Nicaragua

In Nicaragua Washington saw the greatest challenge to US interests in the 1980s and to Latin American progress towards constitutional democratic governments. The Marxist state that emerged after 1979, which was hostile to private enterprise and nationalised foreign-owned interests, also faced severe economic problems. They were in part due to the economic embargoes of the US, which could not be fully compensated for by trade with Europe or loans from sources not under the control of the US; they were also due to the inefficiency of planned socialist economies, as evidenced, for example, in Cuba.

Nicaragua is the most thinly populated state in Central America, with the lowest per-capita income after Honduras, at $830 in 1987. Here, too, can be found the link between the dominance of coffee and bananas as Nicaragua’s principal exports, until disease in the 1930s devastated the crop, and the gross disparity of wealth between the few plantation owners and merchants and a landless peasantry, the largest in Central America. Diversification into beef, cotton and sugar in the 1960s could not compensate for the low income from agricultural exports and the declining terms of trade (commodity export prices rising more slowly or falling, as against rising costs of manufactured imports and, in the 1970s, the rising cost of oil). On such a social and economic basis, democracy could not be built up; on the contrary, deprivation and extremes of wealth and poverty provided the soil for revolt and savage repression.

Nicaragua has traditionally been an area of US concern. When disorder and foreign financial claims threatened it in 1912, US marines moved in and did not finally leave until January 1933. By then they had had to cope with a nationalist backlash. Augusto Cesar Sandino led a guerrilla campaign against them and against the Nicaraguan government they were supporting. He was tricked into taking part in negotiations by the Nicaraguan leaders whom the marines had left behind in power, and in 1934 he was murdered by the Nicaraguan National Guard. Sandino was a liberal reformist and patriot, and now he became a martyr, a powerful symbol whose name and mantle the Marxist Sandinistas appropriated in their struggles during the 1970s against the rule of the Somoza family.

The Somozas had established a dynasty in Nicaragua. In the 1930s power in the country was wielded by the National Guard, which had been organised by the US to maintain internal security. At its head was General Anastaslo Somoza Garcia. The constitutional institutions were a facade behind which the National Guard operated. In 1937 Somoza made himself president and ruled the country for the next nineteen years, until he was assassinated in 1956. His authoritarian rule became notorious for corruption, nepotism and repression. This was not a turn of events Washington had anticipated when creating the supposedly non-political National Guard, but defence of constitutional proprieties was not high on Washington’s list of priorities, as long as US interests were safeguarded. Somoza’s National Guard was preferable to having to send in US marines. Somoza took care not to offend US interests and aligned Nicaragua as a dependent and reliable US ally. He was also adept at manipulating the political and landed interests at home. In the division of spoils, the National Guard were pampered, and plantation owners and merchants were allowed to reap unhindered the profits of their enterprises. This left the vast majority of the population in wretched poverty, illiterate and with no hope for the future. On Somoza’s assassination his eldest son Luis took over the presidency and the younger son, Anastasio Jr, assumed command of the National Guard. The 1950s and 1960s were relatively peaceful in Nicaragua, a period of diversification into cotton and other crops; a small but growing middle class began to emerge with the help of Alliance dollars, and some economic progress was achieved. But for the peasants the expansion of cotton-growing meant displacement from the land.

Luis was the ‘weakest’ of the Somozas, and in 1967 Anastasio assumed the presidency. Nicaragua’s most bloody and repressive decade now began. Anastasio made no pretence of ruling as a politician. He used the naked power of the National Guard, employing murder and torture to crush the growing opposition. When a devastating earthquake in 1972 all but destroyed Managua, Nixon sent large-scale aid. It did not reach the victims; only half of it could be accounted for by the Nicaraguan treasury. Corruption was rife, and for a time the National Guard could keep order only with US help. Reconstruction after the earthquake benefited mainly Somoza’s supporters, not the poor. The guerrilla war flared up and National Guard atrocities perpetrated in repressing the guerrillas outraged the Church. Human-rights abuses were now affecting American support. There was growing opposition in the US to providing dollars in support of ruthless dictators, yet even under President Carter military aid continued to be granted to Somoza, since the alternative of a Marxist-led Nicaragua was regarded as totally unacceptable. But the abuses of Somoza and his National Guard, worldwide condemnation and the evident crumbling of Somoza’s power left the Carter administration little alternative but to abandon all support for the regime by the spring of 1979. A few weeks later, in July, Somoza was overthrown by the broad opposition coalition of guerrillas, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

The abuses of the Somoza family, their amassing of enormous wealth and the general corruption had made them many enemies, especially among those who had not shared the spoils. These groups ranged from the right, conservatives opposed to any genuine democratic reform, through to the professional and mercantile middle sectors, and to the socialists and Marxists. It was an alliance of the left that formed the first guerrilla groups of the 1960s, recruiting support from peasants and students. The corruption and repression following on the Managuan earthquake of 1972 broadened the opposition. After the assassination in 1978 of the respected editor of the leading newspaper in Nicaragua, La Prensa, the middle class and conservatives were ready to support armed opposition against Somoza. FSLN forces with Cuban help were now well organised and, in a series of attacks, demoralised the National Guard and seized power on 19 July 1979. Somoza fled the country.

