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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/06/AR2006110600506.html
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Ortega Set To Reclaim Nicaraguan Presidency
By N.C. Aizenman / Washington Post Foreign Service
MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 6 -- Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist president and nemesis of President Ronald Reagan, appears to have won back Nicaragua's top job.
With 62 percent of precincts reporting, Ortega was comfortably leading the field of five presidential contenders with 39 percent of the vote, virtually ensuring him a first-round win under Nicaragua's electoral rules.
In a public appearance Monday night, Ortega, 60, declined to declare victory until the full count was in. "We are ready to work together [with the other candidates] to eradicate the poverty of Nicaragua, to provide security to the private sector, to provide security to the diverse foreigners in our country . . . and to develop relations with the entire international community," Ortega said, as his wife and campaign manager, Rosario Murillo, stood grinning by his side.
If the results from Sunday's vote hold, they will mark a stunning comeback for the Cold War icon, who has failed twice to regain power since 1990, when voters disillusioned by a decade-long war with U.S.-backed insurgents and government abuses cast his Sandinista National Liberation Front from office.
Ortega's return to Nicaragua's presidency would also constitute an embarrassing setback for the Bush administration. American officials have recently made thinly veiled threats that the United States would impose economic sanctions and other punitive measures if Ortega was reelected, arguing that Ortega has not changed despite his embrace of Catholicism, pronouncements in favor of a market economy and efforts to cast himself as the candidate of "reconciliation."
U.S. officials appeared motivated in part by concerns that Ortega would be an eager partner in pushing an anti-American alliance with Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez. Ortega's return is particularly galling to many in the Bush administration who devoted their careers to getting rid of him in the 1980s.
Longtime political analysts in Managua said that Ortega was too pragmatic to attempt to resurrect controversial policies implemented during his 1979-90 government that drew international condemnation -- such as military conscription, confiscation of some private property and press censorship.
"Ortega is not going to be stupid and commit the mistakes of the past," said Emilio ?lvarez, an analyst and critic of the Sandinistas. "He knows that the Soviet parachute is gone and that he is totally dependent on the assistance of the United States, the International Monetary Fund and foreign investment."
Instead, Alvarez predicted that Ortega would try to reach out to Nicaragua's impoverished populace with more modest measures, such as raising taxes to pay for salary increases for low-level government workers and for increased spending on education.
Still Alvarez worried that Ortega "is erratic. He has these messianic dreams of being the savior of the people that make him vulnerable to unworkable economic schemes."
During the campaign, Ortega caused alarm in the business community by suggesting that he wanted to compel banks to lower the fees they charge Nicaraguans living overseas to wire money to relatives back home.
Carlos Chamorro, editor of the respected weekly newsmagazine Confidencial who broke with the Sandinistas a decade ago, agreed. "Nobody thinks the country is going to go belly up with Ortega," said Chamorro, whose mother, Violeta Chamorro, defeated Ortega in the 1990 elections. "But he represents a step backwards because he could bring economic uncertainty and slow the process of investment and job creation."
Ortega's supporters, including many underemployed youths too young to remember the years of Sandinista rule, are convinced that he is the only candidate who empathizes with their plight. As word of his early lead filtered out, they poured into Managua's streets, setting off firecrackers and cheering ecstatically.
Ortega's closest rivals, meanwhile, held news conferences Monday to announce that they were not yet ready to accept defeat.
"This is not over until the last vote is counted," said Eduardo Montealegre of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, who trailed Ortega by 8 points in the preliminary count.
Jos? Rizo, of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party, said the preliminary results were misleading because they did not include many polling stations in Nicaragua's remote rural areas, where his support is strongest. He said a count by his campaign workers put him close enough behind Ortega to force a runoff election.
However, the results released by the electoral commission were bolstered by similar findings from a "quick count" of a representative sample of ballots released Monday by Ethics and Transparency, a widely respected Nicaraguan civic group that fielded 11,050 observers to every polling and counting center in the nation to carry out their own tally alongside the official one.
At a news conference in Managua on Monday, Pablo Ay?n, president of Ethics and Transparency, said their count, giving Ortega 38 percent of the vote, had a margin of error of 1.7 percent.
Although there were complaints of irregularities at some polling stations, international observer teams declared that the election was orderly and lawful.
