National Union of the Opposition (UNO) to drop Its mask and than a model of "national selfthrow Nicaragua into turmoll. Giving way to UNO's most determination" mechanically transreactionary wing, Violeta Chamorro has launched an offensive posed from European conditions?
Not all national questions in Africa against the gains of the revolution through the declaration of a imply state independence. There are of series of anti-worker measures. In three days prices have course exceptions, such as Eritrea. Thirty gone up by 200%. The reply has not been slow in coming - a years of independence have created a new fortnight of social movements and a general strike in the civil institutional, economic and social context.
Although you can hardly talk about these countries having a national consciousness, there is a consciousness of living in a specific national state which is the context for all political struggles. This raises the question of how in a revolutionary crisis, with a rise in mass struggles, notably in the countryside, can every guarantee be given regarding ethnic rights — including rights to self-organization, the right to use their language. The ability to speak English, French or Portuguese is a basic factor in social selection in these countries, where knowledge of one of these languages is a requirement for education beyond the lower levels, thus excluding 80% of the population. What is needed is real bilingualism, which requires literacy in
(and therefore the writing down of) the local language. Only a real revolution made by the rural and worker masses would be able to impose such measures.
• Given the objective weakness of the socialist and workers' movement in black Africa, what kind of contribution can socialists in the imperialist West make to the development of the current struggles?
Revolutionaries in the imperialist countries most directly connected with Africa
— such as France, Britain or Belgium have a number of tasks. The first is to break the wall of silence concerning the nature of imperialist domination in these countries and all its dirty secrets. In
France it is necessary to denounce the policy of the Socialist Party and government in defending the interests of the French state in Africa. This is very difficult, since there is a consensus in these imperialist countries on Africa, including a certain paternalism. The campaign for the cancellation of the debt can make a contribution to breaking the wall of silence.
Secondly, we must, work, think, write about the mechanisms of this domination.
Really understanding how these things work is an element of solidarity. We also have to participate in concrete political aid for the revolutionary current which is
18 beginning to appear in these countries. *
International Viewpoint #187 • June 18, 1990 service. CECILIA GARMENDIA
T HE NATIONAL UNION of the
Opposition (UNO) has been in government since April 25, 1990. Since then, tension has grown unceasingly because of the measures announced by Violeta Chamorro and ever growing demands of the Contras.
After having negotiated the terms and the time period of their demobilization, the Contras have demanded new guarantees. Not accepting the retention of comandante Humberto Ortega as head of the Sandinista People's Army (EPS), they wished to continue to exert pressure for the removal of all power from the Sandinistas and a share of the cake for
The most reactionary sectors of UNO, vice-president Virgilio Godoy, have encouraged the Contras in this attitude and have drawn closer to them with the aim of increasingly provoking the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) - they hope thus to catch the Sandinistas off guard, and make them pay the price for their electoral defeat. The Contras have made considerable demands; they have demanded that a territory is "ceded" to them where their men can install themselves and "work". The government has offered a zone of 16,000 square kilometers in the region of San Juan, on the frontier with Costa Rica, where the FSLN is dominant - the latter, obviously, has rejected this proposal.
At Managua's Intercontinental Hotel, the luxurious residence of US "tourists" in the time of Somoza, meetings between the Contra chiefs and the new men in government have become increasingly frequent. Emissaries of Violeta Chamorro, such as the new minister of the interior, travel frequently to the Contra camps. The Contras, and above all their leaders, moreover, are travelling throughout Nicaragua, under the pretext of visiting their families, alone and without authorization or even legally, under the protection of the United Nations (UN) mission, which is verifying the implementation of the accords. These intrigues are making tensions mount.
