U.S. steps up pressure on
1985Larry Cooperman 1985-03Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 1
Nicaragua As the Nicaraguan government announced emergency measures to shore up its war-damaged economy, the CIA-backed contra forces made important moves to unify their campaign to topple the democratically elected Sandinista government.
On Feb. 8 Daniel Ortega, in a televised broadcast, denounced the acceleration of U.S. war moves against the Nicaraguans. President Ortega accused the Reagan administration of trying to be the "prosecutor, judge, and hangman" of the Nicaraguan revolution.
The Ortega speech was given just two days after Reagan, in his State of the Union address, repeated his call for renewal of overt funding of the Nicaraguan contras. Nicaragua now devotes 35 to 40 percent of its budget to its increasing defense needs.
At the present time, there are approximately 10,000 contras operating within Nicaragua's borders, attacking important economic targets, and terrorizing the rural population.
In the face of this situation, Ortega announced that $112 million out of a budget of $280 million will be devoted to fighting the U.S.-trained guerrillas. Furthermore, Ortega pointed out that the cost to Nicaragua of Washington's economic blockade of the past four years is nearly $1.1 billion in lost credits and exports.
Ortega also announced measures to deal with the black market economy that has thrived in Nicaragua. The Linus Pauling problem of the black market has been described by Sandinista leaders as being "worse than the contra war."
The Sandinistas therefore moved to devalue the cordoba by 50 percent and to remove price subsidies on basic foodstuffs. These are the most important measures taken to deal with this situation since the enactment of a law last year to ensure greater control over distribution of goods.
The price subsidies were originally enacted to maintain basic foodstuffs at prices affordable to Nicaragua's workers and peasants. They were removed in order to decrease the number and importance of speculators who would buy the goods at subsidized prices and then resell them at inflated black-market levels. Ortega promised that severe (continued on page 12)
----- pull-quotes -----
on Nicaragua. See page 3