Nicaragua: Nearly Gone & Almost Forgotten

Henri Lara Gutierrez was born in Esteli, Nicaragua in October 1979, three months after the July 19, 1979 triumph of the Sandinista revolution. This year, Henri, like the revolution, will turn 18 years old. In 1989, at the age of ten, Henri was a slender, curly-haired boy who went to school daily in a clean, pressed uniform. He did his homework and raised his hand in class. He passed the afternoons climbing trees for guayavas and playing baseball in the street with his cousins and friends. He was healthy, although he could have eaten more food than he found on his plate. He had long since received all his vaccinations. The doors of the hospital and clinic were open any time he or his little sister needed attention.

The Nicaraguan revolution had accomplished small miracles for the mass of poor citizens oppressed by 45 years of the Somoza family dictatorship. Literacy had increased from 25 percent to 80 percent. Free education and health care had become state priorities. Land reform had benefited thousands in the cities and countryside. Countless projects had been completed with the help of international donations, including construction of schools, hospitals, and clinics, establishment of drinking water supplies and waste water disposal, agricultural irrigation, and environmental protection. The Sandinista government continued to prioritize needs of the majority while the country suffered from the crippling blows of the U.S.-funded counter-revolutionary war and the U.S. economic blockade. The United Nations World Court had ruled that the U.S. owed Nicaragua $17 billion in damages from the U.S. economic and military war on this small, poor country. The U.S. has never paid any of it.

U.S. military and economic intervention brought an end to the Sandinista government at the ballot box in 1990. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was inaugurated as president in April 1990.

 

In the Clutches of the IMF

Anxious for resources to run her government, President Chamorro implemented the "neo-liberal policy" and "structural adjustment program" of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). State employees were offered two years of salary to quit. The government made drastic cuts, primarily in education, health, and social services. The army decreased from 95,000 to 16,000 soldiers. Many small farmers, who had acquired privately or cooperatively owned land under the Sandinista government, lost their farms to credit policies that favored large farmers. Small farmers sometimes became peasant laborers on land they had once owned. People flocked to the cities in search of work. Squatters, living in black plastic shanties, stretched the boundaries of Managua and other urban areas. Cheap imports, including shoes and chickens, caused many Nicaraguan industries to fold. By 1991,  unemployment had grown from its 1989 level of 35 percent to 60 percent (officially) and remains so today. Unemployment is nearly 90 percent on the Atlantic Coast.

The World Bank and the IMF now tightly control Nicaragua’s governmental policies through restrictions tied to loans. According to the video Deadly Embrace, produced in 1996 by Compas de La Primavera for the Nicaragua Network Education Fund, "The World Bank considers the growth of poverty to be a pathology, not a consequence of an economic system." Nicaragua’s foreign debt rose from $1.5 billion in 1979 to $8 billion in 1996. Each Nicaraguan owes $3,000, one of the highest per capita debts in the world. Annual per capita income decreased from $870 in 1983 to $430 in 1995. The only "positive" aspects for the poor of the Chamorro government’s economic measures has been control of inflation and stabilization of the Nicaraguan cordoba against the U.S. dollar.

Structural adjustment was designed to enable poor countries to pay off their loans. Deadly Embrace describes it as, "not part of an economic recovery program but meant only to create a cheap labor force, cheap raw materials and a Nicaraguan market for TransNational Corporations." Over 80 countries have undergone structural adjustment programs. The video’s companion book claims that the IMF brings in more money in payments on interest and principal of debts than it lends out: "According to one calculation, in 1990 there was a global surplus of $180 billion, yet the IMF used virtually none of it to alleviate the crippling indebtedness of the South. Most of the capital went to private capital markets in the North."

In 1991, the UN ranked Nicaragua 85th on its human development index, a measure which takes into account life expectancy, average education level, and average per capita income. By 1995, Nicaragua had dropped to 117th, second only to Haiti as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. According the December 1996/January 1997 issue of Envio, "80 percent of the population lives in poverty, half of those in abject poverty."

