The Nicaraguan revolution under fire
Celebration of the anniversary of the revolution in Nicaragua (DR)
Jean-Claude BERNARD MANAUGA - August-September 1983 marked the start of large-scale military maneuvers given the name "Big Pine II," which are being directed by Ronald Reagan against the peoples of Central America.
Some 12,000 Honduran soldiers are to participate in eight-month long joint training exercises on the territory of Honduras, which borders El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The main targets are the Salvador revolutionary movement and the Nicaraguan revolution. There is direct imperialist intervention in Central America. Nearly 6,000 more U.S. soldiers will be stationed in Honduras at least until January 1984, but it seems likely already that these maneuvers will be prolonged until the spring of 1984.
The objective of these operations is not simply to train Honduran soldiers in the use of arms. A sixty-room military hospital has already been set up near the barracks where the newly arrived U.S. military units have been quartered
This shipment of troops is part of the military deployment designed to encircle the Nicaraguan revolution.
In the wake of the celebration of the fourth anniversary of the overthrow of Somoza on July 19, 1979, Ronald Reagan announced that a part of the U.S. fleet was being sent to the waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Nicaragua. Seventeen warships are involved in these maneuvers. Some of them are cruising less than 12 miles off the Nicaraguan
Provocations and incursions have been staged into Nicaraguan territorial waters themselves. The U.S. ships are equipped for offensive actions, since they include carrying planes and a sea-to-land missile carrier.
In all the other Central American countries, the U.S. is reinforcing its political and military involvement. The August 8 coup d'etat in Guatamala means the installation of a ruling team more subservient to Washington. In the aftermath of taking power, General Meija, General Rios Montt's former minister of defense, declared flatly: "Guatemala supports the policy of the United States toward Nicaragua, because it seems to me to be the most appropriate." (1)
Up until now, the Rins Montt regime, absorbed by its war against the guerrillas and the native American population, had refused to get involved openly in the imperialist crusade against Nicaragua. Less than a month before the putsch, the chairperson of the Guatemalan Council of State described the dispatching of the U.S. fleet to Central America as "lamentable." (2)
The overthrow of General Rios Montt has, moreover, been the occasion for reviving the Central American Defense Council (CONDECA), a counterrevolutionary alliance that has been in moth balls since the so-called Football War before El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 In fact, it was virtually dissolved after the fall of Somoza.
Direct collaboration between the Salvadoran and Honduran armies has been increasing for a year. The U.S. Green Berets are training about 2,400 Salvadoran military in a U.S. base set up near Puerto Castilla in Honduras.
The Honduran government has just proposed the reestablishment of the Central American Military Pact. In his reply, to this proposal, the Salvadoran minister of defense said on August 20: "There is an agreement between Honduras and El Salvador for the reactivization of the alliance." He then added that Guatemala "will not raise any problems about accepting this accord." (3)
While it is based mainly in Honduras, where the mass opposition is weakest, the U.S. military deployment covers the region. What it involves is more than a mere demonstration of force. It represents systematic preparation for a decisive move to crush the peoples of El Salvador and Guatemala and to overthrow the revolutionary government of Nicaragua. A NEW TACTIC BY THE "CONTRAS"
CIA financing of the activities of the counterrevolutionaries is openly admitted in Washington. The Nicaraguan intelligence services have, moreover, revealed the growing collusion of the Argentine military with the counterrevolutionaries, or "contras," as they are called in Nicaragua.
In fact, they have explained that the contras have "a joint general staff made up of a representative of the CIA, an Argentine military advisor, and a repre1. Nuevo Diario, August 10, 1983. 2. Idem., July 23, 1983. 3. Idem., August 21, 1983.
the National Union of Tillers and Stock tras are a long way from being able to sentative of the FDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Force, a Somozaist group based in Honduras)." (4)
More and more sophisticated logistic support is being provided by the U.S.
notably, 60 and 80 meter mortars, as well as high-technology radio equipment enabling them to receive the information picked up by radar installations in Honduras. been given airplanes to resupply the former Somoza National Guard groups that have infiltrated into Nicaraguan mercenaries is estimated today at 8,000. In recent months, their tactie has changed, not as a result of planned progress in preparing their offensive but mainly because of the resistance they have run into on the ground.
counterrevolutionary commando groups have finally failed in the attempts they began in the spring of 1983 to occupy a strip of Nicaraguan territory in the north near Jalapa. This is despite the fact that they had mobilized up to 1,200 soldiers in coordinated operations. In contradiction to the statements they issued, they failed to take any in July 1983 to match the anniversary of the revolution.
