Nicaragua is now relaxed and peaceful

Press, 3 August 1981, Page 16

Nicaragua is now relaxed and peaceful

Bv

JOHN RETTIE

in “The Guardian,” London

On the rim of the Masaya volcano, some 30 kilometres south of Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, a bevy of nuns was peering into the crater over the edge of the well-built lookout point. A hundred feet below, In the middle of a soft and sulphurous mass, great clouds of smoke were hissing with sinister effect from a hole some 10 metres across. Overhead, chattering furiously, squadrons of green parrots patrolled ceaselessly to and fro. One of the nuns had been there before. “When there’s no smoke," she confided, “you can see the red-hot lava writhing and bubbling in the hole. It’s just what Hell must be like!” They clutched each other in a twitter of excitement and fear. There was no-one else about, which, like the dog that didn’t bark in the night, was odd. Given the high-pressure enterprise of the United States tourist industry, one might have expected hordes of Bermudashorted and mauve-rinse visitors at such a sensational spectacle. Especially in Central America, their own back yard.

But in America’s back yard alarming things are happening. The whole of that spectacular volcanic zone, from Costa Rica in the south to Guatemala in the north, is running out of control, and Washington has about as much idea of what to do about it as Moscow has about Poland. Tourists, at any rate, are taking no chances and staying away. In Guatemala and El Salvador this is understandable; guerrilla warfare and Govern-ment-controlled terror are hardly conducive to package tours. But Nicaragua is peaceful and astonishingly relaxed. Only if you are serving in the militia up in the north of the country do you run the risk of being ambushed and shot by marauding bands of former National Guardsmen, encamped across the Honduran frontier after their defeat by the Sandinista revolutionaries two years ago. The fear and tension, so acute in the countries to the north, have disappeared from Nicaragua. This is not just because Nicaraguans are more like the easy-going Caribbeans than the darkly introspective Indian and “ladino” (mixed race) peoples of Guatemala and El Salvador. It has very specific reasons. In the words of a perceptive Mexican observer: “Luckily for

the Nicaraguans, their class struggle is happening after the violent overthrow of their dictatorship. So they can fight it out peacefully. But in El Salvador and Guatemala the class struggle is part of the battle against dictatorship, and that’s why it’s so rough there.” Peaceful Nicaragua may be, but to someone who has not been for 18 years, the peace is strikingly different. In 1963, two years after the formation of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.), it was a peace of indifference, apathy and despair that nothing would ever change.

Meetings with labour and student leaders to hear of opposition activities had to be furtively organised. There were whispers of a new organisation, the F.S.L.N., and rumours of sporadic guerrilla activities up in the northern mountains.

Now, everything is out in the open. Nothing is taboo in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the people. In private and in public, in the press, on radio and television, everybody is arguing about the revolution and how it can be improved, developed, corrected or opposed. A crucial role in this argument is being played by Jesus Christ. Is he with or against the Sandinista revolution? On the road south out of Managua, past the volcanic lagoons that freckle the landscape, someone has chalked on a gatepost the warning, ominious' to some, hopeful to others: “Christ is coming!'’ On the opposite gatepost some revolutionary wag has scrawled his riposte: “No intervention in Central America!” What did the nuns of the Masaya volcano think of this, if they saw it as they drove by? Were they for or against the revolution? As they were young, they probably supported it. Broadly, the split in the Church that has developed in the last two years is between the hierarchy, with most of the bishops, backed by the Vatican, supporting the conservative opposition; and the over-whelm-ing majority of priests and laity, with a few bishops, enthusiasts for the revolution. In this, as in so many other ways, the Nicaraguan revolution is significantly different from the Cuban. It is not just that the Nicaraguans are a more deeply religious people, less advanced

politically and socially, and far more strongly imbued with hostility towards “Communism” after half a century of conditioning. More important, the Nicaraguan Church authorised the Sandinista insurrection. thus absolving it of any taint of “Communism." However, the conservative opposition plays skilfully on popular fears by trying to show that the present leadership is trying to divert the revolution. But a serious obstacle to their campaign is the presence in the Government of four priests: Miguel D’Escoto (foreign affairs), Edgardo Parrales (social welfare), Ernesto Cardenal (culture) and his brother Fernando, leader of the Sandinista Youth Movement. The four rejected an order from the hierarchy to resign, mustering an impressive array of grass-roots Christian support. With this behind them, they negotiated an arrangement with the bishops allowing them to remain in the Government, provided they exercise no priestly function.

