Answer the call of the Sandinista revolution
Organise solidarity brigades for Nicaragua
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY "Nicaragua Libre" (Free Nicaragua) has always given great importance to the solidarity movements, which throughout the world have testified to the impact of the revolutionary process set in motion by the fall of the Somoza dictatorship on July 19, 1979, and have helped to expose and stigmatize the actions of the imperialists and counterrevolutionary forces against the Sandinista revolution.
This is reflected in the efforts made by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the Government Council for National Reconstruction to accomodate international solidarity brigades. This work has already been going on for some years. In the summer of 1983, hundreds of volunteers from West Germany, Argentina, Belgium, Chile, the United States, Denmark, Spain, France, Euzkadi, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland formed such brigades to offer concrete solidarity to the Nicaraguan revolution.
The participants in these brigades met in August 1983 and issued a joint statement calling "on our respective governments and public and religious figures, on all workers, peasants, and intellectuals organizations, on all political parties and mass organizations," to condemn the Reagan administration, to support the FSLN's efforts to achieve peace, as step up protest actions in front of U.S. embassies in all countries and to use every means to respond and mobilize -public campaigns, financial solidarity, and organizing more and larger brigades of volunteers."
The Sandinista press gives systematic coverage to the arrival of contingents of volunteers and to their activities in contact with the population. This winter more than 700 solidarity brigade volunteers have already lett for the coffee harvest in Nicaragua, including 500 trom the United States.
Such brigades serve the Nicaraguan revolution in a number of ways. First of all, they offer real help for the campaigns to harvest the coffee and cotton crops, as well as for building schools, health centers, and other projects. For example, two brigades of Swiss volunteers built a bridge in a neighbor hood of Matagalpa in the summer of 1983 in collaboration with the local people. All these actions are concrete contributions to the labor of reconstruction undertaken by the Nicaraguan revolution.
Moreover, the organization of volunteer work brigades takes on another aspect, which is very important. It helps to give the Nicaraguan masses a concrete idea of the international political support that exists for the Sandinista revolütion. It shows them that they are not isolated in their enormous mobilization against the counterrevolutionary attacks financed and organized by the U.S. administration.
This more strictly political dimension of international solidarity looms larger when the brigadistas maintain a presence in the border areas, where the Nicaraguan fighters stand in front line facing the attacks of the counterrevolutionaries, and will be even more in the forefront in the event of more direct foreign intervention.
Establishing a presence in these areas is exactly what solidarity activists from West Germany are setting out to do. This could play an important role in deterring attacks fomented by the U.S. In early January, a Swiss brigade of twenty persons started working along the Costa Rican border, in the San Juan river area, clearing land.
On the other hand, forming such brigades is also a way International Viewpoint 27 February 1984 of stimulating the solidarity movement itself in the countries where volunteers are recruited. Far from being an activity isolated from the rest of the solidarity work, this is an effective means for publicizing the real situation that prevails in Nicaragua. It offers a way to get the workers organizations as such, as well as individual activists in them, involved in tasks of concrete solidarity. The reports by returned volunteers can serve as a basis for increasing the number of informationa meetings and getting more organizations and individuals to take public stands in solidarity with Nicaragua.
Experience has also shown that after seeing with their own eyes concrete mass internationalist work in connection with a living revolution, a lot of solidarity movement activists more committed to the revolutionary cause. Sending fact-finding trips and trade-union solidarity visits also helps the general effort. Moreover, the Nicaragua trade-union movement is anxious to receive solidarity delegations from unions abroad. It has just issued a call for an "International Meeting for Peace" to take place in Managua
The possibilities are shown by the experience of the forty Austrian volunteers who left for Nicaragua at the beginning of January. Responding to the appeal issued by the Rural Workers Association (ATC), the Sandinista peasant and agricultural workers organization, the Austrian solidarity movement hoped to get about 15 volunteers. In a few days, however, it had more than 300 candidates. The Austrian solidarity committee had to make a selection. it organized about a hundred people to go in two groups.
All these reasons combine, therefore, to make sending volunteer work brigades to Nicaragua an exceptionally important initiative, both for defending the Nicaraguan revolution and for extending the solidarity movement. In many countries, this appeal for internationalist volunteers has gotten a response hardly seen since the Spanish civil war.
In many cases, these brigades represent the achievement of an exemplary unity of the various components of the workers and mass movement in the respective countries. For example, the Austrian brigade includes Social Democrats, members of the Communist Party, of the Catholic workers movement, of the Alternative group (the counterpart of the West German Greens), Trotskyists, as well as activists who do not belong to any political group. Some joined up for purely humanitarian motives, others for more political reasons, wanted to support the revolutionary struggle of the FSLN and
On October 25, 1983, the National Executive Sandinista Defense Committees issued an appeal for "solidarity brigades for Nicaragua," calling for the formation of brigades of volunteers to do medical, technical, and other skilled tasks. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of volunteers from West Europe, North America, and Japan are expected in Nicaragua early this year. This is a first positive response to the appeal by the Nicaraguan masses and their organizations. This response has to be strengthened and built in a systematic way by generalizing the experiences. Now more than ever, it is necessary to do everything possible to stay the armed hand of imperialism.
In the face of imperialist aggression, Nicaragua is not alone! We must answer the call of the Nicaraguan revolution.
INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT 3
SOVIET UNION -
The rise of Chernenko, by all accounts, represents the comeback of the pure parasite layer. He was the heir apparent of Brezhnev and was reportedly stopped from reaching the highest trough because Andropov had his nose to a hot