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Tuesday November 7, 2006
Ortega back in power, early poll results show
· Sandinista head 'triumphs in Nicaraguan first round'
· Split opposition cries foul and US warns of sanctions
Reported by Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent / The Guardian
Supporters of Daniel Ortega celebrate in the streets of Managua, Nicaragua. Photograph: Dario Lopez-Mills/AP
The Sandinista leader and former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega appeared to have mounted a spectacular political comeback last night after preliminary results showed he had won Nicaragua's presidential election in the first round.
Mr Ortega led by a margin which seemed wide enough to avoid a run-off and to deliver a stinging rebuke to Washington, which had openly campaigned against him. Returns from about 40% of polling stations gave him 40.1%, far ahead of his four rivals and over the threshold for victory. An estimate by an independent watchdog, Ethics and Transparency, which was spot on in previous elections, put him at 38.5% and nine points clear of his nearest rival.
To win in the first round a candidate must score 40%, or more than 35% with a five-point margin over the nearest rival. The Sandinistas did not wait for the final results to erupt in jubilation, with thousands pouring on to the streets to sing, dance, wave black and red flags, and set off fireworks. Mr Ortega, 60, mellower and cagier since losing three previous elections, made no immediate statement.
Since being ousted from the presidency in 1990, in the wake of a brutal civil war against US-sponsored contra rebels and crippling sanctions by Washington, Mr Ortega has reinvented himself as a moderate and devout Catholic. From a social progressive, critics say he has changed into an ego-driven opportunist who has ditched women's rights and income redistribution in his quest for power. Nevertheless, his victory, if confirmed, will be hailed by Cuba and Venezuela as a leftward tilt in Latin America.
The Sandinistas' main challenger, Eduardo Montealegre, a conservative banker favoured by Washington, trailed at 32.7%, according to the early polling returns. Ethics and Transparency pegged him lower, at 29.5%. Mr Montealegre did not concede defeat, citing irregularities in Sunday's vote. "In a democracy, that is unacceptable. We are going to a second round," he said.
If Mr Ortega's victory is confirmed it will be testimony to his stamina and his opponents' disarray, rather than a surge in his popularity. He scored around the same or better in 1990, 1996 and 2001, yet lost. A change in the law which lowered the threshold for a first-round victory and a split in conservative ranks rewarded the former revolutionary's endurance in running a fourth time. The Sandinistas also split, but the dissident candidate, Edmundo Jarquin, languished at 7%, according to the early results.
Mr Ortega would probably lose a run-off, since the 60% of the population which dislikes him - a figure which has barely budged in four previous elections - could unite around a single opponent.
US officials in the capital, Managua, echoed the claims of irregularities but said they would await the final results before giving a verdict on the election. The Bush administration warned that aid and trade with Nicaragua might suffer if its cold war foe from the Reagan years returned to power. Venezuela, by contrast, offered cheap oil to Sandinista supporters and hinted of more to come should Hugo Chávez's ally join the "pink tide" of leftwing Latin American leaders.
Roberto Rivas, the head of Nicaragua's top electoral body, said the vote was clean and transparent. An army of 17,000 observers, including the former US president Jimmy Carter and EU officials, was expected largely to endorse that view.
Many polling stations opened late because of squabbling between rival party officials who ran the stations, and about 12% of stations closed while people were still queuing to vote. Ethics and Transparency said the numbers affected were too small to affect the outcome.
Mr Ortega ran a deft campaign which mobilised his base with small, but enthusiastic rallies throughout the country. He shunned media interviews and huge rallies lest they concentrated his opponents' minds. Sixteen years of successive conservative governments have left the country stable, but impoverished, making many receptive to his promises of jobs, housing and social services.
But to some critics he is still an authoritarian radical, no matter how many times John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance anthem was played at his rallies. If the losers reject the final result, Nicaragua, though peaceful, could swiftly slide into a political crisis and frighten investors.
A change of policy
· No longer advocates central planning but wants to promote "fair markets" and may renegotiate US trade agreement. Hints that landless peasants ought to receive own plots.
· Preaches reconciliation and appointed Jamie Morales, former Contra spokesman, as running mate. Paid Morales compensation for seizing his home in 1980s. Ortega still lives in it.
· Apologised to Mesqitos, a rural community whose homes were torched by Sandinistas for cooperating with Contra rebels.
· Still chummy with Cuba's Fidel Castro, and also Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, but pledges to seek good relations with all countries, including the US.
· Has abandoned secularism and embraced Catholic church.