The verve with which Nicaraguans hurl themselves into this dispute reflects the burst of energy released by the revolution. How it is possible to sustain any flow of energy in the crushing heat of Managua is beyond the understanding of an observer from temperate climes. How did they fight in it, never mind make a revolution and now rebuild a country?

With one’s back to the town, looking out over Lake Managua with sweat coursing down one’s body in rivers, nothing might have changed in 18 years. But turn back to the town and the change is breathtaking. For a start, the town is no longer there. Destroyed in the 1972 earthquake, it was never rebuilt because Somoza pocketed the reconstruction funds.

In the main square the cathedral is a roofless skeleton, its floor choked with tropical weeds, the cracks in its front wall concealed by banners of the national hero, General Augusto Cesar Sandino and, lower down, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Significantly, no room for Stalin in revolutionary Nicaragua.

Behind the square, in the shadow of the tall, white Bank of America building, now used as government offices, a children’s playground has been

built. Dedicated to Luis Alfonso Belaxquez. a IQ-year-old boy killed while making petrol bombs for use against Somoza's National Guard, the playground is made of simple, local materials painted in multicoloured hues. Far harder than building it was teaching children accustomed to oppression and adept at war, how to play on climbing frames and swings. It seems inconceivable that a Government whose first act of reconstruction in the devastated capital was to build a children's playground could, in two years, have lost the support of the majority of the people, as the opposition claims.

Virtually the whole population fought with the Sandinistas against Somoza, and for all the Government’s self-admitted inefficiency and incompetence, people still widely see it as their own. They, like their Government, are learning as they go. The scars of battle are still there to remind them should they forget. In the main square of Diriamba, a little town south of Managua, people asked about the war will point to the streets along which Somoza’s tanks rumbled, shooting down unarmed people while grown men wept, not from fear, but from frustration at being unable to shoot back. Above them, as they talk, half a roof of an abandoned house leans sideways against the sky. How could they forget? In fact many working people are behaving in quite contradictory ways. The removal of Somoza and his authority, and its replacement by “people's power,” led many workers to

believe that they need no longer respect any authority, even at their workplace. Bad labour discipline is frankly admitted by the Government and complained of by the opposition. But at the same time the Sandinista Trade Union, C.S.T., which is highly responsive to its members, has agreed to minimal wage rises. But while real wages have fallen, subsidies on food, public transport, health and education (not to mention the massive literacy programme) have soared — to the benefit of the whole population, including the well-to-do middle class. And the well-to-do are still doing fine. Even Alfonso Robelo, a dashing young cooking-oil manufacturer and their chief spokesman, admits that the private sector still runs twothirds of the economy, and three-quarters of the vital agroexport sector. But what Robelo cannot pardon is that wealth no longer brings with it power. “The F.S.L.N. had no right to take over the revolution,” he says. “The revolution was made by all sectors of the population, and we agreed on three aims: a pluralist political system, a mixed economy and a nonaligned policy. Not one has been adhered to.” To the Sandinistas, these complaints are meaningless. They have never made any secret of their intention to carry out a revolution; a pluralist system would merely, in their eyes, leave power in the hands of a wealthy elite and so perpetuate the country’s endemic injustices.

According to Sergio Ramirez, a member of the

ruling junta, and the Government's senior civilian, “the private sector is risking its neck. If it refuses to co-operate and things get worse, people would not turn to Robelo for a solution, but would demand something much more radical than the mixed economy now’ offered by the F.S.L.N. And we would have to be at the head of it. We couldn’t allow the Trotskyists to do it for us.” As for its international position, Nicaragua's relations with Cuba are close, "but we have no intention of joining the Soviet blocs,” said Ramirez. “Our policy of seeking alliances is a' vital part of our defence strategy.” Some of the most important are those with such non-Marxist countries as Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, Sweden and, above all, the new France of Francois Mitterand.

Nevertheless, Nicaragua is under enormous pressure which, as the revolution reaches its second anniversary, could force it to change course. External financial, commercial and diplomatic pressure from the United States’ allies inside the country, and military threats from Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras and Florida, might make it impossible to continue the present cautious, pragmatic consolidation of the revolution.

If the pressure is not eased or overcome, the Sandinistas may be forced to tighten discipline, centralise control and turn for aid to other allies. It is not the Sandinstas’ wish, but they would do it rather than let their revolution collapse. And Washington would have repeated the mistake it made with Cuba 20 years ago.