Nicaragua

[shakur420]

^Good try still. Respect.

[zanj uhuru]

no one is ever as bad or good as people say they are

[shakur420]

For sure. Just don't see how the term "dictator" can be applied to a government that was born out of popular struggle, dissent and revolution, whose early period is marked by mass mobilization of the population into the political arena. The U.S. Library of Congress seems to think that "most Nicaraguans saw the Sandinista victory as an opportunity to create a system free of the political, social, and economic inequalities of the almost universally hated Somoza regime". We're talking about a government that refused economic policies which would have decimated the population (as demonstrated by the acceptance of these policies under the threat of practical genocide by Bush I), and the simultaneous rejection of authority from the Kremlin as long as they were able to do so, while being praised by the World Bank on how "project implementation has been extraordinarily successful in Nicaragua in some sectors, better than anywhere else in the world" and by OXFAM, who apparently thought that "the Sandinistas had fulfilled their promises better than any revolutionary government". A government that was supposedly praised by human rights organizations for their unprecedented efforts to curb abuses.

Now, some people know how I feel about marxist-leninist doctrine and those who champion it, so I'm not exactly going to say I "support" the Sandinistas in their political goals, when it cones to workers control, Democracy, etc. But I can't just be quiet when people lie outright about them, try to demonize a political party who brought enourmous prosperity to it's people and continued to try under unimaginable attack by counter revolutionaries. I'm not gonna say they were angels, but the lies just don't sit well with me.

http://www.spaef.com/file.php?id=1040

[Mein Manifesto]

^ u win,

I don't personly regard to him as a dictator and to be honest don't really know why i said that guess I wasn't thinking. Maybe using that word is more attention grasping and causes discussions. Which was really the whole point cus i wanted to know your opinion and learn from it just as i did.

Also to me its seems like its the way the media portray leaders of foreign countries who don't do what the US wants (as dictators). I guess the media and US public schooling has successfully implanted that image somewhere in my mind.

Maybe my mind is all fucked but that's why i'm here to educate myself. But i really don't agree with him going for a third term when he has restrictions based on the Nicaraguan constitution.

Also my property interest in Nicaragua may cause mind may be focused on the negative that he could do.

[1871]

In the first link shakur towards the end of the article it was described how Nicaragua had descended into being a sweatshop supplier for businesses to the US market. Thats disappointing.

Is it that we prefer to remember this;





rather than the commentaries now of many disillusioned former Sandinistas and these accounts;



Et Tu Daniel? The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed*
By Roger Burbach

March 2009


Upon his inauguration as Nicaraguan president in January 2007, Daniel Ortega asserted that his government would represent “the second stage of the Sandinista Revolution.” His election was full of symbolic resonance, coming after 16 years of electoral failures for Ortega and the party he led, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). The Sandinistas’ road to power was paved with a series of previously unthinkable pacts with the old somocista and Contra opposition. The FSLN’s pact making began in earnest in 2001, when, in the run-up to that year’s presidential election, Ortega forged an alliance with Arnoldo Alemán, an official during the Somoza regime who had been elected president in 1997.

But even with Alemán’s backing, Ortega was unable to win the presidency. So, before the 2006 election, he publicly reconciled with his old nemesis, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a potent symbol of the counterrevolutionary movement in the 1980s. Ortega and his longtime companion, Rosario Murillo, announced their conversion to Catholicism and were married by the cardinal. Just before his election Ortega supported a comprehensive ban on abortion, including in cases in which the mother’s life is endangered, a measure ratified by the legislature with the crucial votes of Sandinista deputies. To round out his pre-election wheeling and dealing, Ortega selected Jaime Morales, a former Contra leader, as his vice presidential candidate.

Even with these concessions to the right, Ortega won the presidency with just 37.9% of the votes. Once in power, he announced a series of policies and programs that seemed to hark back to the Sandinista years. Educational matriculation fees were abolished, an illiteracy program was launched with Cuban assistance, and an innovative Zero Hunger program established, financed from the public budget and Venezuelan aid, that distributed one cow, one pig, 10 hens, and a rooster, along with seeds, to 15,000 families during the first year. Internationally, Nicaragua joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a trade and economic cooperation pact that includes Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela.


