NICARAGUA
The people's response to Reagan's threats
The Nicaraguan revolution is increasingly under threat. It is under threat of direct imperialist aggression demonstrated by the increasingly precise statements from US leaders and in the fact of US aid to counterrevolutionary forces spreading terror throughout the country. But the revolution is also in danger of being strangled through the systematic policy of economic and financial blockades operated by imperialism.
Up until the month of November the financial losses to the Nicaraguan revolution in 1984 alone were 255 million dollars incurred by the imperialists' offensive on the Nicaraguan revolution.
According to some sources this sum represents 70% of export returns. Over the last four years these losses represented more than one billion dollars.
In the face of this difficult economic situation, the Nicaraguan government while relentlessly pursuing its efforts to mobilise the people for defence, is at the same time developing an audacious diplomatic strategy aimed at loosening the noose of the imperialist blockade, around their necks.
government has just adopted a series of economic austerity measures withdrawing subsidies on certain basic products.
In effect, the government's policy of subsidies aimed to guarantee better supplies to the masses has been diverted. It had, on the contrary, strengthened speculation. Also in agriculture, the subsidy of basic goods, at great cost to the state, resulted in the reduction of the amount of land being used for growing corn and beans, because it became more economical to buy those products at the subsidised price than to produce them oneself. This in turn brought about a heightened speculation and the growth of a black market.
The restriction on subsidies of basic products is going hand-in-hand with a rise in wages aimed, mainly to attract workers into the productive sector and to maintain the level of consumption of the masses, despite inflation.
We publish below a report from our correspondents in Managua, which pinpoints the difficulties of the economic situation and draws up the tasks posed by the need for international solidarity against imperialist
At the same time within the country the Sandinista aggression.
C. GARMENDIA and P. RIVERA C. GARMENDIA andP RIVER A
MANAGUA - Seventy thousand Managua militia members and delegations from the border areas rallied here on February 26, the anniversary of the founding of the Sandinista People's Militias, to respond to Reagan's threats.
This year, 1985, "the year of unity against aggression and for peace," will be a crucial year for the survival of the Sandinista People's Revolution and for the struggles of the peoples of Central Amer-
Everything is in question. The mercenary forces financed by the CIA and the imperialist interventionist army are taking up positions in a context in which the avenues of dialogue have been blocked (i.e. the mediation of the Contadora group, Manzanillo, and the Hague international court). The machine has been set in motion.
In Nicaragua today, more and more weakened economically by aggression but with the masses mobilised, the fate of the revolutionary is being decided.
Seventy thousand Nicaraguans, the defense force's organizations in the battalions of the Managua Territorial Militias, marched the entire day through the city, armed and shouting slogans. Armed peasants from the border areas, from Yali, Jalapa, Somotillo, and so many other villages that have become the symbols today of the peoples resistance to imperialism, massed in the Plaza de la Revolucion. International Viewpoint 25 March 1985
There were workers, peasants, women (including both the very young and the very old, mothers and companions of comrades fallen in the fight who have taken up the weapons of their children or their companions). There were young people, young men and women, students and workers. "A gun for every hand," the minister of defense, Comandante Humberto Ortega, said that day. And he added: "We will do everything possible to see that every citizen gets a gun" to defend every inch of Nicaraguan territory.
"The National Leadership of the FLN has issued an appeal to all its activists and sympathizers, to its political organizations, mass organizations and social organizations. We appeal to the people of Nicaragua to confront the challenge of this year, 1985, to support in a consistent way the military and economic measures that the government of the republic has taken and will continue to take." (From the speech of Comandante Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, in the name of the National Leadership of the FSLN, on February 8, 1985.)
The mobilization of February 26 was only one milestone in the great campaign that is to be waged in 1985. To meet the challenge of this decisive year, exertion and discipline are needed to organize a fighting and producing homefront to face the possibility of imperialist intervention.
A massive campaign of mobilization is being built up by the press, the TV, the radio, in the factories, in the cooperatives, in the neighbourhoods. Appeals are being made for youth to sign up for Patriotic Military Service (SMP). In recent days, it was the turn of Managua and the surrounding region. Thousands of youth lined up at the recruitment offices. Tomorrow another round of recruiting will open up throughout the country, directed at a younger age group, coming after the call up of the active reserve.
A week ago in Masaya and Managua, practice operations were started by the Territorial Militia Battalions. These units mount a continuous defense of local areas both in the cities and in the countryside. They are backed up by the Sandinista People's Army and the youth of the Patriotic Military Service, as well as civildefense groups of women, workers and the very young.
