Nicaragua
Taking Sides in the Playoffs
Envío team
The generalized social outburst feared and predicted by the Sandinistas and pooh-poohed by the government finally happened in early May. It came in the form of an unprecedented wave of spontaneous local conflicts throughout the country. The main provincial cities were virtually isolated, since the conflict was primarily centered in the countryside. Although the various sectors protesting were not coordinated, their actions overlapped to cut off the country's key highways and block communication such that they almost paralyzed economic activity. The South Atlantic Autonomous Region also burst into action in May, when its highest elected official was legally voted out of office.
In an equally tempestuous and disorderly fashion, yet another uproar shook the country in May—in this case baseball fever. The national baseball championship captured the hearts of many Nicaraguans, pushing the ongoing negotiations and violence in the north to the back burner as the San Fernando team from Masaya and the Boers from Managua fought it out to the bitter end. It was a fever, commented one local newspaper, "that affects us all and of which nobody wants to be cured."
The two social outbursts had certain elements in common. Both united widely diverse sectors of the Nicaraguan population across political and party lines. And both "games" were plagued with poor pitching, bases gained on balls and crass errors by both players and obsessive fans—particularly those of the Boers, who were unable to control their emotions either in the stadium or in the streets. Both the Boers and the mix of recompas and recontras who blocked roads throughout the country constitute powerful forces that, as never before, managed to make it to the semi-finals and challenge their opponents.
Who's on first?At the beginning of May, the government effectively lost control of the country. On previous occasions, government authorities had taken advantage of the dispersed actions of the rearmed groups to neutralize them, combining threats with dialogue and finally agreeing to comply with certain of their specific demands. This had become the pattern since the February "taking" of Ocotal, followed by partial uprisings in Matagalpa, a confrontation in Sébaco and the quickly multiplying number of groups under arms.
But this initial strategy of containment erred in two key senses: one, the government offered money in exchange for arms; and, two, it promised far more than it was actually able to deliver. The experience appeared to demonstrate that rearming translates into individual monetary reward and immediate governmental attention. Government noncompliance and its inability to extend immediate benefits to those demanding them then provoked unprecedented levels of armed rebellion.
To this new quantitative dimension must be added a more qualitative element. The make-up of those in arms became more heterogeneous: in the occupation of small towns, state institutions and properties, it was no longer just a question of revueltos or rejuntos (the various combinations of recompas and recontras), but also a significant number of landless peasants and unemployed rural workers. At the same time, peasants with land organized their own protests demanding legal titles for their properties and access to credits. (See "Omens," this issue, for a detailed description of this phenomenon.)
Some of those who have become involved are best described as confused and desperate, and others as out and out opportunists. In some cases, landless peasants have occupied properties without regard to whether they were rightwing farms, private Sandinista ones or peasant land-reform cooperatives. In some cases, the demands of these groups go far beyond the imaginable and the negotiable. Contrary to the policy of the groups with more clarity, they have engaged in violent confrontations with the armed forces.
Lumpen elements have also jumped in to the rising river of social unrest, seeing a chance to "cover" their vandalism. On some roads, gangs of delinquents have donned olive green and carried out common assaults.
The only thing uniting all these rebels is the common conviction that the government is betraying them by not complying with the many promises it had made to each group. Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo admitted that the government did not even have a clear record of what its different officials had signed—a confession made at a moment when the patience of these sectors, the majority of whom have both military training and access to arms, had already worn thin.
The greatest danger rests not only in the possibility that the government's capacity to contain the explosion may be coming to an end, but also that the FSLN may no longer be able to continue acting as an "outfielder" to cover for the government's horrible pitching. The furious batters on the barricades are becoming unforgiving.
On the other hand, the batting team's own incoherence does not help the efforts at containment, nor does it help achieve its own stated objectives. In the playoff between the rebels and the government, the losers could well be the police and army. The loss would not be strictly military, but political, since the Sandinistas would be forced to decide once and for all which team it is rooting for.
