LATIN AMERICA REPORT Nicaragua militias turn back contras

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CHRISTOPHE MALDIDIER, and PASCALE REIOLLE The authors of the following account are French agronomists who spent a year in Nicaragua working in the agrarian reform zones. They tell about the daily life of the rural population in the face of the provocations of the pro-imperialist forces. The article is reprinted from Rouge (July 20, 1984), the newspaper of the French section of the Fourth International, and has been edited and abridged. The translation is by Socialist Action.

PUEBLO NUEVO, Nicaragua-Friday, April 24: Two thousand peasants walk slowly in a long procession through the village of Pueblo Nuevo.

They come from all the neighboring hamlets-for some a two-hour walk-to follow the stations of the Cross during Holy Week. It is one of the religious traditions still very much alive in Nicaragua.

One month earlier, this procession would have been difficult: A group of contras made an incursion into the township. Few peasants would have been willing to travel at that time.

Pueblo Nuevo is a township of 15,000 inhabitants situated in the mountainous zone in the Northwest some 20 kilometers from the Honduran border.

On Friday, March 16, a group of 500 armed contras invaded one of its villages, Los Hatillos. They came with several hostages who had been kidnapped from a neighboring hamlet. They had rounded up the defenseless villagers and selected a few dozen young men from among them, forcing them to carry their armaments and provisions and ultimately to join their ranks.

Three peasants were able to escape and to alert the village of Pueblo Nuevo. Alarmed by the arrival of the popular militias of the township, the contras fled to take refuge in the hillsbut only after killing four hostages: a schoolteacher, a leader of the cooperative, and two health brigade workers.

After the battle of Los Hatillos, the contras divided into two groups. One went toward the border. The other, seeking to settle in the area, tried to reach the Morro mountain as quickly as possi- erating a small piece of territory, are to ble. On reaching the highlands, they take a village (with the national and were surprised by the militias of the international repercussions that would neighboring village of Limay, and they decided to turn back. the revolution (schools, cooperatives, etc.); to distribute anti-Sandinista propA general offensive aganda; to kill the leaders of the mass The presence of the contras in the organizations and the State institutions; region corresponded to a general offensive, carried out simultaneously in the side.

North and the South beginning in the first week of March. The announcement the township of Pueblo Nuevo did not on February 21 by Daniel Ortega of elections in Nicaragua on Nov. 4, 1984, and the discussion in the U.S. Congress lions. of $21 million in new credits to support the armed struggle of the Somozaists were doubtlessly not unrelated to the date of this offensive.

The contras' objectives, short of libfunctionaries. These men and women of all ages receive a short military training in defending their homes and workhave); to destroy the achievements of places.

In each township, these militias consist of groups based either at the village level or in the adjacent rural areas. The function of the first is to defend the vilor simply to sow terror in the country- lage itself and to lend reinforcement to those groups situated outside of the vilThe group of contras who penetrated lage that are in charge of a definite geographic area. achieve their goals. They were repulsed In Pueblo Nuevo, there are 600 peoby the popular militias and army batal- ple in the militia-250 in the village and 350 in the countryside. They are divided These territorial popular militias are into 16 groups of peasants who provide the units of popular defense put into daily vigilance. Six groups are linked to place after August 1983 in the rural the production cooperatives (CAS) and towns of Nicaragua. They are formed 10 to the hamlets. by peasants, workers, students, and The cooperatives include peasants who work in common the confiscated occupying any portion of territory. They must ensure the protection of the CDS (Sandinista Defense Committee), the credit and service cooperatives, the health and education facilities... and the lives of the peasants themselves, who are sometimes forcibly recruited by the contras.

The strategy of the Sandinistas is to erect a close-knit system of popular militias, dispersed throughout the territory, that can prevent the groups of contras from carrying out their deadly activities. Only one year ago, there were no hamlets where this popular defense was present. Today, since the contras began to circulate in the region in August 1983, 10 brigades have been organized In certain hamlets, the peasants still hesitate to arm themselves. They believe that it would only attract the contras in search of militia members. They prefer to escape from the fighting. They see the attacks of the contras as a war whose function and goals they do not understand. It makes them afraid.

For them the revolution has meant the national literacy campaign (1980) and access to agricultural credits and to free health and education services. They do not yet see the necessity for organizing their own defense. They count on the compas (companeros) for that. They are mainly concerned with the production of the basic grains (corn and beans) indispensable to their survival.

Nevertheless, for those who are conscious that the lives of their children are at stake, or that it is their children who would benefit from what the revolution and its agrarian reform offers, or even better, that they have the opportunity to become real actors in social and economic change-to those, the need to organize their own defense becomes more apparent.

A good political and military choice The defeat of the contras at Pueblo Nuevo forms part of a generalized defeat of their last offensive, the largest since the victory [over Somoza]. Of the 8000 men who returned to Nicaragua, 600 were killed and 300 were wounded. The remaining groups were dislodged and some of them were pushed back to Honduras. The local popular defense strongly contributed to this success. That is why the slogan "Todas las armas al pueblo" ('All arms to the people') has such significance.

The strategy of the Sandinistas, who dismantled the National Guard of Somoza following the victory of July 19, 1979, and created a popular structure parallel to the small regular army (20,000 to 25,000 men) has been confirmed as a good political and military choice.

With more than 200,000 armed men and women and around 750,000 participants in the mass organizations ready to defend the revolution, the experience of Guatemala in 1954 or of Chile in 1973 has little chance of being reproduced in Nicaragua. The territorial popular militias are constituting little by little an impenetrable web against the contras in the North as in the South.

A peasant of Pueblo Nuevo concluded: "We will never let them come back... the revolution will continue to advance."

¡EPTEMBER 1984