Rural workers march for land, work & justice
On March 17th the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) began a march for Agrarian Reform, Jobs and Justice. Marches from Sao Paulo, Governador Valadares (Minas Gerais state) and Rondonopolis (Mato Grosso state) will converge in the federal capital, Brasilia on April 17th, one year to the day since 19 peasants were massacred in Eldorado de Carajas (Para state), a crime for which the landowners responsible have still not been tried.
About 600 landless workers joined the Sao Paulo march, which is marching at 20km/day on its 1,000 km route to Brasilia. The march is supported by the Workers Party (PT), the CUT trade union, the Catholic Church and a range of popular organisations. Wherever it stops, the march is greeted warmly, confirming that the demand for agrarian reform is supported by the vast majority of Brazil's poor. Tens of thousands of terests, a desire on the part of the Sandinistas to place themselves further in the "mainstream" in an increasingly neo-liberal, unipolar, imperialist-dominated new world order. In other words, Ortega and the FSLN were actually carrying out in 1996 what they had derisively accused the MRS of proposing during the 1994 Sandinista Congress.
In this context, the 1996 election results are not very surprising. The severe social crisis plaguing Nicaragua was associated by broad layers of the population with the Chamorro government AND with the parliamentary majority made up of 39 Sandinista legislators and 15 UNO "moderates", . There is considerable concern about the corruption and enrichment of a layer of the FLN. Widespread cynicism prevails on the viability of struggling against the neo-liberal agenda and IMF-World Bank dictates. There is, in addition, the omnipresent fear of a return to war. Alemán's supporters "hammered home the warning that a Sandinista victory would mean a return to the years of war and economic collapse." 2 Meanwhile, Daniel Ortega chose a capitalist as his running mate. Faced with this choice, the Nicaraguan electorate voted for the wholesome capitalist ticket of Alemán/Bolanos, who are perceived as having greater access to international funding and better prospects of obtaining foreign aid. Cynicism concerning graft among politicians and even about the corruption of the Sandinistas is reflected in the phrase, reported in the press, that "Alemán also steals, but at least he's efficient!" 2 Sandinista candidate Victor Hugo Tinoco said the Sandinista programme had only 'differences of shading' from the Liberal Alliance free-market strategy of economic re-activation by encouraging foreign investments." 24 In a race in which the Liberals' message was "restoring production"
demonstrators are expected to welcome the marchers at a rally in front of the National Congress building in Brasilia on April 17th.
The MST march is a protest against the impunity of those who terrorise and even murder rural workers who demand their basic rights, a protest against the government's irresponsible treatment of the land reform question, and a protest against the neo-liberal economic policies of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
This is the first major protest against the present federal government.
According to the MST, Brazil has four million landless families, waiting in tents for the government to fulfil its various obligations and promises towards them. The movement is intensifying its occupations of unused farming land and plantations, which it sees as the only way to create real land reform. [JD]* and the Sandinistas the "search for a productive consensus," the Liberals were perceived as less linked to Chamorro's policies than the Sandinistas, and with better possibilities of obtaining credit to restore production. Who is Alemán?
Alemán receives financial support from Jorge Mas Canosa, leader of the Miami antiCastroists. His father was an official in one of Somoza's governments. In 1980 Alemán spent nine months in jail for counterrevolutionary activity. In the 1980s he was head of Managua's coffee growers' association and later of the national coffee growers association. In 1990 he ran for mayor of Managua through the Liberal Constitutionalist Party, a splinter from the National Liberal Party, Somoza's party.
As mayor of Managua, Alemán built a classic patronage machine and utilised public works projects to distribute jobs and economic favours. The Cuban-American Foundation supports Alemán through the Nicaraguan Foundation for Development and Democracy, a conduit for Miami funding. NFDD dealings in Miami are handled by Alemán's agent Byron Jimenez, who allegedly participated in Somoza's death squad, Mano Blanca. The NFDD serves as an intermediary for many Miami companies with contracts in Managua.