Throughout August 1983, the actions by the contras have been carried out by groups including at most 100 to 150 operatives who have penetrated up to 80 kilometers into the country.
The present tendency is to increase sabotage operations. This reflects a reorganization of the contra forces to demore widely dispersed throughout the country. It means that large contra groups have managed to penetrate deeply into the country. They have been able to hold positions, however, only in peripheral areas by-passed by the course of history in Nicaragua, around the large expanses of land devoted to growing crops for the
Raisers (UNAG) confirmed that he was finding it difficult to organize meetings of the cooperative, which still includes only a minority of the peasants. This is an exemplary struggle in very difficult
VISIT TO A NORTHERN VILLAGE
The tactic of the contras is clear. is to attack the two sectors revolution has made possible significant advances - health and education - and to do this in the regions where such outrages can be carried out with the the greatest impunity
At the end of July, the jeep carrying doctor visiting the hamlets around Totogalpa fell into an ambush and the driver was killed. The result — no more doctor's calls for the peasants living a long way from the town.
A gigantic effort has been made in education - 18 schools have been opened for a population that totals 5,000 per-
But recently a woman primary teacher was kidnapped by the contras. As a result, fearing for their lives, six teachers stopped going to their school and it had to shut down temporarily. One of the teachers is a former peasant who learned to read thanks to the literacy
This is the sort of thing the
To carry out their tactic of spreading terror, the contras have a certain basis of
This poor area was one of those from which Somoza recruited his Nation
The contras also benefi from violently anti-Communist sermon by the reactionary section of the Catholi
According to the testimony peasant who is an avowed supporter o the revolutionary process and lives twen ty kilometers from the town, the line tha the contras take for the old peasants is: "We are with Ovando y Bravo (the archbishop of Managua). Anyone who is not with him is against God."
rule the roost
The resurgence of counterrevolutionary operations in August is evident in a statement to the Council of State on May 4, 1983, the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega already estimated the caused by such actions at 2% of the Gross National Product, or one entire week of work by the country. This is the initial result of operations than can only be carried out with the help of the CIA.
Nonetheless, the objectives set by the leaders of the armed counterrevolution have not been achieved. In all the towns they have tried to attack, they have run up against determined resistance. In no town have they been able to carry out the sabotage actions their plans called for.
On Friday, August 19, 1983, an FDN representative acknowledged this failure, saying that they had no hope in the context of the present relationship of forces, of "military victory against the Sandinista army." (5)
Such an admission does not mean, however, that the FDN is giving up the
What it reflects is the need for more aid from U.S. imperialism. In fact, the poor results the contras have achieved by comparison with the objectives they set themselves point toward increased intervention by U.S. military forces. They do not mean that the dangers that hang over the Nicaraguan revolution are any less acute.
One of the contras' present limitations has to do with their inability for the moment to offer a credible political solution for all the counterrevolutionary sectors that have a potential base in
Any doubts about the existence and activity of this counterrevolutionary social base should be dispelled by a look at the combination mass and mass meeting held in honor of Archbishop Ovando y Bravo on August 14, 1983, in Managua, during which the U.S. ambassador was applauded by 15,000 persons.
Organizing such a ceremony to celeexport market.
The fact that the heart of Nicaragua is surrounded by border regions that, for the reactionaries are running up against objective conditions, remained largely outside the war of liberation constitutes an additional problem for the revolution.
A part of the area that borders on Honduras, thus, is characterized by a population - mountain villages, a few towns, and by isolated farms, without even clusters to form hamlets.
Every peasant has to walk hours every day to work the hill-side plots. the case, for example in Totogalpa, a town 25 kilometers from the fontier. On July 12 and for four consecutive nights, this village came under mortar fire from the Honduran side of the bor-
In this thinly populated region, it is a six hour walk from one of the five hamlets to the town of a thousand inhabitants. There are no big estates to expropnor much unused land to bring
The leader of the local organization of the village of Totogalpa an active mobilization - city councils,
Committees, Sandinthe militia, and UNAG. are rallying militant fighters.
