To read some of the “analysis” of the left one would think
that the recent uprisings in Nicaragua are all a part of a well-orchestrated
campaign from the same old enemies that the Frente Sandinista had during the
1980’s and the ones that the Left has in the region since way before that. Those right-wing actors sure are still busy
and it is easy to look at their fingerprints on other Latin American internal
affairs, especially in Venezuela.
Are events in Nicaragua another CIA plot?
NO, but the CIA is trying to shape events and always has.
Understanding Nicaragua today is sort of like being involved
in a family break up that involves a lot of denial. Just as one’s ex will downplay that part
where a fist was slammed on the table and a door was slammed during a stomp
off, many on the left are looking for all kinds of reasons not to believe that
the government of Daniel Ortega is the source of its own problems.
There are two major denial arguments:
1 THE GRAND ANALYSIS.
This is where someone lectures us on the history of US intervention in
Latin America and tells us what the US actions have been in Venezuela,
Honduras, Paraguay (if they are sharp) and we get some kind of discussion of
the Contra War. We are told that today’s
events MUST be seen mostly, or only, in this context, but then are offered few
facts to establish how relevant the overall context is to current events in
Managua. This big picture is a great thing to keep in
mind, but the arguments are usually presented backwards going over what the CIA
has done, and likes to do and then rationalizing that this somehow proves that
this is what is going on in Nicaragua today.
2 CAUGHT IN THE ACT. This is where some statement from
somebody, such as someone stumping for the National Endowment for Democracy
(sort of the CIA’s 501c3) either claims credit they do not fully deserve or
puts forward some of their own protégé’s as “representatives of the
opposition”. As Americans we should have
no trouble spotting a non profit over stating their accomplishments.
There are hard facts and good points in both of these
arguments and behind them lies part of the truth of the current crisis in
Managua, but only part. As someone who
worked for the Nicaraguan government in rural development in the 1980’s and who
fought in the Contra War, I have a lot of suspicion of my own aimed at the CIA
and most anything that any part of the US government or it’s wealthy right wing
friends do in Latin America, especially when they open their mouths and tarnish
the word “democracy”.
There is no doubt that many political operations funded by
the US government and its right-wing friends have never stopped being active in
Nicaragua and have cultivated and sponsored many of the people emerging today
as youth or opposition leaders.
To think of the US role in Latin America as anything other
than imperialist is delusion.
But Daniel Ortega and today’s Frente Sandinista has it’s own
inconvenient truths.
It is an avoidance of certain facts on the ground to call
what is happening there today mainly the result of some kind of grand CIA plot
and therefore dismiss the demands of this uprising against Daniel Ortega, his
family and cronies, and what the Frente Sandinista has become today.
So let’s stick to some facts on the ground and not think
about what we think it must be because of our understanding of the larger
political context and look at what we know for sure.
The first inconvenient truth for the Sandinistas, is that
they are not the same Sandinistas.
The current Daniel Ortega government started when he was
elected president in 2007. Not only did
Daniel’s politics change during the 17 years that the FSLN was out of power,
the structure of the FSLN changed too.
It has the name, but it does not have a solid claim on the revolutionary
legacy that it uses as political capital inside and outside of Nicaragua.
The policy change is much more than their pro Catholic anti
abortion law that took away a Nicaraguan woman’s right to choose. During his 17 years in the opposition
wilderness, the ‘new’ Danielista Sandinistas made a pact with the right wing
Liberal Party president Aleman that was accommodating impunity to corruption
prosecutions and also became the neo Liberal’s best friend falling in line with
international (including US) finance and making common cause with the
equivalent of the local chamber of commerce called COSEP in employment, tax and
austerity policies.
The Liberals, COSEP and the US State Department did not have
a problem with authoritarian Daniel for a long time before these protests. It is more they who have changed policies,
not Danielismo.
So for those who want to blame the US for the resistance to
the Ortega government I ask “why?”. The
US already had a neo liberal, authoritarian strong man to keep the unions and
farmers from resisting austerity and globalization in Daniel. Why switch?
When the outgoing FSLN government made a property grab on
their way out of power in 1990, many many many long standing FSLN members quit
the party. Then the FSLN held internal
elections making Daniel the party leader.
During the entire revolution and the revolutionary
government period, Daniel did not have such power, he was part of a committee
leadership group. Almost all of the
surviving members of that group, including Daniel’s own brother, are no longer
in the FSLN and do not support his current government.
There is an organized Sandinista Renewal Movement as an
ineffective split off party, so not even all organized Sandinistas are in the
Frente Sandinista. Many other former Sandinista
revolutionaries are very vocal public critics of “Danielismo”.
