A bit more on Nica

It´s election day again, this time municipal elections in Nicaragua. Seems simple, right? Wrong. We´ve been advised either 1) to stay at home with our host families or, if we need to work on homework, 2) go straight to the CGE house, using only taxis from the cooperative based in our homestay barrio.

Today´s FSLN (Sandinista Front for National Liberation) are not the Sandinistas of the 70s and 80s and, I will wager based on what little I know of him, the party of Sandino himself. Criminalization of political parties, concentration of power in the hands of the FSLN and the opposition party (in such a way, though, that the FSLN has the PLC party in its pocket through control of the legal status of their former president), more and more steps toward authoritarian control of the country.

The women´s movement, so integral to the victories in the 70s/80s, has been shunned for supporting the accusations of sexual abuse brought on by Ortega´s step daughter.

None of this is to say that the Frente isn´t doing good things in people´s lives at the individual level. For example, Amy and Arpita´s host mother was talking a couple days ago about the direct support her family has received in dealing with her husband´s health problems. Thousands of families, at least to some degree, have received food assistance as part of the ¨Zero Hunger¨ campaign. These are all very real, tangible impacts. And I know that it is easy for someone (me) whose daily needs are being met to say that the tangible benefits can often mask systemic abuses -- or even systemic contributions to the very poverty and hunger being addressed by the (highly-publicized) programs. But the fact remains that if you´re confined to a hospital bed, you won´t be going to the polls today, even if your party of choice IS one of the two legal parties in the elections. And if the Frente can get you the medicine to get out of that bed, that´s not be brushed aside.

(What makes the two party situation so disheartening is that one of the four pillars of Sandinism was its comitment to a multi-party system that would allow contributions and participation from people all over the political map. The fact that the FSLN has been so integral in removing that possibility is pretty hard to hear about. But, of course, they didn´t act alone. More on that in a minute.)

Yet, just as is the case for me with Chavez and Castro, I´m not willing to give special passes to authoritarian (or borderline-so) leaders just because they are on the left. If I want my leaders to be both progressive and transparent, then Nicaraguans have every right to expect that from theirs as well. (Not, of course, to say that if I don´t, they don´t. You all get my drift.)

But this would ultimately be too easy if the assumption was just that Ortega, Castro, Chavez, and others went in with hopes of becoming dictators. I honestly don´t think that is the case. There is another common theme that tends to run between people who take up leadership (especially in the Americas) at the head of popular or leftists movements: They immediately become targets for US opposition. In Cuba and Nicaragua, the theme was Communism during two major ¨hot¨ periods of the Cold War -- we need to keep the communist threat out of our back yard.

[And a side note: Central America is not unaware that US foreign policy considers CA the US back yard. Some people plant flowers in their back yards; some let their dogs poop in them. What´s been our approach?]

What I´m getting at is this: In Nica, after the Triumph of the Revolution (in 1979) the FSLN was never given the opportunity to really establish a successful government before the Contra war began. Obviously, that was the point, from Reagan´s perspective. But in the initial phase of the revolutionary government, Ortega (yep, he was president then, too) went all over the country holding listening sessions where he would set up a microphone, invite the community, and ask what they needed from the government. Now I don´t know how much of that information made its way into policy. But Somoza´s (the previous dictator and end of a dynastic line that began in 1934) way of interacting with the people was shooting them or cutting off their hands. Seems like a step or two up to me.

Also, there were immensely successful literacy and health campaigns in the first few years. Tens of thousands of youth were released from school for a year to go out into the campo, where literacy rates were sometimes in the single digits, and teach both children and adults. By the end of the 10-month cycle, illiteracy on the national level (previously 56%) had been reduced to 12%. The majority of the adults, who had not been able to read before, were reading at a third grade level -- after 10 months! Similarly, youth were sent out into the campo with materials for vaccinations and polio was irradicated from Nicaragua.

By the time these gains had been made, the Contra war had also started. Thus a government that had begun to be successful in really reaching the people in both urban and rural areas suddenly had an exterior force against which to rally and consolidate power. Speculation thirty years after the fact doesn´t bring change, so I won´t dwell in it long. But I can only imagine that without the presence of US intervention so common in Central America, the Sandinista government might have felt a bit more freedom not to move toward a more authoritarian model.

(Then also important are the 1990 elections when the majority of the people knew that voting FSLN would continue the US aid to the Contras, ie, continue the violence. That defeat for the Sandinistas also plays a huge role in where they are today. Imagine this: during the 1980s, 30,000 Nicaraguans were killed in the Contra war. This is after 70,000 were killed under the three Somoza regimes. In 1990, Nica had a population of about 3.9 million. Contrast that to the US during Vietnam, where 57,000 US soldiers died in a population of about 150 million. Who in the US didn´t know someone killed or injured in Vietnam? There are essentially no families in Nicaragua that weren´t touched by death in the 80s.)

This has become an incredible stream-of-thought entry. It wasn´t intended to be a Nica history lesson! I didn´t develop my thoughts on US influence on CA dictatorships (of the left or right) as much as I had intended. But I would love to hear people´s thoughts on what I did get out there!

Pray for a peaceful election time here.