Nicaragua
People vs. Neoliberalism: Who Will Fold First?
Envío team
The poker game whose pot is the release of $104 million in US aid is still being played, and the US and Nicaraguan ultra-Right continue to up the ante. It’s the longest and most intense hand dealt since President Chamorro came to power, and the extremists' high card is the end of US tolerance for her "reconciliation" policy with the FSLN. With acquiescence from the Bush Administration, the Republican right is forcing a drastic modification of that political scheme, a shift toward the rightwing minority in Nicaragua's executive branch—the opposition faction of the electoral coalition.
Despite Chamorro's continual reassurances that the aid is about to be unblocked, she has run out of excuses for why it has not happened. She no longer blames it on insufficient information in the US Congress, or says that President Bush wants to release it but has his hands tied by the electoral campaign and the power of a few intransigent Senators. That there is consensus in Washington favoring this shift is an overstatement, but opposition to this policy has been quiet so far.
From the most "pragmatic" school of political thought in Washington to the most ideological one, all seem to buy the idea that what the US Agency for International Development (AID) calls economic "takeoff' is at risk of aborting unless Nicaragua's government is cut loose from its dependence on the FSLN. In this view, even the government's "progress" in the past two years could be rolled back, since this dependence inclines private producers and investors to abdicate their role as the guiding economic force. Worse yet, AID is using funds from the US Treasury to fill the vacuum.
The only debate is about nuances. One interpretation has it that the White House, State Department and CIA have only now decided that it is time for the sizeable influence of Sandinismo and the popular movement—which has provided the framework for stability—to come to an end. While that influence has never been to US liking, indications that it could actually be formalized into a bipartisan decision-making body have caused alarm.
Another interpretation sees more continuity in US policy. With the monetary stabilization and economic structural adjustment programs now imposed, it is simply time for the next stage: a complementary political structural adjustment. In both interpretations, economic "take-off' is simply a euphemism for the consolidation of the economic and political components required by the neoliberal capitalist model.
Whether the timing is a result of impatience or continuity, the moment is as good as it will get. The Chamorro government is desperate because it has promised payments to the international banks in September. Furthermore, the US government will have less leverage in the future since Bush has only requested $170 million for Nicaragua in next fiscal year's foreign aid budget.
Who is the opposition?In Nicaragua, political experiments have always had unpredictable results. For example, the coalition known as UNO that carried Violeta Chamorro to the presidency ended by playing the opposition role that should reasonably belong to the FSLN.
That coalition was and still is today a hodgepodge of minuscule and conflictive parties, united only by their determination to eradicate Sandinismo from the history books. Even in the best of circumstances, no administration can govern alone, and the circumstances in which Violeta Chamorro took office were pretty poor. Saddled with a weak and divided government in a semi-destroyed country, her decision to seek support from the FSLN, the nation's main social and political force, was neither stupidity nor ideological betrayal; it was a political necessity.
The executive branch could not ignore Sandinista influence in the armed forces and police, indispensable instruments for exercising power. And lacking support from the UNO bench in the National Assembly, it had to look elsewhere. Its only means to exercise legislative leverage was to negotiate with the FSLN for the backing of its sizable minority bench. Combining their votes with those of the handful of moderates on the UNO bench normally assures the passage of legislation promoted by the executive.
But the FSLN has paid a significant political price for this arrangement. It has meant being linked to the criticisms and mistrust generated by the government's policies. It has even meant being branded as a "co-government" by both the right and the popular movement, but with none of the benefits that go along with such status. The FSLN has not helped design any political or economic programs or controlled any ministerial or other portfolios, with the obvious exception of the armed forces. At best, there has been ongoing consultation, although this does not always end in agreement.
Such consultation between the government and the main opposition force is considered a characteristic of democracy anywhere else in the western world. As one government official recently remarked, "No one accuses President Bush of being a Democrat just because he sits down with Mr. Foley to work out a compromise."
But Washington finds the idea unacceptable in Nicaragua, because it considers the FSLN an unacceptable political force, even though it pulled nearly 41% of the vote in the 1990 elections.
Caught up in its vision of itself as the pot at the end of the rainbow of history, the United States is taking it upon itself to break the Nicaraguan government's dependence on the FSLN, even if this endangers the country's political and economic stability.
Freeing President Chamorro from what Washington sees as a co-government scheme requires undermining Sandinista influence in three fundamental sectors: the armed forces and police, the National Assembly and the popular movement.