Most of the young men on Henri’s block are out of work. The few who have jobs barely feed their families on what they earn. Henri’s uncle Toño had always farmed with his father. Now Toño is overwhelmed by the recent loss of his father in an automobile accident, the shortage of other work, and the demands of raising four children. Henri’s uncle Donald, married with three children, suffers from alcoholism but keeps his family alive with the little work he gets painting cars. Henri’s uncle Wilfredo is an alcoholic, now near death from his recent habit of sniffing paint thinner. "No one will give him work," his mother laments. Both Donald and Wilfredo were psychologically impacted by their experiences in the Sandinista Army fighting the Contras. Henri had two other uncles who were killed during the insurrections of the late 1970s, when Somoza’s National Guard destroyed the family’s car painting business in 1978, after discovering that their house was used to hide Sandinista rebels.

Henri’s neighbor Sergio has been deported back from Costa Rica twice while searching for work. In late 1996, Sergio spent several weeks working in one of the textile maquilas or sweatshops in the outskirts of Managua. When the "free trade zone" opened in 1992, it employed 1,300 people. By the end of 1996, it employed 11,000.

Turnover in the maquilas is high. Respiratory and other illnesses are common. Approximately 80 percent of the employees are women and 60 percent are 15 to 24 years old. Like most employees, Sergio couldn’t tolerate working there for long. His daily salary of 24 cordobas (about $3 at that time) was reduced further for room and board. The days averaged 12 hours, he was watched over and always pressured to produce more. But people are so desperate for employment that new job seekers line up outside the gate daily. Sergio now spends his days in a tobacco factory working for $2 a day. Henri’s uncle Toño scrapes up what he can working his family’s farm and fixing vehicles.

The 1996 Elections: Free and Fair?

Nicaraguans anticipated the October 20, 1996 elections with tremendous intensity. Most believed the ballot box offered their only real hope, for escape from the poverty and hardship that settled into the country during the Chamorro years.

Term limits coincided in 1996 such that all six levels of public office were up for consideration in one election: president and vice-president, national representatives to the National Assembly, departmental representatives to the National Assembly, representatives to the Central American Parliament, mayors, and municipal councils. In all, 32,500 candidates ran for 2,100 positions.

Bringing these elections to fruition was a mammoth and tremendously costly task for the Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council (CSE). The $50 million administrative bill was paid for largely by foreign donations. Violeta Chamorro’s government had refused to allocate funds to run the election. Mariano Fiallos, who had headed the CSE since the 1984 election, resigned in early 1996 charging that his job was untenable given the CSE’s lack of funding and electoral law changes that encouraged partisan influences.

The Supreme Electoral Council’s challenges included: how to print and distribute under secure conditions six ballots each for the nearly 2.4 million registered voters, half of whom live in remote areas at the end of long, muddy roads; how to find and train 45,000 reasonably impartial people to administer the elections, 3 for each of 9,000 precincts; and, how to receive and record election results from even the most remote precincts quickly and reliably.

The presidential contest was the most highly charged. Although 19 parties and 5 alliances put forth candidates, the polls indicated that only 2 ever had a real chance. The Liberal Alliance (a coalition of five conservative parties) ran Arnoldo Alemán, former mayor of Managua and member of the PLC (Liberal Constitutional Party, the party of the Somoza family). The National Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) nominated Daniel Ortega, head of the party’s National Directorate and President of Nicaragua from the triumph of the revolution until his 1990 defeat.

Problems occurred with almost every aspect of the elections. The 45,000 people hired by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) were not well-trained, nor could most of them be impartial in such a highly polarized country. Many precincts opened hours late. Hundreds of precincts telegraphed results to Managua on election night that differed from their own official tally sheets. According to the FSLN’s 646-page complaint filed with the CSE in November, 800 of the 9,000 precincts reported more than the 400 maximum votes allowed in each precinct, most of them for the Liberal Alliance. Thousands of ballots disappeared altogether, as did many official tally sheets. Election materials showed up in taxi cabs, private homes, or garbage dumps. The FSLN’s parallel count showed 60,000 votes missing entirely. Fraud may have been intentional, but much of the chaos may have resulted from impractical logistical processes and under-trained workers who abandoned their responsibilities after 24 hours or more without food, water, sleep, and access to a bathroom.