But the Ortega government’s clientelistic and sectarian nature soon became evident when Ortega, by presidential decree, established Councils of Citizen Power under the control of the Sandinista party to administer and distribute much of the social spending. Even more importantly, under the rubric of ALBA, Ortega signed an accord with Venezuela that provides an estimated $300 million to $500 million in funds personally administered by Ortega with no public accountability.


As Mónica Baltodano, the leader of Resacte, a dissident Sandinista organization, argued in a recent article, Ortega’s fiscal and economic policies are, in fact, continuous with those of the previous governments, despite his anti-imperialist rhetoric and denunciations of neoliberalism.(1) The government has signed new accords with the International Monetary Fund that do not modify the neoliberal paradigm, while the salaries of government workers remain frozen and those of teachers and health workers are the lowest in Central America. According to the Central Bank of Nicaragua, the average salary has dropped the last two years, retrogressing to 2001 levels.(2)


Moreover, the government and the Sandinista party are harassing and repressing their opponents. During an interview in January, Baltodano told me the right to assembly has been systematically violated during the past year, as opposition demonstrations are put down with goon squads. “Ortega is establishing an authoritarian regime, sectarian, corrupt, and repressive, to maintain his grip on power, betraying the legacy of the Sandinista revolution,” she said.


The core of this legacy was the revolution’s commitment to popular democracy. Seizing power in 1979 from the dictator Anastasio Somoza, the Sandinista movement comprised Nicaragua’s urban masses, peasants, artisans, workers, Christian base communities, intellectuals, and the muchachos—the youth who spearheaded the armed uprisings. The revolution transformed social relations and values, holding up a new vision of society based on social and economic justice that included the poor and dispossessed. The revolution was muticlass, multiethnic, multidoctrinal, and politically pluralistic.


While socialism was part of the public discourse, it was never proclaimed to be an objective of the revolution. It was officially designated “a popular, democratic, and anti-imperialist revolution.” Radicalized social democrats, priests, and political independents as well as Marxists and Marxist-Leninists served as cabinet ministers of the Sandinista government. Images of Sandino, Marx, Christ, Lenin, Bolívar, and Carlos Fonseca, the martyred founder of the Sandinista movement, often hung side by side in the cities and towns of Nicaragua.


A central attribute of the revolution that has made its legacy so powerful is that it was a revolución compartida, a revolution shared with the rest of the world.(3) As Nicaragua, a country with fewer than 3 million inhabitants, defied the wrath of the U.S. imperium, people from around the world rallied to the revolution’s support. In a manner reminiscent of the Spanish civil war half a century earlier, the Sandinista revolution came to be seen as a new political utopia, rupturing national frontiers. It marked a generation of activists around the globe who found in the revolution a reason to hope and believe.


With the deepening of the U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary war from military bases in Honduras, activists from the United States came to be the largest contingent to support the Sandinista revolution. An estimated 100,000 people from the United States visited Nicaragua in the 1980s, many as simple political tourists. Some came as part of delegations, but most of them arrived on their own. It was an experience totally different from that of Cuba, where the prohibition of U.S. travel to the island meant that only organized delegations arrived via Mexico or Canada with assigned accommodations and structured tours. But it was not just the travel arrangements that were different. Those going to Nicaragua found an “open door” society: They could talk with anyone, travel to the countryside, and stay where they pleased with no interference from the government.


The Sandinista revolution’s commitment to democracy led it down a new political path. This was not a revolutionary government conducted, in the classical sense, by a dictatorship of the proletariat. While the National Directorate of the FSLN oversaw the revolutionary process, it was not dictated by a single strongman but by nine people who reached consensus decisions with input from popular organizations. The Nicaraguan Revolution thus responded to internal and external challenges by deepening its democratic and participatory content, rather than by declaring a dictatorship.


In October 1983, when a U.S. assault appeared imminent in the aftermath of the invasion of Grenada, the National Directorate adopted the slogan “All Arms to the People” and distributed more than 200,000 weapons to the militias and popular organizations. I was there as U.S. aircraft flew over Managua, breaking the sound barrier, trying to “shock and awe” the populace. Bomb shelters and defensive trenches were hastily built as the country mobilized for war.