Alemán's backers have called for restoring properties acquired by Sandinistas in La Piñata to the pre-revolutionary owners. This threatened a return to unmitigated Somocismo. The principal stumbling blocks in the path of such outright oligarchic restoration are the Nicaraguan army and the IMF/ World Bank, which prefer stability over a flare-up of struggles over property." Before the elections, Ortega called upon Alemán to agree on a "pact of governability" with
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* Nicaragua/Ecuador guarantees against revanchism. Alemán's rising star was foreseen by many observers.? A double dynamic FSLN
The struggle continues over the agrarian retorm, particularly concerning tand tues, reform, particularly concerning land titles, which the Sandinistas sorely neglected during their administration. Massive land invasions took place in 1990, and they have continued every year, although on a steady downward trend. Workers' struggles will continue, and the Sandinistas are not about to disappear from the political scene.
There is no easy answer to the dilemmas facing the FSLN in the present international context. Instead of simplistic arguments about supposed electoral fraud, an assessment of the complex causes that led to the second Sandinista electoral defeat may help shed light on Nicaragua's current situation, and the possible course of the FSLN's struggle for national liberation in the future.
Under the Chamorro government, the FSLN was pulled towards workers' struggles, and towards a "realistic" accommodation with imperialism and the Nicaraguan right. Under the Alemán government the weakened FLN will experience the same tensions, but within a political framework situated further to the right *. Notes 1 See, for example, Dianne Feeley, "The 1996 Nicaraguan Elections: How Arnoldo Alemán 'Won'," Against the Current, no. 66. (January-February, 1997), pp. 26-30. 2 "Como votaron los nicaraguenses?" Envio (Managua), Nov.-Dec., 1996. (gopher://ns.uca.edu.ni/00/4/1/1). 3 The Principles and Program of the FLN, adopted at the First Congress of the FSLN on July 21, 1991, state that: "in government, the FLN led a far reaching agrarian reform that democratised land ownership and contributed to modernising the entire countryside. Nevertheless, it did not win the support of broad sectors of the peasantry, the pillar of society and national production. As the government and as a party, the FSLN carried out policies that negatively affected their economic interests and which ignored their characteristics. For this reason, this important segment of Nicaraguan society continues to be the FSLN's main challenge. The program is reprinted in Vanessa Castro and Gary Prevost's, The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua and their Aftermath (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992). 4 Vanessa Castro, "Electoral Results in the Rural Sector," in Vanessa Castro and Gary Prevost, The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua and their Aftermath,. pp. 130-131. 5 Eduardo Baumeister, "Agrarian Reform," in Thomas Walker, ed., Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), p. 242 6 Vanessa Castro, "Electoral Results..., 7 Shelley A. McConell, "The Electoral Defeat of the Sandinista Regime: a Postmortem," Latin American Research Review, vo. 31, no. 1 (1996), p. 219. 8 Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost, Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993), p. 144. 9 Gary Prevost, "Nicaragua Surprise: Sandinistas Split; Somoza Party Gains," Commonwealth, May 3, 1996 (v. 123, по. 9) р. 9. 10 NACLA Report on the Americas, Nov.-Dec. 1994, vol 28, по. 3, p. 32. 11 El País (Madrid) June, 24, 1996, quoted in Maurice Lemoine, "Des Elections Decisives sur Fond de Desastre Social: La Nicaragua tente par un retour au passe," Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1996. 12Maurice Lemoine, "Des Elections Decisives..." 13 "Nicaragua's $1 Billion Battle: Can the Government make the Sandinistas Give Back their Homes?", U.S. News and World Report, v. 111 (July 29, 1991) pp. 35-6. 14 New York Times, January 19, 1997. 15 D. Dye, J. Butler, D. Abu Lughod, J. Spence and G. Vickers. Contesting Everything, Winning Nothing: the Search for Consensus in Nicaragua, 1990-1995 (Washington Office on Latin America and Hemispheric Initiatives, November 1995), pp. 21, 9, 30, 28. 16 Dye et. al. Contesting Everything..... p. 9. 17 Francois Houtart, "Echec du modele neoliberal..." 18 Puerto Rico/USA Foundation, "Socioeconomic Statistics for Caribbean and Latin American Countries Compared to Puerto Rico."[www:pr-eda.com] 19 J. Jonakin, "The Impact of Structural Adjustment and 16 International Viewpoint
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