Their operations included practice defense against air attacks, against bombing, including the entire community. They involved exercises in returning fire, use of shelters, the handling of anti-aircraft guns, and first aid, as well as fighting in urban and rural conditions. The experience of the people's insurrection of 1978, with all its methods, is reviving in the face of a renewed aggression.
All the cadres of the FSLN and the mass organizations have mobilized to carry out the political and defense tasks. In the National Assembly elected on November 4, the political struggle is continuing. The objective is to take steps comst we gravity of the situation mensurate with the gravity of the situation
3
that the country is experiencing and to force the bourgeois and opposition parties to take a position, to come out against the aggression.
No day goes by without its painful list of victims of the imperialist war being waged against Nicaragua. Ambushes, massacres, kidnappings of peasants that the contras want to impress into their ranks have become a daily drain of blood. The destruction of cooperatives, the spearhead of peasant organization, of crops and schools all tend to foster uneasiness and fear. And, in particular, it represents an enormous economic and human cost for the country.
The Somozista counterrevolution has intensified the tactics it employed back in 1980 - limited operations by small groups that lay ambushes for peasants or political leaders, technicians, and educ ators. Their objective is to create terror and, above all, to avoid having to confront the People's Army, which has been dealing them heavy losses.
This represents a change of tactics following the failure of the contras' operations in 1983/84. Their hit-and-run operations are clearly directed against the economy and production. The target of the counterrevolutionaries in the first three months of 1985 was to do as much harm as possible to the coffee harvest.
Dozens of ambushes were laid for volunteer coffee pickers, students and urban or agricultural workers. In Jinotega and Matagalpa twenty privately owned coffee plantations have already been totally destroyed by the contras. About 40% of the coffee crop will be lost because of the direct and indirect effects of this war.
Reagan's "crusaders for freedom" have already accumulated a long record of atrocious crimes against humanity. Strategy of terror
Up to last year, the strategy of the Somozistas (fitting into the framework of the overall political, diplomatic and military strategy of the imperialists) was to try to "liberate" a section of Nicaraguan territory. They would then have set up a "provisional government" on this territory, which would be immediately recog nised by the US's regional allies. This would have been used to legitimize direct intervention by the armies of the neighboring states first (which in fact have been constantly looking for excuses for conflict) and then of the US.
This strategy has totally failed. It is degenerating today into tactics of terror, attacks upon production, with the more or less open support of the CIA and the
Reagan Administration, combined with constant US-Honduran joint maneuvers on the border, the mining of ports, spy flights, and so on. But the US administration is determined to get out of this impasse.
In the recent period, while more than
4,500 GIs were being mobilized in the
Pino Alto III maneuvers on the Nicaraguan borders (simulating an invasion suppos-
4 edly in response to one by Nicaragua!), while all the mercenary troops were mustering on the Honduran and Costa Rican frontiers, the US pushed aside all means for a solution through dialogue.
Washington withdrew from the Manzillo bilateral talks under the pretext that the Contadora group already provided a better framework, and then it went on arrogantly to boycott that. Everything was done to demonstrate to the US Congress that dialogue with Nicaragua was out of the question.
Comandante Humberto Ortega declared that there was a threat of a total naval blockade, and that every measure would be taken to prepare for such an eventuality. After thousands of volunteers had mobilized to save the coffee harvest, which had already been delayed by the diversion of the students in November to the defense of Managua, if the coffee crop were blocked in the harborofCorinto, it would have dramatic consequences for the country's economy!
Behind the proposal to Congress for the first time to openly appropriate 14 million dollars for aid to the contras is a sordid battle that Reagan has been waging against certain opposition sections of the Democratic Party in order to open up the way for intervening in Nicaragua.
Up until now, aid to the contras has gone through the CIA's "discreet" channels, mercenaries' associations and other "good works," as well as armies such as the Israeli one. If this appropriation were voted it would mean that the Reagan Administration had succeeded in getting unanimous support for an intervention on the basis of a policy of declared war rather than "covert war" , as the policy has been up till now.
However, it should be clear that an impasse in the debate in Congress or rejection of the proposed appropriation would not mean an end to the aggression, although it would represent a political and "diplomatic" setback that would complicate Reagan's calculations and reduce his margin for openly maneuvering. (The US withdrawal from the national Court at the Hague and its declaration that it did not recognise the court's authority have not failed to cause problems for the US.)