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Nov. 6, 2006, 9:17PM
Effort by U.S. to derail Ortega comes up short
Ex-Marxist rebel likely won't face a runoff in his bid to regain presidency
By JOHN OTIS and TIM ROGERS
Email= john.otis@chron.com
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA - With his apparent victory in Nicaragua's presidential election, Daniel Ortega overcame a high-profile push by U.S. officials to derail his campaign.
Critics including American Ambassador Paul Trivelli, Republican members of the U.S. Congress and former White House aide Oliver North warned Nicaraguans that a government led by the former Marxist revolutionary would lead to cutoffs of the country's estimated $220 million in annual aid and a deep freeze in relations with Central America's poorest nation.
"They did everything but threaten to invade," said Mark Weisbrot, a Latin America expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
U.S. interference
Many Nicaraguans were not listening. Ortega, a close friend of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, led the five-man race and, based on incomplete returns Monday night, seemed poised to avoid a runoff.
When Ortega emerged as the front-runner in this year's campaign, U.S. officials began speaking out against him. They branded Ortega as corrupt and anti-democratic and warned that Chavez, a strident U.S. opponent who had publicly endorsed the Sandinista leader, would have a new platform from which to spread his influence in Latin America.
The American campaign against Ortega hit a crescendo shortly before Sunday's vote. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez warned that all U.S. aid for Nicaragua could be at stake. Other officials said the country could be left out of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and that remittances sent home by Nicaraguans living in the United States could be blocked.
By contrast, Chavez promised to step in with economic aid and cheap oil for a leftist Sandinista government. In the end, many voters decided to give Ortega another chance.
"Nicaraguans worry that bad relations with the United States can have really negative consequences," said William LeoGrande, a professor at American University in Washington. "But some were offended (by the U.S. interference) on nationalistic grounds and were more likely to vote for Ortega."
Official returns from 61 percent of the nation's polling stations Monday night put Ortega in the lead with 38.6 percent, compared to 30.9 percent for Eduardo Montealegre, a Harvard-educated banker supported by the United States. Former Vice President Jose Rizo of the ruling Constitutional Liberal Party finished third with about 23 percent.
Earlier on Monday, a nationwide quick count vote sampling by a Nicaraguan electoral watchdog group showed Ortega winning with 38.5 percent, compared to 29.5 percent for Montealegre. To avoid a runoff, Ortega needed either 40 percent of the vote, or 35 percent with at least a five-point margin of victory.
"The Sandinistas won the election," said Pablo Ayon, president of the Nicaraguan Civic Group for Ethics and Transparency, the U.S.-funded organization that carried out the quick count. "In our opinion, these results are final."
Although Ortega stayed behind closed doors for much of Monday, his supporters drove through the streets of Managua, waving red-and-black Sandinista flags and singing a Spanish-language version of John Lennon's Give Peace A Chance, the party's campaign theme.
"This is a moment of great happiness after 16 years of sadness," said a tearful Tomas Borge, who in the early 1960s helped found the Sandinista guerrilla movement that overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and ruled Nicaragua with the Soviet Union's support for the following decade.
Montealegre, a dissident Liberal, was a key part of Washington's strategy to stop Ortega.
Fed up with corruption in the ruling Constitutional Liberal Party, U.S. Ambassador Trivelli and other officials promoted Montealegre, a former foreign minister, as the best man to take on Ortega.
Instead, the Liberals nominated Rizo, who refused U.S. suggestions to drop out. On Sunday, Montealegre and Rizo appeared to have split the majority anti-Sandinista vote. Together, they received far more votes than Ortega.
Although Ortega lost the past three elections by huge margins, the Sandinista took advantage of growing dismay over government corruption scandals as well as the Sandinista Party's formidable get-out-the-vote machine. His victory would give the Sandinistas a second chance to govern, this time in a more peaceful, post-Cold War era in Central America.
Rogers, a freelance journalist, reported from Managua; Otis, from Bogota, Colombia
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http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/ortega/
Profile= Daniel Ortega Saavedra
Born in La Libertad, Nicaragua, on November 11, 1945, to middle-class parents who were actively opposed to Nicaragua's dictator, Anastasio Somoza, Ortega was first arrested for his political activities at the age of 15.
During the early 1960s, after only a few months as a student at the Central American University in Managua, he joined the underground Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). He was put in charge of its urban guerrilla wing in 1967. However, that same year Somoza's National Guard captured him. Ortega was in prison until 1974. Upon his release, the result of a Sandinista hostage taking, he went to Cuba and next returned to Nicaragua to continue what was now a war against the government.
