Nicaragua
Peasant Resettlements: Protection or Pacification?
Envío team
“They [the Sandinistas] are using Stalin’s tactic of Gulag relocation for those who do not support their tyrannical regime.” (Ronald Reagan, speaking to a group of Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries visiting the White House, March 25, 1985)
“The resettlement of thousands of Nicaraguan families on the northern border is a direct response to counterrevolutionary terrorism directed against the innocent civilians living in these isolated rural zones. They have been the victims of the CIA-backed mercenary war.” (Statement from the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington in response to President Reagan’s remarks.)
Since 1981, more than 120,000 peasants have fled the war zones, many of them migrating to the safety of towns and cities, others beginning again in resettlements provided by the government. In February 1985, the Nicaraguan government initiated a large-scale resettlement project in the two northern regions most affected by the counterrevolutionary war. These are Region I, comprising the departments of Estelí, Madriz and Nueva Segovia, and Region VI, the departments of Matagalpa and Jinotega.
The project will relocate two basic groups of peasants into resettlement communities. The first group is made up of already displaced peasants whose tiny farms or agricultural cooperatives have been destroyed by the counterrevolutionaries. The second includes small private producers and subsistence farmers living in isolated mountain areas deep in the war zone. Many from this second group have never suffered direct attacks, and some, either by choice or coercion, provide a social base for the contras.
The first phase of this two-year project began in February of this year. In it the government plans to establish 80 to 90 settlements for approximately 7,000 families by the end of the year. During the second phase, in 1986, the number is scheduled to increase to more than 130 settlements, with another 2,000 families. Conservatively calculating five members to an average peasant family, this project could affect 50,000 Nicaraguans.
In part, the resettlement project is a direct response to the growing internal refugee population and the problematic migration pattern to urban centers, which has taxed the cities’ capacity to provide services and left rural production under-attended. But it is also part of a military strategy designed to push the contras out of the northern zones, and create productive rural communities that can be defended.
This complex resettlement project is just getting underway. In April, a group of investigators from envío visited several of the settlements, gathering data and impressions about living conditions and morale during this initial phase.
The reactions of those recently moved varied, since they are just getting accustomed to their new communities. The project represents a major challenge to the Nicaraguan government and a serious political risk to the revolution. The success of the project will depend on the quality of living conditions in the settlements, which includes but is not reduced to the government’s ability to deliver social services and assistance to the new residents. This article offers first-hand observations of living conditions to date, our analysis of the reasons for the project, and conclusions about the prospects for its success.
Yalí: Where the cost of war has been highThe road leading to the town of Yalí is like a nightmare religious procession, in which the stations are burnt jeeps and transport trucks. Every bend in the road is a message: here is where they ambushed so-and-so; that is where the battle on such-and-such a day took place. As the road winds higher into the mountains of Jinotega, tropical vegetation gives way to the few pines that escaped past deforestation.
As we pulled into Yalí, a youth we had given a ride commented, “Yalí has paid one of the highest prices of this war.” In this town of 7,000 in the southwest end of Jinotega, 300 have been killed in counterrevolutionary attacks.
Many children are playing in the streets; the Nicaraguan Social Security and Welfare Institute is building an orphanage here. We see many people just sitting around in the center of town. Some, we are told, are peasant farmers from the surrounding settlements. They come into town during the day to do business, or just to pass the time; at night they return. This is our first contact with recently resettled peasants in this zone. From their faces it is clear that they are still disoriented, refusing to accept the drama into which they have been drawn.
Las Colinas is a settlement 18 kilometers north of Yalí along the highway. This follows the government’s plan to locate the settlements near towns or along major roads to make them easier to reach and protect. Along the highway are more signs of war: charred vehicles, even an armored Sandinista Army truck headlong down a ravine. When we arrive at Las Colinas, people are lined up singing, forming a corridor from the community entrance to their graveyard. They are awaiting the visit of the bishop of Jinotega.
