The ten years of Sandinista rule in Nicaragua saw an evolution from an authentic revolution to a situation where state interests prevailed over the popular interests.
This logic affected the conduct of the war, the conservation of power, economic policy, and most importantly, the relations with the bourgeoisie aimed at consolidating a
122 space for socio-economic development and modernization.
The erosion of the social base of the revolution, provoked by the war and the economic crisis, favored a change in the balance of forces which led to the electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1990. A rightist coalition (the UNO), intent on a counter-revolution took over control of the country.
Shocked by its defeat, the Sandinista leadership launched an appeal to defend the conquests of the revolution with the hope of preserving its gains.
But what gains were there to defend?
They were mostly of an institutional political nature. The FSLN tried to preserve the political rights won and the remnants of institutional power in the following order: the constitution and the institutions; the army and property distributed by the Sandinista government that is, the agrarian reform and the property acquired by the FSLN.
No mention was made of the economic model nor the institutional changes which flowed from them nor the social policies or of regulation, and still less of the influence not to mention the participation of the poorer layers in economic management. Why was this so? Because the model was worn out and already by 1988 had been replaced by an adjustment programme strongly marked by monetarism. Decline in social programmes
Social policies decreased along with the regulating role of the state. Popular participation in decision making had been very weak - something recognized by Daniel Ortega himself in an interview published in 1991 when he said that if the FSLN had won the elections its policies would not have been very different from those of the current government except as far as "social sensibility " is concerned.
did not exist before. This is why their preservation was identified with the continuity of the revolution.
The government, in spite of several hesitations which were the result of foreign and domestic pressure, wound up respecting the institutional framework demanded by the
FSLN. Firstly for reasons of governability
- it was necessary to pacify the country
- but also for tactical reasons - the government concentrated all of its efforts on economic reforms.
Political considerations demanded these reforms and the most controversial political reforms, such as reform of the constitution, of the army, of the police were postponed for a second phase. The social protests in
1990 and 1991 and the ungovernable situation that the country was in afterwards made the government and the United States understand the real balance of forces within the country.
Because of this, the counter-revolutionary character of the government was not clear to the Sandinista leadership. The acceptance of some institutions and the freeze on changes gave rise to an agreement, underpinned by the existence of similar views on economic questions. The label "counter-revolutionary" was henceforth used only for the Somozistas and the far right. The government was described as being in the centre and the FLN entered into negotiations with it.
Meetings with government
More than eleven meetings have taken place between the government and the FSLN since 1990 including at least eight focused on social conflicts. Two dealt with foreign aid, and one with the concertation [the negotiations that the Sandinistas held with the opposition] as well as meetings on the protocols of the transition.
The agreements between the government and the FLN on the institutions, the army and economic policies formed the basis of an understanding that revolved around the executive, the army, and the FLN leadership in the name of stabilization. Without this, it was thought, the economic reforms could not be carried through. Nicaragua would not be able to escape from the spiraling crisis and the FSLN would not benefit from the instability in the event that it came back into the government in an unstable and crisis-ridden situation. It was on this basis that a "centre grouping" was formed within the FSLN. To a certain extent it represented the continuation of policies begun in 1988 involving an
Oh no! It's my Sandinista branch meeting tomorrow! orthodox economic vision; social considerations taking a back seat to state interests; and the search for stability and development in alliance with certain sectors of the Other post-electoral factors contributed to the development of these positions within the FSLN. The first of these was the fact that the FLN as an opposition party did not manage to develop a strategy that could appeal to the masses in the framework of democratic political struggle. There were two reasons for this. The first was structural. The revolutionary project was already in crisis in terms of economic and social viability; its image was completely damaged after the adoption of monetary measures — the reserves were exhausted. It was only thanks to the firmness and centralism in the state leadership and in the war that the project seemed to still maintain a strategic coherence.
The second reason for this absence of strategy is political. The FSLN did not have enough political and theoretical reserves to enable it to rapidly adapt to defeat, opposition and the search for a redefined identity.
### Chaotic period
The period from February to October
1990 was particularly chaotic. Even if the
FSLN leadership did not seem to be directly threatened, the authority of its leaders appeared to be diminished as a result of the scale of the defeat and their lack of political vision. A feeling of mistrust, mixed with declining authority and credibility arose concerning a leadership that once was considered infallible.