Ortega was one of the leading commanders of the forces that ousted Somoza in July 1979 and became the head of the ruling junta at the head of the government of national reconstruction. A coalition of various opposition groups at first, the junta quickly became the exclusive domain of the Sandinistas as the other members left, dissatisfied with what was turning into a leftist and somewhat corrupt dictatorship.
However, the Sandinista regime did initiate significant reforms that, in many cases, were of great benefit to Nicaragua's poor and could have achieved more, had it not been for a new civil war.
In November 1984, the Sandinistas were victorious in national elections, and Ortega became Nicaragua's president. Opponents charged that the Sandinistas had manipulated conditions during the election campaign in such a way that, although clean at first sight, the vote was actually rather tainted. The U.S. government of Ronald Reagan shared the opposition's criticisms and further intensified U.S. support for the so-called "Contra" rebels -- a coalition of dissatisfied peasants, former Sandinista allies and Somozistas. The result was a cruel and costly civil war that in 1989 compelled the Sandinistas to accept a peace arrangement negotiated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez.
In the February 1990 elections under the Arias agreement, Ortega and the Sandinistas lost to a right-centrist coalition led by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Ortega relinquished the presidency the following April. Since that time, he has remained an influential leader in the Sandinista movement and through it, although less so recently, in Nicaraguan politics. Most recently, he has been in the news in connection with accusations of sexual abuse by a female member of his family.
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http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/18/interviews/ortega/
Interview= Daniel Ortega Saavedra
Daniel Ortega Saavedra was president of Nicaragua from 1985-1990. As one of the leading commanders of the Sandinista forces that ousted Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in July 1979, he became head of the ruling junta in the subsequent leftist regime. In disputed elections in November 1984, he was elected president. During the 1980s Ortega led the Sandinistas in a long and bloody civil war against the U.S.-backed Contras -- a coalition of dissatisfied peasants, former Sandinista allies and Somozistas. A peace arrangement led to national elections in 1990, and Ortega and the Sandinistas were defeated by a right-centrist coalition led by Violeta Chamorro. Ortega relinquished the presidency in April 1991. He was interviewed for COLD WAR in September and October of 1997. This interview has been translated from Spanish.
On the origins of the Sandinista revolution:
We grew up in a situation where we didn't know what freedom or justice were, and therefore we didn't know what democracy was. ... The people of Nicaragua were suffering oppression. This made us develop an awareness which eventually led us to commit ourselves to the struggle against the domination of the capitalists of our country in collusion with the U.S. government, i.e. imperialism. And that's why our struggle took on an anti-imperialist character.
One has to bear in mind that during my childhood and adolescence, I suffered the repression of the Somoza dictatorship in every way: economically, socially, as well as at the hands of the police -- because if we went out on the street to play baseball, for example, the police would come and beat us up and put us in prison. There was nowhere for young people to play sports, and all we experienced was repression. I also became aware through the experience of my family, because my father had fought alongside Sandino and had been imprisoned by Somoza, and my mother was also anti-Somoza and had been sent to jail. And they used to tell all those stories. On the other hand, there were no civic channels through which one might try to achieve change in our country, so we came to the conclusion that the only way to overthrow the dictatorship was through armed struggle.
The Cuban Revolution hadn't triumphed yet. My idol was Sandino, and also Christ. I was brought up a Christian, but I regarded Christ as a rebel, a revolutionary, someone who had committed himself to the poor and the humble and never sided with the powerful. I had a Christian upbringing, so I would say that my main early influences were a combination of Christianity, which I saw as a spur to change, and Sandinism, represented by the resistance against the Yankee invasion. Later, the triumph of the Cuban Revolution was very influential, and Fidel, Che, and Camilo [Cienfuegos] became our main role models. There were also wars going on in Algeria and in Vietnam, which further encouraged us to believe that victory was possible.
On Latin American support for the Sandinistas:
[Cuba and Nicaragua] were close together and both suffered a dictatorship backed by the United States: there it was Batista, here it was Somoza. And there was a desire for profound change; I mean, not just replacing one dictatorship with another, or going from an iron dictatorship to a formal dictatorship within the framework of liberal politics: we wanted a more profound social change, a socialist change, and naturally that led us to identify with the Cuban Revolution.
[Visiting Cuba], I really felt transported to a country that was challenging imperialism, that was putting forward an alternative to capitalism. I mean, it was challenging world capitalism and also the heavy weight of international imperialism. And one came face to face with these very spiritual, moral people who had a great fighting spirit. That's what I felt when I went to Cuba for the first time. ...
