This is Monday's reading. (Jan. 10)
Remember "Somoza" can actually refer to several people.
It is the first of two last names of the original dictator (Anastsio Somoza Garcia) and that of his children who followed him in power (Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle).
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"Nicaragua"
Marcia Olander
Encyclopedia of the Cold War (Routlege Taylor and Francis Group, 2008), p 632-36.
Questions:
1) Why might it have been "naive" to assume that a U.S. trained National Guard would contribute to democracy?
2) Approximately how long after 1910 did the U.S. have a military presence in Nicaragua.
3) Who was Augusto Sandino and what did he do? He won his goal when the U.S. pulled out, what do you think he did afterward? (the second question isn't answered in the article, but you can speculate).
4) Did the U.S. always support Somoza? Explain.
5) When did the FSLN emerge and what did they do... (big question)
6) What happened in 1972, and why was it a turning point in the anti-Somoza fight?
7) Describe the U.S. response to the final months of the Somoza regime (from mid-1978 September 1978 to July 1979 when Somoza fled).
8) What was the most important aspect (overall) of U.S. policy toward the Sandinistas after July 1979?
9) Would you say there was essentially continuity between the policy of U.S. presidents Carter and Reagan, or was there a notable change. Explain your answer based on the reading.
10) The article doesn't mention the Iran hostage crisis (1979-1981) in which Iranians took the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Given the state of relations between Iran and the U.S. in the early 1980s, what part of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua is most contradictory or surprising?
11) Who were Daniel and Humberto Ortega?
12) There are numerous foreign policy initiatives mentioned in this short paper that originated in Central America or Latin America to resolve this crisis. Name the ones you see. Do you see any sort of common thread or significance in this diplomacy?
13) Who was Violeta Chamorro?
14) Why does the article say that "U.S. policy had both failed miserably and succeeded"?
section 1: Background on Nicaragua and the U.S. role there
Between 1979 and 1990, Nicaragua was led by the
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1981-89) at one point characterized as "a Communist reign of terror" (Congressional Quarterly, p. 72). The Sandinistas, for their part, noted in the new Nicaraguan national anthem that the "Yankees" were the "enemy of humanity." Both sides engaged in hyperbole, but the U.S. charge, certainly untrue, led to graver consequences.
The U.S. intervention in Nicaragua spread to include pressure upon and aid to the rest of of Central America. These four small countries received one billion dollars of aid, including an unprecedented amount of military aid. The U.S., furthermore, funded an irregular army of fifteen thousand troops which operated from Honduras. Its goal: to overthrow the Sandinista government.
The FSLN overthrew the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, third ruler from the Somoza family that had led Nicaragua since 1935. The Somoza family's fortunes had been tied closely to the U.S. and the Cold War. Somoza Debayle's father, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, came into power as an unintentional, but perhaps predictable, result of U.S. diplomatic and military intervention in Nicaragua between 1910 and 1933.
The intervention in 1910 to favor of a conservative leader in a Nicaraguan power struggle, wound up leading to the long term presence of U.S. troops in the country. In an attempt to end the long presence of U.S. marines in the country, the U.S. created and trained a "
depoliticized" National Guard with the naive idea that it would support a stable government. Finally, in 1927, nationalist anger over this long-term U.S. role led Augusto Sandino to take up arms rather than accept the results of any Nicaraguan election managed by the U.S. government. The U.S. was soon bogged down in an nationalist guerrilla war against Sandino's men, a war which it was clearly losing in the public relations front - within Nicaragua, and internationally.
When the marines pulled out in 1933, the U.S. left Somoza García in charge of the National Guard and he soon overthrew the elected government. In the 1940s, the dictator's hold on power was not entrenched; U.S. disapproval as well as local and regional opposition threatened the regime. As late as 1951, Nicaragua, with the dictatorial Dominican Republic, was one of only three Latin American nations with no U.S. military mission (the U.S. mission had been recalled in July 1947 in protest of Somoza's dictatorship). It was when the U.S. turned to covert intervention, as in Iran (1953) but more relevantly in the Caribbean region beginning with Guatemala in 1954, that the Somoza regime became a vital U.S. ally receiving U.S. military and economic aid even while corruption and human rights abuses characterized the regime. Somoza Garcia was shot in 1956, and when doctors in the U.S. Panama Canal Zone couldn't save his life, his sons took over (Luis Somoza Debayle became president and Anastasio Somoza Debayle served as the head of the National Guard).