Natural allies For the "ultras" in Congress, President Chamorro is nothing more than "the official head of a Sandinista regime led by corrupt bandits," to quote the director of Senator Helms' team responsible for publication of a damaging report on the Chamorro government, "Nicaragua Today." This report, riddled with inaccuracies, uses language as mean-spirited as anything the State Department put out during the Sandinista years, and all the information for them is supplied by the rightwing Nicaraguan opposition—some from Managua, but mostly from Miami.
Helms' objective is to send the Nicaraguan people the same message they heard during the 1990 electoral campaign: supporting or even tolerating Sandinismo has an economic cost, so either back the most anti-Sandinista positions or we will bankrupt the country.
And the Bush Administration appears to be quietly applauding the effects of their pressures on the Managua government.
Trading one chain for anotherAmid rumors, some of them true, of divisions in Chamorro's Cabinet and calls for Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo's resignation, Nicaragua's government has begun to shift to the right, violating its political and constitutional accords with the FSLN. It has started to heed the logic that Secretary of State James Baker laid out in Managua in January and Sen. Helms reiterated more recently: capitalism requires private investment, investment requires property security, property security requires a police force that upholds the supremacy of private property.
In the US version of this logic, any property in the hands of those dubbed Sandinistas is exempt from security, but, at least so far, that interpretation remains between the lines in Chamorro's rendition.
Property In August, the government announced that it would compensate those whose confiscated properties cannot be returned with stocks in public utilities and other state holding not subject to privatization. Although the government would supposedly retain the majority shares in utilities such as electricity, water, telephone and postal services, it is clearly trying to kill two birds with one stone: satisfy the pressures of AID and the multilateral banks to privatize basic services, and assure some form of compensation to claimants, above all US citizens, without sizable outlays of cash that it doesn’t have.
The communal movement and unions immediately rejected the idea, which implies turning over the administration of these utilities to private entrepreneurs who are far more interested in profit than service. "Why," one labor leader asked rhetorically, "won't these former owners accept being indemnified with enterprises that require reactivation?"
Police and armyHelms demanded the removal of high-ranking Sandinista officers from the police, and from intelligence and other government agencies. In July the government announced that the police would be restructured and civilian delegates would assume authority, thus breaking the existing chain of military command. Persistent rumors that National Police Chief René Vivas and other top officers would be retired were consistently sidestepped by government spokespeople.
At the beginning of August, however, the President finally turned the rumors into official fact. The news took the FSLN totally by surprise, since the decision flagrantly violated the transition accords and departed from the practice of consultations. The FSLN leadership had been consulted about discharging some police cadres, even including a dozen commanders, similar to what had already occurred in the army, and had agreed only if it would guarantee the aid release and if Lacayo would personally convey this offer to Secretary of State Baker. Once in the meeting, however, Lacayo offered—or was forced to offer—Vivas' head too.
This provoked not only protest from the FSLN but an emergency meeting of the Sandinista Assembly. The Assembly members sharply denounced this new indication of "anti-Sandinista political persecution," together with the government's clear violation of the transition accords. FSLN secretary general Daniel Ortega, however, pushed the idea that the accords could remain in effect if they were buttressed with "new content" through the creation of an organic law—similar to one the army already enjoys—that would provide institutional stability and legal respect for the police command structure.
For Sandinismo, the most serious issue was not Vivas' removal per se. Independent of the changes, Sandinista influence still predominates in the police, and the commanding officers are still Sandinistas. The real problem is that the government caved in to US meddling, and, as the Sandinistas well know, that is a no-win game because the US keeps redefining the rules. "The Yankees will only be satisfied when we have a police force at the service of the capitalists," warned Ortega.
And, sure enough, the aid has not materialized. The Bush Administration reportedly agreed to assure the release of half of the committed funds as part of the Baker-Lacayo accord. While even that remains to be seen, a common assumption is that the other half will come only when Washington is also sent army chief Humberto Ortega's head.
There is certain evidence to back that assumption, despite presidential adviser Danilo Lacayo's recent assurances to a US reporter that the US has shown no interest in removing General Ortega. La Prensa, for example, has joined the Helms bandwagon by publishing a series of sensationalist reports on the actions of old Sandinista intelligence structures. President Chamorro’s son Pedro Joaquín, a political adversary of his brother-in-law Antonio Lacayo, now controls that paper. Investigations into the deaths of former contra leader Enrique Bermúdez and the youth Jean Paul Genie have also been revived. Gen. Ortega's bodyguards are suspected of shooting the latter, and the right is convinced that Ortega himself is behind the murder of the former.
In an unprecedented joint appearance at the beginning of August, Vice President-without-portfolio Virgilio Godoy, soon-to-be-outgoing National Assembly president Alfredo César and Managua's vituperatively anti-Sandinista mayor Arnoldo Alemán presented a declaration calling on the President to convoke a national dialogue between "the UNO government," the political opposition (presumably the FSLN), private enterprise and the unions to define what they called a "social pact" that would put an end to the current crisis and win back "international credibility."
