Nicaragua’s 44/19, the 44th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution, was celebrated this year on July 19. It was a very professionally orchestrated political celebration at the gates of the Roberto Clemente Baseball Stadium. There were crowd waves, fireworks, jumbotron screens, chants, and drone shots. The celebration was capped with a mandatory rambling speech by an aging revolutionary leader.
The theme seemed to be that the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has got it’s mojo back. After a week in country, I kind of concur. But before I get to that, let’s look at the 44 years since the 1979 Revolution.
Nicaragua’s counter revolution
The Sandinista revolution overthrew the Somoza regime in 1979. It seemed, then, that this revolution was one more harbinger of progress against empire. The Sandinistas immediately embarked on a literacy and immunization campaign that profoundly improved the lives of Nicaraguan people at every level in a short amount of time.
But 1979 was also the commencement of a period of historical reaction. In May 1979, Margaret Thatcher won the UK General Election for the Conservative Party. In November 1980, Ronald Reagan won the US Presidential election for the Republican Party. These reactionary leaders would drag their respective societies back to a simpler age of greed and social inequality. Unlike the Sandinista agenda, Thatcher and Reagan’s main thrusts were privatizing education – and in the UK, healthcare.
Thatcher’s brand of conservatism wasn’t getting much traction in England until the Argentine regime decided it needed a reconquest of Las Malvinas, the Falkland Islands, as a feather in its fascist cap. Thatcher got the war she needed to get England squarely behind her.
Reagan needed a good war, too. The disaster of Vietnam remained fresh in the American memory and Reagan needed to change the dynamic. So he cooked a proxy war in Nicaragua by flooding Honduras with money and guns to fund a mercenary army of former members of the Somocista National Guard and military that had refuged there after the Nicaraguan revolution.
These groups became known as the Contras. They were funded by illegal arms sales to Iran and cheap crack cocaine flooded into American inner cities.
They waged a war directly on progress made by the Sandinistas, mainly attacking soft targets like schools and medical centers. Former president Anastasio Somoza Debayle had killed more than 50,000 Nicaraguans in suppressing the Sandinista Revolution. He had actually bombed his own cities. Then the American proxy Contras killed 30,000 more. These were profound losses of life in a country of 2.5 million.
Daniel Ortega handily won the first elections held in Nicaragua in 1984, but the ongoing Contra war hampered his ability to implement his progressive agenda.
Exhausted from war and sanctions, the elections in 1990 included parties outwardly inimical to the goals of the revolution. The National Opposition Union government, led by Violeta Chamorra, ruled in Nicaragua from 1990 to 1996. The Liberal Alliance, headed by Arnoldo Alemán, ruled from 1996 to 2001. The Constitutionalist Liberal Party, headed by Enrique Bolanos, led the country from 2001 until 2006.
These parties were all some version of neoliberal. In their collective 16 years in power, land reform was reversed, education and healthcare were privatized, and all the human development index markers generally tracked in the wrong direction: inequality increased, land was returned to rich landowners, and elements of the education and healthcare system were monetized and privatized.
Ortega’s authoritarian reputation
However, the Sandinista government returned in the 2006 elections with Daniel Ortega returning as president. The neoliberal reversals were reversed once again. By then, the people of Nicaragua had gotten the hang of electoral politics and just kept re-electing the Sandinistas. Fool me once…
The opposition could see no route back to political power though the electoral process. By 2018, they sought to pull a ‘Juan Guaido’ on Ortega. Unrest surfaced that year over a five per cent reduction in pensions coupled with an increase in pension premiums for large employers. The FSLN had made this ‘Structural Adjustment’ based on an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report. After protests erupted, the FSLN government backed off the pension reforms, but the political opposition continued violent protests, which in turn were suppressed by FSLN supporters and the police.
The result was about 325 deaths, one third of these reportedly in the police forces. The government prosecuted supporters of the protest, and some journalists who actively wrote in support.