The houses, still under construction, consist of a 36-square-meter zinc roof held up by six wood posts. Sheets of black plastic have been tacked up temporarily, in place of more substantial walls. This much is provided by the government. The resettled peasants themselves will finish the houses with wood from the surrounding forests. Some complain that they had expected to find finished houses waiting for them. Government officials supervising the project said they hope to have the houses finished by the rainy season.
It still is not clear how many families will be brought to this settlement. The original plan was to build sixty houses here, but more than 100 families have already been brought from the isolated mountains. There is not enough land at Las Colinas for so many families, so the staff from the Ministry of Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA) in charge of the project is now looking for other sites. Solidarity groups from Germany and the United States have already expressed their willingness to send brigades to help with construction.
A little above the settlement was a small coffee processing plant. It is now just burnt remains, destroyed recently by the contras as part of their general strategy of attacking Nicaragua’s fragile economic infrastructure.
The day of our visit, a delegate from MIDINRA is also there, distributing lands to some 15 peasant families in the settlement. Since the government owned no land in the Yalí valley, it had to buy it from medium and large private owners. The urgent demand has caused prices to skyrocket, but after long bargaining sessions the government has now purchased all the land it needs.
One piece of property was confiscated, an abandoned coffee farm whose owner has political ties with Edén Pastora and has left the country. The peasants tell the MIDINRA delegate they are hesitant to take land from this farm; they are afraid of contra reprisals.
A few peasants also say they will not start cultivating until they are given official land titles. At the moment, titles are written on pieces of notebook paper, with the peasant’s name and how many acres of land have been assigned to his family. The delegate promises to do what he can to speed up bureaucratic transactions in Managua.
We were surprised by the peasants’ spirit of collaboration and their enthusiastic discussions with the MIDINRA delegate about production plans. The land is rich and fertile, excellent for coffee, basic grains, cane and cattle, and they know it. The majority of these peasants are poor subsistence farmers, who tell us of their vision of a better life in this valley.
Those hardest hit by the relocation are the small and medium farmers who produced for market, and whose standard of living was therefore higher. Here, as on other settlements, they cling to the possibility of returning to their original farms once the military situation has been secured.
In the meeting with the MIDINRA delegation, the peasants contribute criticisms and suggestions for turning the valley into an agriculturally productive zone, and listen to discussions about the need to organize defense of the valley. The “security limits” of the zone are marked by three other vehicles burned by the contras along the road.
“Many have already died,” the peasants agree, “too many.” On the northeast side of the mountain is La Rica, an area that has seen dozens of skirmishes. Several military lookout posts are scattered among the hilltops surrounding the valley, and a small military base protects the valley’s entrance.
Las Colinas is one of the most advanced of the many settlements established in the war zones of Region VI. At the beginning of the war the counterrevolutionaries infiltrated the mountains around the Yalí valley. They received logistical support from the big landowners in the area who had been associated with Somoza, playing on fears that they would be affected by the land reform.
They also took advantage of dissatisfaction among peasants scattered throughout the mountains, whose isolation prevented them from seeing any immediate benefits from the revolution. With some success, the counterrevolutionaries used religion and visceral anti-communism to establish a social base among these peasants. The message was always the same: “The Sandinistas are communists and atheists; they’re going to take your land away; in the cooperatives you’ll die of hunger; they’ll send your sons to Russia; the women are everybody’s property.”
The organized cooperatives were the other side of the coin; they have been contra targets from the outset. Of the 14 that had been established in the Yalí valley, only one cooperative remains. All the rest have been destroyed, and their membership decimated. Any revolutionary symbol, any participation in revolutionary tasks, any signs of resistance to the contra message has brought one response: death and destruction by the contras. Government efforts to enact real agricultural reforms and to build a base of support for the revolution have thus suffered.
The contras have repeatedly tried to take the town of San Rafael del Norte, just south of the valley. Had they succeeded, they would have controlled the highway to Yalí, and with it the entire area. This would have brought them dangerously close to Jinotega, the capital of the department. Recent reports by the army indicate that it is succeeding in its attempt to push the contras of for the region. “Each acre of land we deliver to these peasants,” a young delegate from MIDINRA said to us, “is land out of the reach of contra influence.”
