- Sandinista! is also the name of a popular music album
by The Clash.
The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front)
usually referred to as simply the Sandinistas or FSLN is a leftist political movement in
Nicaragua.
For many decades it was the main rebel group against the US-backed dictatorship of the Somoza family. After emerging victorious from a brief civil it formed the government of Nicaragua from
1979 until 1990, facing heavy opposition from the United States. It lost the February 25, 1990 elections and peacefully surrendering power. The FSLN remains the country's leading political
opposition to the current governing Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC).
The Movement for National Liberation (1961-1979)
The FSLN was formally organized on July 23, 1961 by Carlos Amador Fonseca, Tomás Borge Martínez and Silvio Mayorga. It took its name from Augusto César Sandino (1895-1934), a leader in the country's nationalist rebellion against the United
States military occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s and early 1930s until his assassination by the US-created Guardia Nacional (National
Guard) enabled Somoza to seize control of the country.
Inspired and supported by the Cubans, the FSLN tried with little success to organize
guerrilla warfare against Somoza in the 1960s. In the 1970s, it
began to attract significant support from the country's increasingly politicized peasantry and from other sectors of the
population in response to the dictatorship's brutality and corruption, especially after the earthquake that leveled Nicaragua's
capital city of Managua on 23
December 1972. The earthquake killed 20,000 of the city's 400,000 residents and left
another 250,000 homeless. Somoza's National Guard stole much of the international aid that flowed into the country to assist in
reconstruction, and much of downtown Managua was never rebuilt.
During the long struggle against Anastasio Somoza
Debayle, the FSLN's leaders internal disagreements over strategy and tactics were reflected in three main factions:
- The guerra popular prolongada ("prolonged popular war") faction was rural-based and sought long-term "silent
accumulation of forces" within the country's large peasant population, which it saw as the main social base for the
revolution.
- The tendencia proletaria ("proletarian tendency"), led by Jaime Wheelock, reflected an orthodox
Marxist approach that sought to organize urban workers.
- The tercerista ("third way") faction, led by Humberto and Daniel Ortega Saavedra,
was ideologically eclectic, favoring a more rapid insurrectional strategy in alliance with diverse sectors of the country,
including business owners, churches, students, the middle class, unemployed youth and the inhabitants of shantytowns. The
terceristas also helped attract popular and international support by organizing a group of prominent Nicaraguan
professionals, business leaders, and clergymen (known as "the Twelve"), who called for Somoza's removal and sought to organize a
provisional government from Costa Rica.
On 10 January 1978, the assassination
of Pedro
Joaquín Chamorro, who edited the anti-Somoza newspaper La Prensa, sparked a broad uprising against the regime, with
the Sandinistas leading a combination of general strikes, urban
uprisings and rural guerrilla attacks that increasingly demoralized the National Guard. Despite an overwhelming superiority in
arms and ruthless tactics that included the aerial bombardment of Nicaraguan cities, Somoza's army disintegrated and he fled the
country on 17 July 1979. Two days later the
Sandinistas entered Managua and were greeted by huge crowds as national liberators.
Sandinista Rule (1979-1990)
The Sandinistas inherited a country in ruins, with a debt of USD $1.6 billion, an estimated 50,000 war dead, 600,000 homeless and a devastated economic
infrastructure. To begin the task of establishing a new government, they created a Junta of National Reconstruction comprised of
five members – Sandinista militants Daniel Ortega and Moises Hassan, novelist Sergio Ramirez
Mercado (a member of "the Twelve"), businessman Alfonso Rebelo Callejas, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. The preponderance of power,
however, remained with the Sandinistas and their mass organizations, including the Sandinista Workers' Federation (Central
Sandinista de Trabajadores), the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan Women's Association (Asociación de Mujeres
Nicaragüenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza) and the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (Unión Nacional de Agricultores y
Ganaderos).
Sandinista ideology reflected a broad spectrum of opinion ranging from revolutionary Marxism to Christian liberation theology. Upon
assuming power, their political platform included the following:
- Nationalization of property owned by the Somozas and their collaborators.
- Land reform.
- Improved rural and urban working conditions.
- Free unionization for all workers, both urban and rural.
- Control of living costs, especially basic necessities (food, clothing, and medicine).
- Improved public services, housing conditions, education (mandatory, free through high school; schools available to the whole
national population; national literacy campaign).
- Nationalization and protection of natural resources, including mines.
- Abolition of torture, political assassination and the death penalty.
- Protection of democratic liberties (freedom of expression, political organization and association, and religion; return of
political exiles).
- Equality for women.
- Free, nonaligned foreign policy and relations.
- Formation of a new, democratic, and popular army under the leadership of the FSLN.
- Pesticide controls
- Rain forest conservation
- Wildlife conservation
- Alternative energy programs
The FSLN also created neighborhood groups, similar to the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, called Sandinista Defense
Committees (Comités de Defensa Sandinista or CDS). Especially in the early days following the
overthrow of Somoza, the CDSs served as de facto units of local governance, distributing food rations, organizing
neighborhood cleanup and recreational activities, and policing to control looting and apprehend remnants of the National Guard.
During the subsequent Contra war, they also organized civilian defense efforts against
contra attacks. Critics of the Sandinistas decried the CDS as a system of local spy networks for the government.
By 1980, conflicts began to emerge between the Sandinista and non-Sandinista members of the governing junta. Violeta Chamorro
and Alfonso Robelo resigned from the governing junta in 1980, and the governing role of the Sandinistas became obvious.