Approval of Reagan's proposed appropriation would in fact be an open declaration of war against Nicaragua and a clear endorsement for counterrevolutionary and interventionist plans in Nicaragua and
Central America.
The revolutionary government has just issued an invitation to the US House of
Representatives and Senate to set up a joint congressional committee to come and see for themselves, "without any restrictions," that "our country's military buildup is purely defensive and not offensive."
President Daniel Ortega made this proposal during the visit of a delegation from the US Conference of Bishops to Nicaragua. The archbishop of New York has y to serve as announced that he is ready to serve as intermediary in this new move.
Once again the White House was caught tas uard by the boldness of the Sandinis- off guard by the boldness of the Sandinisdiplomatic maneuvers. Reagan's spokesperson, Larry Speaks, said that he was delighted by this proposal. At the same time, Secretary of State, George Schultz, has attempted to discredit it, resorting to anti-Communist hysteria. Jatın bourgeoisie ny away Irom Reaga The policy of the "big stick" which has cost the lives of thousands of people in the Southern-Cone countries looks to these bourgeoisies as a less and less effective means for suppressing people's struggles and insurrectionary processes.
In these semi-industrialised countries of Latin America, the mass movement of solidarity with Nicaragua and against US intervention is reinforcing and reinvigorating the movement of the workers at home for their economic demands. The bourgeoisies, which perceive this danger quite clearly, are being driven to commit themselves more and more to the Contadora operation in order to try and block the threat to themselves.
The Reagan government realizes what is happening. It expressed its disapproval to the Alfonsin government loudly and clearly through its embassy in Buenos Aires when 150 young people from the Communist Youth in Argentina formed a brigade and went to Nicaragua to pick coffee. A massive rally of 30,000 persons gave them a send off from Buenos Aires. it is clear how far the consequences of this could go.
More than 8,000 civilians have been killed in the five years of imperialist aggression against Nicaragua. Some 120,000 peasants have been forced off their land by the pressure of constant attacks. Today, 40% of the national budget in Nicaragua is to go to meet military expenses (as opposed to 25% in 1984). These pressures have obviously made it necessary to mobilize sections of productive workers and move them to the war zones in order to defend the revolution, with the result of dangerously upsetting production.
These problems are compounded by the attacks on economic targets and sabotage. These involve the destruction of cooperatives and productive units, as well as crops; the wrecking of the infrastructure of production; destruction of schools and granaries; the mining of ports; and, most recently, the blocking, by US pressure, of a shipment of oil from Ecuador. The latter will increase the scarcity of transport and energy within the country. Credits have also been frozen.
Since December 1984, when the coffee harvest commenced, twenty private coffee plantations have been totally destroyed by the contras. The objective of this operation is to impede the harvest but also to terrify the volunteer pickers and the coffee growers who continue to produce.
"Of every hundred pairs of shoes made in Nicaragua, forty are soldiers'
International Viewpoint 25 March 1985
boots. Of every hundred pieces of clothing produced, forty go for uniforms. Of every hundred bars of soap, forty go to the fighters. Of every hundred pounds of maize harvested, forty go to the war fronts." That is what Comandante Ortega said on February 8.
The bulk of production, thus, has to be diverted to the fighters, to the workers who have been mobilized and so are not producing any more. And this is giving rise to imbalances, shortages, speculation, and inflation. The effects are hitting the workers in their buying power.
The government is now going to stop subsidies on eleven necessities, which amount to seven million dollars a year. This money will be diverted to the directly productive sector in order to increase the wages, which are going to go up by 46% for urban workers and 100% for agricultural workers.
These raises will go first to productive urban workers and administrative workers and later to be extended to agricultural workers. These increases, which less than make up for the 34% annual rate of real inflation, will be readjusted in two or three months to meet increases in prices. The latter will also go up sharply as the result of the elimination of state subsidies and higher prices for producers.
Crisis and austerity in a situation in which the country's economic life is being disrupted and strangled by imperialism in all areas have not kept the revolutionary government from raising wages, from putting the buying power of the workers and the standard of living of the masses first. The measures in question were discussed and worked out in collaboration with the unions before they were put before the National Assembly. This procedure bears no relation to the IMF imposing its dictates.
