AFTER THE SANDINISTA NATIONAL LIBERA- tion Front was soundly defeated in last February’s elections, most friends of the Nicaraguan Revolution rushed to blame the United States, noting that 10 years of relentless aggression had hardly created a climate for free and democratic balloting. Implicit in this reaction was the conviction, based more on faith than evidence, that had the war and embargo been ended, the FSLN would have won. At the same time, many began to wonder, somewhat desperately, whether the Right’s claims of Sandinista mismanagement, corruption and abuse of power may have been more than imperialist propaganda all along. And everyone asked where-“between the ingenuous extremes that Sandinismo is eternal and that the United States is omnipotent,” as Argentine social scientist Car- los M. Vilas puts it-the future of the revolution lies. In preparing this special issue of Report on theAmeri- cas, we set out to answer these questions, and to probe the complex and contradictory phenomenon of revolution. “The knee-jerk reaction of the Left that points exclu- sively to external forces (the U.S. war and financing of the UNO campaign),” writes Vilas, “is as incomplete an explanation [of the election results] as its counterpart on the Right (the people’s repudiation of corrupt Sandinista leadership). There were elements of both and more.” Vilas is the author of three books on Nicaragua. He worked as an adviser to the Sandinista government and to nongovernmental agencies in Nicaragua from 1980 until early this year. The Sandinistas and their supporters, Vilas insists, projected their analysis-that patriotism would keep the people from voting for a candidate openly identified with the aggressor-onto an electorate that was much more concerned with the concrete and specific issues of living conditions on which the revolution had been unable to deliver. Sandinista economic policies of the past few years favored the wealthy and hurt the poor, and were couched in rhetoric that only rubbed salt in the wounds. Nearly all the revolution’s social achievements suffered serious deterioration. And as the formal political system opened up under U.S. pressure to the political parties of the Right, the Sandinista Front remained vertical and bureaucratic, enforcing a unity that in the end proved ephemeral. Many of these problems can be attributed to the U.S. war of aggression. But this was apparently of secondary importance to voters. George R. Vickers, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and frequent visitor to Nicaragua, points out that the success of U.S. strategy “can only be fully explained by taking into account the internal dynamics of the revolution which the United States turned to its favor.” NE COMMON MISCONCEPTION ABOUT RE- volutions is that they begin with a tabula rasa. That somehow, as relationships are called into question, old ways and styles fall into oblivion. Of course, some do dis- appear, some change, and others display a remarkable resilience, popping up where least expected. Vickers notes that the FSLN was not immune to Nicaragua’s dominant political culture, a creature of 150 years of oligarchic rule, intermittent civil war, U.S. occupation and family dictatorship. In fact, the party, which was in most ways also the state, functioned much in the fashion of caudillo-style personalistic politics. “The different ministries,” writes Vickers, “tended to be fiefdoms for the individual ministers as well as strongholds for the different tendencies.” The paternalistic and divisive traditions of Nicaraguan political culture which have haunted the FSLN, have defined the National Opposition Union (UNO). Journalist Trish O’Kane, who works at the CRIES research institute in Managua, traces the history of the UNO parties and finds that the politicians closest to Dofia Violeta Chamorro are the political descendants of those Conservative Party oligarchs who worked to bring down Somoza. They may well have more in common with the Sandinistas than with the other UNO politicians, much less with the Contras. What’s more, close family relationships among the upper reaches of UNO and the FSLN-often more powerful than ideology in traditional societies-will likely ensure that negotiation will be the watchword of the coming months. The revolutionary achievements that remain-a state committed to social justice, a sense of empowerment and participation among the poor-are not about to fade away without a fight. But will the FSLN lead that fight? TomAs Borge, the supposed “hard-liner,” has already announced a process of internal democratization to renew the Front’s revolutionary mandate. Daniel Ortega, removed from party leadership though still a spokesman for Sandinista “moderates,” continues to insist that only unity will defeat the revolution’s enemies, and that any internal debate should be postponed until the threat of civil war subsides. On this perennial issue for the Left-enforced unity versus internal democracy-rides the future of the Sandinista Revolution, haunted as ever by the past.
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