economic victory.
Commander Jaime Wheelock, Nicaragua's minister of agrarian reform, spoke to 11,000 of the volunteers in the city of Matagalpa February 5 at a rally to celebrate the completion of the harvest.
In the portions of Wheelock's speech published below, he describes the advances in Nicaraguan agriculture accomplished in the face of hostility from crisis that has devasted Latin America's
The translation, taken from the text published in the February 10 Barricada, is by Intercontinental Press.
It's true that we have our problems.
It's imperialism that's in It's the way they've organized the exploitation and their lives that puts
And, enmeshed in this us at 20 percent and sometimes as high as 30 or 35 percent. deficit of 13 billion US dollars in 1973. That figure rose to 35 billion US dollars
The region's overall debt rose from 34 billion to 268 billion US dollars in 1981. It jumped to 350 billion US dollars in 1982.
Brazil owes 87 billion US dollars. Just to pay the interest it will have to use all its exports and it will still come out 26 percent behind. Mexico owes 80 billion US dollars. Using all its exports for payment, it will be left owing 24 percent. Argentina owes 43 billion and must pay back 18 billion US dollars next year — which it cannot do even if it were to use
Where are the imperialists taking us? To economic ruin, to a debacle, to econdiction that today's world suffers from, a contradiction that will be difficult to resolve because there are factors weighing down on our economies that will crisis, they want to violently detain the not be resolved easily.
- In new housing developments, the rent for 44-square meter dwellings is set at a standard 300 cordobas a month and adjusted according to income.
—Rents have been lowered by up to 50% for the majority of the population.
- Under the new housing law, an estimated 50,000 families will become owners of their dwellings.
In 1971 (the latest study), there were 300,000 dwellings in Nicaragua, of which 60,000 (20%) were rented. Today, the percentage of housing rented is estimated at 30%.
- Since the revolution, 8,000 new dwellings have been built, and 18,000 pieces of land have been given to families to build their own homes. In proportion to the population, this is the biggest program for building housing in Central Am-
But there is still a shortage of 250,000 homes in the country.
advance of other peoples. They want to resolve their profound political contradictions, and their now even more profound economic contradictions, not only at the cost our people's blood, but also through the ruination of the poor in their own countries.
Unemployment in [the seven major countries has gone from 21 million in 1980 to 32 million today who cannot find any work whatsoever. how do those governments want to reproblems? have assembled a monstrous apparatus of organized plunder, so as to drain our wealth to benefit ripping off billions of dollars through unequal trade arrangements. For example, they buy coffee cheaply from us and sell us equipment, machinery, and inputs at high prices — robbing us of much
To give you an example, if we could sell today's coffee harvest at 1979 prices, we would get 280 million However, selling the harvest at today's prices we are barely going to get 150 million US dollars; that is to say, only about half the price.
In Nicaragua, we're not doing so bad, but there are other countries that
Costa Rica's gross domestic product is going to drop 5.6%; El Salvador's, 10%; Guatemala's, 2.5%; and Nicaragua's, between 2.5% and 3%. But if we hadn't had flood damage and the drought, it's likely that Nicaragua's economy, the second time since the triumph of the revolution, would have been economy in Latin America to have grown.
Coffee production rose from 50,000 tons in 1979 to 70,000
In 1981 our meat exports totaled 21 million US dollars; this year,
Sugar climbed from 245,000 of this! 1977, the best year of the Sotons to 265,000 tons in 1982. of the floods, we will have more cotton in Nicaragua. So the basic exports of the Nicaraguan economy - coffee, sugar, and cotton - have grown this But their prices are much lower.
If the imperialists were to pay us the porting 740 million US dollars. much will we actually export this year? We won't reach 500 million - we'll export about 460 million US dollars.
Who took the difference of almost 300 million? Ask Reagan's government and his political economy
We should also note that in basic foodstuffs - compared to what there was under Somoza - we've grown 10 percent more corn, 45 percent more beans, 89 percent more sorghum, and 100 percent more rice. In other words we're growing in a sustained manner in a way that responds to our needs.
There are some interesting indicators moza regime, 384,000 gallons of cooking oil was produced. We produced 756,000 gallons in 1982.
- Under Somoza, 35,000 dozen eggs were produced daily; today we produce 88,000 dozen eggs daily.
-Fish production was 300,000 pounds a year then; today it is 2.5 million pounds.
Before the revolution, 14 million pounds of pork were produced; now we produce 22 million pounds.
Twelve million pounds of chicken were produced then; now we are produc-
Is this a crisis? Is this decline? No, it's sustained growth based fundamentally on the strength of the revolution and the fact that the revolution has a formidable the labor of the workers, peasants, and humble people led by their vanguard, the Sandinista National Libera(Intercontinental Press, April 18, 1983)
world.
The Oesterreichische Gewerkschaftsbund (OGB - Austrian Confederation of Unions) has 1,672,500 members, that is, 60.4% of all employed persons in the country. It is virtually totally controlled by the SPO.
Nonetheless, the SPO's losses by comparison with the last elections - 3.38% — were considerable. A close examination shows that few of these lost votes went to the only gainer in the election, the conservative bourgeois Oesterreichischen Volkspartei (OVP - Austrian People's Party).
In 13 years, therefore, the strongest bourgeois party has not been able to make a breakthrough into the sections of the population that vote for the SPO. That makes it clear that we cannot talk about a real shift to the right in the country.
The SPO lost votes in the first place among youth under the age of thirty, many of whom voted for the new environmentalist parties, Gruene Oesterreichs (VGO - United Greens of Austria) and the Alternative Liste Oesterreich. (ALO).
In the second place, a lot of the bour-