Clearly, the section that is most mobilized is the youth, which has been directly affected by the major expansion of
What the revolution meant first of all for the leader of the Sandinista Youth here was the opening of schools, which made it possible two young people from this isolated village to go to university, one in Cuba and the other in Nicaragua's second larg. est city, Leon.
Also important is the growth of the cooperative movement. nical and economic advice to the peasants. The result is that the banks and wholesale buyers are no longer all powerful. These gains are defended arms in hand by thirty members of the militia. The conbrate the continuing pastorate of a prelate who was a faithful friend of Somoza is a whole program in itself. To dare, in the midst of a period of imperialist ag gression to call for applause for the U.S. ambassador, as the auxiliary archbishop, Bismark Carballo, did means identifying yourself openly with the counterrevolufact, the Catholic hierarchy presided over by Ovando y Bravo represents main bourgeois institution in the country, with an organized network of influence that extends from Managua into the remote rural areas. This is far from the case, for example, of the opposition bourgeois parties grouped in the Demo cratic Coordinating Committee, which includes the Social Christian Party, the Liberal Constitutional Party, and the Social Democratic Party.
As for the contra organizations - the FDN, which operates in the North, and 4. Idem., August 19, 1983.
Dispatch from the Nicaraguan Press Agency (ANN), August 19, 1983.
mined activists that leads them to go to defend the gains of the revolution, all the Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE) led by Eden Pastora, which is active on the southern frontier with Costa Rica, they have not yet managed to draw behind them all the big landowners, big merchants, and industrialists. Some of these are still trying to safeguard their interests within the country.
The existence of this counterrevolution was explained as follows by Jaime Wheelock, one of the nine FSLN commanders, on August 14, 1983, at a ceremony of turning over land to peasants in Massaya in the southern part of the the front lines in the defense of the revo-
The withdrawal of such activists from production both in the cities and in the countryside is planned on the basis of criteria that scarcely take account of the needs of production itself. The inevitable result is problems in production.
More serious still is the problem posed by the departure of the best activists for impelling the unions, the mass movement, and the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS). If there is a consistant pattern of the most active leaving for the front, it arms to the people." (8)
When this proposal was submitted for discussion to the Council of State on August 10, 1983, it sparked a very wide-ranging debate. In fact, this was a good indication of the social polarization that is sharpening in the country. posed law puts this new military service in the context of defending the revo-
Notably it says: "In its historic pro. gram the FSLN included abolition of the force that was the enemy of the country.
"There is a counterrevolution because седакthere is a revolution.
The counterrevolution is going to be more active because vando la produce the revolution is going to continue to attack the interests of certain people.
For every person who suffers loss, a hungain." (6)
Continuing dred will to address the peasants, he said: "the lands that the revolution is turning over to you will never be taken back by the bour-
TODOS SOMOS RESPONSABLES DE LA PRODUCCION geoisie."
INISTERIO DEL TRABAJO
ORGANIZING THE DEFENSE
OF THE REVOLUTION
Defending the gains of the revolution comes first in Nicaragua. It is an
'Participate in the revolution, increase production' (DR) urgent and immediate task: "They will not get past the border! All arms to the people! A single army!" - these were the main slogans in the summer of 1983.
The political and military defense of a revolution under attack necessarily sets in motion great social processes. All the efforts that are being made now to extend, rationalize, and raise the technical level of the military defense are intertwined with a process of social polariza-
The very gravity of the imperialist aggression is highlighting more and more every day who is defending the revolution, who is fighting against it, and who is holding back from assuming that are being taken up by the urban working people, as well as the agricultural and the small peasants in the countryside.
the FSLN leadership is being led to base itself still more resolutely on the classes that form the social founda-
The defense of the revolution has thus far been organized on four distinct levels - nonarmed armed militias organized to defend the neighborhoods, villages, or enterprises; reserve battalions ready to be sent to combat zones; and the standing army, the Sandinista People's Army (EPS). general principle applies to recruiting for these four structures - it is on the basis of volunteering. People are asked first to sign up and then to go off when the time
This systematic appeal for volunteers is coming up today against the limitations posed by its results for production, both from the standpoint of economic efficiency and political motivation in the workplaces.