If the explosion did not result in a greater number of victims, it was only because the discontented still have a minimal level of organization and local political leadership. More than 120 groups were involved in the different uprisings, each one jealous of its own autonomy and representativity. There was no organization from on high, as the extreme right alleges when it claims that everything is being directed straight from the offices of Daniel and Humberto Ortega. The right consistently exaggerates the FSLN's degree of control and coherence. With the possible exception of the recompa movement, headed by former Sandinista army officers, none of these groups has a national structure with the capacity to carry out centralized negotiations. Even the discharged army officers are themselves divided into various groups. Peasant coordinating groups or fronts exist on paper, but in reality each group is carrying out diverse actions, according to the demands of its members and the peculiarities of its region.
The confusion became palpable and dangerous, both within and between each rearmed group. Recontras, recompas and revueltos alike accused their leaders of selling out to the government, or of being incapable of defending their demands. They charged the leaders of having enriched themselves with official perks and leaving the base with nothing. Given the government's non-compliance, the lack of confidence extends to leaders who signed accords and persuaded the group to disarm without demanding verification mechanisms first.
FSLN in the outfieldThis lack of confidence extends to the FSLN: there are reports of former and/or anti-Sandinista groupings that accuse both the FSLN and the army of having left their respective low-ranking members with nothing while the "higher ups" benefited from the "piñata." The FSLN is also accused of currently conspiring with the government and distancing itself from the grassroots. These sectors thus disparage the FSLN's mediating activities, which, in any case, have not assured government compliance with the resulting accords.
The nature and scope of the movement and its demands once again put the FSLN's capacity for leadership and containment to the test. The army conservatively estimates the number of armed rebels at 1,800 recompas or recontras who demobilized at least once following negotiations; another 820 irregular forces with hard-line positions, but with whom the army still was able to maintain contact; and another 600 men, really vandals, who are completely closed to any negotiation. It was with this last group that the army has had head-on collisions. Whatever their differences, most of these rebels have one key element in common: like more than half of all Nicaraguan families, they have incomes less than that needed simply to buy a monthly market basket of basic necessities—if they have access to any income at all.
Once again, the FSLN identified with those making demands and with the bulk of the specific demands they made. It also identified with the executive branch's overall call for dialogue and an end to confrontation. One Sandinista leader publicly reflected that "armed struggle can be justified to fight a dictatorship or foreign invasion, but not to demand jobs or land."
But it is not easy to convince people who are hungry and without jobs, land or resources, especially when they also have military preparation, access to arms and clearly see that the government only responds to ongoing threats. Most of these people are not engaging in armed struggle per se, but rather in armed pressure.
The phenomenon is complex and endangers the Sandinista forces' internal cohesion. Clear contradictions are already apparent in the FSLN sphere of influence, between the army and police and the rebels, as well as among producers affected by economic paralysis.
Throughout the last weeks, various protest actions were contained or mediated by FSLN actions. In the first stage, that work took place through FSLN regional structures; more recently, it has been by Daniel Ortega personally, diminishing the influence of regional party leaders.
But the FSLN's political influence and moral authority is not endless, and it does not have equal influence among the distinct groups. The FSLN's difficult internal situation is one explanation, but is not the key factor. The dimension of the social and economic crises suffered by the great majority of the population—the worst in Nicaraguan history—has greatly eroded any capacity for persuasion and leadership, not just of the FSLN, but also of the unions and other social movements. Like many peasants and the revueltos, the Sandinista unions also came to the conclusion that the methods of struggle used to date, from strikes to negotiations, have not achieved their stated objectives or improved the situation of the average worker.
Government foulsIn many senses, the problem being faced is not a political one that responds to political solutions. In the country's western region, the old economic model is suffering the near total collapse of cotton production, a consequence of falling international prices and almost zero profit rates. This crisis has affected the entire region. Any plan for crop substitution would take years to effect. In this zone, not enough land is available to meet the demands of those who have historically clamored for it, people whose needs were resolved neither by the Sandinistas nor by the new government. They are now competing for land with tens of thousands of men demobilized from the army and the contra forces, in addition to returned refugees, urban unemployed who have gone back to the countryside in order to survive and others. Beyond the debate about whether or not the government has complied with its many promises is the very real issue of the country's structural agrarian crisis. This crisis turns on both the problem of property per se and on the country's productive paralysis resulting largely from the unresolved issue of who gets credit financing, itself in part an issue of the lack of legal titles to land.