Pantasma: A new start after the tragedyA group of children come into the tiny MIDINRA office in Pantasma with a request, children’s books for the library in the settlement. In all the settlements, the first thing one notices is the high percentage of children.
Most of the peasants being resettled in the Pantasma valley east of Yalí are from cooperatives destroyed by the counterrevolutionaries. For many this is their second relocation. In May 1984, a number of families were brought to the town of Pantasma when their cooperative in the area of El Ventarron was destroyed. In February 1985 they were relocated to a new settlement called Loma Alta. Two other cooperatives attacked in October 1983 are also now resettled in the valley, in Las Praderas. When all of the displaced families are finally relocated, there will be 60 at Loma Alta and 80 at Las Praderas. Two other settlements are also in the planning stage.
Construction brigades from Germany and the United States are helping build the standardized 36-square-meter houses at Las Praderas. The difference here is that there are walls, made out of prefab concrete slabs. Las Praderas is envisioned as the urban center of the valley, so its design has a more urban character, with a cluster of houses constructed in orderly rows on either side of the highway. Loma Alta, on the contrary, is constructed on a coffee farm, so the houses alternate with rows of coffee bushes.
“The resettlement plan has been in the making for a long time,” we were informed by Ronald Zeledón, an official from the regional MIDINRA office. “This is why some displaced peasants had already built their houses along the highway—they knew the government was planning a cooperative here.”
Pantasma is a beautiful, fertile valley of 425 square kilometers, with a population of 12,000. From the beginning, the government has had ambitious plans to cooperativize the valley, but has been limited by lack of funds; key loans from the Inter-American Development Bank were blocked by the Reagan administration. Also, the major contra offensive against cooperatives in the area led by “Mike Lima” killed 47 peasants in October 1983 (envío, January 1984). In the last four years, 170 peasants have been killed by the contras and 250 kidnapped.
The cooperativized peasants at Las Pradras and Loma Alta see the resettlements as an opportunity to reunite their old communities. In an effort to maintain continuity, the MIDINRA office has promised them that they can grow the same crops they grew before. These cooperatives, each with their own character, will be the nuclei around which life will be oriented on the settlements.
These enthusiastic peasants are living alongside others with very different experiences. Some are very poor, others, relatively well-off, medium-scale producers; they come from an isolated, individualistic life in the mountains of Pantasma. In their area the counterrevolutionary effort to build a social base found an echo due to serious abuses committed against some peasant families by Sandinista leaders in the area. The 42 responsible are now in prison, several of them for 30 years, the maximum punishment in Nicaragua today. There is no question but that the differences in social positions, experiences, and attitudes of these diverse groups will be a major challenge for the project, perhaps more than in other places.
Pancasán: Taking the peasant lifestyle into account“This is the spot where Somoza’s National Guard spotted the column of Sandinista guerrillas,” our driver pointed out as we approached Pancasán, a peasant town nestled in the foothills of central Matagalpa. In 1967 this clash between the guerrilla and the National Guard made Pancasán one of the most important symbols in Nicaragua’s struggle for liberation, and since then the area has been firmly pro-FLSN, with many peasants joining the guerrillas or collaborating with them. “We have a historic commitment to these people,” explains Pedro Haslam, FSLN political secretary in neighboring Matiguás.
The peasants around Pancasán organized themselves into “self-defense cooperatives.” From the very beginning they were under brutal attack by the counterrevolutionaries, who also burned down private farms in the region. Not far from here 23 young reservists were killed in February 1983, days before the Pope arrived in Nicaragua. It was their mothers, wanting the Pope to pray for the dead boys, who began the peace chant that quickly swept through the assembled throng. Eighty peasants from the area have been killed and over 300 kidnapped. Of the latter, half have managed to flee the contra ranks and return to Pancasán under the amnesty law.
The counterrevolutionary forces have never been able to establish a permanent presence in this area. The peasants here know better than to be enticed by contras who promise that “by Christmas we’ll be in Managua,” or “when we win, there’ll be dollars, cigarettes and American jeans for everybody.”