It is emulation among the most deterbecomes more difficult to mobilize the
In most of the big factories in Managua, any visit starts with a listing of those who have left for the front, in the
A great many of them are activists of the Sandinista Workers Confederation (CST) or the Sandin-
Defense Committee, or the Sandinista Youth. This problem is made worse by the fact that the number of those who have fallen in the defense of the revolution is beginning to be significant by comparison with the economic active population and the cruel lack of political and
Daniel Ortega has estimated the total number of Nicaraguans felled by blows of the counterrevolution at (7) So, it is important to broaden the base of a defense system that needs skills and military training. This is the objective of the new Patriotic Military Service announced on July 19 by Daniel Ortega in his speech on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the revolution.
He ended by saying: We have to prepare ourselves to fight and to win, with all the mighty power of the organized people. The National Leadership (of the FSLN) has decided, with the approval of the Government Council, to introduce a law establishing Patriotic Military Service.
"It is the decision of the National Leadership, approved by the Government Council for National Reconstruction, to supply arms in an orderly and organized way to every corner of the country, all the arms to the people. This is so that the people, organized on a territorial basis in the Sandinista people's militias, can have weapons with which to fight. arms to the people to defend the land, to people, the National Guard. It called for creating a revolutionary patriotic people's army in which students, workers and peasants, as the fundamental forces in society, could defend their gains arms in hand against the inevitable counterrevolution by internal and external coun terrevolutionary forces." (9)
NATIONAL SERVICE AND THE
TERRITORIAL MILITAS
The proposed law calls for active service by all men between the ages of 17 and 25, if required. Women between the ages of 18 and 40 will be able to participate in the reserve service, according to the needs determined by the Ministry of Defense. All Nicaraguan citizens may be called up for this active or reserve service.
Registration will begin on October 1. In a country where there is no census, in the immediate future the task of drawing up the lists falls to the administrative or military authorities. Registration is therefore voluntary, that is at least in the first stage of the new service. It is this that will make it possible to form the first contingents.
The first units will be organized on January 1, 1984. They will involve 20,000 to 30,000 Nicaraguans. The number is limited primarily by the number of officers the EPS has to organize the new recruits. 6. Notes taken during Jaime Wheelock's speech (this part was not picked up in the press the following day). 7. Speech by Daniel Ortega, July 19, 1983. government press service.
Idem.
Draft law military service, from the government press service.
7
All the mass organizations that support the revolutionary process are firmly backing this project. The only reservations have come from the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan Women's Association (AMNLAE). These are because the proposed law makes a distinction between men and women, excluding the latter from active military service.
With respect to this, Glenda Monterrey, a member of the Sandinista Assembly, has written: "We all have limitations, and we run into obstacles. This does not mean that our society can adopt a law that includes discrimination on the basis of sex.... Women are demanding the right to take an active part in the service that is being organized." (10)
This question is posed all the more forcefully because the militias are mixed. And in separate battalions, women make up 30% of the reserves involved directly in fighting the contras on the front.
Barricada, the organ of the FSLN, has given considerable space to this debate among supporters of the revolutionary
More fundamentally, this military service law has been seen both by those on the revolutionary side and on the counterrevolutionary side as a calculated challenge to the bourgeoisie. It will be shown concretely who defends the revolution, because in principle the law applies to
In Monimbo, in the southern part of the country, this law has evoked a lot of
"The reactionaries have begun to spew out vilification and falsifications about this process, which means that our role will be to clarify it and make the will of the people felt," said Carlos Salinas, a small shopkeeper.
Paula Rodriguez, another local person
"We will see now who really defends the revolution. We'll see what they do. This is a goal for the people."
Gonzalez Mendez, a painter-carpenter in the same neighborhood, said: very important for us workers because if we don't defend the revolution, who can do it? I don't think the sons of the bourgeoisie will do it." (11)
To counter these assessments, which reflect a sound class instinet, the bourgeoisie has launched a rumor campaign the theme of "They're going to take away your sons." According to conreports, students from big and middle-bourgeois backgrounds already left the country. The demand for U.S. visas has risen. A new process of clarification is under way.
The implementation of the Patriotic Military Service law will make it possible to bring to fruition all the work that has been done for youth. Through the mass organizations, the young people have remained in most regions the spear-
This mass enrollment of the youth will make possible a better distribution of the tasks of political and military defense. It fits into the more general policy of rationalizing the defense system to make it more efficient and to adjust it step up in exterin the cities have the basis of tervould be wrong to of normalization However, the sysThere are only 96 the militia battalions organized on a territorial basis include a large proboth industrial and agricultural workers, as well as other working people."