The party was full of rumors about the effects of the avalanche, revealing a deep malaise that had before been obscured by party discipline. It was only on June 17,
1990, the date of an evaluation meeting of
FSLN cadre who put forth a critical balan-
...And l haven't got my self-criticism ready ce sheet, that this dynamic towards a grave political crisis ceased. However no solution to the basic political crisis was in sight, as is shown by the contradictory statements of FLN leaders on imperialism, relations with the government and the attitude to take to the latter's economic plans.
The attempt to hide reality behind the notion that the FLN was a political orphan was particularly tragic. The Front, attached to a fetishistic conception of power, attempted to cling onto its institutional positions to the detriment of an analysis of the socio-economic forces at work.
The FSLN subordinated defence and articulation of the material interests of its mass base among the poor to a scheme for political stabilization of the country. Thus, the FSLN found itself politically disarmed and increasingly dependent firstly on conservative political stabilization and then to preserve that, on the neo-liberal economic policies of the government.
This was clear in the FSLN's support for privatization, which placed the unions and social organizations in the position of having to negotiate from a defensive position, and in its disorientation in the face of state restructuring and the deregulation of
The leadership thought that it could manoeuvre in the upper circles and contain the capitalist restoration process. The slogan "govern from below" was only an empty compensation for the rank and file upset by the defeat after so many sacrifices.
Nothing stood in the way of the rapid economic restructuring which restored the power of the right and the strongest sectors of the employing class.
All social roles were changed; a high level of conservatism and cooptation of personnel was introduced into the army, the police, the state functionaries and even the
FSLN itself, as well as in its satellite orga-
NICARAGUA nizations. A Barricada editorialist crudely affirmed that "we have leaders who think that in the new situation the moral capital of the FSLN must be traded for money and
The state created by the revolution with the aim of assuring a certain class equilibrium which the FLN had also intended to use to preserve the revolution's gains, is leaking from all sides. Business, the preservation of certain places in the political system, the cooptation of functionaries, the development of the market, and the liberalization of the economy have gradually reduced the progressive and regulatory aspects of the state. The free market needs the establishment of order and the maintenance of social hierarchy that its tendencies are now creating.
A bourgeoisie is being reformed and the FSLN is tied into this process at several levels. A section of the Front is linked in via the armed forces another via the Sandi-
The social organizations close to the FSLN — the National Organization of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), the Sandinista Workers Union (CST), and the Association of Rural Workers (ATC) - have for their part contradictory interests that are not always easily reconcilable with those of the former group. On the one hand these organizations must express the demands of their members - victims of the governments policies. This puts them into conflict with the Front's goals of stabilization.
Surviving market conditions
On the other hand, the Sandinista organizations that had received shares of property thanks to the privatizations or who were already owners must survive under market conditions and will need the appropriate measures and resources. They make demands and exercise a certain amount of pressure, but they also negotiate in function of their own corporatist interests by making shifting alliances with the government or other social organizations. This introduces elements of instability into the social base of the FSLN, which in turn finds itself pulled apart in different directions.
Besides these three big interest groups, there are the large marginalized masses, the unemployed, recently laid off people, the informal sector, the workers and peasants who cannot survive under market conditions, not only for lack of opportunities, but also because they are crushed by the dominant economic policies which leave them no alternative. It is this sector, which is the majority, that has protested and revolted, that has periodically negotiated, but which has only obtained the most ephemeral gains; they thus find themselves in a 13 These different interests do not bring the
International Viewpoint # 239 • November 23, 1992
NICARAGUA same weight to bear. Thanks to their situation in the pyramid of power, the first two groups are the strongest.
The third and fourth groups have the least weight. Although they represent the majority, they are subordinate to the army and the deputies in the logic of stabilization, the market and the recomposition of the bourgeoisie.
All these groups and their contradictions are found within the Front. The absence of a clear strategy and an overall programme to confront this situation has led the leadership to adopt an empirical, short term, attitude. It makes political calculations for the survival of the dominant groups in the Front while fighting to preserve its relationship with the government. The FSLN also needs to champion mass discontent if it is not to lose its social base. All this explains the leadership's zig zags from
The FLN is torn between its project of a pact of national unity for the development of the country under entrepreneurial hegemony, with all of its retrograde social consequences, and a project of mass development and participation to limit the bosses' hegemony.