It is for these actions that the Northern narrative currently paints the Ortega government as authoritarian. Relative to its neighbor’s Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, however, it is politically stable and relatively safe. There is no mass exodus and no migrant caravans leaving Nicaragua and despite the 2018 troubles. Nicaraguans represent less than three per cent of the migrants at the Mexican/U.S. border, well behind Honduras at 19 per cent, Guatemala at 17 per cent, and El Salvador at six per cent.
Access to food, housing, education, and health care is good. There are fewer panhandlers and people who are homeless in Managua than there are in Toronto. It is a safer country for tourist travel than even neighbouring Costa Rica. The Nicaraguan police forces, almost 30 per cent of whom are women, are armed with a sidearm and a pair of handcuffs, not the Robocop utility belt of escalating violence now seen on every cop in North America.
Nevertheless, Nicaragua still struggles with the usual difficulties of development, 44 years after the revolution.
The FSLN Revolution’s Super Bowl halftime show
I travelled on a citizen diplomacy delegation to Nicaragua to participate in the 44th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. Before I left, a few people questioned why I was going to celebrate something that ended in dictatorship. I said I was just going to see for myself and draw my own conclusions.
What I saw was a country with a bone deep understanding that it lived in the shadow of an empire, and that it could still persevere on its own path while getting its revolution back on track.
At the 44/19 celebration rally on July 19, diplomats, Global South journalists, Sandinista youth, honourary police and fire units, and the rag tag Northern Leftist delegation – including myself – were treated to the Super Bowl half-time show of the Revolution – minus the air force fly by, mercifully.
The only thing that could have made it better would have been a reunion of the Clash with Billy Bragg subbing for Joe Strummer. Old revolutionary marches were sung along with pop political ditties extolling solidarity with Daniel. It was so moving that I wished there was a song sheet so I could add my voice.
Rosario Zambrana, the First Lady and Vice President, went through all the protocols before Daniel Ortega mourned former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, scorned Volodymyr Zelensky, bemoaned the loss of maritime rights to Colombia, and recalled his fallen comrades.
Ortega’s speech was about 90 minutes – not Castro long, but then, Ortega is not the orator that Castro was. But he spoke with confidence, knowing that he is succeeding where some of the country’s allies, namely Cuba and Venezuela, are not. The markets were full of food, the streets were full of promenading people, and no one seemed desperate for anything except to sell you a few extra wares from their market stall.
After the rally, Ortega was mobbed by the crowd who wanted, more than anything, a selfie. And for a solid hour, he smiled into smartphones. Ortega has more selfie stamina than Justin Trudeau even though he is substantially older.
When he finally called it a night, the Sandinista youth contingent walked him and Rosario to their Mercedes G-Wagon and they were driven away with a fraction of the security required for the average Portuguese soccer match.
What makes an American a Sandinista?
I’d bought a 44/19 pinata at the Mercado Oriental earlier in the day to have a little fun at the debrief with my crew of journalists and activists at the end of the evening. We were going to fill it with candy, union pins, cigars, and whatever other souvenir swag we could come up with.
As I carried the 44/19 pinata through the market, speaking English with my companions, a merchant, maybe in his 30s, standing before his stall asked me in good American learned English: “Why makes an American a Sandinista?”
I replied: “I’m not American. I’m Canadian. My parents are Portuguese. In Portugal, we overthrew fascism in 1974. Nicaragua overthrew Somoza in 1979. I was happy for you then and I guess I’m happy for you now.”
He cocked his head slightly, considering my response: “I think we may have a new Somoza now,” he finally said, cryptically.
“I don’ know. If what you’re saying is true, would you be saying it to me now, here in the middle of the market,” I replied.
He pondered my answer while I reviewed the minor selection of Nicaraguan cigars in his souvenir stall. Noting my disinterest in his stock, he took me to a second stall he owned with a way better selection. He sold me a dozen Joya de Nicaragua, which he stated were the White House smoke of choice, and a dozen Cohiba Corona Especiales, which he assured me were Fidel Castro’s preferred smoke.
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