The task of these militias is to defend the urban areas in the event of a large-
"The battalions must guard the cities, the industries, and the schools so that the invaders will not be able to take any street... What the national leadership (of the FSLN) is preparing for is the most massive counterattack against the threat we think we now face - that is conventional military assaults backed up by the commando forces directed against strategic points such as the airport or the telecommunications build-
It is necessary to realize the gravity of the threats of imperialist aggression as they are seen in Managua. The objectives of the national leadership of the FSLN build up the essential defense effort and to do everything possible to stop the closing of the vise that is being clamped on to crush the Nicaraguan
The peace proposals made by Daniel Ortega in the name of the FSLN and the Council of Government on July 9, 1983, are part of this. They refute the false arguments spread by the pro-imperialist propaganda agencies that a small country like Nicaragua is deliberately seeking a military confrontation with U.S. imper-
However, in view of the U.S. threats, the question of immediate military effectiveness is decisive. from the deepening of the revolutionary stepping up the mobilization of the social
An indication of the breadth of the present mobilization is the rally organized in the country's second largest city, Leon, to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the revolution on July 19. gathered more than 120,000 persons.
This is a considerable figure by comparison with the total Nicaraguan population of 2,900,000, of whom 990,000 are economically active. It is all the more significant because the leaders had to dissuade a lot of workers and peasants from coming to the rally because of problems of transport.
Peasants began to be assembled in columns at 3:00 in the morning and remained in them for nearly nine hours But this joyful, turbulent throng was far from the image of a militarized population that is being spread by the big international press.
Tens of thousands of peasants and urban working people chanting "All arms to the people!" certainly make a striking impression. But the level of the mobilization can only be fully appreciated when you consider the role of the mass organizations and the relations they maintain with their base.
La recent book. Jaime Wheelock. ol the nine leaders of the FSLN. wrot "We are able to mobilize politically 600,000 persons — the great majority of them members of the mass organizations the revolution has created. enough if you consider that the country's economically active population is 900,000." (14)
The problem is that the level of mobilization is far from even. This is the result in particular of the newness of most of the mass organizations, which still have to consolidate their base and build up their structure of intermediate cadres.
In an interview granted to us, Lucio the national coordinator of the CST, summed up the history of his confederation in this way: "In 1979, only 6 percent of the economically active popbadly organized and deeply divided con-
The CST was founded on July 27, 1979. In the whole first phase, the CST was organized from the top
Referring to the last congress of the CST, held in February 1983, he made the
"This wasn't really a congress but a founding assembly. Now a process of building the union from the bottom up is beginning on a new basis."
This point is not just a semantic one. Most of the mass organizations have operated with appointed leaderships on the various levels, although in the case of the UNAG, the ranks had the right to refuse to accept the leaders appointed from
The "founding assembly" of the CST has inaugurated a new mode of
What this means, Julio Jimenez explained, is that "all the leaders elected at any level of the union have to go 10. Barricada, August 18, 1983. 12. INEC data, February 31, 1982 13. Barricada, July 27, 1983. 14.El Gran Desafio, p. 129, Ediciones Nueva Nicaragua.
Of course, overnight, and
100,000.
fitted the CST.
A notable example is the proposal the
CSN made in negotiations with the government this summer over the question of minimum wages in industry and in agriculture.
The CST proposed to the other confederations to set the minimum-wage cities
'SN, an ted th
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But the recognition he revo triety positiv ado, on the case of the problem natural catastrophes in
"We debts.
banks, through union members enrolled in unions
1980.
the unions.
largest.
Jimenez.
the CST.
transformed year,
Trade-Union
(CSN).
and the Workers political currents,
Only the
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25 to sing an he orl
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It doesn't le that th ership by the stage,
The working class agains explained Lucio reats ar volutior have is ir strategi
(founde society.
(17)
resc th on for of suk
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-.
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"It is necessary to favor labor and confedapital."
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the of context ne mounting offensiv onary there roor impetus of Nicaraguan to th hes the revolu that moreover, the recognized national the en, lead
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small peasants.
Far from opposing of this sort of movement.
process.
The urgent task
This is by the
Central America.
15. The magazine Envio, May 1983; and INEC date, 1982.
16. As a standard for comparison,
, a bus ticket costs 1 cordoba and a meal in a factory cafeteria, about 25 cordobas.
17. Nuevo Diario, August 4, 1983.
18. Barricada, July 12, 1983.
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