remember when the Russians invaded Afghanistan late in 1979,
the junta had
to meet to decide what position we were gong to take at the United
Nations,''
Hassan said. ``We decided we would condemn it. But when [Foreign
Minister
Miguel] D'Escoto went up to New York, he abstained when it was
time to vote.
The Sandinista directorate told him what to do, and he obeyed
them, not us.''
In fact, there was an increasing confusion between the identity
of the country and
the party. The police became the Sandinista National Police,
the army the
Sandinista People's Army. Schoolchildren pledged allegiance not
only to
Nicaragua but to the Sandinista party, and promised it their
``love, loyalty and
sacrifice.''
Meanwhile, the failure to condemn the Soviet invasion was symptomatic
of the
revolution's leftward march. The government quickly moved to
seize anything that
was ``mismanaged'' or ``underexploited.'' Farmers were ordered
to sell grain only
to a state purchasing agency and cattle only to state slaughterhouses.
Newsmen who criticized government policies lost their papers or
radio programs,
and sometimes were jailed. Kids learned math from schoolbooks
that taught two
grenades plus two grenades plus two grenades equals six grenades,
and their
alphabet from sentences like this one that illustrated the use
of the letter Q:
``Sandino fought the yanquis. The yanquis will always be defeated
in our
fatherland.''
It was the profound Sandinista hostility to the United States
-- the party anthem
even referred to the U.S. as ``the enemy of humanity'' -- that
led to what some
party leaders now consider its most ruinous mistake: supporting
Marxist
guerrillas in nearby El Salvador against the American-backed
government.
First Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan warned the Sandinistas
to stay out of
the Salvadoran conflict. When they didn't, the United States
first suspended aid to
Nicaragua, and later began supporting the counterrevolutionary
forces that came
to be know as the contras in a civil war that ultimately cost
the Sandinistas
power.
``It was just political machismo,'' Belli said. ``Everybody was
young, wearing
uniforms, and they thought they were cute. They wanted to be
heroic, and going
up against the United States was heroic. . . . But it was the
wrong thing to do,
and the Nicaraguan people paid a high price.''
Several Sandinista leaders say the party missed a golden opportunity
when
Thomas Enders, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, came to
Managua in 1981
with a final carrot-and-stick offer from the Reagan administration:
Quit fooling
around in El Salvador, and we'll leave you alone, no matter what
you do inside
Nicaragua. Keep it up, and we'll swat you like a fly.
``It was a great opportunity for a deal,'' said Arturo Cruz Jr.,
who was a key official
in Nicaragua's foreign ministry at the time. ``I think it was
a sincere offer. Ronald
Reagan considered Nicaragua a lost cause. Their concern was El
Salvador.''
Sergio Ramirez, a member of the junta and later vice president,
agreed: ``I
thought it was an opportunity, and I said so, but no one agreed
with me.''
Even with the benefit of hindsight, some Sandinistas say it was
unthinkable to
back away from the Salvadoran guerrillas.
``That was a matter of ethics on our part,'' said former President
Daniel Ortega.
``The Salvadorans had helped us [against Somoza]. And thanks
to the armed
struggle, El Salvador has changed. It's a much different place
than it was then.
. . . The war in El Salvador has led to a political advance,
and we are part of that
achievement.''
The United States wouldn't have kept its promise anyway, said
Borge. ``Look, I
don't think Cuba was ever a threat to the United States, but
let's say it was at one
time,'' he explained. ``Well, with the fall of the Soviet Union,
it obviously isn't a
threat anymore. But the U.S. agitation against Cuba and attempts
to isolate it
continue. The U.S. doesn't like revolutionaries, and we were
revolutionaries.''
But if some Sandinistas had doubts about the carrot in Enders'
offer, they know
he was serious about the stick. Three months after the Sandinistas
rejected the
deal, the Reagan administration was funneling money to the contras.
Four
months after that, in March 1982, the contras blew up two major
bridges in
northern Nicaragua, and the war was on in earnest.
The war led directly to some of the Sandinistas' most unpopular
policies, like the
military draft, and broadened others, like moving peasants off
their land into
cooperatives. Censorship expanded until the daily paper La Prensa,
the last voice
of the opposition, was shut down completely.
What had been skirmishes between the Sandinistas and the Roman
Catholic
Church erupted into full-fledged firefights, climaxing when FSLN
militants shouted
down Pope John Paul II as he tried to say Mass.
It accelerated the decline already begun by their economic policies.
By 1988,
inflation was 33,000 percent annually, and it took a shopping
bag full of cordobas
just to buy lunch -- that is, if you could find lunch.
Practically everything was in short supply: No hay, there isn't
any, became about
the only Spanish phrase a visitor to Nicaragua needed. The vast
shelves of the
supermarkets built in the days of Somoza were empty except for
Bulgarian-made
dishwasher soap, useless in a country with no dishwashers.
When the Sandinistas managed to obtain food from their socialist
trading
partners, people were suspicious. A bumper crop of Russian potatoes
in 1987 led
to the widespread certainty that they were contaminated with
radiation from the
breakdown of the Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl.
Some of the problems, Sandinista leaders insist even now, weren't their fault.