These are the source of the contradictions which exist between the various interest groups which make up the FSLN. The dynamism that the social movements have periodically demonstrated has prevented the Front from consolidating around a new position even if these mobilizations are not the centre of the FSLN's strategic political recomposition and have not been able to check the Front's empiricism.
### Social energy exhausted
But the social energy of these social movements is not inexhaustible. The FLN has a limited amount of time to regain its influence and emerge from the current stagnation that the revolution finds itself in concerning the needs of the masses.
Neither the FLN's congresses, nor the meetings of the Sandinista assembly (their central committee), have been able to resolve these contradictions which can only be solved by the social movements.
During the three years that the right has been in the government, there have been strong protests against the measures taken to stabilize and restructure the economy. While the concertation was being launched, the social movements carved out a significant autonomy.
The enormous expenditure of energy by the FSLN rank-and-file was not utilized to refound a strategy and to use this base as support for the elaboration of a participatory model aimed at checking neo-liberal restructuring under the total control of the 14° bosses.
The concertation was reduced to conflict negotiation which broke the dynamic of social movements. This strengthened negotiating positions but not the coordination of the masses' interests. This process was followed by a political evolution resembling that of the meetings between the FLN and the government.
In 1991, the fight over property again mobilized organized mass sectors. The participation of the workers in the privatizations after the 1990 struggles distracted their efforts from the consequences of the economic policy which, in fact, tended to undermine the survival of distributed property.
The blows of the adjustment plan underlined the need for opposition to the government's policies, but the interest groups within the FSLN also began to become more important. The "centre group" put itself forward as the pivot for the FSLN's renovation.
For the first time, the de facto subordination of the rank-and-file was subjected to an open bid to coopt them in the interests of the current political strategy and to definite interests tied to the national pact of development.
The reaction of the rank-and-file and to a certain extent the leadership which understood the risks of division, served to neutralize the centre and to reinforce the radical discourse capable of shoring up the mass discontent of the first six months of 1992.
At the end of 1991 and the beginning of 1992, the adjustment programme and the governmental reforms spotlighted the real character of the tendencies and the fact that socio-economic groups were organizing. The need to take a position on this was clear more due to the FLN's disorientation and social pressure than from any spe-
The 1990-1991 exhaustion of the urban movements brought important groups in the countryside. The catastrophic situation of the peasantry and the difficulty of socially and economically integrating the contras and former soldiers from the Sandinista army (EPS) created an explosive situation. Many groups took up arms again, supported by peasants who hoped to obtain gains by taking up the most radical demands. Occupations of the land, towns, and of roads proved that the government's policies could lead to an increasingly ungovernable situation because of the marginalization that was taking place.
### Signs of ungovernability
While the state and the political system, especially the executive, lost all political and institutional capacity to master the situation, clear signs of ungovernability appeared.
The popular sectors felt disarmed in the face of the economic measures and the changes taking place. During the first half of 1992, protest movements in several sectors developed. The truce agreed to by the unions after the second concertation in August 1991, had led to a relative peace in the towns, but in the countryside the situation threatened to explode.
The unions in the National Workers Front (FNT) which comprises the majority of social organizations close to the FLN declared that the truce could not hold. The struggle for the defense of worker property and their living conditions began again, peasants joined the battle by demanding credits, guarantees for the land and access to national enterprises being privatized. All of this led to spontaneous convergences between recampas - demobilized veterans of the Sandinista army who took up arms, and recontras - former contras who also took up arms and peasants who were victims of the same problems.
Pressure to neutralize this social movement was enormous. The FSLN leadership threw all of its weight behind an attempt to steer the conflict onto the negotiating table. The government coopted and signed agreements. The army exerted selective pressure in order to control the movement and check its expansion. As a result it emerged divided, isolated and neutralized having only gained a few minor concessions.
The reaction to the adjustment measures and to the new economic model that this movement expressed were thus crushed. The energies that it represented were atomized. It was prevented from formulating new alternatives to the agreements made by the government and the FLN by the knowledge that its room for manoeuvre was limited.
### Prioritizing exports
On March 14, 1992, the government had a meeting with the FLN leadership in the presence of Sandinista leader and army boss General Humberto Ortega. The government's proposals were totally centreed around the need for stability, attempts to attract national and foreign investments and to develop the country.
