Castro failed to transmit Cuba's Sandinista leadership lessons to

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Sergio Ramirez, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega in 1984 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1990 17 In an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE in late 1985, Cuban President Fidel Castro was asked the question, "Do you think the Sandinistas pursue or hope to create in their country a Cuban political and economic model?" Castro answered:

"Nothing could be further from the truth.... Nicaragua is a country with a much lower level of development than Cuba at the time of the triumph of the revolution.... Conditions are different. Economic development is the top priority for the Nicaraguan government, not the construction of socialism."

Asked if the construction of socialism was even their objective, Castro stated: "Actually, it's not their objective. It's not a short or even medium-term objective. If you want you can add that it isn't their current objective." And he continued: "I think the Nicaraguan plan-and I have no disagreements with it, neither theoretica nor practical, and I say that sincerely—is perfect, given the conditions in their country and in Central America."

Further on, Castro stated: "Nicaragua needs a series of structural changes and a program of economic and social development. That's what the Nicaraguans face, and it must be understood. This is not a fairy tale or an invention, a disguise to fool anybody. Their method is real and we fully agree with it in theoretical and practical terms.... Development is the main objective of that country since it is very difficult to have socialism without development."

Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez made this point even more emphatically: "The Nicaraguans themselves are proposing an open society in which they will have private enterprise in agriculture, industry, and trade. They are not going to socialism, least of all to the Cuban model. We don't believe that the Cuban model is to be exported either to Central America or to the rest of the world." (San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 11, 1984)

These views of the Cuban leadership only served to obstruct the course toward socialist revolution in Nicaragua. Instead of transmitting the lessons of their own victorious revolution to the Sandinista fighters, these leaders were advising the Sandinistas to preserve the capitalist mixed economy. But their own history had demonstrated that (1) it was impossible to satisfy the demands of the workers and peasants and those of the capitalists at the same time, and (2) it was impossible to develop the economy in any meaningful way within the framework of capitalist property relations.

In January 1959 in Cuba, the revolutionary offensive of Fidel Castro's July 26 Movement and a mass insurrection toppled the Batista dictatorship. The immediate instruments of repression of the old regime the army and police—were destroyed. The new government initiated an aggressive campaign of mass mobilizations that were designed to advance the class interests of the workers and peasants against those of their previous capitalist exploiters. The most sweeping land reform in the modern era was implemented. Landless peasants were deeded the property of their former masters.

Confronted with an imperialist blockade and direct threats against the revolution, the government armed the workers and peasants. In less than a year's time, it carSI ried through to completion the anti-imperialist struggle by expropriating the property of the Cuban capitalists as well as that of the imperialists. The major mines, factories, sugar and oil refineries, and other key elements of production were removed from the realm of private operation for profit. The nation's resources were returned to the people.

This occurred in the fall of 1960. A workers' state emerged based on central planning and the state ownership of the means of production. The new government had deepened its authority with the Cuban masses with each and every anticapitalist measure. In fact, it was the armed people themselves who carried out the anti-capitalist revolution.

This is how Fidel Castro explained the lessons of the Cuban Revolution in a speech to the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in December 1976:

"Yet, in the conditions of a coun try like Cuba, could the revolution limit itself simply to national liberation while maintaining a regime of capitalist exploitation? Or was it not necessary to move forward to"Imperialism could not even tolerate a revolution of national liberation in Cuba. From the time of the titst Agrarian Reform Law, the United States began to organize a military operation against Cuba.

They were even less disposed to tolerate socialism in our country.

The simple idea that a victorious revolution in Cuba could provide an example for all Latin America, frightened the Yankee ruling circles. But the Cuban nation had no other alternative. The people could not be stopped.

"Our national and our social liberation were inextricably bound up.

Moving forward became a historic necessity. Standing still would have been an act of treason and cowardice that would have transformed us once again into a Yankee colony and wage slaves."

Obviously, Nicaragua's level of economic development at the time of the 1979 revolution was much lower than Cuba's in 1959. Its resources, moreover, were heavily drained by the war, first against Somoza and then against the contras. But it was illusory for the Sandinistas-and their Cuban mentors-to believe that Nicaragua could develop economically within the confines of its national borders and on the basis of a regulated capitalist economy. Such a strategy required major political and economic concessions to the capitalist class, which only undermined the revolution.

The FSLN government needed to sever the ties of bondage to the world capitalist economy and take the road of the Cuban Revolution. It also needed to pursue a policy of extending the Nicaraguan Revolution to the rest of Central and Latin America.

Embarking on the socialist road was the only way to permit the Sandinista government to respond to the sabotage of the economy by the capitalists and to effectively address the distortions created by the mixed economy. It was the only way to permit the goverment to meet the needs of the masses rather than allow the dynamism of the revolution to be eroded-which, of course, is what ultimately occurred.

This article was excerpted and adapted from the book by Alan Benjamin, "Nicaragua: Dynamics of an Unfinished Revolution," (San Francisco: Walnut Publishing Co., 1989).

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... Antiwar protests grow