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Reviving U.S. Policy in Central America
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15638 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1989 |
3,701 Words |
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William Ratliff
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A towering billboard in Managua defiantly proclaims "Reagan is Going, the Revolution Remains." For Nicaragua's Sandinista leaders, President Reagan's "warmongering" Central American policy has failed and they are home free.
In a sense they are right. For the time being they have "won" and the opposition is down or on the run. Meanwhile, day by day, Nicaragua collapses from within.
When the Mexican paper Excelsior (October 21) asked Sandinista Vice President Sergio Ramirez if the revolution had made any mistakes, he said: "In the initial years, a fundamental one. Too many dreams. It was imbued with the idea that it could solve everything from one day to the next. It never calculated the weight of enmity from the United States, or the high cost of such ill will. It never prepared for the long struggle." This is one of the Big Lies of the revolution, which many around the world accept--the old "you made us do it" routine that stands the facts on their heads. In reality, during the first 18 months the Sandinistas were in power, before the armed Contras even existed, the United States gave Nicaragua more aid than did any other nation, even as the Sandinistas built the largest army in Central American history and began subverting their neighbors by arming the Salvadoran guerrillas.
The opposition daily La Prensa had it right on November 8 when it said that the Sandinista revolution remains, but the broadly based democratic revolution of 1978-79, the one that really brought about the downfall of dictator Anastasio Somoza, does not. As the paper noted, the Sandinistas have betrayed all the promises they made to Nicaraguans and the international community. They could have given Nicaraguans "an era of peace and progress," but instead they have brought "war, destruction, death and retrogression."
That is, the original revolution has been undermined by a small clique of ideologues whose policies pervade every corner of society in a way Somoza's never did. This clique is a new ruling class, as the Independence Liberal Party (PLI) weekly Paso a paso noted at the beginning of November, with comrades who live luxuriously in an impoverished society. It isn't just that President Daniel Ortega sports designer sunglasses but, more importantly, that just one of his residences occupies three blocks in downtown Managua, while the other comandantes also live extravagantly by Nicaraguan standards in Managua's few posh neighborhoods.
For the Snadinistas, all important decisions on domestic or international policies are political, flowing from a fanatical anti-Americanism, an understandable but twisted reading of history that is given shape by Marxism-Leninism. This ideology, reflected in the antihistorical comment by Ramirez quoted above, set the framework for all the developments of past decade: conflict with the United States and other Central American countries; oppression of all Nicaraguans who disagree with them, and who could have brought the ideas and experience needed for peace and progress; branding all who differ with them "running dogs of U.S. imperialism"; persistence in demonstrably destructive domestic developmental policies; and cultivation of an overwhelming dependence on the Soviet bloc--especially Soviet money and Cuban personnel--supposedly to escape foreign domination by "U.S. imperialism."
An international
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