The government has a high quota of responsibility for what has taken place. The accords were signed irresponsibly, promising what didn't exist or what legally already belonged to someone else. So many agreements were made, and with so many groups, that nobody high up in the government was able to make a clear accounting of exactly what had been signed and what had yet to be fulfilled. It is true that there is a serious lack of resources, but also missing is coherence and efficiency within the state apparatus. After two years in power, the government is still in a process of organizing itself. Its entities are contradictory; there is little official communication about what has actually been done and the objective difficulties encountered along the way; and municipal authorities often disregard agreements made in Managua. The result is a sharp deterioration in the confidence needed to negotiate with a government. The government has shown itself incapable of keeping its promises, except when it is under pressure, force or threat.
When all is said and done, the government's priorities and attention are centered on the structural adjustment plan prescribed by Washington and the international bankers. It is even attempting to over-comply with what the banks require to impress Nicaragua's creditors. From the government's point of view, it is more important to receive international loans than to attend to local demands for credit, although credit awarded to small producers would be one way of alleviating increasing poverty levels in the countryside. Most productive credit goes to large agroexport producers who, despite being favored by the current government, were only able to meet 30% of their credit needs through the government, according to reports by the Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG).
UNAG and the FSLN charge that the government, rather than increasing available credit, will actually reduce it this year, given commitments to the international banks to privatize Nicaragua's state-run banks, the major source of credit to agricultural producers. According to AID and the World Bank, everything should go to private banks, so that the government is not so affected either fiscally or politically by credit disbursements. The private banks will cut off those producers who do not pay on schedule. Using a similar logic, the land issue must be resolved, they say, not by broadening the agrarian reform, but rather by "rationalizing" -as the government calls privatization at the expense of the cooperatives.
These governmental decisions threaten small producers, many of whom were not badly disposed towards the government in political terms, but now find common ground with the revueltos given the threat of their imminent "proletarianization." The state banks did not even open their doors to cooperative members or other beneficiaries of the Sandinista agrarian reform because they do not have legal title to their properties—although the government has repeatedly promised that titles are forthcoming. Meanwhile, the ATC is demanding food-for-work programs, along with land and agricultural tools, while other unions demand financing for the enterprises privatized to the workers.
Right wing at bat Some observers wrongly concluded that the "teams" in Nicaraguan politics were clearly defined. The extreme Right seemed to be out of the running for the championship, with the executive branch and the FSLN monopolizing the political initiative in the country. What these observers ignored was the oldest rule in the Nicaraguan political game: the US government will never abandon its role as referee, manager and majority stockholder of all teams save one.
The center, Lacayo-affiliated bloc in the National Assembly was consolidated as Assembly President Alfredo César lost his automatic anti-Sandinista, anti-executive majority. Thus, the only route left to him was the one traditionally traveled by Nicaraguan politicians: increase his appeals to Washington based on defense of common interests.
The pretext is the country's stability. But everyone has his or her own definition of stability. The FSLN and the executive continue to lay their bets on a national agreement in which each party would set aside its own "radicalism": the social radicalism of the FSLN and the neoliberal radicalism of the government. In this context, any understanding is based on economic policy and, more concretely, on attention to the demands for property and credit in a way that favors both small producers and popular interests.
Antonio Lacayo and the FSLN had declared the property debate closed, but the extreme right wing—both political and business-based—insists that it remain open. The fact that the process of legal property titling is still unfinished contributes to keeping this topic on the agenda. This titling process is part of a law approved last December by a narrow margin of votes.
