Geraldine Rose recounts her days in Nicaragua, January, 1988 and unfolds the revolution which can be “the threat of a good example” to the US. “It is normal for the state to regard the domestic population as a major enemy, who must be excluded, repressed or controlled to save elite interests.”
This definition of dictatorship comes from The Culture of Terrorism, 1988, a book published by renowned linguist and US foreign policy critic, Noam Chomsky, in the same year that I volunteered, along with about 30 others, to travel to Nicaragua to help get in the coffee harvest, vital as a cash crop for the country’s economy. To most US citizens, this description applies to ‘communist’ countries, such as the ‘totalitarian state of Nicaragua’ – denounced at that time almost every day on television and in the newspapers. But the undemocratic state that Chomsky is talking about is the United States. He wants to open the eyes of the domestic population that is excluded, repressed or controlled by elite interests bent on dominating the rest of the world and making war on countries who dare to challenge that domination, like Nicaragua. How is this done? Through the culture of terrorism.
When I left the shores of a grey and miserable UK on 2nd January 1988, nearly nine years after The Triumph (the popular name for the Revolution), in Nicaragua, Margaret Thatcher was still in the throes of destroying the unions, and bringing the working classes to heel, following the Miner’s Strike of 1984-5.
“A generation on, it is clear that the miners’ strike was more than a defence of jobs and communities. It was a challenge to the destructive market and corporate-driven reconstruction of the economy that gave us the crash of 2008. The outcome of the dispute brought us to where we are today: the deregulated, outsourced, zero-hours world of David Cameron’s Britain.” – Guardian Columnist, Seumas Milne, November 2014.
I’ve been hearing with interest how more countries across Latin America are reinventing themselves through socio-economic reforms: ‘with left-wing victories in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, social and economic recovery in Cuba and popular advances elsewhere in the region, journalists are talking about “Latin America’s pink tide” and the region itself has become the forum for passionate debates on “Socialism of the 21st Century”’ – Diana Raby from Red Pepper Blog.
So, how have things changed since my visit to Nicaragua in 1988 and why has there been a huge shift in politics in other Latin American countries from the right-wing US-backed dictatorships of a decade or two ago that have been thrown out in favour of more centrist and anti-US policies?
My journey really began in my comfortable home in a small village in the Peak District, in the heart of England, after watching a John Pilger (socially aware investigative journalist originally from Australia) TV programme. A Catholic Priest spoke about life under Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the cruel, US-backed dictator, who had ruled the country before the revolution, as had his father before him and the changes that had taken place since under the governance of the FSLN and Daniel Ortega. This was the first time that I had heard of the revolution – the right-wing media didn’t generally want the world to know about it – it was a threat of a good example.
The people wanted peace more than anything, to be allowed to fight their real enemy, poverty. The new Nicaraguan approach to development, based on the needs of the poor majority and with the active participation of ordinary people offered real hope to the poor.
This is the hope of poor people throughout the world, even today. With Capitalism now proven to work only for the top few corporate bosses and bankers, people everywhere are calling for change, for a more equitable system that benefits the majority. The good example of Nicaragua really was a threat and, although slow to action, their example has maybe led to changes in other Latin American countries.
It had been a popular uprising against the dictator, instigated by middle-class intellectuals many of whom were artists, poets, priests. They took the name of the freedom fighter, Sandino (Augusto César Sandino, who, between 1927 and 1933 rebelled against the U.S. military occupation of Nicaragua – he was assassinated in 1934 by National Guard forces of Gen. Anastasio Somoza García) and they called themselves Sandinistas.
I saw that one of the first acts of the new parliament following the Revolution on 19th July 1979, was to abolish the death penalty and then begin their promised reforms – the literacy crusade, which within a few years reduced illiteracy from over 50% to 17%; the health and cultural programmes – they won the WHO (World Health Organisation) prize for the eradication of polio; the agrarian reforms – 5 million acres of land were redistributed to about 100,000 families; formation of more cooperatives and increased production of food for home consumption; autonomy and participation in government for every Nicaraguan and they actively promoted gender equality. I was to find out later that without the active participation of women the revolution would never have happened. The US Government was devastated and applied a trade embargo. As the Nicaraguan’s main export recipient this hit the country’s economy hard.