The December issue of Nicaragua Monitor of the Nicaragua Network Education Fund, based in Washington, DC, interviewed Alejandro Bendaña, former Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry of Nicaragua and now Director of the Center for International Studies in Managua. He said, "The chaos was so great that the results were impossible to audit….This was the case in one out of six precincts. What is in question now is not just the legitimacy but the actual legality of the elections."

Dorotea Wilson, a member of the FSLN national directorate, was present when observers witnessed irregularities in Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas) on the northern Atlantic Coast. When she asked if they were going to report the errors, the observers replied, "It’s not our role to report these kinds of problems. They are administrative and internal. We are here simply to watch the voters vote."

By the time most of the irregularities became apparent, most of the major international observer groups had declared the elections "free and fair" and gone home. "It was really election observation tourism," said Bendaña. He found their behavior insulting, "We are not some kind of colonial ward. The foreign observers should have respected us enough not to declare a winner before he was officially declared by our electoral tribunal. This was offensive."

The two largest observer groups were sent by the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS). The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $9 million on the elections: $6 million for technical support for the Supreme Electoral Council, $1.2 million for the OAS observers, and the remainder for five other observer groups, of which the Carter Center was one. Carter and four other heads of state who led their delegation declared in a statement on December 6, 1996: "The leaders concluded that the elections contained flaws, but the results announced by the Supreme Electoral Council on November 22, by and large, reflected the preferences of the Nicaraguan people. Allegations of fraud are unsubstantiated, and the delegation concluded that Arnoldo Alemán won the presidential election in the first round."

Some observers made more bold condemnations of election irregularities. Hemisphere Initiatives, the Women’s Observer Mission to the Elections in Nicaragua (WOMEN), and other, smaller non-governmental groups were among the first groups to report voting procedures in violation of electoral law. Many of these pertained to polling-station staff having allowed people to vote without providing identification that coincided with the list of voters registered to vote at that location.

On October 22, two days after the votes were cast, the New York Times declared, "Rightist is Victor Over Sandinistas in Nicaragua Vote." The next day, the Times ran a profile of Alemán, "the new President of Nicaragua." The U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, John Maisto, also acknowledged Alemán as the winner before the Supreme Electoral Council had performed its scheduled count of the actual tally sheets and long before it had reviewed accusations of irregularities presented by ten parties, including the Liberal Alliance and the FSLN. Bendaña exclaimed, "The U.S. Ambassador met with Alemán’s entire cabinet before the results were final! Obviously, U.S. ‘values’ do not include commitment to institutional process."

Observer groups may have been prepared to denounce anomalies if the FSLN had won the election. In public, Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and part of the Carter team, declared the elections legitimate, while privately he said to Daniel Ortega in front of a dozen witnesses, "God help us if this had happened in Costa Rica or in a European country. The elections would have been annulled at the very least."

It took the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) until November 22 to "review" the election results and the challenges presented to them. Although the CSE annulled 6 percent of all precincts and declared that there were some "anomalies," it also blessed the elections as "transparent and democratic." Alemán won 51 percent of the vote and Ortega 38 percent. Of the 93 seats in the National Assembly, the Liberal Alliance won 42 and the FSLN 36. The other 15 seats went to smaller parties. The FSLN captured 52 mayorships and the Liberal Alliance won all 91 other mayorships.