The mercenaries continue to pillage the countryside, to menace, attack, confiscate or kill, targeting Sandinista militants in particular. A peasant leader from the Crazo region, Paulino Umana, has been decapitated; another Sandinista militant, Noel Antonio Murillo has been assassinated; a former Somoza national guard has stabbed two people. Local offices of the FSLN are regularly looted and the emblem of the "Mano Negra" (the Black Hand) continues to appear on the walls of the houses of known militants. It is not known if these attacks and provocations are the work of the Contras themselves, of groups of delinquents or of hired men from the most rightist sectors of UNO. Contra leadership reneges on agreement
Officially, the Contras should have begun to give back their arms to the UN representatives before April 25, but they have done so very slowly. According to the accords, 4,000 weapons should have been recovered and destroyed by May 14, but, by that date, only some 300 Contras -a dozen a day! — had given back some old rifles and no ammunition. On May 18, the Contra leadership publicly reneged on the accord signed with the new government and it has put into question its demobilization for June 10, citing the "social instability" of the country and a so-called EPS offensive. The EPS has, on the other hand, begun to disarm the cooperatives of the security zones where the Contras are to regroup, complying with the accords signed. This is not happening without
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Chamorro
problems — the peasants are not returning their rifles with any lightness of heart and are often resisting.
The attitude of the Contras, like the declarations from the most right wing sectors of the UNO, speak volumes about their intentions — judging the Sandinistas to be in a position of weakness after the election of February 25, they aim to provoke them into reacting as soon as possible.
The agreement for the transfer of power signed on March 25 by the FSLN and
UNO, like the speeches of the president and her entourage on the eve of
April 25, invoked a "national reconciliation"; certain sectors of the bourgeoisie wished to avoid frontal attacks on the FSLN and to calm social tensions. The leadership of the FSLN, for its part, responded in a conciliatory tone to this initial moderation. However, the tactics of the UNO have changed from the time of Chamorro's assumption of presidential power.
The government immediately took a series of economic measures which directly hit wage earnand agricultural ers small production. Four devaluations have already taken place since
April 25 (100% at the official exchange rate and 180% at the black market rate, without any equivalent increase in wages, reducing still more the standard of living of a population already hit hard by the crisis. Increases in charges for public services have been announced, as well as in the price of certain food products.
The minister of the economy,
Silvio de Franco, has explained that he wishes to proceed to an
"industrial reconversion", under the of pretext technological
"very improvement, with a policy of foreign aggressive investments"; he has said that national industry must show its competitivity in order to survive (on May 25, some nationalized shoe and textile factories had already put their workers in technical unemployment). This plan also envisages the restoration of a free industrial zone through the aid of "Nicaraguans living abroad", with the aim of developing new exports. The new minister of agriculture is concerned very much more with the big landowners of rice or cotton plantations than with the small producers, who furnish 60% of the national product.
The decree on the leasing out of the nationalized sector (APP), which envisages privatizations at a quicker pace than predicted, has sparked a big reaction. It was announced, with other equally unpopular measures, on May 11, 1990. Former landowners in the sector affected by the agrarian reform could henceforth reclaim
- with or without justification - their former landholdings. So far as the nationalized sector is concerned, with the exception of those lands confiscated from the Somoza dynasty by decree number 3 of 1979, the old latifundaristas can hire the land, whether or not it is being used, by payment in "cordobas-oro" (a new currency in parity with the dollar). If they can prove that they have worked these lands efficiently they can reclaim the payment after a short period. The old landowners can also reclaim the land redistributed to the cooperatives or to the peasants by the
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DERECHO agrarian reform; if these lands cannot be returned to them for "reasons of agrarian reform or if they are occupied by small peasant landowners or by cooperatives which fulfil social and economic functions" they will be compensated.
Bearing in mind that the bourgeoisie does not recognize the usefulness of small peasant production and that the rate of interest on bank credits for producers today is running at 15% (one of the highest in the world), endangering the next agricultural cycle — notably for food cultivation — the door is obviously wide open to the reconcentration of land. The peasants and cooperatives organization (UNAG) and the trade union of the agricultural workers (ATC) are preparing a march of peasants on Managua to protest against these measures and some lands in the nationalized sector, threatened with reprivatization, have been occupied by their agricultural workers.
NICARAGUA
Land and housing distributed in the towns are also challenged by another decree. Finally, the president has issued an order to change the "civil service law"
- which prevents, amongst other things, the dismissal of civil servants for political reasons - and cancelled the collective agreements made (dismissals for political reasons which have already taken place since April 25 have nearly all been blocked by mobilizations in the ministries); 6000 state employees immediately organized a demonstration before the seat of government. The UNO wants to quickly purge the administration of Sandinistas and replace them with "its" people, particularly those who return from exile.
