Defend the Cuban Revolution!

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Your article on the Cuban Revolution (February Socialist Action) was probably the best analysis I've seen in years on this subject. It very effectively dealt with the contradictory nature of the pragmatic Castro leadership and spelled out clearly what steps they will need to take to avoid being swamped by the perestroika-mania that is I think that in light of the defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the "We Won the Cold War" propaganda of the imperialists, Cuba will be under increasing fire as the last bastion of "outdated"

Because of this, I think that Socialist Action should make the defense of the Cuban Revolution against imperialism and Stalinism a Dear editor, sweeping the "socialist camp."

socialism.

major part of its activities.

tries to compensate for the underdevelopment of countries like Cuba, Vietnam, and Mongolia. These countries would get favorable prices (above the world market prices) for their products.

For example, Cuba would get a higher price for its sugar from the Soviet Union and be paid in kind with oil, credits and technological assistance.

If the new COMECON proposals were adopted, Cuba's exports-such as sugar, fruit, and minerals—would be thrown on what Castro correctly calls "the garbage-heap of world prices" which are controlled by world imperialism.

Over 80 percent of Cuba's trade is with the countries of COMECON. Virtually all of Cuba's oil comes from the Soviet Union. And now the Cuban workers and peasants are being told that they will have to pay for these vital products in hard currency or payment in kind based on prices set by imperialist markets.

But Gorbachev's new "capitalist-style" bookkeeping methods entail, first of all, abandonment of international solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. The favorable trade agreements the Cubans previously enjoyed are now being called "too expensive" and a drain on the Stalinist bureaucracy's "market reform" projects.

The Cubans aggressively Julie Sommer, Long Island, N.Y.

Jan. 10 COMECON meeting, and believed that their position of maintaining the old agreements won the day. But two weeks later, on Jan. 22, they were forced to take hitherto unheard of economic measures.

For the first time in 20 years, Cuba announced a raise in prices on basic food staples like bread, eggs, and meat—along with measures to ration consumption. These measures came as a consequence of delays in Soviet grain and flour shipments.

The Cuban government accepted the Soviet explanation that the delay was caused by dislocations in the Soviet economy, but Castro could see the handwriting on the wall.

The Cuban leaders can no longer take for granted the economic and military support the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries provided in the past. This support was crucial for Cuba's survival. It decisively helped to offset the effects of a 30-year U.S. trade embargo.

Today, however, Cuba is being economically starved from the rear by the Soviet bureaucracy while it is being militarily harassed from the front by the U.S. imperialists.

Preparing the Cuban masses Castro is now campaigning to prepare the Cuban masses for the hard times ahead. In a SOCIALIST ACTION

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... the rich remained as rich as they were under Somoza while the poor, who sacrificed the most for the revolution, got poorer? 10 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL1990 "If Daniel Ortega wants me to give back my rifle and allow the Sandinista army and police to be placed under the authority of [President-elect Violeta] Chamorro, he will personally have to come and take it out of my hands."

These words were spoken by a member of the Sandinista militia at a spontaneous gathering of Sandinista supporters in Managua's Blandón neighborhood two days after the Feb. 25 elections.

Informal gatherings such as this one were commonplace throughout Nicaragua in the immediate aftermath of the elections that brought Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate of the UNO coalition, to power.

Those who had taken arms up against Somoza and courageously defended the revolution for more than 10 years could not believe that the candidate of the contras would soon be sworn into office. They assembled at all hours of the day in the factories, neighborhoods and farms, desperately seeking to understand what had gone wrong and what could be done to defend the revolution.

"Wherever you go, you can feel the deep sense of resentment and outrage among the footsoldiers of the revolution," Francisco Samper, vice presidential candidate of the Movement for Revolutionary Unity (MUR), told Socialist Action.

"Sandinista members and supporters are not satisfied with the answers and perspectives offered by the FLN leadership," Samper continued. "They are openly voicing their criticisms of Ortega's election campaign and of Sandinista policy in general. Never has there been this much discussion about the problems of the revolution. Even we have been taken by surprise."

[The MUR, a party that includes Trotskyists and formers Sandinistas, put forward a program that called for defending, deepening, and extending the revolution. Its presidential candidate, former Sandinista leader Moisés Hassan, obtained 16,850 votes (or 1.3 percent)—which won him a seat in the 94-person National Assembly, the only seat won by a left party other than the FSLN.] "Grew apart from the people"

Similar reactions of popular disbelief and anger were reported by journalists covering the elections. Boston Globe reporter Philip Bennett, for example, quoted a bitter FSLN member who placed part of the blame for Ortega's defeat on the Sandinista leadership.

"The Front [FSLN] grew apart from the people," she said, "and for a revolutionary movement that is suicide."