Shortly after I saw this programme I came across a NSC (Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign) leaflet asking for volunteers to help get in the coffee harvest. I applied and was asked to go to London for an interview. When I was accepted, I took another journey up to Edinburgh for some training and to meet the rest of the Brigadistas, as we were to be called in Nicaragua. We were told that it would be no holiday, that the work would be hard, the climate hot and conditions very basic. Food was not abundant and what there was had no variety – rice, beans, tortilla and black coffee three times a day. Living accommodation was spartan and makes little concession to privacy. As a third world country that is how Nicaraguans live and we would have to be prepared for a certain amount of culture shock.
I, however, was pleased to leave this country, with not many dreams of better tomorrows, to join up with a brigade of around thirty other volunteers, made up of many Scots, a Portugese woman living in the UK, a Spaniard with a wine shop in London and Irfan, a Turkish political refugee living in London, and a few English including myself, to travel to a small country where the people had taken back control of their country from the right-wing dictator – a peoples’ revolution of idealism after living through years of terror and they were looking forward to a bright tomorrow – who wouldn’t want to help them to realise their dreams? The young people were defending the borders against the US backed Contra so they couldn’t get in the coffee harvest, so there we were to do our bit for the revolution. However, foreign aid workers were a target for the Contra, for kidnappings, so we had to have an armed guard to protect us whilst we picked the coffee!
“Carter’s plan was to keep Somoza’s private army, the National Guard, in power, while Somoza escaped to enjoy his $900 million fortune. Most Nicaraguans, having suffered 46 years of the Guard’s unrelenting brutality, were not thrilled with that plan.” Mark Zepezauer from his book The CIAs Greatest Hits.
President Reagan was perfectly candid about the goals – the second-poorest nation in the hemisphere was to be ‘pressured’ until they say, ‘uncle’. The Contra forces were armed and trained by the US and were still attacking the farmers near the borders, and raping and killing female health workers.
In 1984, the first free and democratic elections in the country’s history were held with the FSLN receiving 67% of the vote and Daniel Ortaga was elected president. One year after I left, in 1989, after ten years of warfare – both economic and military – the Nicaraguans gave up and voted for the US-backed slate of candidates and Daniel Ortega was not voted back in as President until 2007. They didn’t vote the Sandinistas out I was told, they voted to stop the economic sanctions and for a life free of war.
We worked in the mountains every day from sunrise to sunset picking coffee, with a break when our meal of rice and beans was brought up to us on the back of a lorry. Our beans were weighed every night and we were paid for what we had picked, although all of our wages were donated to the barrio. We ate rice and beans before we left and we ate rice and beans when we returned after dark. We took it in turns to stay behind for one day at the now empty ex-general’s house (he fled when the revolution began) where we all slept on our mats on the marble floor. We shared two toilets and one shower between 30 brigadistas and about ten locals. When half of the brigade had diarrhoea, I was pleased that I had dug a pit outside behind a bush, in anticipation, when we first arrived! Our job on this day was to clean the house, empty the bin containing toilet paper (it would have clogged the toilet) and dispose of it.
During my turn to spend the day there an elderly man from the district who appeared with a syringe and needle and something in a vial and asked me to give him an injection. He said it was too far for him to walk to the Health Centre. I managed to work out that it was a vitamin supplement (it was in Spanish) and so I did inject him, using a new needle that I had brought with me. I was the medical representative so I had to carry a huge medical kit around everywhere and a copy of Oxfam’s Where There is No Doctor! This came in use later when half of the brigade became sick with raging temperatures. We managed, with the help of the book to work out who had what tropical disease – Bacterial Dysentery, Amoebic Dysentery, Giardia or something else, and treat them accordingly with the medicines that we had brought from home. A friendly socialist doctor at home had supplied me with the medicines that we might need. At least no-one died on my watch! This was fortunate because my only credentials were a two-year stint as a student nurse many years before! I shared the job with a teacher, Linda, who had recently taken her first-aid certificate! Fortunately it was a really good book!
Before the revolution the campesinos had no such luxury as a Health Centre. Only the rich could afford health care and besides 90% of the doctors worked in two major cities, Managua and Leon. Peasants relied on local ‘healers’. Since 1979 there was free health care for all, particularly in isolated rural communities and each region had a central hospital, a network of health centres and smaller health posts.
The major cause of infant deaths was diarrhoea and preventable (by inoculation) childhood diseases like measles and polio. Most of the diseases were eradicated or reduced by education campaigns and a network of trained workers. However, when we were there resources were scarcer and the war was attacking the health system at all levels. Health workers and health posts were primary targets for the Contra and half the government’s budget had to be spent on defence. Infant mortality and malaria was increasing, particularly in the war zones.