We may never know whether the threatened invasion was a ruse or if the popular mobilization forestalled a U.S. attack. But it did reaffirm the revolution’s commitment to democracy. In 1984, in the midst a deteriorating economy and the escalating Contra war, the country held an election in which seven candidates vied for the presidency. The election was monitored by “at least 460 accredited observers from 24 countries,” who unanimously described it as fair.(4) A reported 83% of the electorate participated, and Ortega won with almost 67% of the votes.(5) The election demonstrated that a revolutionary government can solidify its hold on power in the midst of conflict, not by adopting increasingly dictatorial powers but by building mass democratic support.


The adoption of a new constitution in 1986 marked yet another step forward in the democratic process. The constitution, which established separation of powers, directly incorporated human rights declarations, and abolished the death penalty, among other measures, was drafted by constituent assembly members elected in 1984 and submitted to the country for discussion.(6) To facilitate these debates, 73 cabildos abiertos, or town meetings, were attended by an estimated 100,000 Nicaraguans around the country. At these meetings, about 2,500 Nicaraguans made suggestions for changes in the constitution.


But this bold Sandinista experiment in revolutionary democracy was not destined to persevere. As occurred in the Spanish civil war, the tide of history ran against the heroic people of Nicaragua, sapping their will in the late 1980s as the Contra war waged on and the economy unraveled. Often as I departed from the San Francisco airport on yet another flight to the Central American isthmus, I would look down on the Bay Area, with its population roughly the same size as Nicaragua’s and an economy many times larger, and wonder how the Sandinista revolution could possibly survive a war with the most powerful nation on earth.


Perhaps the die was cast in neighboring El Salvador with the failure of the guerrillas there to seize power as the United States mounted a counterinsurgency war. The inability to advance the revolution in Central America seemed to confirm Leon Trotsky’s belief that a revolution cannot survive and mature in just one nation—especially in small countries like Nicaragua with porous borders, which, unlike island Cuba, lend themselves to infiltration and repeated forays from well-provisioned military bases.


To end the debilitating war, the Sandinista leaders turned to peace negotiations. Placing their faith in democracy, they signed an accord that called for a ceasefire and elections to be held in February 1990, in which the Contras as well as the internal opposition would be allowed to participate. Once again the popular organizations mobilized for the campaign, and virtually all the polls indicated that Ortega would win a second term as president, defeating the Contra-backed candidate, Violeta Chamorro, whose campaign received generous funding from the United States.


Nicaraguans and much of the world were shocked when Chamorro defeated Ortega with 55% of the vote. Even people who were sympathetic to the Sandinistas voted for the opposition because they wanted the war to end, as the threat of more U.S.-backed violence remained looming. The day after the election, a woman vendor passed me by sobbing. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “Daniel will no longer be my president.” After exchanging a few more words, I asked whom she had voted for. “Violeta,” she said, “because I want my son in the Sandinista army to come home alive.”


During the next 16 years, three Nicaraguan presidents backed by the United States implemented a series of neoliberal policies, gutting the social and economic policies of the Sandinista era and impoverishing the country. Ortega ran in every election, drifting increasingly to the right, while exerting an iron hand to stifle all challengers and dissenters in the Sandinista party. Surprisingly, Orlando Nuñez, with whom I wrote a book with on the revolution’s democratic thrust, remained loyal to Ortega while most of the middle-level cadre and the National Directorate abandoned the party.(7) Many of these split off to form the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), the largest dissident Sandinista party, founded in 1995.


When I asked Nuñez about his stance, he argued that only the Sandinista party has a mass base. “Dissident Sandinistas and their organizations,” he said, “cannot recruit the poor, the peasants, the workers, nor mount a significant electoral challenge.” Nuñez, who works as an adviser on social affairs to the president’s office, went on to argue that Ortega allied with Alemán not out of political cynicism, but for the sake of building an anti-oligarchic front. According to this theory, Alemán and the somocistas represent an emergent capitalist class that took on the old oligarchy, which had dominated Nicaraguan politics and the economy since the 19th century.(8) A major thrust of Ortega’s rhetoric is bent on attacking the oligarchy, which is clustered in the opposition Conservative Party.