Before the triumph of the Revolution, we received aid primarily from Cuba. Cuba had always supported the Sandinista struggle. Later on, as we developed the struggle in our country, Cuba was able to give us much more support. When the governments of Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela, Omar Torrijos in Panama and Rodrigo Carazo in Costa Rica coincided in power, it became easier to bring in weapons from Havana through Panama, and then from Havana directly to Costa Rica, which of course assisted us greatly in overthrowing Somoza's dictatorship.
[Weapons] arrived by air, on airplanes which transported the weapons to Panama. In Panama, the Cuban weapons would be added to some weapons that Panama and Venezuela were giving us, and then they were taken to Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, we would receive the weapons and bring them into the country clandestinely. I would say that that was the way the logistics worked. Most of the weapons were rifles, some artillery (especially antiaircraft artillery), some mortars, but above all it was rifles, which were what the population most needed, because people wanted to fight but they had no arms. ...
Before that time, we received invaluable support from the late Costa Rican leader Jose Figueres, and his help was crucial for the first stage of our insurrection in October Ô77. During our preparations for the insurrection, we were able to count on some weapons which had been left over from Figueres's revolutionary struggle in the Forties; he gave us several dozen rifles, and some machine-guns (which I think included a .30-caliber one and a .50-caliber one). We also got some weapons from the United States, because some of our comrades worked in the solidarity [movement] in the United States and had connections there, so they found a way of buying weapons in the United States and bringing them to Nicaragua via Mexico.
On the Sandinistas' relationship with the United States:
[We took power] with great enthusiasm and a great desire to transform the country, but also with the worry that we would have to confront the United States, something which we regarded as inevitable. It's not that we fell into a kind of geopolitical fatalism with regard to the United States, but historically speaking the United States has been interfering in our country since the last century, and so we said, "The Yankees will inevitably interfere. If we try to become independent, the United States will intervene."
I would say that we tried to neutralize that confrontation with the United States, and around September of Ô79 I went to the United Nations, and before that I visited Washington and had a meeting with President Carter. During the meeting with President Carter, we proposed the development of a new kind of relationship with the United States. During our exchange, [he said that] the American government was worried about the implications of the revolution and that the conservative sections of the United States perceived it as a threat. We insisted that this was an opportunity, as I said to Carter, for the United States to make good the historical damage they had inflicted on our country. Our national anthem still includes the words "Yankee, the enemy of humanity," and we said to him that the only way to abolish that line would be for the attitude of the imperialist powers to change throughout the world, and specifically towards Nicaragua. And then, in concrete terms, we asked President Carter for a certain amount of economic help, and for material support to build up a new army, because the old one had been wiped out. We needed weapons, because Nicaragua didn't manufacture any at the time, so we were asking them to help us in this respect. But they couldn't respond, because there was a public debate going on in the United States at that moment, and the conservatives were accusing Carter of opening the door to "communism," which was the word they used for these changes. It was up to the U.S. Congress to make these kinds of decisions, and the Congress did not want to approve such decisions.
[Our relationship with Cuba] was precisely the challenge -- that the United States should respect our right to maintain friendly relations with whoever Nicaragua wanted. If the United States wanted to put conditions on Nicaragua's relations [with other countries], then it meant that we were starting off on the wrong foot, that the old imperialist attitude was still the same and there was nothing democratic about it at all, and that they were keeping up their dictatorial attitude throughout the world, supported by their economic and military power. So this meant that we started trying to find weapons in other parts of the world. Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support. The first weapons that we received came from Algeria. Algeria identified very much with our struggle. We conducted a series of negotiations at the time, and the first reply we received came from Algeria. Then we began to receive support from other countries of the socialist community, and mainly from the Soviet Union. ...
I remember perfectly well that when we began working in that direction, which we did quite openly, the U.S. government sent us an emissary, Mr. Thomas Enders, and I remember my conversation with him. He came to tell us very clearly that the United States was not going to allow a Soviet-Cuban communist bridgehead to be established in this continent. I said that we had a right to maintain relations with any other country, and that they should respect that right. And then he said that I should understand that they had to power to crush us, to which I replied that we were ready to fight and confront them even though they were a big power -- that Sandino had already confronted them in the past and that we were ready to do so again if they tried to crush us.
