Sandinismo for the Nineties IS THE NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION NOW TO become like the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944? Will it be like Bolivia of 1952, Chile of 1970, Grenada of 1979? Nothing but a historical reference point, an ideal- ized remembrance never to be realized again? Or will the Sandinistas “govern from below,” as they claim today? If the next few years show that the Revolution was indeed over in 1990, historians will likely trace the begin- ning of the end back to 1985. By then, the U.S. war of attrition had boxed the Sandinistas into a continual crisis mentality, forcing decisions which undermined their credibility. FSLN economic policies began to resemble the prescriptions of the IMF. Thrilling exercises in grass- roots democracy degenerated into little more than calls for heroic sacrifice to defeat imperialism. Historians would point to the raucous and issueless electoral campaign of the past six months, when the FSLN seemed more interested in baseball and beauty contests than in revolution, when the glitz of TV imagery eclipsed any attempt to talk serious politics. And they might offer the hypothesis that the brief decade of the Nicaraguan Revolution, rather than fundamentally altering the politi- cal culture of the nation, simply allowed the traditional politics of family-based armies to flourish. This may turn out to be the case. However, it is possible that 1990 will mark not the end of the Revolution, but the year when the Sandinistas astutely avoided the fate of pre- vious Latin American revolutionaries by trading a meas- ure of political power for peace. Only by exploiting the Arias peace initiative was the FSLN able to forge an alternative to prolonged suicidal war, an alternative which leaves intact (for the moment) the Revolution’s greatest accomplishment: the making of a country out of So- moza’s private farm. The Sandinistas inherited a state which was all but non-existent. No ministries attended to the monumental tasks of developing the nation’s potential. No infrastruc- ture, nor any channels for political participation, existed. The FSLN, at the time a tiny band of young dedicated guerrilla fighters, had to play roles for which none of them was prepared. Like the Paraguayan guerrilla in Graham Greene’s The Honorary Consul: “Of course we are amateurs. All the professionals work for the other side.” Today, there is a functioning government staffed by relatively honest administrators (and the occasional party hack), who actually enforce the progressive constitution and body of law guaranteeing citizen rights and demo- cratic participation-a novelty for Central America. P ARADOXICALLY, THE SANDINISTAS MAY achieve more as opposition than they could as gov- ernment, developing in ways that were unimaginable for any Nicaraguan party up to now. Before 1979 they were condemned to the verticalism and distrust that the need for secrecy breeds in any underground. As government under siege, these characteristics were not easily shed-and made it difficult to avoid the emergence of an old boy patronage network inside the revolutionary government. Now, as the opposition in a system without death squads or courts stacked against them (neither of which UNO is likely to employ) and without favors to divvy up, the party may return to the rank-and-file agitational organizing which could renew its revolutionary mandate. From the beginning the FSLN recognized that, given the strength of the Empire and the weakness of the socialist camp, some accommodation with private capital was unavoidable. The Sandinistas sought to make their party embody a class alliance in pursuit of capitalist economic development within a framework of egalitarian social values-a marriage fraught with contradiction.The business class resisted and, with its U.S. allies, managed to win back the government, but they have not torn down the revolutionary state through which UNO will rule. The FSLN’s relationship to the new government will undoubtedly build on the party’s historical desire to incor- porate the private sector into the revolutionary process. Dofia Violeta’s advisers represent precisely that sector of the business community to which the FSLN increasingly reached out (all held posts in the revolutionary govern- ment at one time or another). They seem to understand they cannot effectively govern without the cooperation of the FSLN (thus are likely to work with the Sandinistas to eliminate the contra threat). And Sandinista leaders have shown a willingness to respect the UNO as a legitimate political force-not the “UNO/National Guard” of the campaign, but a vehicle for the private sector to partici- pate (with its capital) in the reconstruction of the nation. NICARAGUA IS AT A WATERSHED. SECTARI- anism, encouraged by the tug of traditional Nicara- guan political culture, could plunge the country into civil war. The United States will certainly do its all to destroy the FSLN-using AID, the Peace Corps, and other “soft” coercion to ensure that if it returns to power it will only do so “responsibly,” A la Jamaica’s Michael Manley. But if the country’s political leaders can call forth suf- ficient maturity, the Nicaraguan Revolution may well make the great leap from traditional politics toward something which for many in the FSLN has always been its goal: a consensual political system in which the poor are as effectively organized as the wealthy, and in which pragmatic compromise channels the class struggle toward economic development. It would not be socialism, but in this age of crumbling models, who can say what route leads to socialism or even to capitalist development? If nothing else, the experience of European socialism tells us that the permanence in gov- ernment of revolutionary parties is not the key. Twenty years ago Eduardo Galeano wrote that the division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others-Latin America’s primary among them-spe- cialize in losing. On the surface, Nicaragua today seems to be one more example. But the Sandinistas may yet prove history wrong.
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