Situation in Nicaragua worsens as gains of Revolution are dismantled

Scan page 18

"Many cooperatives remain together and producing, but a large number have already disappeared, losing their land to former owners or to bank foreclosures, or because the co-op embers have sold the land or divided it up among themselves to avoid losing 18 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1992 The following is an abridged version of a newsletter article written by Garrett Brown, a supporter of the Nicaraguan Revolution who visited that country during New Years 1992. Although the article concerns observations made almost six months ago, it gives a good feel for the current economic and political trends in Nicaragua today. If anything, things have only gotten worse in the last six months. The article is reprinted with the permission of the author.

This is a report from a brief visit to Estelí over New Years 1992. I was last in Nicaragua exactly one year ago, and in both visits spent time only in Estelí, though I spoke with people living in Managua [the capital] on both occasions.

In general, the situation in Nicaragua today is desperate. One might even say it is a "train wreck," with bodies and wreckage flung in all directions, and those who are "putting it back together" have a clear counter-revolutionary agenda.

The changes from the time of the Sandinista government are dramatic and have come at a very accelerated pace since my last visit.

If the Sandinista period could be described as a "revolutionary flow tide," overwhelming obstacles and sweeping along many people and processes in its forward march, the current situation might be described as a "reactionary ebb tide," in which the momentum has shifted definitively in the other direction and is now dragging people and processes into the past with an equally voracious power.

The Economy: Nicaragua has an official unemployment rate of 59 percent, meaning an even higher actual rate. Hunger and poverty have increased tremendously and are clearly visible on the streets. Families are surviving by pooling whatever salaries they have, and participating in the informal sector whenever possible. But there are many families who are eating no more than once a day—and then with a very restricted diet.

Land tenure in this predominantly agricultural country is still a very unsettled and instability among food producers in the countryside.

The economic pressures in Nicaragua today virtually overwhelm all other activities as people struggle simply to see tomorrow.

The public healthcare system has virtually collapsed. There are no more subsidized medicines available and many people now don't bother going to the hospital or centros de salud [health centers] for anything less than immediately lifethreatening illnesses because they don't have the money to buy any prescribed medications.

Any serious illness now becomes a financial emergency. The hospital itself now has a "private" (payment required) wing as well as the "public" wing. Overall, public health is clearly deteriorating in Nicaragua, especially among the poor majority, and things like AIDS and cholera are waiting ominously in the wings.

The education system is now pay-asyou-go. Parents must rent their children's schoolbooks and pay for them if lost or damaged). They must also pay a "curriculum fee" in the "public" schools. The MED [Ministry of Education] was even going to require a fee to receive report cards, but backed off from that proposal.

The university now costs 7000 cordobas ($1400) a year to attend, and the Estelf branch is being threatened with closing. Adult education and literacy classes have been eliminated from MED budgets. All of this is in addition to a major shift in curriculum and materials by the new government, eliminating old texts and lessons and replacing them with U.S.-AID-supplied materials. members have sold Land reform is seriously threatened, though the Chamorro government recently vetoed the latest attempt to overturn it immediately.

Many cooperatives remain together and producing, but a large number have already disappeared, losing their land to former owners or to bank foreclosures, or because the co-op members have sold the land or divided it up among themselves to avoid losing it otherwise.

The net result is a creeping return to the old patterns of land ownership and rural social relations (dominated by a handful of rich men), a result which is the undisguised goal of all sections of the new government.

The industrial sector, always a tiny portion of the economy, has continued to shrink as the new government seeks to "privatize" state-owned facilities, thereby creating "labor unrest," on one hand, and "lack of confidence" on the part of prospective owners, on the other hand.

The number of public employees has been drastically reduced, but there is no other gainful, productive employment available for laid-off state workers. it otherwise."

The famous U.S. aid has been slow in coming and has had little effect (apart from lining the pockets of various government functionaries) when it has arrived. No private capital is expected to enter the economy in any significant way until "stability" of the traditional Latin American kind is "restored" in Nicaragua.