For the moment in any case, it faces a sizeable response.
Finally, under the pressure of the sectors of UNO which are closest to the Contras, the amnesty law adopted by the old assembly (which protects the former high civil servants and ministers
- see IV 184) will also be reviewed to lift the immunity of the former leaders and above all to be extended to former Somozistas. Moises Hassan, deputy of the
Movement of Revolutionary Unity (MUR), former FSLN militant and mayor of Managua, has voted for this law with UNO.
All these measures contradict the populist discourse of Violeta
Chamorro, promised who an improvement in the social situation; they constitute a veritable declaration of war against the
FSLN and the gains of the revolution. It adds up to a "counterreform" as the Sandinistas put it;
the new government has pushed its provocations so far as to announce these decrees whilst in full conflict with the civil service, threatening to declare the strike illegal and dismiss the strikers. The very violent attacks which the pro-UNO press and media have launched against the former administration, accused of diversion of funds and bad management, seek to justify these measures and to legitimize the dismantling of the revolutionary state.
Moreover, in issuing these decrees, the president has encroached on those areas inscribed in the constitution which can only be modified by a vote of parliament.
The Harvard educated technocrats of
Chamorro's governmental team, representing the big financial interests, seek to prove the suitability of a neo-liberal model for a country like Nicaragua (the ministers have awarded themselves salaries going up to $5,500 a month; the minister of the economy requiress $12,000, while an average technician in Nicaragua earns
$48, and the minimum salary being demanded is $150).
But these measures show the true nature 19
NICARAGUA of the government. The FSLN can point this out to all those who voted for the UNO, in the hope of better living conditions and to give a warning to the Sandinista leadership.
The test of forces is happening on a local level also. The installation of the new UNO mayors has often involved violent altercations with the Sandinista councillors and numerous civil servants have been dismissed in municipalities taken by the right. UNO wish to make a clean sweep and install a counterpower, relying on its majority in the municipalities and the regional governments. In this area, the FSLN has been using a carrot and stick approach in an attempt to play on the contradictions of UNO. Thus, the municipal deputies of the FSLN have voted for the new mayor of Managua, Aleman, a big coffee planter. Some days later, he announced his intention to revoke the allocations of housing and land made by the Sandinistas, and to dismiss employees of a municipality which, according to him, was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Sandinista's tactics hard to understand istration, as well as national education, to telecommunications, the water service, health, and so on. Chamorro threatened to use force to dislodge the workers, but in the end she negotiated. She knows well that the use of the police (a body formed by the Sandinistas, which she has not yet been able to touch) intimidates few people. The government would find it hard to make it apply orders of ferocious repression.
Finally, the economic situation could get worse. The US aid demanded by UNO and approved by Congress ($300 million) is coming through an eyedropper. To this day, only a donation of food aid worth $12.5 million has arrived from the US, which was moreover conditional; the benefits of the sale of these products must go towards privatization.
The trade unions are not demanding the fall of the government, seeking instead to oblige it to negotiate and to put a brake on its attacks. This is also the line of the FSLN which unambigously supports the movement.
We are witnessing an acceleration of the response of the FSLN, provoked by the attitude of UNO and also reinforced by the breadth of the resistance to the attacks. The bourgeoisie, for its part, under the pressure of its most reactionary wing — to which Violeta Chamorro is obliged to make concessions after having ceded the leadership of the army to the FSLN — wants to go quickly to work. It hopes to strike a mortal blow to the FSLN before it regains the social base alienated by the war and the economic crisis it had to preside over. But these oscillations prove the weakness and the heterogeneity of the UNO government and indicate that the situation will remain very unstable.
The attitude of the FSLN leadership which, before April 25, launched appeals for social calm, has changed radically; they now propose a "plan of struggle" to the workers and call for mobilization against "the danger of a return to Somozism". The pro-FSLN media have hardened their tone and are issuing threats — it is true that the FSLN could, if it wishes, paralyze the country. The FSLN is opposing the attacks that the goverment wishes to make against the revolution, and is seeking to reestablish its place in the popular and trade union movement in the current confrontation with the bourgeoisie; it is conscious that this will be the sole fashion of countering these attacks. *