Lest anyone think the trio envisioned defining this social pact by way of relatively cordial give-and-take negotiations such as the executive has had with the FSLN, they also demanded that both Vivas and Ortega be relieved of duty so as to end the "notorious vacuum of governmental authority" that, according to them, has sucked the country into its current "anarchic" situation.
President Chamorro's three rivals threatened that, if she failed to fulfill these requirements, "the only remaining alternative would be a popular consultation."
The extremist right is trying to take political credit for the situation generated by the US aid suspension and by accusations of serious corruption on the part of high-level government officials who had promised "a revolution of honesty." As in 1989, when it put together the UNO coalition, the right is also making new efforts to respond to the US call to put aside the internal conflicts and personality feuds that afflict the more than 20 mini-groups making up that side of Nicaragua's political spectrum.
The FSLN position: Ambivalent or dialectic?A key element of US strategy involves putting the FSLN on the defensive, forcing it to relegate the demands of the popular sectors at a time when the issues of property and the security forces are being negotiated with the government.
The US hoped that the FSLN, its back against the wall, would again use its influence to stop the popular sectors' "destabilizing" protests, risking more of its political capital in the process. Some Sandinistas fell into the trap by pushing for uncritical support of the government and for avoiding moves that would suggest that the FSLN was blackmailing it from the streets.
In the Sandinista Assembly, positions ran the gamut from "a total alliance with the government to finish off the ultra-right" to a total break with it. Some argued for a greater emphasis on negotiating agreements with the government to prevent its destabilization and possible fall. One voice was even heard arguing that the FSLN abandon confrontation with imperialism, since it is a fight "between an ant and an elephant." Someone else warned that if no concrete actions were proposed, "we will be increasingly converted into co-authors of this government's mishaps with every passing day."
In typically dialectical fashion, Ortega urged Assembly members not to fall into extremist positions, but to strengthen Sandinista cohesion and unity. The proposed "lines of action" reflect his perspective, an engagement of the battle on all fronts.
The Assembly unanimously agreed that US interference is the core of the issue—hardly a historic discovery. The problem lies in precisely defining which aspects of that interference should be resisted with the greatest priority. For Ortega and other Sandinista leaders, the defense of self-determination should continue to be fought on economic terrain. Even when the FSLN is forced to act against "political persecution," the real issue is not some government post. The crisis, said Ortega, "should not derail us from the course we have been defending": adjusting the government's economic plan and profoundly modifying its property plan.
This ambiguity, which some see as necessary but which others firmly reject, is also reflected in the economic proposal the FSLN presented to the government. In an extensive document titled "Exposition on the current economic situation and government policies," the FSLN offered its "alternative" proposal for getting past the economic and social crisis. In summary, the document proposes correctives to the course of the government's economic recovery policy, currently oriented toward stimulating the economic activity of an entrepreneurial minority.
The document is presented from a state perspective, reflecting the "consultative" style of government-FSLN negotiations on political issues. The problem, however, is that the FSLN's influence on economic issues has been minimal and always subject to the requirements of AID and the multilateral lending agencies.
Because of this, the recommendations, drawn up more by Sandinista economists than by social organizations, do not argue for structural changes, but only for "compensatory" palliatives to cushion the social effects of the existing program.
Given pressures from the multilateral lending agencies, many question whether any latitude exists for policies that benefit the impoverished sectors and allow for the incorporation of small producers. More questionable still is whether the government will reciprocate the dialogue and negotiation, as well as encourage respect for individual and collective property by discouraging land takeovers. Democratizing credit and the social economy are not on the neoliberal agenda.
Formalities aside, the central dilemma always comes back to the same point: to whom is this FSLN document—or the FSLN as a whole—directed? Is it aimed at the FSLN's own political base, which is demanding "coherence" instead of ambiguity, or at other sectors of political and civil society that are demanding "viability" instead of confrontation? The debate is still open.
The social movement: A novel rebuttal The effectiveness with which the student movement combined negotiation and mobilization taught a lesson to those in the FSLN who exclusively advocate one or the other. The unity of the university community—all the way up to the rectors themselves—was determinant, as was the tenacity of the students, who claimed that the 6% of the national budget earmarked for university expenses should be calculated from total state income and not just ordinary income, as the executive branch steadfastly insisted. The legislative branch finally upheld their argument after the Supreme Court simply ruled that the University Autonomy Law prohibits government interference in decisions over the use of those funds.