Measures are being introduced to establish markets run by MICOIN [the state distribution network] in all the work centers. They will be run by the unions and will sell necessities at fixed prices in order to assure that the wage increases remain real and that the workers will not have to acquire what they need on the speculative free market. Exchanges among enterprises may lengthen the list of price-controlled products. Such operations are to be carried out by the unions as well.
Consumption of necessities has continually risen since 1979, in fact it has nearly doubled. However, production has not increased at a commensurate rate, in particular since 1983. And food imports have been growing. It is necessary, therefore, to provide incentives for production, and, above all, to draw into production the large numbers of working people who have gone over into the informal tertiary sector (for example, street vendors), who have been speculating in state subsidized products, an activity that has been far more lucrative than productive work.
At the start, the increase in consumption will be slowed. This is to make it possible to give a new impetus to producInternational Viewpoint 25 March 1985 tion (better prices for producers) and to put into operation new ways of organizing production, distribution and the monitoring of these processes.
Meat consumption, for example, dropped by a fourth in one week in Managua and Leon as a result of higher prices. But you do not see the speculators and pedlars lining up early in the morning anymore and emptying the stores. It is ordinary consumers who are coming to buy.
There will also be changes in the exchange rate of the dollar. The official rate of 28 cordobas to the dollar no longer corresponds to the reality. Differential exchange rates will be instituted, depending on where the currency comes from and what it is intended to go for. "a new endeavour for international solidarity
However, the revolutionary government has made it clear that these are temporary measures, which will be reviewed in collaboration with the unions. They are not proposed as definitive solutions to the structural problems of the crisis-wracked dependent economic system inherited from the Somoza regime. The Sandinista People's Revolution does not claim that it can change this situation by raising wages.
The means by which Nicaragua has been struggling since 1979 to transform this dependent capitalist economic system are agrarian reform, total nationalization of internal commerce and transport, socialization of health services and free education, setting up committees of industrial workers and agricultural wage workers and organizing cooperatives.
The international economic crisis, moreover, is costing Nicaragua dear, as a dependent country historically specialized in the export of agricultural products, devoid of any industrial infrastructure, even one related to its agricultural economy in the framework of the Central American Common Market promoted by the imperialists. And the cost of the crisis is compounded by the imperialist boycott of Nicaragua's products on the world market.
The discussion on the 14 million dollar appropriation for the contras in the US Congress, the positions of some sections the Democratic Party, the positions of the Socialist International, of the Latin American bourgeoisies and even the European bourgeoisies are the result of the working people mobilizing against intervention.
The only way that we can help the people of Nicaragua and the other peoples of Central America effectively to halt imperialist aggression is through united mobilizations. This is also the only way we can effectively support and defend the consolidation and advance of the revolutionary regime in Nicaragua and the extension of the revolution in Central America.
This is where our internationalist tasks are concentrated today, in the unconditional defense of the revolutionary process in Nicaragua within the context of the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle.
As Comandante Bayardo Arce has said, "the new imperial ideology has to be countered with a new endeavor for international solidarity."
Fourth Intemational supports mobilisation against US imperialism The following is the statement of support for the April 20 demonstration against US military intervention in Central America, adopted by the Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International..
As the US government deepens its aggression against the workers and peasants of Nicaragua, El Salvador and throughout Central America and the Caribbean, a march on Washington D.C. along with protest demonstrations in San F ancisco and other cities has been called for April 20, 1985, by a broad array of forces in the United States.
The first demand of these demonstrations is to stop the US military intervention in Central America. Other demands call for a halt to US support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, to the mounting US war budget and nuclear arms build up, and to racism and unemployment.
Sponsors of the call already include trade unions such as the International Association of Machinists and the United Food and Commercial Workers; civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation PUSH and the League of Urited Latin American Citizens; the Rainbow Coalition; the Committee in Solidarity with the People in El Salvador and other Central American solidarity and anti-war groups; church and religious organisations; and many other social and political organizations. A nationwide coalition has been set up to coordinate plans for the demonstration, as well as local coalitions in many cities.
Along with the many individuals and organizations that will participate in building this action, the April 20 demonstation offers special opportunities to draw the unions and organizations of oppressed nationalities, women and working farmers into the fight against Washington's aggression against the peoples of Central America and the Caribbean. The February 1985 World Congress of the Fourth International hails this initiative in the United States and encourages anti-war forces, Central American solidarity committees, trade unions, workers' organisations and youth organisations in other countries to discuss holding solidarity actions on or around the April 19 - 22 anti-war activities in the United States.
BRITAIN RDIT AIN