By way of example, she described a postdefeat Sandinista rally in Managua that was addressed by the top Sandinista commanders. "We were standing there in the sun after days of crying to show our determination to move ahead, and I saw all these leaders with long, serious faces. They took a look at the crowd, but instead of joining us, they got into their air-conditioned luxury jeeps and went home. This is why we lost." (March 3)

Argentina's daily newspaper Sur quoted a leader of the Sandinista Youth, Patricia López, who said: "It was not they [Chamorro's UNO coalition] who won, but we who lost." (Feb. 27)

López explained that under the Sandinistas, "the rich remained as rich as they were under Somoza while the poor, who sacrificed the most for the revolution, got poorer." She said the poor simply lost confidence in the Sandinistas' ability and willingness to respond to the people's needs.

Globe reporter Bennett was told by members of peasant cooperatives that they had voted for Chamorro because of her promise of individual titles to the land.

"Daniel [Ortegal promised us titles, but we never got them. So we were angry," Diego Oliver, a peasant at the Naranjito cooperative told Bennett. (March 4)

But Oliver added that if the titles were not forthcoming from Chamorro, or if land was taken away from those who had benefited from the agrarian reform program, the peasants would rise up against the new government.

Similarly, pro-Sandinista factory workers told reporters that they would wage crippling strikes if the new government did not improve the economy within its first 100 days. They would also strike, they said, if the Chamorro government attempted to privatize businesses nationalized by the Sandinistas.

Accepting a "smooth" transition In the wake of their electoral defeat, Sandinista leaders publicly pledged to defend the gains of the revolution by "governing from below," as Daniel Ortega put it.

Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, repeating a pre-election promise, said he would never accept placing the army and police under the authority of the new Chamorro government. Other Sandinista leaders said they would wage a relentless fight to ensure that the agrarian reform law and other social programs enacted over the past 10 years would be "irreversible."

Within a few weeks, however, top Sandinista leaders began to change their tune.

At a meeting with U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle in Santiago, Chile, on March 13, Daniel Ortega said the Sandinistas had dropped all pre-conditions for a "smooth" transfer of power. This was a retreat. Ortega and Interior Minister Tomás Borge had earlier threatened to arm the entire population if the contra army was not dismantled before the new government took office on April 25.

In addition, Ortega, undermining the sovereignty of the Sandinista army and revolution, gave his support to United Nations "peacekeeping" troops to ensure the transfer of power. These UN troops would have the authority, among other things, to put down protests of Sandinista supporters against the new government.

Nicaraguan Vice —Patricia López, leader, told the press, moreover, that the Sandinistas had now agreed to place the Sandinista army and police under the control of the Chamorro government. Ramírez's pledge was confirmed by Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, Chamorro's chief negotiator with the Sandinistas. (New York Times, March 22)

By acquiescing to this transfer of power, the leadership of the Sandinista Front signaled its willingness to become a loyal opposition to Chamorro. Along this path, it is impossible to prevent Chamorro and her U.S. backers from dismantling, little by little, every gain of the Nicaraguan Revolution.

Along the concessionary path The course followed by the Sandinista leadership is not altogether surprising. During the FSLN election campaign, Ortega and other top government officials clearly revealed their willingness to make substantial political concessions to U.S. imperialism and its local puppets in Nicaragua.

Nicaraguan Vice President Sergio Ramírez, in an interview with the weekly La Crónica in late January, said that the FSLN had adopted an approach that is "more political and less ideological" than in the past. One aspect of this approach, he said, was the FSLN's decision to include capitalist farmers on its slates for the National Assembly and for municipal posts.

"These people have access to specific social sectors that the Sandinista Front as a party in the strict sense" cannot reach. The FSLN, Ramírez continued, is now making Sandinista Youth "real alliances with different social political sectors of the country and is determined to give these alliances a strategic character aimed at contributing to a national consensus." (quoted in The Militant, Feb. 2)

Ramírez's statement was universally interpreted as a pledge to include capitalist representatives in a new post-election government. This was the condition the Nicaraguan capitalists had long demanded as the basis for accepting the FSLN leadership's social pact known as concertación (or collaboration).

The Nicaraguan capitalists explained that as long as the FSLN retained its monopoly on political power, they would refuse to invest productively in the economy—no matter how many dollar subsidies and other incentives were provided by the Sandinistas' policy of concertación.

[None of the 11 cattle producers and agro-export capitalists was among the 39 FSLN candidates elected to the National Assembly, having been ranked relatively low on the FSLN's 94-person list of candidates. Dozens of capitalists were elected to local office on the FSLN slate, however.] The U.S. State Department had also insisted that power-sharing be instituted before the United States would lift economic sanctions and normalize relations with Nicaragua.

MUR Vice Presidential candidate Francisco Samper told Socialist Action that the Sandinista leadership had in fact, agreed to a "secret 9-point pact" with the COSEP (Superior Council of Private Enterprise), the

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