Allegations spread among critics that the Ortega clique were planning to turn Nicaragua into a Communist state like Cuba. Simultaneously, the U.S. administration of
Ronald Reagan began organizing remnants of Somoza's National Guard into
guerrilla bands known as "Contras" that conducted terrorist attacks on economic and
civilian targets. During the Contra war, the Sandinistas arrested suspected Contras and censored La Prensa as well as
other publications that they accused of collaborating with the U.S. and the Contras to destabilize the country.
Unlike the Cuban revolution, however, the Sandinista government practiced political pluralism throughout its time in power. A
broad range of new political parties emerged to take advantage of freedoms that had not existed under Somoza. Following
promulgation of a new constitution, Nicaragua held national elections in 1984, in which
Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramirez were elected president and vice-president, and the FSLN won a large majority of seats in the new
national assembly. Although several opposition parties boycotted the election and it was denounced by Reagan as "a sham", it was
endorsed as free and fair by numerous international observers.
Sandinistas vs. Contras
Upon assuming office in 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan accused the FSLN of supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in
other Latin American countries such as El Salvador. His administration began financing, arming and training the remnants of Somoza's National Guard to
launch raids into Nicaragua from their camps in Nicaragua's neighboring countries of Honduras (to the north) and Costa Rica (to the south). The U.S.
also attacked Nicaragua economically, imposing a complete trade embargo and disrupting shipping by planting underwater explosive
mines in the Nicaraguan harbor at Corinto.
The US-backed armed resistance to the Sandinistas in Honduras initially called itself the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) and was known as the 15th
of September Legion. It later formed an alliance, called the Nicaraguan
Democratic Force (FDN), which included other groups including MISURASATA and the Nicaraguan Democratic Union. Because of its opposition to the Sandinista
revolution, the insurgency became known as the "Contras" (an abbreviation of contrarrevolucionario) and were considered
terrorists by the Sandinista government and seen as a US proxy army.
The Contra war unfolded differently in the northern and southern zones of Nicaragua. Contras based in Costa Rica operated in
Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, which is sparsely populated by indigenous groups including the Miskito, Sumu, Rama, Garifuno, and Mestizo. Unlike western Nicaragua, which is Spanish-speaking, the Atlantic Coast is predominantly English-speaking
and was largely ignored by the Somoza regime. The costeños did not participate in the uprising against Somoza and viewed
Sandinismo with suspicion from the outset. Lacking support from the population, Sandinista troops committed their worst human
rights abuses on the Atlantic Coast, including the forcible relocation of 8,500 Miskito from their land as well as killing or imprisoning indigenous people suspected of collaborating with
contras. On two separate occasions in 1981 and 1982, Sandinista troops committed massacres in which dozens of indigenous people
were killed and buried in common graves. [1]
In the mid-1980s, however, the Sandinista government acknowledged errors in its dealings with the Atlantic Coast and
successfully negotiated an end to the southern front of the Contra war. In fulfillment of the terms of that negotiation, the
Nicaraguan National Assembly unanimously passed an Autonomy Law in 1987 that made Nicaragua the first American nation to
recognize its multiethnic nature, guaranteeing the economic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights demanded by the indigenous
groups of the Atlantic Coast.
Duirng the war Amnesty International and other groups
reported that political prisoners in Sandinista prisons, such as in Las Tejas, were beaten, deprived of sleep and tortured with
electric shocks. They were denied food and water and kept in dark cubicles that had a surface of less than one square meter,
known as chiquitas ("little ones"). These cubicles were too small to sit up in and had no sanitation and almost no
ventilation.
On February 26, 1990, Nicaragua held
its second national election following the 1979 revolution, and this time the Sandinistas lost to the United
Nicaraguan Opposition, an alliance of 14 opposition parties ranging from the ultra-conservative business organization COSEP
to the Nicaraguan Communist Party. UNO's candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, replaced Daniel Ortega
as president of Nicaragua.
After their loss, some of the Sandinista leaders held part of the property that had been nationalized by the FSLN government.
This process became known as the piñata and was tolerated by the new government.
Prominent Sandinistas also created a number of nongovermental organizations to promote their ideas and social goals, such as the
Augusto César Sandino Foundation (FACS).
Daniel Ortega remained the head of the FSLN, but his brother Humberto resigned from the party and remained at the head of the
Sandinista Army, becoming a close confidante and supporter of Chamorro. The party also experienced a number of internal
divisions, with prominent Sandinistas such as Ernesto Cardenal and
Sergio Ramírez resigning to
protest what they described as heavy-handed domination of the party by Daniel Ortega. Ramírez also founded a separate political
party, the Movement for the Renovation of Sandinismo (MRS). In the 1996 Nicaraguan election,
Ortega and Ramírez both campaigned unsuccessfully as presidential candidates on behalf of their respective parties, with Ortega
receiving 43 percent of the vote while Arnoldo Alemán of the Liberal
Constitutionalist Party received 51 percent.
Prominent Sandinistas
- Monica Baltodano
- Tomás Borge, one of the
FSLN's founders and Nicaragua's interior minister in the 1980s
- Omar Cabezas
- Ernesto Cardenal, a poet and Catholic priest, served as
minister of culture
- Miguel d'Escoto, a
Maryknoll Catholic priest, served as Nicaragua's foreign minister
- Vilma Núñez
- Edén Pastora, a Sandinista leader during the
insurrection against Somoza who became the leader of a Contra group based in Costa Rica during part of the 1980s.
See also
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