Section 2: The Sandinista origins and the revolution
The FSLN, formed in 1961, was inspired by the 1959 Cuban revolution and received training and material aid from Fidel Castro. Their bid to politicize rural Nicaragua was unsuccessful in the 1960s, rather it was a devastating 1972 earthquake in the capital Managua that gave the opposition to Somoza new life.
Somoza Debayle used the emergency to obviate any pretense at power sharing,and the corruption with which Somoza and the Guard dealt with rebuilding and foreign aid alienated the middle class and the elites. Growing unemployment caused by the earthquake and global economic crisis beginning in 1973 created conditions for an eventual Sandinista victory.
After a successful guerrilla attack by the FSLN in 1974, Somoza unleashed a wave of repression which the FSLN barely survived.
Schisms divided the group, but the victor was the more pragmatic branch called the
terceristas (third way), which promoted seeking allies from many social and economic sectors regardless of ideology.
Terceristas benefited, for example, from ties to a movement emerging in the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1960s that focused attention on social justice (Liberation Theology). Daniel Ortega, who eventually consolidated leadership over the FSLN movement, emerged from the
terceristas.
On January 10, 1978, prominent Conservative journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, opposed to Somoza, was assassinated, igniting the first urban uprising as well as a national strike led by the business sector. After scrambling to take advantage of the popular mobilization caused by Chamorro's death, the Sandinistas won a spectabular public relations and military victory in August of that year when, under the direction of the charismatic Eden Pastora, they took the National Palace, with two thousand hostages including the Assembly Deputies. The Sandinistas gained the release of sixty imprisoned comrades, a ransom, and safe passage out of the country; the streets were lined with supporters as the victorious guerrillas traveled to the airport.
The Sandinistas were now a mass movement, and successfully made contacts with the moderate and conservative opposition to Somoza. In September 1978 the FSLN began a new phase of fighting with coordinated attacks on National Guard stations in several cities. Although their military apparatus was still small, they were quickly gaining recruits, from only five hundred in early 1978 to well over 2,500 in 1979 (with uncounted numbers who joined them in battle).
By 1979 the Sandinista wings reunited, established a government junta in exile which included conservative members, and created umbrella organizations to lead the last phase of the war. The Sandinistas managed to organize the only effective and disciplined group to win not only the armed struggle but the diplomatic battle as well. In addition to the long-standing support of Cuba, by late 1978 the presidents of Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Panama were providing the Sandinistas with arms or other logistical aid.
Section 3: U.S. response to the FSLN victory
U.S. policy tried to reconcile contradictory aims. Congress had demanded a human rights element in foreign policy, and President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) embraced this readily. In this light, the administration helped weaken Somoza's standing in Nicaragua. However, very conscious of regional anti-Americanism, Carter strove to keep a low profile, refusing to take the final steps to push Somoza out. Furthermore, to avoid an outright Sandinista victory and takeover, was anxious to maintain the National Guard in place, loyal, it was hoped, to a new more democratic government. The Guard, however, had been too vital to the repression and corruption of the Somoza regime to play a credible role in a political solution.
Thus, it was not unpredictable that Somoza Debayle clung to power longer than was rationally justifiable. He was proud of how his father's defiant maneuvering during the period of intense U.S. disapproval in the mid 1940s; like his father, he withstood international pressure to resign. In his case, he badly miscalculated. In September 1978 when the American ambassador in Nicaragua intimated that Somoza's presence increased the likelihood of a Communist victory, Somoza dug in his heels, doubled the size of the Guard, bought weapons from Israel, and unleashed harsh military measures.
The U.S. limited itself to supporting mediation efforts which failed for several reasons: first, Somoza refused to seriously negotiate his own departure; just as importantly, the history of National Guard corruption and brutality left few Nicaraguans willing to openly endorsea plan for a stable transition which preserved the Guard. the Sandinistas, certainly, had no desire to see U.S. mediation succeed. Finally, no other nation in the region was strongly behind the U.S. position; the democratic countries tended to be more sympathetic to the Sandinistas, whereas the dictatorial regimes, facing unrest in their own countries, supported Somoza.