But the business-based right wing also has its own plan for the issues of property and credit and will not easily withdraw from a battle that is really about economic power. In the midst of the ongoing social turbulence in the country, the rightwing parties in the Assembly introduced two new property bills linked to the interests of the country's large landholders. Their goal is to annul the President's December 1991 veto, which supposedly put an end to the legal battle around this issue. The National Conservative Party presented one of the bills and Alfredo César the other, pushing up already high political temperatures.
Around the same time, César threw more fuel on the fire when he traveled to Washington with charges that the executive branch had created a "co-government" with the FSLN and abandoned its UNO allies. On an earlier trip, he took a bill to assure thoroughgoing changes in the Nicaraguan military with him, for "consultation." This time he was looking for support for his new bill on property and one on the privatization of state banks. He characterized the government as arrogant and accused it of trying to resolve things alone, isolating itself from the forces that brought it to power. He also charged that it was trying to ingratiate itself with the FSLN and declared that, "Nicaragua is sliding towards anarchy and total chaos."
César revealed a governing plan with specific proposals to resolve the "fundamental problems" of properly, the armed forces and the police, as well as economic growth. On his return from Washington, he argued that "the government is the body with the mechanisms to resolve these problems... and if not, it should humbly recognize that it cannot and call on those forces that can, which are UNO," adding that there were bad feelings in the US capital because the government had supposedly not complied with certain commitments it had made. In the best tradition, now three generations old, of Nicaragua's Liberal and Conservative parties, César demanded that Washington remove Lacayo and give "UNO"—which, of course, would comply with the United States—a chance to govern. As Barricada put it, "César has proposed to carry off in Washington all that he was unable to obtain in Managua, even if this means involving the US Congress and the Bush Administration in our internal politics."
By design or by chance, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Jeanne Kirkpatrick, longstanding and staunch enemy of the Sandinistas, published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post on May 12 revealing a private conversation she had had with César. She reported him saying that foreign assistance, including aid from the United States, would be channeled to state-run banks and would thus pass to the strongboxes of Sandinista businesses and Sandinista organizations. It was precisely at this moment that the US Congress was studying, and decided to temporarily stall, the approval of a new disbursement of already budgeted aid to Nicaragua. Minister of Foreign Cooperation Erwin Krügger characterized César as irresponsible and said he contributes—as does an article published in The Wall Street Journal by Nicaraguan banker Haroldo Montealegre—"to damaging the country's image" and fueling "confrontational policies."
Krügger warned that "we are arriving at the moment of defining who is for peace and reconciliation and who is on the side of revenge and slander." For his part, Lacayo accused Montealegre of forming part of a public campaign in the United States to force the closing of the state-run banks and facilitate their control over the Nicaraguan financial market. He called César an "employee of Washington."
The episode puts in stark relief the weaknesses of the country's political scheme and economy. It has also obliged the FSLN to call on all sectors to not hold party interests above foreign financial assistance. The virulence with which the government responded to the extreme right's onslaught demonstrated that it has learned the historic lesson Sandinismo taught it: governments in confrontation with Washington will always lose. In fact, the US government is substantially involved in all government policies.
It was, as on other occasions, another attempt by the extreme right to take advantage of the differences of opinion within the US government—and vice versa as well. César, who insisted that "US aid was about to be suspended," has a formidable and organized base: a group of highly conservative members of Congress, well-known for their anti-Sandinista positions; Nicaraguans who went into self-exile in Miami and have close links to the Somoza dictatorship; the rightwing Cuban community; sectors of the Central Intelligence Agency; and rightwing foundations. The National Assembly representatives are under particularly intense pressure from those Nicaraguans with US citizenship who are demanding the return or "indemnization" of their properties, even those legally nationalized and, in some cases, compensated by the Sandinista government. From time to time, Congressional representatives send letters to President Chamorro demonstrating their "concern" about the situation of these dual citizens and the implications this could have when authorizing another aid disbursement.
