San Antonio workers protest

Scan page 8

SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1989 revolution, the private sector has accounted for only 20 percent of investment.

Antagonistic class alliance

At this juncture, the central question for Nicaragua appears to be the viability of its mixed economy.

When socialist revolutionary goals are joined at the hip with private control of production, economic performance is at the mercy of unstable and ultimately antagonistic class alliances.

In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas have faced intransigent large producers whose only term for negotiation is the Sandinistas' relinquishment of political power. Capitalists fear that no matter what concessions the government grants them, they are being asked to invest in their own euthanasia. Large producers refuse to invest, and the private sector generates lackluster performance. The economic battle initiated in February 1988 [with the adoption of the austerity measures] will continue after the contra war is over. In some ways, it will be as difficult to win as the war itself.

Several months after the July 13, 1988, nationalization of the San Antonio sugar plantation and refinery, the workers began to mobilize to demand better wages and working conditions.

Production has increased substantially, but the workers claim they have received no benefits. In fact, many of them are angrier than before. [The former owners, the wealthy Pellas family, had received 60 percent of all state money devoted to the sugar industry to stimulate production. But they had totally decapitalized the plant. In 1987 alone, $30 million were taken out of San Antonio and used to open a bank in the United States.] A considerable percentage of the sugarcane cutters, Nicaraguan economist Orlando Morales told Socialist Action, are opposed to the new daily production norms and wage rate-six tons of cut cane at 400 córdobas a ton. They claim their wage does not even permit them to provide food for their families. The workers have demanded that the scales used by the previous owners, which were rigged to underpay the cutters, be corrected. They have also complained that the prices in the state stores have gone up while wages have not, and that food bonuses have been cut in half. Many of the workers were also outraged by a statement made by Minister of Agriculture Jaime Wheelock threatening workers who considered striking to press their demands.

On Nov. 12, Jaime Wheelock told an assembly at San Antonio: "The revolution rewards, but it also punishes. Anyone who raises the banner of the strike Will have his or her hands cut off, because it would be a crime against the people, who need sugar and the medicine that are bought with the our export earnings. (Barricada, Nov. 13, 1988)

The pro-contra daily La Prensa, posing as a friend of the Nicaraguan workers, ran a banner headline in its Nov. 14, 1988, issue proclaiming: "Violent threat to anyone who starts a strike: Wheelock threatens to 'cut off the hands of the workers." La Prensa's article gloated that Wheelock's statement ran counter to Nicaraguan law. With the lifting of martial law in 1987, La Prensa noted, it is no longer illegal to strike.

Wheelock's attitude unfortunately played right into the hands of the Nicaraguan capitalists.—A.B.