• Nationalcapital NICARAGUA is a socialist regular US-hacked military incursion. Next month it will hold IF THOMAS COOK ran package tours to Nicaragua, its ads would feature "a land of contrasts'. Once market research showed that all takers, aside from that asshole teddy bear Oliver, were social science graduates, it might add paradoxes and contradictions'. If so, it would be dead right.
comprises coastal regions, separated mountainous backbone of hostile jungle. There no roads. English speaking habitants of the Atlantic coast refer to everyone from the Pacific side, including blacks, as Many have hardly noticed revolution.
airport, advertising American Express shoulder to shoulder with tionary propaganda. And, yes, there is a MacDonalds. Shanty towns more graffiti than Railton Whilst up-front political, it exhibits as much flair and bad spelling as the New York subway.
The revolutionary hero Sandino -responsible for the S in FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional) — is usually reduced to a stylised cartoon of his hat.
Downtown Managua is simply a modern bank building vivor of the 1972 earthquake rounded by wasteland. human hurricane, ringed by seething barrios. Don't try and cross it by public transport unless you've got a couple of days to spare.
Uniforms are everywhere and more people carry Ak47 Kalashnikov assault rifles than briefcases or handbags. Yet the streets feel more like Amsterdam than Moscow.
Nicaraguans are devout Catholics who hate the Pope.
Jesuit priest, recently married, assured us that His Emminence was another heretic'. The Nicaraguan version of the Lord's Prayer is part the usual gobbledegook and part a call to revolution.
Western marxists find one contradiction particularly stomach. How can a revolutionary socialist government economic activity in private hands as Thatcher i jes? For many it is simply a contradiction in terms. Socialism imthe first free election in its history.
returned from Nicaragua. provides some background.
tion remains are a poor substitute for analysis.
'and of pre-revolutionary Nicaraguense two by traditional through cultural exports. inSomoza clan's.
'Spaniards'.
the dustry and finance.
billboards stand with Cuban racketeers, revoluHene KeDozo. flaunt Road.
Guard.
In January — the sole sur— surThe eye of a A 55-year-old 'just hard much Doce JOHN HARRISON, recently plies public ownership; most producprivate Nicaragua is not socialist. QED, move next item, and all hail the local Suslov. Back in the real world facile syllogisms dante Three financial groups dominated Banco comprised the more dynamic elements of the bourgeoisie, closely tied to US transnationals. Banco de America was dominated by the conservative oligarchies who ran the estates producing agriThe most powerful group was the Its personal empire ranged from prostitution and extortion through agriculture and mining to inOne it its more enterprising and profitable operations involved buying local human blood for resale in the States. It had close links Mob. monopolised political power by rigging elections and controlling the National By the early 70s, the Somozas were openly flouting all rules of bourgeois competition to squeeze out rivals. the wake of the 1972 earthquake they stole millions of dollars of foreign aid 1978 they assassinated Pedro Joaquin Chamorro — big wheel Banco de America, bourgeois oppostion politician patriarch of the second most powerful Nicaraguan family and editor of the anti-Somoza daily• La Prensa. Such mafia-like tactics hardened capitalist opposition. Sections of the bourgeoisie edged closer to the FSLN.
Twelve bourgeois notables — Los proposed including outlawed Frente in discussions about reconstruction. responded enthusiastically, asking Los Doce to represent it. When it launched the insurrection, in September 1978, it asked the 12 to head a provisional government to expropriate Somoza's holdings replace the National Guard with a less partisan, sadistic, standing army. A year after the seizure of power, two of Los Doce were in ine ruling Junta. seven ouler held senior government posts.
But the FSLN retained the itiative. The tens of thousands who flocked to see the Junta sworn in at an open-air ceremony in Managua heard the voice of Thomas Borge — sole surviving founder member of the FSLN, and its most charismatic - signing people up. For those at the back the match-stick figures on the podium were dwarfed by four gigantic silver letters which had appeared overnight on the hillside behind. No prizes for guessing which four.
As the Frente dug in, bourgeoisie distanced itself from the La Prensa attacked FSLN stridently and the alliance fractured. But other considerations weighed against widespread nationalisations.
Nicaragua is starved of technicians. Administrators, cians, economists and so on worth their weight in dollar bills. The FSLN's pamper this strata - most of whom can earn more in the private sector was boosica o its foreign allies. The Cubans now regard their failure to integrate many skilled personel into the revolution as a major mistake.
The Frente is also painfully aware that Nicaragua's growing and inexperienced bureaucracy is a drag on development. Full scale central planning would expand the bureaucracy exponentially.
leading the FSLN and less NO
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country about the size of Britain with a population of three million. Desperately poor, it faces