As the Sandinistas gained more internal and international stature, the U.S. found itself outflanked and embarrassed. The brutal assassination of ABC reporter Bill Stewart at a National Guard check point (as his cameraman filmed) turned U.S. opinion, and a week later, on June 27, 1979, Somoza finally offered to resign. The U.S. government asked him to wait as the ambassador in Managua tried desperately to arrange a post-Somoza government that would somehow weaken the now clearly victorious Sandinistas; in the meanwhile the material destruction and loss of life continued until finally, on July 17, Somoza fled and the U.S. was faced with the unconditional Sandinista victory it had feared.
Section 4: The Sandinistas in power
The Sandinista forces marched triumphantly into Managua on July 19, 1979, riding a wave optimism and support that would provide impetus for economic and social reforms. The Sandinistas' immediate social reforms in public health and literacy produced dramatic results demonstrating that popular participation and enthusiasm was high in the early phase of the revolutionary government.
From a longer-term perspective, there is much disagreement over the ideological nature of the Sandinista government. Clearly many FSLN leaders were Marxist-Leninists; however, Sandinistas were cognizant of the need to appease the conservative anti-Somoza groups with whom they had allied to oust Somoza. The Sandinistas included conservative voices in the original five-member junta which took power, although they never relinquished their majority.
The Soviet Union had made it clear that it would not take on another completely dependent state in the Caribbean and the reaction from the U.S. and global community was also a consideration. The Sandinistas quickly signaled their desire to work within the capitalist markets with the 1979 declaration that Nicaragua would pay the onerous debt left by Somoza.
The government promoted a mixed economy albeit with a much larger state role than had existed previously in Nicaragua; ownership of industry and agriculture was to be shared between the state, small producers, and the capitalist sector. With the expropriation of the vast properties of the Somoza and his closest associates, the government overnight controlled 20 percent of Nicaragua's arable land and initially the Sandinitas hoped to maintain these properties as state farms; by 1983, however, the poor performance of these farms led to greater small holder distribution. While generous government support was available to private producers, suspicion from the business sector led to capital flight.
Daniel Ortega was a charismatic thirty-three year-old in 1979 when he and his brother took leadership of the government. The Ortega family had long opposed Somoza, and Daniel joined the FSLN as a university student in 1963 soon after the organization formed. he was imprisoned by Somoza several times but was released as part of the negotiations after the successful 1974 raid on the National palace. Daniel led the political branch of the party and his brother, Humberto, the military arm. The comparison to Fidel Castro and Raul, head of the Cuban armed forces, generated unease, as did Cuban advisors in the literacy and health campaigns as well as in military capacities.
In spite of bureaucratic inefficiency and the infrastructure damage caused by the revolution, the Nicaraguan economy did fairly well by regional standards until 1984. Furthermore, human rights and social conditions were greatly improved since the Somoza regime. This, combined with the nationalist anti-U.S. stance of th revolution, gave the Sandinitas a resounding victory in the 1984 elections (the elections were endorced as free and fair by international observers). Daniel Ortega became the first democratically elected president since the 1930s. Nevertheless, warfare, not democracy, was the primary focus of life as parts of rural Nicaragua turned against the Sandinistas. Already, on the first anniversary of the Sandinista victory, peasant and rancher leaders from the mountainous northern region organized the first armed action against the Sandinista government. Resentment toward Sandinista rule in traditional rural regions, combined by 1981 with the possibility of U.S. assistance for anti-FSLN groups, led to a convergence of civil unrest and armed aggression.
Section 5: U.S. policy from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan
Although the Carter adminnistration was dismayed at the Sandinista takeover, it decided to provide financial support in order to maintain some leverage on the new government. However, during the Carter-Reagan transition, in late 1980, the Sandinistas sent arms and support to leftist rebels in El Salvador, which forced Carter to cut off aid, a policy which Reagan continued even as evidence emerged that the Sandinistas had halted the tranfer of arms. In order to ensure that the Salvadoran allies of teh FSLN did not oust another Central American government, through 1984 the Reagan administration directed $400 million dollars of military aid to tiny non-democratic El Salvador. An invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 also manifested Reagan's fears of regional Communist expansion.