The revolutionary junta was dominated by the Marxist-Leninist leadership from the start. Decision-making was collective. FSLN’s most influential figures were the hardline Tomas Borge Martinez and the two brothers Humberto Ortega and Daniel Ortega. The junta was more pragmatic than most communist regimes, permitting some degree of political plurality and private ownership. But it was equally determined on the Leninist Soviet model to retain real power and build a socialist society. The National Assembly reflected the firm control the junta exercised over the country through the revolutionary party, the army and the state security services. Until its closure in 1986, La Prensa remained a lone voice in opposition. Throughout the country there was censorship and control of the domestic media. During the 1980s, splits began to occur among the junta. The more moderate coalition partners of the original Council of State went into exile, leaving the country under the domination of the FSLN. In exile also were remnants of Somoza’s National Guard and dissidents from FSLN’s regime. Together they formed disparate guerrilla bands on Nicaragua’s borders, the so-called Contras, who, with the help of supplies from the US, waged a guerrilla war against the Sandinistas.

Within Nicaragua the junta did not honour its commitment in 1979 to establish a democracy, but postponed elections until its power was consolidated in 1984. Daniel Ortega became president. By adopting a programme of reforms from above, and by mobilising nationalist feelings against the US and its support for the Contras, the junta was able to dominate Nicaragua for a decade, backed by the powerful party and security apparatus. The main opposition refused to participate in elections before 1990. In health care, housing and particularly education, the Sandinistas nevertheless achieved progress. State planning and land reforms were instituted more gradually. But the combination of the effects of the civil war, the huge resources devoted to building up a large army to fight the US-backed Contras and US economic embargoes devastated the Nicaraguan economy. Only the limited Soviet and European assistance enabled the Sandinistas to survive. But Moscow’s own economic troubles led to a cut in aid, and the Soviet-US rapprochement forced Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista leadership to modify their policies and invite a more genuine popular mandate through free elections. At the same time, despite Reagan’s strong support, the Contras were being denied essential war supplies by the US Congress’s refusal to supply the funds.

These conditions provided an opportunity for the long-drawn-out peace negotiations sponsored by Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, whose presidents met on the island of Contadora in the early 1980s, and then by Costa Rica’s president. Arias Sanchez’s peace plan was signed by the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in August 1987 and earned Arias Sanchez the Nobel Peace Prize. It called for regional ceasefires in all the guerrilla wars, democratic reforms and the ending of foreign support for the rebels. It marked an attempt by the Central American leaders to solve their own problems without outside interference. In Washington, the Reagan administration greeted the peace plan with scepticism and suspicion. It was difficult to believe that the Sandinista leadership had any other motive but to persuade the US Congress that the US administration’s support for the Contras was an obstacle to peace;

Then, with Contra pressure removed, the Sandinistas would be able to rule with impunity. As it turned out, Arias Sanchez’s optimism, despite many setbacks, proved at least partially justified. Daniel Ortega had changed: he was no longer the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader determined to build a socialist Nicaragua at all costs. The failures in Nicaragua were all too obvious. Daniel Ortega now took the lead in following the perestroika line. In April 1990, free elections were held in Nicaragua and the opposition won, to the surprise of the Sandinistas. Ortega handed over power peacefully to Violeta Chamorro. Violeta Chamorro, in turn, followed a policy of reconciliation acceptable first of all to the Sandinistas, who were allowed to retain command of the army, and acceptable in the end to the Contras as well, who abandoned the armed struggle. At least for war-shattered Nicaragua the future began to look a little more hopeful as the guerrillas gave up the armed struggle. But the economy remained in dire straits, with almost half the population unemployed.

Latin America after the early 1960s experienced accelerating economic and social change. Its traditional power structures adapted by increasing reliance on military force and repression, or they shared power with other sectors of society but still placed reliance on the military to check organised peasant and urban labour groups, as happened in Brazil. Socialist alternatives were never able to retain power; the hostility of the US ensured support for anti-socialist opposition forces in Guatemala (1954), the Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), Grenada (1983) and, finally, Nicaragua. The Soviet Union was in no position to challenge the US effectively in the Western hemisphere.

During the 1980s, Latin American political developments came to seem more in conformity with Western hopes and American intentions. Military regimes receded in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil. Colombia, Venezuela and Costa Rica were already ruled by civilian governments. Indirectly the US helped to bring about the fall of the military junta in Argentina. By providing intelligence to London, crucial assistance was given to Britain’s recapture of the Falklands in 1982, a blow the junta could not survive. In the Caribbean, the worst of the dictators, Duvalier, had been forced from Haiti into exile (1986); the leftist regime in Grenada, which had lapsed into murderous infighting, was eliminated by a US invasion in 1983, to the evident relief of the local population, but to the embarrassment of Britain, as Grenada was a member of the Commonwealth. What had led the Reagan administration to intervene was its determination to halt the spread of Cuban influence. After a long struggle and despite many setbacks, US policies also succeeded in making authoritarian Marxist rule by the Sandinistas untenable. US policies in Central America and the Caribbean in the 1980s were an update of the Monroe Doctrine.