On Soviet support for the Sandinista regime:
Well, first of all, we did not assume that others would fight on our behalf; we the Nicaraguans were ready to fight ourselves. What we asked for were weapons so that we could defend ourselves -- that's what we asked of the Soviet Union, of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, of the Algerians, of the Vietnamese; and that's what we received so that we could arm the Nicaraguan people and defend ourselves in that war imposed on us by Ronald Reagan's Administration over a number of years.
[From the Soviet Union] we received rifles, which were still what our government most needed, because clearly, if the United States invaded us, we wouldn't be in a position to wage a mobile war with heavy armaments, so our defense would have to rely on our ability to develop popular resistance forces, guerrillas, throughout the country. So rifles were our main request, plus a few heavy armaments. Some tanks and helicopters arrived from the Soviet Union, but we never managed to get any MiG planes. We asked for planes so that we could use them in this war imposed on us by the United States, because with interceptor planes we could have neutralized the Contras' aerial logistics from Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica. But it seems that the United States put such heavy pressure on the Soviet Union, that even though the Soviets were willing and had already committed themselves in writing to send us MiG-21 planes and trained [our] pilots ... they began procrastinating. And I even remember that in one of the exchanges we had with them, they said that the United States had threatened [them] -- and I remember they even did it publicly during a visit to France, in the presence of President Mitterrand. We had explored the possibility of the French sending us Mirage [planes], and the French were willing; and when this became known, the Americans reacted by announcing publicly that they would not allow those armaments to enter Nicaragua and that they would bomb the Nicaraguan ports [if they arrived]. We asked the Soviets and the French to send the planes regardless, that we were willing to take the risk of Nicaragua being bombed. But in the end it wasn't possible for the planes to arrive in our country. There was an attempt, I remember, to send some smaller planes from Libya, and those planes got as far as Brazil, where they were intercepted and sent back to Libya.
I think that the Soviet Union was guided by a socialist agenda, and that this socialist agenda was in the minds of the Soviet leadership and Party members. There was a conviction that the socialist cause was a just one, and so wherever there were struggles against colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism, the Soviet Union would support those struggles and those causes, in the form of economic and military help. The economic assistance that the Soviet Union gave Nicaragua was invaluable.
On the Sandinistas' war with the Contras:
The fact is that the United States is behind what has happened in Nicaragua, and what they did was to promote a confrontation between Nicaraguans. And we already know how many millions of dollars and armaments they approved for the war in Nicaragua, and the things that were openly discussed in the U.S. Congress about our ports, the contempt of the United States for international law, for the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the decisions of the International Court of Justice, and so on. And of course, it was painful to have to accept that we were being confronted by another part of the Nicaraguan people, who were as poor as the Sandinistas who were defending the Revolution, but who acted as tools of an imperialist policy. ...
This was a war that went beyond [Nicaragua], and without the United States the Contras would not have existed. Without the United States it would have been impossible for Somoza's former Guard to regroup, and it was they who started to organize the first counterrevolutionary units. Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country. So I think it's very clear that external factors played a role in this matter, because I repeat, if I had had the resources to start fostering wars, I could have done so anywhere in the world -- in the United States, for example: first stir people up and then provide them with the weapons to defend the rights they feel they have been denied. ...
I would say that what was going on here was a confrontation with the United States. That was their discourse and that's how they trained [the Contras]. I mean, they trained them to make the same speech to the people as Somoza had made. Somoza set himself up as dictator of our country in the name of anti-communism and the fight against communism, and according to Somoza, Sandino was a communist, as he was in the eyes of the United States. So the training they gave the Contras -- that whole manual the CIA prepared and all the rest of it -- was aimed at exacerbating an already backward mentality, because a population with more than 60 percent illiteracy is obviously a backward population; and a good part of the Contras themselves come from this same section of the population.
On the Sandinistas' 1990 electoral defeat:
[The United States] invaded Panama, which had a great influence on the elections in our country -- because this happened two months before the 1990 elections, and it broke up the support we had and the votes we had accumulated during the campaign. In December we had 47 percent support, with two months' campaigning still to do; [then] the invasion of Panama took place on December 23rd. And when we did a poll the following January, we had come down 10 points to 37 percent --- by which time we were one month away from the elections. ...
It wasn't a completely free election because there was open interference from the United States, from President Bush, in the form of financial and political support to our opponents, as well as threats that the blockade would not be lifted and all the rest of it if [the anti-Sandinitsta opposition party] UNO didn't win. The decisive moment was the invasion of Panama.
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Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta-de-Aztlan
Email= sacranative@yahoo.com
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