Instead, the contras arrive for attacks during the planting and harvesting seasons. This has seriously hurt production, when it is not lost altogether, and over the last few years has created a slow but steady flow of individual and cooperativized peasants to towns in the area. In Matiguás, there are now 60 displaced families living with relatives or friends. These traditional basic grain producers now must be subsidized for months at a time, and their progressive “urbanization” also threatens to permanently affect the social and productive structure of the countryside.
The government has long-term plans to establish five settlements in the Pancasán area. Three are underway, as extensions of already existing cooperatives. The most advanced of these is called Sitio Histórico, added on to the 13-family Silvio Mayorga cooperative. The twelve new houses are being built according to the same model as the others, except that here the government has provided prefabricated wood wall panels. The newcomers also participated in the planning of their community, opting to leave considerable distance between houses. “They like their chickens and pigs and vegetable garden around the house,” said Pedro Haslam. “It would be a real mistake to bring an urban scheme to the mountains.”
El Laberinto (with 15 new houses and 15 old) and El Balsamo (32 new houses and 18 old) are the two other settlements in the area. In accordance with the desires of the peasants themselves, the regional government plans to take a very different approach to housing construction in these two communities. It will establish a “materials bank,” and the newly resettled peasants can build their own houses in whatever fashion they choose. Old cooperative members can also use a share of the materials to improve their houses.
In total, 200-300 Pancasán families out of a population of 4,000 will be relocated in the coming months. Again, the majority of these are subsistence peasants. MIDINRA is assigning lands to them either in individual parcels or for cooperatives, depending on how they choose to work, and MIDINRA agronomists and technicians supervise the projects and production plans.
The land is fertile. The first priority is to plant enough basic grains, bananas, plantains, sugar cane and coffee to make the communities self-sufficient. For the future, cattle promises to be the most profitable project.
The relocation here, as in all areas, has had high costs. The peasants were moved quickly to avoid contra ambushes, and everything was left behind. Crops went unharvested, and the new ones will take months. Until then, the government commission will provide the communities with food, clothing and medicine. Pancasán already had a health center which the recently resettled can use, and a course in midwifery will soon be taught there.
As we were leaving a woman asked us for a lift to the nearby hospital to see her son, who had been wounded in combat some days earlier. The Sandinista Army’s Irregular Fighting Forces (BLI’s) operate in this zone, with troops made up mainly of young men fulfilling their military service. The “Sombreritos,” as they are known for the olive green cloth hats they wear, enjoy widespread support from Pancasán residents. The government recently changed its policy so that local soldiers from this and other northern regions are no longer integrated into traveling BLI units, but rather into their own area’s defense militia. This allows them to continue living with their families and work their land.
Jalapa: An Intense Experience in OrganizationThe night of our arrival there is no light in the town, except the dim glow of kerosene lanterns in the houses. Jalapa’s streets are empty. An occasional shot from the surrounding mountains breaks the silence.
Jalapa is a lush triangle of valley and mountains that juts into Honduras. Because of its seeming vulnerability, Jalapa became a primary objective in the contra strategy during the first two years of war. They hoped to declare the Jalapa valley “liberated territory,” but failed to capture even one town. (envío, February 1984).
In this valley, which contains some of the best land in Nicaragua, there has been a constant flow of peasants displaced from the surrounding mountains in which the contras hide. In response to the influx of people looking for work and a new life, three settlements—La Estancia, Santa Cruz and Escambray—were established in 1982-83. The people who moved into these communities have adapted well to their new communal living conditions, many even planting flower gardens around their homes. The settlements all have schools, health centers, day care and free cafeterias for the children. The communities are highly productive, growing basic grains and tobacco for sale. They also have a well consolidated self-defense system that has considerably discouraged counterrevolutionary activity in the valley.
This experience and the structures already set up by the local government are a tremendous help in coordinating the relocation of the 650 families evacuated from surrounding mountains in February of this year. The families are being integrated into the three existing settlements and two new ones.
