Nicaragua: How far can Reagan go?
By HARRY SLOAN "HE really hates those bastards. It won't be easy to change that."
This blunt summary Reagan's attitude to the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, given by Western diplomat in Managua Newsweek magazine, represents one of the few uncontested facts of the present struggle in Central America.
Reagan and his vicious team of cold-war advisors certainly do hate the Sandinista revolution like poison. They would dearly love to overturn the elected Nicaraguan government with its 54% majority support in the population as a whole, and replace it with a renewed right wing military dictatorship like the regimes which the USA supported upto the overthrow of Somoza in 1979. But how far are they prepared to go to secure this objective? How far can they given the scepticism of the US Congress, and the overwhelming (70%) public opposition to any US involvement in ousting the Sandinistas?
These questions are less easy to answer. Though Reagan has funnelled no less than $80 million in covert aid since 1980 to the gangs of "contra" gunmen curently fighting overthrow the Sandinistas, from certain that the administration's atest reauest for a further $14 millio n aid will be endorsed by Congress But with Reagan stepping up the cold war of rhetoric against dinistas in a desperate ploy to win over Congressional support, it would be foolish indeed to rule out any prospect that this aid forthcoming.
Reagan has demanded capitulation by the Sandinistas that they "say uncle" and negotiate with and cede a "share" of govern. mental power to the contras, central military commander Colonel Enrique Bermudez was Somoza's chief henchmen commanding the hated National Guard. He has described the mercenary gangs of CIA-organised contras, campaign of wanton murder and economic sabotage has become notorious, as the equal of our Founding Secretary of State George Schultz, too, has gone "over the top" with a hard-hitting endorsement ofthe contra "freedom fighters":
"The bottom line is this. Those who would cut off these freedom fighters from the rest democratic world are in effect consigning Nicaragua to the endless of President a to go, to it is far the Sanwill be total
States danger."
whose its 3 million population, as a of vast arsenal and imperialist one of the some whose terrorism, by the administration to drum up
"moral"
Fathers".
accused
"redbaiting"
bitrary
Foreign
Affairs of the ed at runway darkness of communist tyranny.
And they are leading the United
- down a path of great
America,
The notion of tiny Nicarguagreat credibility.
danger" to the United States with its armies based across most of the world's key centres is so laughable that even hard-bitten anti- communists of the US Congress have been ridiculing these latest attempts war fever. Schultz himself has been of "McCarthyism" and arin the House
Committee.
And themselves when challenged to produce proot of plausible
Nicaragua's alledged aggressive or subversive intentions and actions, the administration has been hard put to offer anything tangible. A lengthentown airfield an near
Mangua, and a large number of age-
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 24
| ing Soviet T-54 tanks have been cited but in the absence of any serious Nicaraguan air force and in the mountainous conditions of Central both lack any real
Conspicuously, no evidence has been produced of Sandinista arms or aid to the FMLN guerrillas fighting for the liberation of El Salvador. Indeed Reagan has been forced to abandon his original claims that the chief purpose of the "contras" was to block arms traffic from Nicaragua to the FMLN - and now admit that his sole objective is to overrun the Sandinistas. His problem in switching to this new line is that the contra forces are neither united nor as an alternative government. They lack sufficient popular support within Nicaragua to enable them to capture even a token border which they could turn into a propaganda "provisional capital" -
and they have suffered heavily under an intensified Sandinista counter-offensive.
An attempt at the beginning March to bring together the feuding contra factions at a meeting in Costa Rica and present a united front to the Sandinistas resulted in ignominious failure. One key figure in the contra forces to the south of Nicaragua, renegade Sandinista Eden Pastora, has repeatedly refused to join or collaborate with the ex-Somoza forces of the largest military gangs north, the ludicrously-titled "Nicaraguan Democratic (FDN). The Costa Rica summit also failed to enlist the support Brooklyn Rivera, leader of a guerrilla grouping of Miskito Indians on the Atlantic coast. The disarray of the contra forces and their morale has been exploited by the Sandinistas who have amnesty to those who surrender.
While Reagan has gone onto a desperate offensive to rally his support, however, the Sandinistas have made further concessions they see as a move diplomatically to isolate the USA and win back some of the international support (which had ebbed to a dangerously low level, to judge from the poor turn-out to President Ortega's inauguration January).
Using the focus of the inauguration of the new Sanguinetti, elected Uruguayan president declared a unilateral decision to send home 100 Cuban military advisors
CONTRAS
"HE'S NOT HEAVY, HE'S MY BROTHER...
"new military weapons
MiG fighters.
of leadership
Castro ministration over the supply the Kremlin leaders made it painfully to the
"contra" sabotage or US attacks.
Force"
of sinking offered an what
In
GUAT
Engearts
Ortega and to abandon plans to acquire systems"
including
These concessions - plainly discussed in advance with the
— successfully removed the USSR from any potential confrontation with the Reagan adof jet fighters: but it also absolves the
USSR of any responsibility for the defence of Nicaragua. In any event
May.
obvious last summer that they will do
It is nothing to defend Nicaragua against consistently
WE SEEK NO LARGER
PRESENCE IN THE AREA!
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 25
It was quite predictable that the concessions would also fail to produce any relaxation from the US warmongers: but they do appear to have given a new lease of life to the seemingly deadlocked "Contadora" process of negotiations in search of a regional peace plan, spearheaded by Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela and Panama — which will reconvene in untortunate in this situation that the Sandinista leadership have so sought to answer US ANANIA
political concessions. The Contadora leading countries concerned and by the social democratic "Socialist International" as a means of procuring within a stabilised Central America: this can only mean renouncing revolutionary struggle in Honreplacement by vague utopian hopes liberalisation parliamentary democracy.
While Nicargua, after the defeat of Somoza and with the Sanidinistas firmly in the driving seat, has been able to organise the most democratic elections ever held on that continent, that a negotiated settlement with the regimes of El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras could produce comparable results duce governments that culd in any answer the problems of their crudely-exploited workers and poor farmers — is pure self-deception. use of the Contadora process by the Sandinistas: but it does mean that each one of the Sandinistas' tactical general stance, should be clearly and tionary fighters elsewhere in Central
The failure of the Sandinistas to adopt such a clear position is only surprising if we forget their origins them. Despite the highly publicised issue of stamps bearing the head of Karl Marx, the Sandinistas are not a Marxist or even explicitly tionalists with strong popular supcommitted to (capitalist) economy and to detence of their country against imperialism. They find themselves under ruthless imperialist attack but denied substantial military, economic or political support from the USSR or Cuba which have no wish to conflict directly with the USA in the American "sphere of influence" dinistas hae been courted instead by international social democrats eager to restrict any possible socialist developments in Nicaragua, and by American bourgeoisie desperate to confine the struggle to Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Yet the best defence of the revolution - and one of the main external factors inhibiting an even more unbridled attack by the Reagan administration is precisely its character as part of a regional struggle against imperialism. The advance of revolution in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and into Mexico, the major country of Central America, is a key both to the defence and the completion of the Nicaraguan revolution. The many supporters of the Sandinistas' struggle who downplay this vital aspect of the fight do no favours to the masses of Central America.
Cartoon from a recent issue of the Managua newspaper, Barricada.
ANTES... CUANDO EL FSLN
ESTABA ENMONTANADO, LA BURGUESIA
YLOSPOLITICOS DECIAN QUE ERAN
TERRORISTAS
BEFORE
.. when the Sandinistas mountains, were bourgeois and the politicians called them terrorists.
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