It is not clear if the State Department entirely shares the position of these members of Congress. Although political formalities must be respected and the Embassy is developing its consular representation of the case for Managua's authorities, the high-level concern in Washington around the property issue is deeper: the goal is to stabilize the property structure in Nicaragua to assure political and economic stability so the country can be relegated to its historic place on the US list of official priorities. To a certain degree, this means supporting the understanding between the executive branch and the FSLN around this issue.
Nevertheless, the State Department is very suspicious of the way this understanding is reflected in the arrangement between the army chiefs of staff and the executive branch. On this point, Washington could well coincide with César, and it is no coincidence that it was at this moment that a strong campaign was unleashed against Humberto Ortega, and more particularly, the President herself for not relieving herself of Ortega's services. In the same fashion, the State Department will continue to pressure for the "professionalization" of the police forces, with the underlying objective of eliminating Sandinista influence from the government. It would seem that the Chamorro government has promised Washington to take important steps forward along these lines at an opportune moment, but apparently that opportunity continues to be postponed.
The economic counterpart of the FSLN-executive accord is also cause for concern in technical circles, particularly within USAID. While Sandinismo is demanding credit for tens of thousands of small producers and a pardon or restructuring of old debts, the government decided to award credit to scarcely 3,000 producers, the majority of them quite wealthy. Within the neoliberal framework, this power is the prerogative of the financial market and not the government, and thus the state banks that responded to political pressures were thwarted. There was also apparently a commitment by the government to privatize state banks, but political and economic conditions would not allow that. Consequently, AID may recur to postponing disbursements, which would reinforce the position taken by some Congressional representatives. It is an open secret that the international lending agencies and AID were demanding the privatization of state banks, and that the Central Bank president had even agreed to it with the International Monetary Fund.
Nevertheless, the FSLN strongly denounced this initiative as anti-constitutional, as well as explosive from a political point of view. It is the state bank that finances small producers and should demonstrate flexibility in terms of debt cancellations, especially at times when productive activity faces crisis or collapse. The government retreated, postponing the decision, given the concern expressed by the FSLN and the powerful UNAG. Broad sectors of society also defended the logic of democratic economic and productive recovery. Only the private bankers were ready to sell it out; they are anxious to seize control of such a lucrative business, in which funds are received at 5-8% interest and lent out at 18%.
Washington's historic tendency to back two teams makes it unclear to what point the State Department shares César's "concerns." In any case, the State Department is not above sending signals to Lacayo via César, members of Congress or even the US media, which are then invoked in the spirit of "friendship" by the US Embassy in Managua. In any case, the Embassy declared that it would be "premature" to say that US assistance was in danger.
Confusion in the bullpen While Lacayo was calling César an "employee of Washington," César characterized Lacayo as an "employee of Ortega." The fact is that each team is watching out for its own interests, and Sandinismo is a long way from being able to count on "employees." Washington is playing its cards well, taking advantage of the social and economic crisis to directly or indirectly demand greater political concessions from the executive branch. The FSLN thus becomes more dependent on the executive branch in order to contain both the new and old demands of Nicaraguan financial capital, a sector that is beginning to flex its muscles—and its ties to government officials. At the same time, broad sectors of the population continue to demand greater militancy from the FSLN, even though many, diverse protests are taking place in which the demands do not always coincide. To date, the position of Sandinismo has been to support just demands—such as government compliance with signed agreements, access to credit and the distribution and legalization of lands—but always try to assure that protests are of a civic character.
The Sandinista position is valid as long as existing legal recourse is effective and respected. But recently the FSLN was disillusioned once again: in mid-May the President surprisingly rejected a bill for a new Labor Code, carefully drawn up by Sandinista representatives and negotiated with the UNO center bloc, with the justification that it would cause "investment flight and work against the creation of jobs, causing divisions between those working and enjoying great benefits and the great majority who would not have access to the newly created jobs." Without having resolved the situation in the countryside, the executive branch threw a hard new pitch to which the union movement will surely respond with a furious swing.