``The conflict with the church was strong, and it cost us, but
I don't think it was
our fault,'' Ortega said. ``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.
Others, they acknowledge, were in large part their responsibility.
``When we
arrived, we had almost total power,'' Borge said. ``And we didn't
know how to
handle total power. What came hand in hand with total power was
the mistaken
belief that we were never mistaken. This made us behave in an
arbitrary way. And
the most grave and arbitrary abuses were made in the countryside,
where the
peasants began to join the contras.''
Sandinista leaders agree that the contras would never have grown
into such a
huge and destructive force -- some 22,000 by the war's end --
if the U.S. hadn't
been arming and supplying them. But most of them also admit that
the revolution
made the war possible by alienating hundreds of thousands of
peasants.
``During the 1984 election, we had a rally down in the southern
part of the
country, and they had this peasant -- a contra who had surrendered
-- make a
symbolic presentation of a rifle to me,'' Ramirez recalled. ``We
always talked
about the contras as American mercenaries, but this guy standing
across from
me was not some big gringo Ranger. He was a simple peasant.
``Before that, my understanding of the counterrevolution had been
intellectual. But
here, right before me, was the face of the country. This poor
man. . . . He thought
we were going to take away his children, interfere in his family,
butt into his
religion, make him work in a collective.
``And this was the man that the revolution was supposed to be
for! You know, the
revolution was headed by intellectuals. We did it in the name
of the workers and
peasants, but we were all intellectuals. And in the end, most
of the peasants
were against us.''
END OF THE GAME
Sandinistas stunned
by scope of election loss
The war eventually forced the Sandinistas to agree to internationally
supervised
elections. They lost -- to Violeta Chamorro, publisher of La
Prensa, one of their
most important allies during the war against Somoza -- in a landslide
that stunned
them.
``We had a naive syllogism: If it was a revolution for the poor,
then the poor
couldn't be against us,'' Ramirez said. ``But we should have
known much earlier.
We started out with 90 percent of the population behind us. By
1985, there were
400,000 Nicaraguans who had fled to Miami, several hundred thousand
more in
Costa Rica and Honduras, and we still only got 60 percent of
the vote. The
Nicaraguan family was split.''
Since the 1990 election, the Sandinistas have lost three more
elections (one
presidential, two for local offices across the country) by nearly
identical margins.
The party newspaper is closed, the party television station under
the control of
Mexican investors. Two major scandals -- one over the way Sandinista
leaders
looted the government on their way out of office in 1990, another
over allegations
that Daniel Ortega molested his stepdaughter for nine years,
beginning when she
was 11 -- have been sandwiched around countless minor ones.
Those who govern now say the Sandinistas left nothing behind but
wreckage.
Nicaraguan Vice President Enrique Bolaños, a lifelong
opponent of the FSLN
whose farm was confiscated during the revolution, says it will
take decades to
undo the damage the Sandinistas did to the Nicaraguan economy.
``Per capital income dropped to the levels of 1942 when they were
in charge,'' he
said. ``The trade deficit, which had always hovered around zero,
went up to $400
million to $600 million their first year, and it's stayed there
ever since. Even if we
get the foreign debt they left us under control -- it went from
$1.3 billion to $12
billion under them -- that trade deficit will kill us.''
Many of the party's most loyal militants -- including Ramirez,
Belli, Hassan and
Cruz -- have deserted it. Some are harshly critical of what the
revolution left
behind. Hassan, who has left politics and now manages a garment
factory, said
that what he saw during the revolution has soured him on the
political left.
``I think the left equal populism, which equals give-me-give-me-give-me,''
he said.
``What we bred here are people who say, `I'll go to demonstrations
and shout, but
I won't work. I want a salary, but I won't work. I want food,
but I won't work. I want
a house, but I won't work.' ''
But others believe that the revolution left some things of lasting
value, including a
sense that even poor people have inalienable rights.
``A Nicaraguan peasant will look you straight in the eye,'' said
Alejandro Bendaña,
once Daniel Ortega's top foreign policy adviser, now estranged
from the party.
``That wasn't always true. When I was a kid, they walked up to
you, bowing,
humble and deferential, saying boss this and boss that. That
is a legacy of the
revolution.''
Bendaña, like many past and present Sandinistas, believes
that the revolution
would have been worthwhile even if it never accomplished anything
but getting rid
of the Somozas.
``Our parents had failed to get rid of the bastard, and we were
the ones who did
it,'' he said. ``And to get rid of the dictatorhip, armed force
was required. Banging
pots and pans in the streets, like in the Philippines, that wasn't
going to do it.''
Ortega, somewhat paradoxically, believes that the election that
ousted him proves
that the Sandinistas moved the country forward.
``When we lost the election, we gave up the government,'' Ortega
said. ``That
hadn't happened before. What we have here is a typical bourgeois
democracy --
not a true people's democracy -- but I still think it represents
an advance for
Nicaragua.''
But being remembered as a transitional asterisk in Nicaraguan
history was not
what the Sandinistas dreamed of in 1979, when they boasted that
they would do
nothing less than construct a New Man, free of the chains of
ego and selfishness.
``I always thought the revolution would be a transcendental story
in human
development,'' mused Ramirez earlier this month. ``But it wasn't,
was it?''