At La Estancia, 26 badly shaken peasant families joined 50 already living there. They had been evacuated from a combat zone in the mountainous region of Murra under military protection, leaving almost all of their scanty possessions behind. Members of the La Estancia cooperative welcomed the newcomers with food, and soon work groups were formed to plant basic grains and add walls to the housing frames provided by the Ministry of Housing.
The newly arrived children are already attending school and have received medical check-ups at the local health clinic. Beginning a new life, particularly under such conditions, is hard, but it was made easier by the solidarity of the settlement’s older residents in this thriving community. The peasants also say the Jalapa government has responded quickly to their immediate needs.
The situation in the other two existing settlements is similar, but nonetheless peasants in all three told us that they were initially quite angered by the move. But now they are beginning to adjust to their new communities, taking advantage of the social services and the assistance of their well-organized neighbors. “There in the mountains the battles were real close,” one woman told us. “All we want is to live and work in peace, and here it looks like we may be able to.”
The 150 families at the new settlement at Portillo are also from the deserted northern mountains of Murra, pushed there in the 1960s by the expansion of cotton plantations in the Pacific plains where they had traditionally lived. The small plots of land they cleared, a cow or two, a few fruit trees, and the family burial plot have powerful symbolic and psychological value for these peasants who once again must begin anew.
At El Portillo, the first sight is freshly graded earth, felled trees, and houses under construction. A local government official told us the supervisor had inadvertently created a problem when he decided to distribute lots to the 150 families by lottery. Many peasants were disgruntled by the results because they had wanted to live next to their own relatives, so some of the women were now trying to reorganize it. In all the settlements we visited, we noticed the peasants were strongly encouraged to take initiative in organizing their community. In some they had elected representatives to work with the government or local project coordinators.
The state bought 250 acres for the production of coffee, basic grains and citrus for distribution in the area. MIDINRA predicts that the yield per acre will be five times greater than in the mountains. The peasants agree that the soil here is rich, but they told us there is a plague in the valley so they are asking for pesticides and fertilizers. They complain that although they had less land in the mountains, it was cooler and so there were fewer problems with pests. MIDINRA has just given the community a tractor, the first these farmers have ever owned.
Until the first crop comes in, the peasants at El Portillo will receive food subsidies and a salary of 100 córdobas a day for their work constructing the community.
Quibuto: The first objective is to raise the living standardIn May 1984, 800 contras attacked the community of Quibuto, a community in the east of Madriz, near Nueva Segovia. By that time, the cooperative, made up of 48 members and their families, had achieved much. Nightly adult education classes were held, the women had organized, many peasants had joined UNAG, the union of small ranchers and farmers, and the community even had its own post office.
The contras burned 14 houses, the post office and the grain warehouse. They went on a house-to-house search for the cooperative members, but only managed to find five, whom they killed.
The terrified survivors asked the army to move them to a safer area. In several stages, they were finally moved to a coffee farm in Jinotega, where they worked until this February. Now they have returned to Quibuto, where they are settling into a new settlement together with 136 families from three other communities in the area.
Their new resettlement, located at the peak of a hill, is reminiscent of a medieval fortress, and for the same reason: maximum defense against attacks. At the entrance, “bienvenidos or “welcome” is spelled out in little rocks brightly painted by some of the 100 members of the Sandinista Youth who are living and working in the settlement. These teenagers built a children’s park, with play equipment constructed from old tires. There they prepare meals daily for the 350 children in the settlement. A brigade of teachers is also there, giving primary and adult education classes.
Leaders from the original communities coordinate activities in the settlement, and administer the bank credits it has been provided. Old debts have been cancelled, to help the people adapt to the new situation. A shared priority for the peasants is to sow 240 acres of basic grains, which means having to overcome their traditional individualism. In this, the role of the old cooperative members from Quibuto will be key. A hopeful sign is that they are collaborating in the construction of houses for the others, even before putting up their own. A group of carpenters from the four communities are advising the housing construction and a professional carpenter from Estelí supervises the work full time. In the meantime, people live in field tents or in makeshift housing of plastic and tree branches.