The Ortega government has become progressively more
oppressive and repressive during the 11 years since he was elected. The evidence for this has been documented far
and wide with some of the primary investigators having close links to the 1979
revolution and first Sandinista government.
The reports of human rights groups from inside of Nicaragua have been
confirmed by international human rights groups.
These are groups that often bite the CIA’s tail and call the United
States out for their crimes in other parts of the world.
The Ortega administration actions range from threats against
the employment of critics and their family members to threats and actions of
personal injury. Such tactics as false
legal accusations have been documented.
Critics and opponents have been vilified in the press in such a way that
their personal safety is in danger from the public that believes the
stories. Attacks on protests and
individual protestors became more and more common. The pro Sandinista counter protest groups
called “turbas” came back, not as counter protestors, but more like goon
squads.
There has also been a series of different types of
corruption under this government. Here
it is hard to tell who is who, what is the truth and what are the rumors. There have been all kinds of land takeovers
and accusations of land takeovers. Many
“Sandinistas” are obviously very wealthy and are publicly involved in a lot of
investment schemes related to government activities.
Easier to track is the very public stacking of the courts
and strategic placement of pro Daniel appointees in key electoral monitoring
positions, leadership in the army and police etc. The second consecutive Ortega reelection is
of dubious constitutional legality and even more dubious fairness. They claim 72% and nobody wants to discuss
the record low voter turnout. Daniel was
elected in 07 by a plurality, not a majority, and to be reelected a second time
8 years later with his wife as vice president and many of the other parties
crying foul does not live up to the mandate that he currently claims. Many observers consider that Daniel and
Rosario got rid of any serious opposition before the vote was held.
I was in Nicaragua just as the protests started. The criticisms of the pension reforms had
more to do with wondering where the money had gone than the reform itself. There was much talk of Daniel’s son being
involved in investing social security funds in a mixed economy real estate
project that he was involved in. There
had been a recent uncontrolled fire in the Indeo Mais nature reserve. There too
the question was less about the incompetence protecting this land and more
about suspicions that burned forests were being handed over to agribusiness,
friends of the government. Similar
accusations abound around the now bankrupted canal project. There is no canal, but the companies still
took the land concessions.
For many Nicaraguans, this government lacks basic trustworthiness.
To argue about the pension reforms on the basis of the
actual proposal is to miss the point.
But that is often exactly what those who want to blame the whole crisis
on the US try to do.
All by itself, the current version of the Frente Sandinista
has earned itself a lot of popular distrust and disgust. That last election seemed much a sham and his
wife Rosario as Vice President is something of an embarrassment even for his
supporters because she is kind of creepy and weird.
All that said, the Danielista governments had some serious
accomplishments in building infrastructure, especially in the countryside, and
overall, living in Nicaragua looks a lot better than in the three nations
directly north of it. Salvador, Honduras
and Guatemala.
In many parts of Nicaragua, the Frente Sandinista locally is
a mixed bag, and better than the national leadership. They contest and win many local
elections. They form the local
opposition in many other areas and are more in keeping with the history,
politics and practices of the Sandinista movement.
In this context the dam broke.
There giant protests against the pension cutbacks among
students and pensioners, and the general public demonstrated their support in
the thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands.
The size of the crowds and the results of the polls say the same thing: Any honest election held today would sweep
the Danielistas out of power. The
protest movement has massive public support.
The next inconvenient truth is that the Sandinistas tried to
put this protest movement down by brute force.
There is no doubt about this. In
the age of the cell phone camera and the international human rights movement
one can no longer hide such a thing. The
evidence is clear enough that any suggestion that the protestors have set up a
false event or events such as right wing groups did in Kiev or Caracas doesn’t
hold water.
The Frente set up different types of attacks on different
protestors and over 200 of the protestors and their friends and neighbors are
dead. There have also been a few deaths
on the government side. The police
violence with the help of their para military helpers has been out there for
the world to see.
And repression failed.
It is kind of sad and pathetic to see to watch Daniel Ortega
try to put down popular protests when it was he himself and the Frente itself
who once led the people of Nicaragua resisting military repression. Did they expect people to just back down and
fold? That much of the revolution has
not died.
It is an outrage to see a government calling itself
“Sandinista” committing such crimes. For
those of us who worked for the revolution, it feels like a betrayal because it
is a betrayal of the ideals and ethics of the revolution for which we worked,
fought and many of us died.
The protest movement has its own inconvenient truths.