Reagan's anti-FSLN campaign included a trade and aid embargo, pressure against friendly countries to prevent arms sales to Nicaragua, constant negative propaganda, financial support for opposition in Nicaragua, military exercises in Honduras involving fifteen thousand U.S. troops near the Nicaraguan border, and naval exercises in Caribbean waters. But the cornerstone of U.S. policy was support for a rebel war against the Sandinistas carried out from Honduras (and to a much lesser extent, from Costa Rica). In 1980, a group of exiles, mainly former National Guard troops, some Nicaraguan farmers and, later, Misquito natives, were organizing in Honduras, with support from the Argentinean military government; the latter feared a connection between the FSLN and Argentine guerrillas). In March 1981, Reagan approved funds for interdicting arms, which became a cover for CIA training and arming of this group. The first major “Contra” incursion into Nicaragua occurred in March 1982. Soon Nicaragua was on full war footing with a military draft and the rapid creation of the largest armed forces in Central America.
The Contras failed at their original mission to control some part of Nicaraguan territory in order to establish a parallel government. So, they turned to economic sabotage and low-level constant harassment, murdering Sandinista officials and civilian health and social workers especially. In 1984 the CIA-directed mining of Nicaragua’s harbors created international outrage.
The resulting scandal led to a congressional prohibition in late 1984 of military funding for the Contras. Officials in the Reagan White House, the CIA, and the State and Defense Departments circumvented the restrictions first by looking for private and foreign donors for the Contras and later through an illegal scheme wherein the U.S. government secretly (through Israel) sold arms to Iran at inflated prices. Profits from these sales were diverted to the Contras. The downing of a Contra supply flight over Nicaragua and the confession of its U.S. pilot that he worked for the CIA finally sparked investigations that resulted in thirteen convictions, most against U.S. officials.
The Reagan administration continued to pressure other Central American governments to join the anti-Sandinista campaign. While regional governments were unnerved by Sandinista rhetoric and the presence of Cubans and Eastern bloc advisers in Nicaragua, the militarization of Central America was increasingly untenable. In addition to the U.S. military presence in Honduras and guerrilla wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, even democratic Costa Rica, which prided itself for having abolished its military in 1948, was being pulled into the regional military tensions; former Sandinista Eden Pastora was organizing anti-Sandinista operations with CIA funds funneled through third parties.
Section 6: Sandinistas and regional foreign policy
The Sandinistas were not weaponless in the international arena. They used their long-standing connection to church reformers to effectively promote public relations abroad, even in the United States. U.S. citizens and others traveled to Nicaragua to “witness” Contra abuses, to reduce Contra impunity. In its greatest diplomatic victory in 1984, Nicaragua turned to the World Court in The Hague to denounce the U.S. military intervention. While the U.S. pulled out of the proceedings and ignored the court ruling, the Sandinistas were successful in building international support and recognition.
The Sandinistas used international audiences to declare their absolute willingness to negotiate with the United States. The lack of reciprocity in this matter left the U.S. isolated. Finally, Nicaragua’s neighbors took diplomatic initiatives from which the U.S. was excluded. The Contadora group composed of Panama, Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia began talks in 1983 which brought Nicaragua and its Central American neighbors together to resolve regional tensions. President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, organized a Central American peace initiative that finally led to a 1987 treaty, signed by all five countries, which laid out careful steps to regional democracy, peace, and demilitarization.
Section 7: The 1990 election
In the 1990 election Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega lost to a coalition of opposition groups whose presidential candidate, Violeta Chamorro, was the widow of slain journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Anti-Sandinista resentment brought about by political errors such as the increased use after 1986 of politically motivated property seizures, as well as economic chaos and hyper-inflation caused by the war and mismanagement, contributed to the upset. To be sure, the U.S. intervention also played an important role. The U.S. funded and guided the opposition and there was the implicit threat that war would continue if the U.S.-favored candidate did not win. Nicaragua’s revolution was over.
U.S. policy had both failed miserably and succeeded. ...
Since 1990, the Sandinistas have maintained an important opposition role, even as the party once again suffered schisms—this time over Daniel Ortega’s insistence on maintaining leadership as well as serving as the FSLN presidential candidate in every presidential election between 1984 and 2006. Finally, in November 2006, Ortega won the presidential election with approximately 38% of the vote. ...
To hear Mercedes Sosa sing the song, with a translation of the words, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyOJ-A5iv5I