Many Sandinistas thought that the FSLN made a fool of itself on May 5 by summoning the representatives of the diverse rural movements to Managua to define solutions. The government was also invited in the hope of thus coming to a constructive position, but its representatives came late, said they were not reviewing the 30-some accords that had already been signed and were "working without rest" to try and resolve the crisis. They added that the weight of the law would fall on the illegal protests. They also rejected the FSLN's proposal to fix a calendar for compliance with the accords already signed as a mechanism to decrease tensions. "If the government doesn't comply, we'll be the first to head up the next protests," Daniel Ortega declared as he left the auditorium at Managua's Olof Palme convention center. It was a more mature position in response to what were characterized as Lacayo's siren songs. The Sandinista call for both sides to take more serious positions had landed in a vacuum.
Two strikes for the coastThe attrition of the FSLN's capacity for containment was made clear in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region, when UNO governor Alvin Guthrie was voted out of office by an alliance of Regional Council members headed by the Sandinista bench. Ray Hooker, a prominent Sandinista National Assembly representative, replaced Guthrie. The alliance included the four YATAMA council members and one UNO Council member, at the time president of the Council's executive board. Guthrie's removal before his term had expired made use of mechanisms spelled out in the Autonomy Statute and the Council's internal regulations.
The naming of Hooker and the threat of violence in Bluefields by Guthrie supporters who refused to accept the legality of his removal caused a division within the FSLN. On one side were those who supported Hooker and the popular demands of the Coast against a governor who had done little, if anything, for the region. On the other were those, particularly within the National Assembly, who saw their efforts at forging closer links with the executive branch and the UNO center group going down the tubes since the center group came out in support of Guthrie. There is concern within some sectors of Sandinismo that what took place on the Coast could give the impression that the charges made by César and Kirkpatrick—reprinted in La Prensa, of course—that there is a FSLN strategy to retake political power are correct. Guthrie, meanwhile, has filed a challenge with the Supreme Court. Both sides have said they will abide by its decision, but, in the meantime, the new executive board, elected at the same time but not sworn in due to the legal conflict, is unable to convene a session of the Regional Council. Guthrie remains in office alone, doing whatever suits him.
Reorganizing the teamIt will be very difficult for the FSLN to profit from situations such as the one that occurred on the Coast or the other, less organized rebellions in the rest of the country. Armed Sandinista supporters demanded support from the party leadership, threatening to leave the party if it was not forthcoming. The extreme right, meanwhile, holds the FSLN responsible for all actions, with COSEP leader Ramiro Gurdián charging that Humberto Ortega heads two armies, the official one and a "clandestine" one—the revueltos.
While his was an extremist position, no one denies that the different takeovers and roadblocks caused irritation among many different sectors of society. They, too, tend pass the political bill, as it were, along to the FSLN. Even UNAG president Daniel Núñez declared that "land takeovers cause instability in the countryside which affects everyone." However, local UNAG leaders were in solidarity with the revueltos in their respective areas. This ambivalent relation is also evident within the FSLN itself. The FSLN does maintain some degree of influence over the rebels, not sufficient to make them desist from takeovers, but at times enough to convince them to clear the road for at least several hours.
Under these conditions, some actions are counterproductive not only because of the adverse reaction they cause among public opinion, but also because the government could feel emboldened by the impatience of such diverse groups and end up ceding to the extreme right's demand to send the police and army in to reestablish order. This demand is coming not only from large producers like Gurdián, but also from small producers who have been affected by the activities of criminal bands who identify themselves as recompas, recontras or ATC dissidents.
The challenge is on the table, perhaps most painfully for leftists who must witness the social decomposition caused by the neoliberal economic policies the government is determined to impose at all costs. The Left cannot respond as it would have in other times—although some sectors are still hoping it will. It is not a question of "heading up" a movement, because today's movements have their own personality and representation, their own capacity for negotiation. This does not mean that leadership should be abandoned, rather that it is necessary to effect a new political style, avoiding the dispersion of forces and seeking to bring the different political forces together. This new style must be based on both explaining and listening to the causes of the problem and its political expressions, as well as jointly analyzing the effectiveness and real impact of the different civil forces and respecting the sectoral and territorial peculiarities of their different struggles.
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