The first of those being that there is no single opposition
movement. One could roughly say that
there are three: 1 this new civic
alliance brought on by the protests 2 the same old right wing and its foreign
backers trying to exploit the situation 3 disaffected or dissident Sandinistas
who were either already opposing Danielismo at some level or for whom the
violence against the people was the last straw.
Inconvenient truth number two for the opposition is that
some of the roadblocks are shakedowns by right wing thugs. Sure, some of the roadblocks are for
neighborhood defense, and some are an aggressive protest tool, but some of them
are run by thugs who seem to be in the pay of right wing groups, many close to
the Liberal Party in some form or another.
Both sides have employed people from marginal ghetto
neighborhoods who are little better than street hoodlums. I have tried to write this avoiding as much
jargon as I can, but now I have to introduce two words: ‘tranque’ for roadblock protest and ‘lumpen’
a Marxist word for ghetto trash.
So there is such a thing as a ‘tranque lumpen’ with petty
criminals calling themselves political activists, stopping traffic, charging a
shake down fee to pass and taking pollical revenge of people they consider to
be “Sandinistas”. They should be called
Liberal Roadblock, but they are not.
On the other side, the Frente has also hired ‘lumpen’ to
attack protestors, not to be confused with the para military Sandinista
volunteers who attack protestors. At
least some of the “turbas” counter protestors fall in this category and have
been filmed hitting unarmed protestors with iron bars.
By no means are both sides equally guilty.
There are no para militaries on the opposition side. There are two definitions of para military.
One is a civilian satellite of the official military or police and the other is
a stand alone force, such as a guerrilla army.
In this conflict, the Sandinistas have both and the opposition have
neither.
The right wing thugs are only running some of the roadblocks
and in no way are reflective of the opposition movement as a whole. And local threats and harassment
notwithstanding, there is little to none of the systematic attacks on protests,
door to door harassments and targeted attacks on individuals that has been
typical of the pro Daniel side.
And there have been few killings from the opposition side
whereas the killings reasonably attributed to the police and the para
militaries with them, are the overwhelming majority of all conflict deaths. (a
good guess would be about 300 to 5) The
government supporter deaths are in part caused by people fighting back once
attacked.
In some places the public supports the ‘tranque’ because it
advances the protest, protects the neighborhood, or both, in other places the
public joins the para military to attack the ‘tranques’ and to open the streets
back up for the public to use.
All over Managua and across much of Nicaragua, the patchwork
of barricades, protests, private groups, police units and petty criminals
having a field day has caused normal life to come to a complete stop. Work and commerce is basically sabotaged
while there are many places where people fear going out at night. Some of the old neighborhood civil defense
has come back into action.
Add to this looting, often encouraged by the government,
sometimes by the opposition and arson or fake arson committed by both sides
with the intention of blaming the other side.
There has been video of people taking their valuables out of their
offices before a fire that they claimed set by the other side.
Life for the average Nicaraguan has been seriously degraded
in the last two months both economically and for their physical security. The Nicaraguan economy has gone from boom
growth to recession.
Inconvenient truth number three for the opposition is that
not all of the current Frente members and groups are part of the problem and
many of them are under attack from local right wing groups. There have been
death threats on both sides.
In Managua the Frente is that of Daniel the autocrat. In other towns the Frente is the local
government or the local opposition.
Sometimes that is a very positive thing, and other places we have local
reproductions of the problems in Managua.
There are also “Sandinista” popular organizations, farmers groups and
trade unions, many of whom do good service for the people at the bottom. Sandinismo means corruption in one place, it
means civil rights and a new water system somewhere else.
With both sides doing works of both good and evil in
different places and communities across the country, feelings have
hardened. The deaths and death threats
cross a line, making wounds that heal slowly, if ever.
For many Frente rank and file there is total distrust for
anything that has to do with the church hierarchy, the Prensa newspaper, the
chamber of commerce, or the Liberal / Somozista right wing. They simply do not believe the reports of
police repression in the cities because it is coming from sources that have
lied to them so often in the past. On the flip side, there are people in the
opposition who just feel that Daniel needs to go right now because of that
repression. Neither group is feeling
very patient.
It is no surprise that the big blocking points in the
national dialog negotiations are the Frente demanding an immediate end to
‘tranques’ and the opposition demanding an immediate end to para-militaries.
I get the feeling that leaders on both sides of this
conflict have made the same political miscalculation:
The other side is not legitimate and will be easy to
beat.
Nicaraguan protests will not be put down by force and Daniel
is not going to resign over roadblocks.
As I write this pro Frente para-militaries and police are
clearing ‘tranque’ roadblocks but the protest movement against the Ortega
government is not beaten and the protests are not over.
