Reviews

The Undermining of the
Sandinista Revolution by Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden
(eds.), Macmillan Press, 1997, 240 pp.,
$39.95 (Cloth).
Violeta Chamorro was elected pres-
ident of Nicaragua in 1990, defeat-
ing the Sandinistas who had ruled
since 1979. The Sandinista revolu-
tion pursued national indepen-
dence, state leadership of a mixed
economy, social benefits for the
country’s poor majority and demo-
cratic empowerment of the popula-
tion through mass organizations
and guarantees of a wide variety of
rights. The Chamorro government
took office pledging to roll back
many of these changes.
This collection examines what
remained of the Sandinista project
after six years of Chamorro’s rule.
In five chapters, six authors exam-
ine Chamorro’s economic policies, the domestic and international pres-
sures which produced them, their
impact on various segments of the
population, and the efforts of the
formerly government-sponsored
Sandinista mass organizations to
find a meaningful autonomous role.
Economic stagnation was the
biggest problem Chamorro faced,
and several chapters overlap con-
siderably on this topic: the over-
view by Gary Prevost, the examina-
tion of the political process by
Harry Vanden, Richard Stahler-
Sholk’s account of structural ad-
justment policies and Cynthia
Chavez Metoyer’s analysis of its
impact on women. Stahler-Sholk’s
chapter is the most valuable, exam-
ining Nicaragua’s domestic eco-
nomic policies and its relations
with international financial institu-
tions vis a vis the hemispheric dom-
inance of neoliberalism.
Buffeted by the U.S.-financed
Contra war, the Sandinistas left the
economy in bad shape. The
Chamorro government failed to
reactivate it. The government cut
back in health, education and state
employment, privatized state-
owned enterprises (where workers
were able to preserve their posi-
tions in some firms by buying a
share of the capital), attacked
agrarian reform by returning prop-
erties to prerevolutionary owners
and strangling credit, and encour-
aged foreign investment in a free-
trade zone. The poor suffered:
50.3% of the population fell below
the poverty line in 1993 and unem-
ployment and underemployment
reached 53.6% by 1994.
While unemployment and im-
poverishment were foreseeable
consequences of the government’s
policies, these did not even succeed
on their own terms. As Stahler-
Sholk shows, “structural adjust-
ment” mainly meant reducing gov-
ernment spending in a (mostly
futile) battle to contain inflation,
without any real structural changes
to reactivate production.
In the only chapter which deals
with the popular response to the
rollbacks, Pierre M. La Ram6e and
Erica G. Polakoff describe the
transformation of the Sandinista
mass organizations. Like Stahler-
Sholk, the authors put their topic in
an international context, relating
events in Nicaragua to issues of
participatory socialist democracy
and recent transformations of social
movements in Latin America. To
the Sandinista leadership, these
organizations were vehicles to
defend the revolution more than
channels to express the popular
will. Interviews with leaders make
clear that the struggle to assert an
independent role and provide for
mass participation in a hostile
political environment is daunting,
Vol XXXI, No 3 Nov/DEc 1997 47 Vol XXXI, No 3 Nov/DEc 1997 47REVIEWS
but that activists maintain a firm
commitment to social justice.
Several authors show that some
of Chamorro’s policies were antici-
pated by the Sandinista regime
itself. They are unsparing of the
Sandinistas’ economic austerity
program which betrayed their com-
mitment to the poor, their exploita-
tion of their positions of privilege
and their vanguardist positions
which denied real autonomy to the
mass organizations.
The book was evidently com-
pleted before the 1996 election, and
though several authors refer to
Arnoldo Alemin as the likely vic-
tor, they do not satisfactorily
account for the right-wing ascent
which his election represented. The
new government can be expected to
exacerbate the Chamorro govern-
ment’s policies, promoting accu-
mulation of private capital and
attacking unions, agrarian reform
and other institutions through
which the Sandinista government
sought redistribution to the poor
majority.
-Jack Hammond
Last Resorts: The Cost of
Tourism in the Caribbean By Polly Patullo, Foreward by Michael Manley, a Latin American Bureau book, distributed by Monthly Review Press, 1996, 220 pp., $19 (paper).
This excellent book asks whether
Caribbean tourism is the future
engine of growth in the area, or
whether is it the engine of short-
term cash and long-term disaster.
Few still dispute that the vacation
industry has become a permanent
feature of the Caribbean or that it
contributes hard currency for local
economies. The main argument
now concerns who controls it and
how it develops.
Patullo examines the industry in
detail. Successive chapters look at
the history of tourism, the interac-
tion of resorts with local econo-
mies, planning (or the lack of it),
employment, the tourists them-
selves, the cruise-ship component
and the airlines and finally the
influence on local culture.
The assessment comes across
decidedly negative. The trend
toward all-inclusive hotels and
playgrounds, for example, means
few linkages with local economies.
Cruise companies now tend to buy
private islands rather than dock at
local ports. Job creation comes
overwhelmingly at the lower end of
the scale and locals are underrepre-
sented in management positions.
Furthermore, employment is sea-
sonal and usually dead-end. In cul-
tural terms, resorts create what the
tourists want to see rather than pre-
senting authentic artistic creations.
Local craftsman do the same. As a
SCUBA diver, I can attest to the
often irreversible damage already
done to Caribbean reefs. Moreover,
the industry often serves as a cover for the drug trade. Patullo, for some
reason, fails to add that almost all
Caribbean beaches have problems
with oil spills due to the fact that
supertankers regularly criss-cross
the area.
The text is liberally sprinkled
with revealing quotes from industry
leaders, government officials and
critics of the industry. The author
correctly notes that not just foreign
corporations prey on the islands,
but local entrepreneurs (most
notably Butch Stewart of the
Sandals chain) have jumped on the
bandwagon as well. The book,
unfortunately, focuses mostly upon
the English-speaking Caribbean,
with less attention given to
Hispanic or Francophone areas.
The book contains its quota of digs
at Cuba, though it never explains
the real reason behind the recent
development of tourism there.
Increasingly, Caribbean nations
have been taking note of the indus-
try’s downside. Several attempts
have been made to present a united
front to foreign entities-one
example being the attempt by the
34-member Caribbean Tourist Orga-
nization to collect uniform port
charges on cruise ships. But the
sledding is rough due to the
involvement of the local elites in
primary and secondary roles and to
the competition that exists between
islands. The threat to use an alter-
nate port of call or build a resort
elsewhere is real. The industry,
however, has reached a point where
host nations have to take control
before more environmental, social
and cultural destruction occurs.
And this does not just mean that
local entrepreneurs grab a greater
share of the business. If govern-
ments do not act responsibly, Carib-
bean peoples in tourist-dependent
countries will soon become, as the
calypsonian sang, “like an alien in
we own land”.