Why Alemán Won and the FSLN Lost

If the election results represent the sentiment of the majority of the population, then there must be reasons why the FSLN was not able to convince voters to give them another turn in power and why Alemán was able to appeal to voters. Marcos Membreño of Envio, and director of research at the UCA, offered the following analysis at a Washington, DC conference held by the Nicaragua Network Education Fund in February:

• During the latter half of the 1980s, Nicaraguans faced a severe economic crisis manifested by hyperinflation and currency devaluations. The crisis fomented discontent and anti-Sandinista sentiments.
• Alemán capitalized on the discontent in two ways: While he was still Managua’s mayor, he tried to appeal to voters as a populist politician; and, he managed to build a strong party at the national level in a short period of time.
• The anti-Sandinista sentiment was consolidated under Chamorro because she managed to end hyperinflation, stabilize the currency, and terminate the military draft. Those who had money and opportunities did not suffer from increased unemployment. They saw the end of scarcity in the stores and received credit to buy automobiles and home appliances. Fear of Alemán liberals and even Somocistas dissipated among this group.
• The FSLN handicapped itself in a number of ways: (a) it distanced itself from its base while the Liberal Alliance was engaged in wide sweeping proselytizing; (b) internal division and struggles prevented the party from developing its political leadership; and, (c) the party could not recover from the loss of credibility with its base after the 1990 "piñata," the distribution of state resources to party leaders who were not in financial need.

The Frente’s leadership problems were expounded on by Envio: "The FSLN continues to be run by a sexist structure rife with dangerous inertia and unnecessary sectarianism, and always inclined to doublespeak." The Frente may have further damaged itself by rejecting the candidacy of Vilma Nuñez, Director of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, for the presidential nomination. A new face, that of a long and widely respected Sandinista, and that of a woman might have paved a smoother way for the FSLN in the 1996 elections.

The FSLN may have faced additional setbacks from last minute attacks on Ortega’s candidacy by both U.S. leaders and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church.

The U.S. government professed neutrality throughout the campaign, yet two weeks prior to election day, State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns said, in response to a question from ABC television, "I would not use the word ‘democrat’ to describe Daniel Ortega." The conservative Nicaraguan newspaper, La Prensa, picked up on these remarks and made its headline the next day, "State Department: ‘Ortega is no democrat.’" The phrase reverberated through Nicaragua’s conservative media, bolstering the right’s ability to paint Daniel Ortega as someone who would not be popular with the U.S. government and who had not changed despite the claims of his campaign ads.

Dorotea Wilson of the Frente’s National Directorate said in February, "We are optimistic. We came out of this election in a stronger position than we were in after the 1990 election." She gives the following reasons:

In 1996, the Frente knew losing was a real possibility whereas in 1990, the party was shocked and unprepared.

The Frente has been strengthened by the alliance it formed in 1996 with agricultural producers and former contra fighters.

The Frente had the advantage of being an opposition party and criticizing the Chamorrro government from the outside.

If we pretend that the election results reflect reality, the FSLN lost support in some areas and gained it in others. The Frente received almost exactly the same percentage of the vote in 1996 as it did in 1990, 38 percent as compared with 41 percent. It is still the largest political party with the strongest and broadest base of support.

In 1990, the FSLN won 39 of a total of 92 seats in the National Assembly. But, according to Wilson, only eight FSLN representatives were left in the Assembly by the end of 1996, largely because of the break off from the FSLN of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). In 1996, the FSLN won 36 seats in the Assembly, thus repairing its strength considerably.

In terms of mayorships, the Frente drastically increased its power in 1996. They won 52 of the 143 town halls, a sharp increase over 1990 when the Frente put only 13 mayors into office. The FSLN is capable of organizing formidable opposition to Alemán’s government. However, as Bendaña cautions, "Keeping the FSLN cohesive for the next period will be a challenge."

The Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), which split off from the FSLN two and a half years ago, ran Sergio Ramirez as its presidential candidate. Ramirez was vice-president of Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega. The MRS was trounced in the presidential race, winning less than 1 percent of the vote. Even their leading candidate for national representative to the National Assembly, revolutionary commander Dora Maria Tellez, lost her seat. The MRS would have had to dissolve, as most other parties did, if it had not managed to win the Carazo departmental seat in the National Assembly. That seat was won by Roberto Arguello but ended up being assigned to Jorge Samper, husband of CSE President Rosa Marina Zelaya.