Apart from the volunteers and those from Quibito, there are few males between the ages of 15 and 25 in the settlement. Whether by choice or force, the others are in the contraranks. Kidnapping is a common technique for replenishing the contra forces, but whether they go willingly or not, they are forced to fight. Peasants who have escaped say that those who refuse are often killed. The contras also tell them that they have broken the law, and will be jailed or killed by the Sandinistas if they return to Nicaragua.
Uncertainty about their kidnapped sons, fear of contra attacks, and in some cases belief in the contra propaganda have created a lot of tension for the residents of the settlement. The organizations that existed before the 1984 attack have not been reactivated, nor has the cooperative.
The members of the Sandinista Youth are trying to gain their confidence. “We want to be their friends, to help them build their houses, to plant their crops. We chat about everything with them, joke with them; we want to show them that we are with them.” But they hardly ever talk politics, mentioning neither the revolution nor the counterrevolution. “The most important thing is to improve the standard of living for these people,” they tell us. These youth along with older militia members are responsible for defense, but no other peasant has been asked to participate in this task.
Why this project?For many reasons both direct and indirect, the resettlement program cannot be understood outside of the war. Within this context, the primary motivation is to protect the civilian population from the terror sown in the countryside by the counterrevolutionaries.
Thirty-five settlements will be established in Region I during the first phase and none in the second. Fifty are planned for Region VI during 1985 and 40 to 50 in 1986. In Region I, the areas selected for settlements include the Jalapa valley, which will gather together population from all the outlying zones, particularly Murra; communities along the Río Coco where it cuts down through Madriz; Telpaneca, Quilalí, and the area around San Juan de Limay. In Region VI, the zones are San Rafael del Norte, Yalí, La Concordia, Pantasma, Wiwilí, Abisinia, El Cuá, San José de Bocay, La Dalia, Rancho Grande, Waslala, Matiguás, Río Blanco and Mulukukú.
Behind each of these names lies the history of the unrelenting military aggression Nicaragua has borne since 1981. By December 1984, the war had left 7,342 dead, of whom 3,346 were children and adolescents. The war has left 6,239 children without a mother or father or both. Children make up 60% of the resettled population.
Nicaragua’s Defense Ministry has outlined its military strategy for 1985-86 as the elimination of the counterrevolutionaries as a fighting force. There are two military reasons then for the evacuation of these northern war zones: first to assure that civilians living in them can be protected from this offensive and second to remove whatever social base for the contras exists in these areas. For some months the Sandinista army has been taking the initiative in the war. The evacuation of civilians has meant an increase in the army’s efficiency as fear of hurting the peasants has been reduced.
The location and density of the settlements responds primarily to defensive considerations. In general, a permanent military presence is not required in the settlement, but rather in the area. Furthermore, some peasants in the settlements were organized into self-defense units where they lived originally. While no settlement is obliged to take arms, these old militia members and young people exempt from military service are available for defense.
Long-term social goals are as important as the immediate military and human imperatives. Those who live in the remote northern region have not received the social benefits the Sandinista government has delivered to the rest of the country’s population. This is due not only to the difficulty of reaching such isolated areas, but also because government personnel, teachers and health workers are primary targets for contra terrorism. At the Quibuto resettlement, a peasant told us that an agricultural technician and a teacher were sent to his original community of Alta Gracia, but both were killed by the FDN forces in the region. In 1984 alone 98 teachers and 31 health workers were killed by the counterrevolutionaries.
The resettlement strategy unites these peasants into communities that are accessible and easy to defend. The government can provide financial, technical, educational and medical services without exposing its personnel, teachers and health workers to such grave risks. It gives the government a chance to “state its case.” It will be a challenge for the government to provide these services, given the general conditions of the country, but small advances can already be seen: the periodic visit of a doctor, the opportunity for thousands of children to go to school for the first time, the opportunity to get bank credits or a tractor, etc.
The resettlement project also relocated all those displaced peasants who are presently not producing because their farms or cooperatives have been destroyed. Contra strategy is to target the farms of peasants cooperating with the government in order to terrorize the population and effectively discourage cooperation with or participation in government programs. This strategy is also aimed at crippling Nicaragua’s predominately agricultural economy.
