Contra Evolution Revolution

[Frida Kosofsky]

A peace process started with the Sapo Accords in 1988 and the Contra War ended after the signing of the Tela Accord in 1989 and the demobilization of the FSLN and Contra armies.[29] A second election in 1990 resulted in the election of a majority of anti-Sandinista parties and the FSLN lost power.

Following the United States occupation of Nicaragua in 1912 during the Banana Wars, the Somoza family political dynasty took power, and ruled from 1937 until its ouster in 1979. The Somoza dynasty consisted of Anastasio Somoza Garca, his eldest son Luis Somoza Debayle, and finally Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The Somoza era was characterized by economic development, albeit with rising inequality and political corruption, strong US support for the government and its military,[30] as well as a reliance on US-based multinational corporations.[31]

In 1961 Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, and Toms Borge Martnez formed the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) with other student activists at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua (UNAN) in Managua. The founders were experienced activists. Amador, first General Secretary, had worked with others on a newspaper "broadly critical" of the Somoza reign titled Segovia.[32]

Consisting of approximately 20 members during the 1960s, with the help of students, FSLN gathered support from peasants and anti-Somoza elements, as well as from the communist Cuban government, the socialist Panamanian government of Omar Torrijos, and the social democratic Venezuelan government of Carlos Andrs Prez.[33]

By the 1970s the coalition of students, farmers, businesses, churches, and a small percentage of Marxists was strong enough to launch a military effort against the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. FSLN focused on guerrilla tactics, inspired by Fidel Castro and Ch Guevara. They launched an unsuccessful the Ro Coco/Bocay-Rait campaign: "when guerrillas did encounter the National Guard, they had to retreat...with heavy losses."[34] Further operations included a devastating loss near the city of Matagalpa, during which Mayorga was killed.[35] During this time, FSLN reduced attacks, instead focusing on solidifying the organization.

Fonseca died in combat in November 1976. The FSLN then split into three factions that fought separately: the Maoist Tendencia GPP (Guerra Popular Prolongada) (English: Prolonged People's War); Marxist-Leninist Tendencia Proletaria (English: proletarian); and Left-wing nationalist Tendencia Tercerista (English: third).

In the 1970s, FSLN began a campaign of kidnappings, which led to national recognition of the group in the Nicaraguan media and solidification of the group as a force.[33] The regime, which included the Nicaraguan National Guard, trained by the U.S. military, declared a state of siege, and proceeded to use torture, extrajudicial killings, intimidation and press censorship in order to combat the FSLN attacks.[33] This led to international condemnation of the regime and in 1978 the US cut off aid over its human rights violations. In response, Somoza lifted the state of siege.[10]

Other opposition parties and movements began to consolidate. In 1974, the Unin Democrtica Liberal (UDEL; English: Union for Democratic Liberation) was founded by Pedro Joaqun Chamorro Cardenal, editor of the Managua newspaper La Prensa. The alliance included two anti-Somoza liberal parties as well as conservatives and the Nicaraguan Socialist Party.[36]

On 22 August 1978 the FSLN staged a massive kidnapping operation. Led by den Pastora, the Sandinistan forces captured the National Palace while the legislature was in session, taking 2,000 hostages. Pastora demanded money, the release of Sandinistan prisoners, and "a means of publicizing the Sandinista cause."[10] After two days, the government agreed to pay $500,000 and to release certain prisoners, a major victory for the FSLN.[33] Revolts against the state and guerrilla warfare continued.[10]

In early 1979 the Organization of American States supervised negotiations between the FSLN and the government. However, these broke down when it became clear that the Somoza regime had no intention of allowing democratic elections.

By June 1979, following a successful urban offensive, the FSLN militarily controlled all of the country except the capital. On 17 July President Somoza resigned, and on 19 July the FSLN entered Managua,[33] ceding control to the revolutionary movements. Somoza fled to Miami; his Nationalist Liberal Party became practically defunct, and many government functionaries and business figures overtly compromised with somocismo chose exile. The Catholic church and the professional sectors generally approved of the new reality.[38]

Immediately following the fall of the Somoza regime, Nicaragua lay largely in ruins. The country had suffered both war and, earlier, natural disaster in the devastating 1972 Nicaragua earthquake. In 1979, approximately 600,000 Nicaraguans were homeless and 150,000 more were either refugees or in exile,[39] out of a total population of just 2.8 million.[40]