I took the bin outside to burn the contents. Maria, the young daughter of our cook, wanted to help and took the bin from me and was about to throw the contents down the hillside where the stream ran. I tried to explain in my broken Spanish why it was a very bad thing to do and showed her the incinerator made from an oil drum. The water supply, needless to say, was in no way potable and one of my duties was to purify water for the whole brigade.
Inroads were being made into hygiene education but obviously they had some way to go. The policies were correct but they needed peace to implement them. The US government were not going to allow that – they had after all lost their cheap coffee, sugar and bananas. The sanctions placed on the country were taking their toll and the people were weary of war and not being able to buy commodities.
After we had spent six weeks picking coffee we had two weeks to see what the new government were doing for ourselves and we visited hospitals, schools, a women’s centre, we had a talk from the ‘Mothers of the Heroes and Martyrs’ and we even visited an artificial leg-making operation.
On a Saturday night we had a fiesta with the locals, drank white rum and danced. Here, two of our brigade, Alisdaire, from Scotland and Emma from London joined the band playing popular songs of the time – Quanta La Mera / Guantanamera was good to dance to and Free Nelson Mandela I remember as being popular with us. It still reminds me of Nicaragua every time I hear these songs.
Many people had lost legs with land-mines
We were given a week of free time to take a holiday after that. There were no buses so we had to hitch lifts, from army lorries mostly, but this way four of us travelled together around the country. We were pleased to eat something other than rice and beans and tortilla and a fish cooked on the beach in a small coastal town was as nectar! We took a banana boat from Managua to the island of Ometepe for a few days and then hitched up to the border town of Esteli. The water tower was bombed during the night whilst we were there but we must have been tired and slept through that! We found an experimental soya restaurant here which was useful because we had no water and the town hadn’t received any delivery of bottled drinks – including coca cola would you believe? I imagine that some goods must have entered via neighbouring countries!
Taking a banana boat over to the island of Ometepe
We met other Brigadista Internacionales on our travels. People from around the world had appreciated what the Sandinistas were doing and had answered their call for help – we had a meal with an Irish brigade, we met an American brigade who were so apologetic for their government’s aggressive policies, we met a Swedish brigade sunbathing in the nude on the beach – we were British so we covered up from the sun of course! We spent some time with a group of Canadian farmers who had come to teach people how to repair the tractors that they had sent earlier (of course it’s one thing sending aid in the form of tractors but tractors break down) and as they had room in their vehicle we joined them to look at horticultural projects and a methane plant. There were so many initiatives going on everywhere, it was quite an exciting time. The Irish brigade told us a story about a refrigerated unit for a hospital that they had fund-raised for in Ireland and shipped to Nicaragua. They were quite near to the town they had sent it to so decided to visit so that they could tell the people who had contributed back home all about it. They found the hospital and the units easily enough but they also discovered that they had never been used – because there wasn’t any electricity! There was a lesson to be learnt somewhere there.
Whilst in Esteli we heard that there was to be a big rally in Managua and one of the heroes of the revolution and now a general, Louis Borge, was going to speak. We decided that we should be there and so made our way back via train – this wasn’t plain sailing by any means but we managed to get back in a cattle wagon after leaping on to the train as it pulled into the station, which was the only way to ensure that you got a place.
Huge crowds appeared for the rally
We were early and the square was empty when we arrived and so we managed to get close to the stage but within an hour it was packed with jubilant crowds carrying huge banners displaying photographs of the heroes and martyrs. I managed to get photographs of Lois Borges by standing on a platform and good shots of the crowds. I forget what the rally was about and my Spanish wasn’t good enough to interpret what was being said by the speakers but it was just a wonderful experience to be part of the atmosphere there.
Sandino on the left banner and Daniel Ortega on the right banner
Chomsky said: “The problem with Nicaragua is not the oft-bemoaned lack of internal democracy, but rather, its very existence. The last thing the US government can afford is the threat of a good example. Nicaragua is a vital, participatory democracy, and that’s a threat to US domination of Central America and other areas of the world, not to mention the US people. So the Reagan administration waged a clandestine proxy war justified by both conservative and liberal intellectuals as a ‘crusade against communism.’”
That many countries in Latin America have followed the ‘good example’ of Nicaragua’s revolution is a wonderful thing and I hope that many more countries follow their example – preferably by a non-violent revolution if possible and I think it is possible if the people say enough is enough. Capitalism has seen its day and people around the world are calling for a better system that works for the majority of the people rather than a small minority of super-rich.