Women fared poorly in the 1996 election, far worse than they did in 1990. Of the 93 members of the new National Assembly, only 10 are women. Of these 10, 8 are members of the FSLN. The Liberal Alliance counts only 1 woman among its 42 representatives. Alemán has named men to all but a handful of his cabinet minister, vice-minister, and commission leadership positions. Women won about one-quarter of the mayorships, more than they won in 1990.

During the election, the Nicaraguan Center for Constitutional Rights focused its resources on getting women involved. The organization’s vice-president, Angela Rosa Acevedo, was pleased that a large number of women turned out to vote, but recognizes that there is a long way to go: "Women are the ones who bear the burdens of the economic crisis because we are the ones who manage the household. Yet, we have lost important political space….The power is with men. We must struggle to have an equal voice….We must examine how to include the women’s agenda in the legislative process." Women’s organizations developed a list of priorities during the 1996 campaign called the "women’s agenda." It was signed by most parties, but not by Alemán.

Democracy in Nicaragua?

Nicaraguans are largely deflated by the messy aftermath of the October elections. Intense anticipation and desperate hope for reconciliation and economic development were shattered and left them with few other bases for hope. They thought they had long since buried Somoza-style, questionable elections.

Most citizens fulfilled their roles in these elections. They tolerated an inefficient and clumsy voter certification process and about 80 percent of those eligible turned out to vote. Waits in line of 2 to 12 hours were common. "The voters provided a civic example," said Angela Rosa Acevedo, "It was the institutions that failed." She concludes, "We have to preserve the new political culture. This is one country. We need to give everyone a voice without the exclusion of any sector or any political interest." She went on to say, "Nicaragua faces a serious economic crisis. It has to fulfill the conditions of structural adjustment which require economic restrictions, increased levels of poverty, unemployment, and underemployment. If we are talking about real democracy, democracy of the human condition, then Nicaragua does not have it. Nicaragua no cumple."

Democracy comes down to money, according to Envio, "We need democracy to advance; democracy needs elections as a test; elections need money and ever more resources to be carried out." Envio goes on to speculate that the first world nations’ requirement of "market democracies" in third world nations, supported by expensive, complicated elections, may be the newest form of north-south intervention.

Arnoldo Alemán has begun his presidency in an atmosphere of controversy and chaos. He is not expected to waiver from the relationships established by Violeta Chamorro with international finance institutions. Now that the country is strapped by debt, significant improvement for the majority may not be seen for decades. Alemán’s campaign promises included creation of 100,000 new jobs each year and resolution of property issues.

Members of the Frente Sandinista boycotted Alemán’s January 10 inauguration because he was "fraudulently elected," as they saw it. Outgoing president, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, refused to pass the presidential sash to Alemán because, according to her, he represents the Somoza era. In his inaugural speech, Alemán claimed, "We will not return to the past; the long dark night is over for Nicaragua," and the FSLN threatened, "We are going to reorganize to confront Alemán’s dictatorial policies in the streets."

In addition to opposition from the Frente and other sectors, Alemán must satisfy the conservative Nicaraguans and Cubans who helped put him into office, while at the same time, not alienating the poor who voted for him. Marcos Membreño expects Alemán to prioritize protection of oligopolies that existed under Somoza and to marginalize those that developed under Chamorro. The oligopolies will pressure Alemán to continue to award credit to them, rather than to small farmers and business owners. Membreño also expects Alemán to try to dismantle everything associated with the Sandinista regime, including non-governmental organizations, universities, and the FSLN.

The toughest immediate issue for Alemán is property. In Miami campaign speeches, Alemán pledged that those with confiscated property would get their land returned. When campaigning inside Nicaragua, Alemán pledged that small farmers and owners of modest urban homes would not be evicted. While many cases of homes and lands redistributed under the Sandinista government have been resolved, some are hotly contested. Sandinistas and Alemán government representatives have been holding talks on property disputes since January, with mixed results. In March, Ortega stated that he did not think the property issue could be resolved through dialog, since the government was promising to suspend evictions, but not doing anything about the actions of the police and courts to remove people, sometimes violently, from property they have held for nearly 18 years. A few people have died in recent evictions and dozens have gone to jail. Also in March, Ortega warned that a "total war" could result if the National Assembly doesn’t order a stop to the evictions.