This then provides the third motivation. Shortages of basic agricultural goods affect the country’s entire population. The north of the country cultivates products that are economically strategic for Nicaragua—coffee in Matagalpa, Jinotega, Estelí and Madriz, tobacco in Jalapa. These areas also produce 67% of Nicaragua’s basic grains and 40% of the beef. It is calculated that approximately half of the country’s exports come from these northern regions. Relocating these war refugees means that they will begin to work again and production will increase.
The resettlement project, however, is not intended to colonize new lands. The lands assigned to the relocated peasants are often the most fertile in the country, and as in Jalapa, are in areas already developed productively.
Nor do they represent an attempt at the proletarization or “forced cooperativization” of the peasant economy. On the contrary, much of the land handed over to the peasants had been state property—Somoza lands that came into state hands when the Somoza clique was overthrown—and worked until now by wage laborers. Other lands for the project have been bought for cash from private owners, creating an inflationary spiral as a side effect. Only in rare cases, when landowners are tied to the counterrevolution, have their lands been confiscated. Basic grains and coffee farms and cattle-grazing lands have been assigned to peasants as individual plots or in one of the various cooperative forms existent in Nicaragua. Never is cooperativization a condition for receiving land.
The experience of Miskitos from Bismuna, Wawá and other areas who are now returning to their original communities from the settlements created in early 1982 is an indication that people can return when the danger diminishes. The climate of dialogue and increased consciousness about the ethnic question has favored their return, but there are still serious risks of counterrevolutionary attacks.
In the meantime, these are not temporary refugee camps, or “Gulag relocation centers.” There was not an “oppressive” military presence in any of the settlements we visited, and in some there was no military presence at all. We asked the peasants in all the settlements about the role of the military, and heard no complaints about abuses either during the relocation or in the settlements. Most people believed the military presence in the area was defensive in nature, and necessary.
Nicaragua’s Vice President Sergio Ramírez heads the national commission in charge of the project. Nine government institutions will be involved in its development: the ministries of agrarian reform, housing, construction, transport, internal commerce, and health, as well as the Social Security and Welfare Institute and the Presidential Secretariat for Regional Affairs. The project will cost the Nicaraguan government US$46 million. This budget includes the purchase of land, six months of food subsidies, and the construction of roads, houses, health centers, schools, day care centers and parks.
The majority of the peasants we spoke to were neither pro-contra nor pro-Sandinista. Neutrality was the means of survival in the mountainous war zones. Many told us they had sold food to the contras because they had no choice or because their children had been recruited—either by choice or not. These peasants, after the initial shock of relocation, are generally adopting a positive attitude toward their new communities. There are also those who were actively pro-government and have suffered the consequences: contra terrorism. For them the relocation is a form of protection.
This population, affected in very different ways by the war, is mixed together in the settlements. Cooperativized and politically conscious peasants coexist with those who have taken advantage of the amnesty to return from the counterrevolutionary ranks. Unquestionably, this mix poses numerous and difficult challenges for the supervisors of the settlement, who must deal with the contradictions and, insofar as possible, reduce conflicts and promote collaboration. There are signs that the people themselves are meeting the challenge as well: the solidarity shown by the previously displaced people in the settlements toward the new arrivals, the recognition of “natural leaders” from the original communities, the flexibility toward forms of property ownership, and the tolerance toward ex-collaborators of the contras, etc.
This does not mean that there will not be sharp social tensions. And one cannot discard the possibility of contra infiltration into the settlements, using ties they have with members of kidnapped families or men fighting with them. There could also be attacks or massive kidnappings which would then be presented to international public opinion as “the rescue of peasants from the communist concentration camps.”
It would be wrong to idealize the lives of these peasants from the northern agricultural frontier. Most are poor people who barely produce enough to survive. Family members often need to take seasonal work to supplement their scant harvests. They are cut off from all forms of communication with the rest of the country, and many are beginning to recognize this as a disadvantage. One peasant woman we talked to said, “Before, we had to walk two days if we wanted to buy a pack of matches. Now I can just go two houses downs.”
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