All in all, a bleak economic situation offers few prospects for significant improvement in the immediate future.

Politics: The UNO government has definitively split between the "moderate rightwing" faction of President Violeta Chamorro and the "ultra-rightwing" fac tion of Vice President Vigilio Godoy, National Assembly President Alfredo Cesar and Managua Mayor Miguel Aleman.

The "ultra-right" have the support of the U.S. ambassador and have already made several attempts to overthrow the Chamorro government. Chamorro remains in power due to the support of the Frente Sandinista (FSLN) which has 40 percent of the seats in the National Assembly and dominates the officer corps of the Army.

The FSLN's strategy is to stabilize the Chamorro government on the grounds that the alternative is worse. But this means stabilizing a government whose avowed purpose is to undo everything the FSLN government did; perhaps not next week, like the Godoy-Cesar-Aleman group, but certainly in the next year or two.

The government has, in the last 18 months, already achieved the above noted "successes" in transforming the healthcare and education systems along "democratic," non-Sandinista lines.The end of "verticalism" in the FSLN and the restructuring of the party in its ongoing "democratization" has positive aspects.

But there is also now a lack of central direction and information-transmission which, when combined with the economic pressures, has produced a serious lack of political coherence and a decline of party activity on the grassroots level.

Base-level Sandinistas are pretty much on their own in terms of defending the "gains of the revolution," but even when activity surges from the base, as in the case of the trade unions, the FSLN leadership has frequently intervened in the name of "stability" and "national reconciliation" to undercut the protests and to make additional concessions and agreements with the Chamorro faction of the government.

Militarily, the new government has made large strides in changing the character of the Sandinista, now National, police, by replacing personnel and using the police against workers and peasants.

Although the national leadership of the police is still Sandinista, the ranks are increasingly new and drawn from UNO and contra sources. Miguel Aleman has created an, as yet, unarmed force of several hundred municipal "inspectors" drawn from the most anti-Sandinista forces in the capital.

The Army has been reduced to under 20,000, now the smallest in Central America, and more cuts have been proposed. The EPS [Sandinista People's Army] remains Sandinista in leadership and composition, but has emphasized its "apolitical and constitutional" character.

This has meant that without an order from Commander-in-Chief Violeta Chammorro directing the army to protect cooperatives and vehicles in the countryside, the "recontra" have been able to act with complete impunity in destroying or overrunning co-ops, burning vehicles and killing opponents.

As a result, the EPS has sat on its hands while several dozen people have been killed. Fortunately, the "recompas," ex-EPS officers and soldiers who have taken to the hills once again to fight the recontra, have acted as a counterbalance to the recontra and reduced attacks in some areas. The peasantry in many areas, however, continue to live, as in previous years, in a virtual state of war.

The "New Society:" The change from a revolutionary society committed to equality and social justice to an increasingly traditional Latin American society with profound inequality, poverty, and discrimination, was perhaps the most dramatic aspect of this trip.

Even in a poor town like Estelf, the rich have returned from the U.S. to dominate the city once again. Their houses downtown are newly painted and repaired, their U.S.-bought cars clog the streets, their street-level garages now offer Nintendo video arcades and high-fashion boutiques for their children and triends.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the city there is a virtual explosion of shanty-towns of plastic and scrap wood houses where families eat once a day and do not have electricity, water, sewage, accessible healthcare or education.

The disintegration of Nicaraguan society has also accelerated in the last year as well. Crime and street violence, unheard of during my [previous] time in Estelí, are now becoming common in Estelí and are epidemic in Managua.

Many of the people I visited in Estelí were, quite understandably, depressed and disoriented. One older woman who lost a son in the war in 1986, took a look around her after explaining her family's perilous situation, and asked rhetorically: "And my son died for this? This is what all our sacrifices were for?"