These projects were to be carried out by pursuing the adjustment plan and transforming the country for the profit of the most internationalized sectors of the bourgeoisie — which means an inegalitarian model of development, subordinate to the exporting
The FLN found its back to the wall. To impose this agreement without destabilizing the government would have implied at least an alternative economic plan capable of re-establishing governmental policies even if these partial conflicts continued. Accepting the accords would have amounted to playing guard dog for the government. And this when, after four years of
November 23, 1992 • #239 International Viewpoint adjustment plans — two years under the Sandinistas and two years under the ONU - nearly 70% of all Nicaraguans found themselves in a state of poverty.
In this difficult situation, the Sandinista Assembly met last March 28-29 to decide on which course to adopt. The discussion centreed on the proposal made by the government and the FLN's joining the Socialist International. The document presented by the leadership concerning economic problems proposed an agreement with the government based on a policy of national emergency to stop the crisis.
The document failed to take up the population's most pressing problems. On the other hand it only analyzed the applied policy from the point of view of "social cost", without any analysis whatsoever of the transformations they involve nor their consequences on social classes. Starting from the premise of "raison d'état" the document put the national interests above social actors. The government's policies seemed to be treated in a neutral manner similar to the Front's support to it.
The Sandinista Assembly rejected this document as too soft. A majority came out for the need to have policies different from those of the government in order to discuss with it. The "co-government" was rejected and it was decided to set up a working group which would develop the FSLN's economic response. A minority proposed "co-government" while another minority grouping came out for open opposition to the government.
The majority resolution was predictable and signalled a repositioning of the FSL in the light of the changing mood of the rank-and-file and the Sandinista social sectors during the last months. The distancing of Daniel Ortega from the party's moderates to shore up support amongst the dissatisfied rank-and-file is a symptom of the degree of malaise the Front is experiencing. But a closer look reveals that the change is
In fact, a Sandinista Assembly resolution from the 1991 FLN congress indicated that the party is in opposition to the government and called for the setting up of a commission to develop an alternative economic policy. Nearly a year later, the same motion was passed.
The March 1992 meeting in El Crucero clarified certain things. The inertia that resulted from an ambiguous and rudderless policy strengthened the pro "co-government" tendencies and accepted the economic policies that have been applied. This in turn reinforced the weight of the parliamentary group, the army and the "cen-
An ambiguity persists as to the possible realignment of the FSLN. But everything indicates that there will not be deep changes. The central problem is that in 1990 and 1991 the social movements acted in a way that might have modified the FSLN's political positions but without
This is one of the reasons why the FSLN does not have a collective position on some fundamental questions and has allowed small well placed groups in the power
NICARAGUA pyramid to make decisions. This is why "centrism" is the dominant current in the FSLN and why there is a lack of clear strategic orientation.
### Factional ambiguity
Likewise, alternatives cannot be elaborated if there is such ambiguity between the different groups within the FLN. The elaboration of alternative economic and social policies presupposes the resolution of these internal contradictions. This is why the FSLN economic commission which should have drawn a balance sheet in July 1992 met twice without much result and has nearly ceased functioning.
These are the factors which have led the FSLN into a situation where it plays the role of intermediary between different interest groups within the framework of capitalist restoration.
In the absence of an overall strategy, the organization tends to function as a feudal network of interest groups with an essentially corporatist dynamic. The role of the leadership is to maintain the internal balance within the apparatus in function of the activism of its members rather than to present a policy based on a real consensus.
The resolution of these internal contradictions is and will remain difficult partly due to the sharpness of the contradictions, but also because they involve the transition towards a new type of party.
Collective and democratic decisions could tend towards the elaboration of a new programmeme, of a new coherence, and towards a renewal of leadership teams which will prepare the FSLN politically and theoretically for the new historical phase. But the FSLN may also be paralyzed by the internal balances.
The process of restructuring continues. In 1993, the economic reforms will have been completed and the government will be in a position to tackle the political reforms. The
FSLN's disorientation, its lack of a programme and the successive neutralization of the social movements on which it could have based a political response has definitively cleared the way for the restoration of the old dominant groups. Any remaining obstacles to this are being rapidly cleared
It is perfectly possible that the sum total of the Sandinista revolution will be the refounding of the national state and the political system, but this means the restoration of the old class society.
The FLN can become a bureaucratized party in which corporatist interests are predominant. But it can also be renewed as a party that will be an indispensable component of social equality and participation in the political system that it will create and continue to develop. 15
Practice will decide. *