In response, a state of emergency was declared. The US sent US$99 million in aid. Land and businesses of the Somoza regime were expropriated, the courts were abolished, and workers were organized into Civil Defense Committees. The new regime declared that "elections are unnecessary", which led to criticism from the Catholic Church and others.[10]

The Somocista regime had created a big and modern center, Managua, surrounded an almost semifeudal rural economy with few productive outputs, including cotton, sugar and other agricultural products. All sectors of the economy of Nicaragua were determined, in great part, by the Somozas or their supporters, whether by directly owning agricultural brands/trusts, or actively choosing their owners (local or foreign). Somoza himself was (incorrectly) alleged to have owned 1/5 of all profitable land in Nicaragua. Somoza or his people did own or give away banks, ports, communications, services and massive amounts of land.[41]

The Nicaraguan Revolution brought immense restructuring to all three sectors of the economy, directing it towards a mixed economy. The biggest economic impact was on agriculture, in the form of agrarian reform, which was proposed as a process that would develop pragmatically along with other changes (economic, political, etc.).[42]

Economic reforms overall needed to restart the economy. As a developing country, Nicaragua had an agriculture-based economy, susceptible to commodity market prices. The rural economy was far behind in technology and devastated by the guerrilla warfare.

In 1985, the Agrarian Reform distributed 950 square kilometres (235,000 acres) of land to the peasantry. This represented about 75 percent of all land distributed to peasants since 1980. The reform had the twofold purpose of increasing support for the government among the campesinos, and guaranteeing ample food delivery into the cities. During 1985, ceremonies were held throughout the countryside in which Daniel Ortega gave each peasant title to land and a rifle to defend it.[43]

The Revolution brought many cultural developments. The Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign (Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetizacin) focused on secondary school and university students drafting teachers as volunteer teachers. Within five months they claimed to have reduced the overall illiteracy rate from 50.3% to 12.9%.[44] In September 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua the "Nadezhda K. Krupskaya" award. This was followed by literacy campaigns of 1982, 1986, 1987, 1995 and 2000, each of which was also awarded by UNESCO.[45]

The Sandinistas established a Ministry of Culture, one of only three in Latin America at the time, and established a new editorial brand, called Editorial Nueva Nicaragua and, based on it, started to print cheap editions of basic books rarely seen by Nicaraguans. It founded an Instituto de Estudios del Sandinismo (Institute for Studies of Sandinismo) where it printed the work and papers of Augusto C. Sandino and those that reflected the ideologies of FSLN, such as Carlos Fonseca and Ricardo Morales Avils.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank with close ties to the Ronald Reagan administration,[48][49] charged the Sandinista government with human rights violations, including press censorship. It charged that the government censored the independent newspaper La Prensa.[50] French journalist Viktor Dedaj, who lived in Managua in the 1980s, contended that La Prensa was generally sold freely and that the majority of radio stations were anti-Sandinista.[51] The Heritage Foundation claimed that the Sandinistas instituted a "spy on your neighbor" system that encouraged citizens to report any activity deemed counter-revolutionary, with those reported facing harassment from security representatives, including the destruction of property.[50]

Heritage also criticized the government for its treatment of the Miskito people, stating that over 15,000 Miskitos were forced to relocate, that their villages were destroyed, and that their killers were promoted rather than punished.[50][52][53] The Los Angeles Times noted that "...the Miskitos began to actively oppose the Sandinistas in 1982 when authorities killed more than a dozen Indians, burned villages, forcibly recruited young men into the army and tried to relocate others. Thousands of Miskitos poured across the Coco into Honduras, and many took up arms to oppose the Nicaraguan government."[54]

The United Nations, the Organization of American States and Pax Christi disputed Heritage's allegations of anti-Semitism. According to them, individual Nicaraguan Jews had their property expropriated due to their connections with the Somoza regime, rather than because they were Jewish. They cited the fact that there were prominent Sandinistas officials of Jewish descent.[55] In contrast to these organizations, the Anti-Defamation League supported allegations of Sandinista antisemitism. It worked closely with Nicaraguan Jewish exiles to reclaim a synagogue that had been firebombed by Sandinista militants in 1978 and expropriated in 1979.[56]

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