But it is also true that some of the most famous Sandinistas, many of whom are in the dissident camp today—like Ernesto Cardenal, Gioconda Belli, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, and others—are descendents of oligarchic families. Accordingly, Ortega and Murillo have accused them of being in league with conservatives in an effort to reimpose the old order on Nicaragua. While the dissident Sandinistas have yet to mount a significant electoral challenge, the Ortega administration has nonetheless gone after them with a particular vehemence. Case in point: Chamorro, the onetime director of the Sandinista party newspaper, Barricada. In June 2007, Chamorro aired an investigative report on Esta Semana, the popular news show he hosts. According to the report, which included tape-recorded conversations, FSLN functionaries tried to extort $4 million from Armel González, a partner in a tourist development project called Arenas Bay, in exchange for a swift end to the project’s legal woes, which included challenges from campesino cooperatives over land disputes.


The government’s response to the bad publicity was swift and ruthless. While the district attorney buried the case, González was charged and convicted of slander. National Assembly deputy Alejandro Bolaños, who backed the denunciation, was arbitrarily removed from his legislative seat. And Chamorro was denounced in the Sandinista-controlled media as a “delinquent,” a “narco-trafficker,” and a “robber of peasant lands.”


The harassment of Chamorro and other government critics continued during the run-up to Nicaragua’s November 2008 municipal elections, which were widely viewed as a referendum on the Ortega administration. The Ministry of Government launched a probe into NGOs operating in the country, accusing the Center for Communications Research (Cinco), which is headed by Chamorro, of “diverting and laundering money” through its agreement with the Autonomous Women’s Movement (MAM), which opposes the Ortega-endorsed law banning abortion. This agreement, financed by eight European governments and administered by Oxfam, aims to promote “the full citizenship of women.” First lady Murillo called it “Satan’s fund” and “the money of evil.”


Cinco’s board of directors were interrogated, and a prosecutor accompanied by the police raided the Cinco offices with a search warrant. Warned in advance of the visit, some 200 people gathered in the building in solidarity, refusing the police entry. Then as night fell, the police established a cordon around the building and, in the early morning, police broke down the door. After kicking out the protesters, the police stayed in the office for 15 hours, with supporters and onlookers gathered outside, shutting down traffic for blocks around. The police rummaged through offices, carting off files and computers. Since then, no formal charges have been filed, but Chamorro remains under official investigation.


Along with MAM, the broader women’s movement in Nicaragua, which firmly opposes the Ortega government, was among the first to experience its repressive blows. In 2007 the government opened a case against nine women leaders, accusing them of conspiring “to cover up the crime of rape in the case of a 9-year-old rape victim known as ‘Rosita,’ who obtained an abortion in Nicaragua in 2003.”(9) In August, Ortega was unable to attend the inauguration of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo because of protests by the country’s feminist organizations; from then on, women’s mobilizations have occurred in other countries Ortega has visited, including Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Peru.(10)


Charges were levied against other former Sandinistas who dared to speak out against the Ortega government, including 84-year-old Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal, the renowned poet who once served as minister of culture. In August, after Cardenal criticized Ortega at Lugo’s inauguration, a judge revived an old, previously dismissed case involving a German citizen who sued Cardenal in 2005 for insulting him.(11)

In addition to harassing critics, the Ortega government also displayed its penchant for electoral fraud during the run-up to the November municipal balloting. Protests erupted in June, after the Ortega-stacked Supreme Electoral Council disqualified the MRS and the Conservative Party from participation. Dora Maria Tellez, a leader of the renovation movement, began a public hunger strike that led to daily demonstrations of support, often shutting down traffic in downtown Managua.
Meanwhile, bands of young Sandinista-linked thugs, claiming to be the “owners of the streets,” attacked demonstrators while the police stood idly by. Then, to prevent more demonstrations, Ortega supporters set up plantones, permanent occupation posts at the rotundas on the main thoroughfare running through Managua. Those who camped out there were known as rezadores, or people praying to God that Ortega be protected and his opponents punished.