The mobilization lasted 50 days, and combined legal actions, neighborhood and shopping center teach-ins, a series of enormous marches and even a hunger strike. Nicaragua's student movement, unlike its counterparts in other Latin American countries, has in its ranks a disproportionate percentage of former military personnel and knows from two years of political experience that the government only listens when forced to do so.
The government played for time, again risking national stability, by calculating first that the university community would wear itself out and second that the students could be isolated from the rest of the population. Wrong on both counts. The students took everyone by surprise, meeting the challenge that the FSLN had not dared to accept. Taking the government at its word, they entered the fray belligerently, determined to make the government back down first.
And they did. The key to the student movement's success was its ability to put its cause above party interests and the existing political polarization, thus winning support from diverse parties and government branches and isolating the executive. Although a large part of the Sandinista base supported the struggle, the FSLN parliamentary bench at first defended the executive's budget concerns; the tremendous pressure from the students finally made them change their position. The pressure did not come from red and black flags in the mobilizations either; the movement's leaders did not define themselves as Sandinistas—which many were—but as the heads of a student movement determined not to accept the FSLN's various attempts at cooptation.
For their own reasons and in their own interest, a large number of UNO legislators joined with the Sandinista bench in voting for an interpretation of the 6% issue that backed the university position. This has meant new negotiations, not only between the university community and the government, but also between the government and the FSLN, to decide who will pay for the $7 million discrepancy.
The executive and even the UNO legislators who supported the pro-university decision astutely argued that the additional funds would have to come out of the army budget and that of other ministries. The game is clear: use the student victory as a pretext to cut other budget lines defended by Sandinismo and blame the students for the sacrifices that the army and social service ministries have to suffer.
Various popular sectors, and even the army chief himself, see the student victory as pyrrhic, in that this student "minority" forced the FSLN to bend to its demands, setting aside the more important issues of property, police and structural adjustment.
But the reverse is also true: the executive could not rely on the FSLN to "convince" the students to put aside their own struggle, one they linked directly to civil society over party interests, baring the government's insensitivity and even that of many Sandinistas.
The people's intelligenceThe lesson that the students imparted to all of Nicaragua's political society deserves to be called historic. That lesson is that popular causes can be politically viable without diluting the coherence of their content. Full identification with Sandinismo was neither necessary nor desirable, since it would have obstructed their ability to unite other students and parents, politicizing them for perhaps the first time after a long period of lethargy. By accomplishing all this with stellar success, the students assured themselves new space and respect in society.
At the same time, they had the political wisdom to use the contradictions between the President and the UNO coalition to their own advantage, assuring some votes that would perhaps not have otherwise responded to a pro-student position. And though no legislator wanted to admit it, the specter of thousands of students knocking on doors, demanding justice and "willing to do whatever is necessary" in the event of a negative vote, also influenced both the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. The students had marched peacefully, but they carried unusually large pencils, sharpened to a fine point. Either a "no" to the 6% issue or the death of one of the hunger strikers would have unleashed chaos. "The university struggle will take a course unprecedented in the history of our country," warned one student leader, "and the only one responsible will be this government, which wants to play with the people's intelligence."
No one struggle can be used as a cookie-cutter model, no matter how anxiously others with claims against government measures may want one. Practice, however, always offers important contributions to the debate about different methods of struggle and their impact on the population and the government. Against all predictions, the students' determined continuity, even at the risk of losing the support of some FSLN sectors, had positive results. But this cannot be attributed, as the government insists, to waging a legal battle through the branches of the state. It was not the justice of the student's cause nor its legal validity that won them the majority vote in the National Assembly; it was the shared political need to prevent the mobilizations from overflowing "civic" channels. Both the UNO and FSLN benches committed the sin of self-complacency by lauding the accord they had reached and suggesting that they had effectively interpreted and represented the students' demands.
They conveniently forgot the nearly two months of sacrifice, struggle and hunger strikes that forced that negotiated consensus.
The country is caught between US pressure on one side and pressure from the popular sectors and middle classes on the other. The student protest has already overlapped with other demonstrations by newly discharged army officers and urban bus drivers, in which tear gas, bullets and the blood of some 50 people, mainly police, flowed within yards of the President's office. It was a grim reminder of what had happened in Venezuela, where hundreds died. Even before the last National Assembly vote on the 6% had been tallied, war disabled, secondary students, primary teachers and others were announcing the start of their own protests after failed attempts to get any satisfactory response from the government. The Nicaraguan people, who lived through a revolution larger than the party that led it, are starting to take on the neoliberal economy and politics that Washington is determined to impose. This is the obstacle course on which Sandinistas from center to left and UNO politicians from their own center to ultra-right have to perform their political juggling acts.
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