Armed groups continue to harass people in rural areas, usually in a sort of highway bandit approach to survival, but also with periodic political assassinations. Innocent civilians continue to be attacked and/or robbed. Nicaraguan Army troops confront periodic ambushes. A few people are killed every month. The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights reported 199 violent deaths in Nicaragua’s rural zones from January to mid-December 1996. Over half of those killed were peasants and 39 were children.

Excessive levels of unemployment and poverty have contributed to higher levels of crime in the cities and an alarming increase in drug use and suicides. National Police statistics reported 6.3 crimes per hour and 2 suicides every 3 days in 1996. The police reported 33 suicides in the first 48 days of 1997. There were a total of 206 suicides in 1996, up from 132 in 1995. Most of the victims are men under the age of 30. Meanwhile, women and children bear the brunt of structural adjustment policies. Domestic violence and sexual crimes against both women and children have also increased markedly.

Signs of Hope

Bitter struggles between the legislative and executive branches erupted even before the outgoing National Assembly had completed its session in December 1996. Some legislators forecast a "constitutional crisis" and a return to the era of Somoza. However, there is reason to expect that the Assembly will present a strong challenge to Alemán’s programs.

Victor Hugo Tinoco, vice-chair of the FSLN bench in the National Assembly and member of the Sandinista National Directorate, was another guest at the February conference of the Nicaragua Network Education Fund. He described the balance of power in the National Assembly as follows: 47 votes comprise a majority of the 93 votes in this Assembly. The Liberal Alliance has 42 representatives, however, about 8-10 of them do not sympathize with Alemán. The FSLN won 36 of the Assembly seats and other parties won the remaining 15 seats. Of those 15, 4 can be considered progressive votes, the MRS vote and the 3 from the Christian Path Party. Thus, it will not be easy for Alemán to push whatever he would like through the legislature. Tinoco also noted that the balance of power between the National Assembly and the executive branch is stronger because of constitutional reforms passed in 1995.

Dialog over property disputes gives reason to hope that one of the most intense issues may finally find some resolution. Organizing on the part of women, grassroots movements, and those few who are lucky enough to be employed is an important route to defending the gains of the revolution. Even those who work in the maquilas are struggling for the right to organize. Likewise, the strength of the Frente Sandinista and other political parties as opposition forces will affect how far Alemán and possibly even the World Bank and IMF can go.

Constructive reform of electoral laws could improve faith in "democracy." Alemán cannot change the heads of the Nicaraguan police or army or make any new appointments to the Supreme Electoral Council until the year 2000. It will be 2001 before Alemán can replace any of the justices of the Supreme Court. The current administration will also test the bounds of the Nicaraguan constitution, developed under the Sandinista government and revised under Chamorro.

Today, Henri Lara Gutierrez is the only one with a job in his household of seven. When there is work, Henri brings home about 27 cordobas ($3) a day. A pound of beans costs 6 cordobas and a pound of rice 3 or 4 cordobas. In mid-1996, it was calculated that a family of 6 required $162 per month just to cover basic needs.

Without the boost he got from the revolution in his first ten years, Henri would probably not have made it past the third grade and might well have already fallen into despair or substance abuse like some of his neighbors or uncles. Whether Henri and his family survive and whether any of the gains of the Nicaraguan revolution survive the next five years of the Alemán government remain to be seen.

Meanwhile, our tax and investment dollars will be hard at work maintaining, if not strengthening, poverty, rather, "democracy," in Nicaragua.          

Regular news reports from Nicaragua are provided by Envio and the Nicaragua Network Education Fund, 1247 E Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003.

Genevieve Howe is a political activist from New Hampshire. She lived in Nicaragua from 1989-1991 and spent last fall helping to organize the Women’s Observer Mission to the Elections in Nicaragua.