Besides the FSLN, two major political parties remained on the ballot, the Liberal Constitutionalist Party and the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. While independent surveys indicated that the opposition candidates would win the majority of the seats, the Supreme Electoral Council, which had prohibited international observers, ruled that the Sandinista candidates won control of 105 municipalities, the Liberal Constitutionalist Party won 37, and the Alliance won the remaining six. An independent Nicaraguan group, Ethics and Transparency, organized tens of thousands of observers but was denied accreditation, forcing them to observe the election from outside polling stations. But the group estimates that irregularities took place at a third of the polling places. Their complaints were echoed by Nicaraguan Catholic bishops, including Managua’s archbishop, who said, “People feel defrauded.”(12)


After the election, militant demonstrations erupted in Nicaragua’s two largest cities, Managua and León, and were quickly put down with violence. The European Economic Community and the U.S. government suspended funding for Nicaragua over the fraudulent elections. On January 14, before the election results were even officially published by the electoral council, Ortega swore in the new mayors at Managua’s Plaza de la Revolución. He declared: “This is the time to strengthen our institutions,” later adding, “We cannot go back to the road of war, to confrontation, to violence.” Along with the regular police, Ortega stood flanked by camisas rosadas, or redshirts, members of his personal security force. A huge banner hung over the plaza depicting Ortega with an up-stretched arm and the slogan, “To Be With the People Is to Be With God.”


“This despotic regime is bent on destroying all that is left of the Sandinista revolution’s democratic legacy,” Chamorro told me in January. “Standing in the way of a new dictatorship,” he continued, “are civil society organizations, the independent media, trade unions, opposition political parties, women’s organizations, civic leaders and others—many of whom can trace their roots back to the resistance against Somoza.”


As the Nobel-winning novelist José Saramago put it: “Once more a revolution has been betrayed from within.” Nicaragua’s revolution has indeed been betrayed, perhaps not as dramatically as Trotsky depicted Stalin’s desecration of what was best in the Bolshevik revolution. But Ortega’s betrayal is a fundamental political tragedy for everyone around the world who came to believe in a popular, participatory democracy in Nicaragua.

________________________________________

1. Mónica Baltodano, “El ‘nuevo sandinismo’ es de la izquierda? Democracia pactada en Nicaragua,” Le Monde diplomatique, Southern Cone edition (December 2008): 16–17.

2. Ibid.

3. The concept of revolución compartida is developed in Sergio Ramírez, Adios muchachos: una memoría de la revolución sandinista (Mexico City: Aguilar, 1999).

4. Rosa Marina Zelaya, “International Election Observers: Nicaragua Under a Microscope,” Envío 103 (February 1990), envio.org.ni/articulo/2582.

5. BBC, “1984: Sandinistas Claim Election Victory,” available at news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday.

6. Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost, Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), 84–85.


7. Roger Burbach and Orlando Nuñez, Fire in the Americas, Forging a Revolutionary Agenda (Verso, 1987).


8. Nuñez develops this argument in his book La Oligarquia en Nicaragua (Managua: Talleres de Grafitex, 2006). See also Nuñez, “La Agonía política de la oligarquia,” El 19 no. 14, November 27–December 3, 2008, available at sepres.gob.ni.


9. Human Rights Watch, “Nicaragua: Protect Rights Advocates from Harassment and Intimidation,” October 28, 2008, available at hrw.org.


10. Baltodano, “El ‘nuevo sandinismo’ es de la izquierda?”


11. CBC News, “Latin American Artists Protest Persecution of Nicaraguan Poet,” September 6, 2008, available at cbc.ca.


12. “How to Steal an Election,” The Economist, November 13, 2008.


*This article appears in the NACLA Report on the Americas, “Revolutionary Legacies in the 21st Century,” March/April, 2009. See the full Report for additional articles on Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia and Haiti. http://nacla.org/currentissue

http://globalalternatives.org/node/102

[shakur420]

(09-10-2011 11:28 PM)Mein Manifesto Wrote:  u win...

...i really don't agree with him going for a third term when he has restrictions based on the Nicaraguan constitution...

...mind may be focused on the negative that he could do.

lol, nah, I didn't win, just talkin some shit. Glad it was useful though, and I have to agree with your concerns. For similar reasons, I stay suspicious, or weary might be a better word for it, about people like Chavez and Castro. I mean, the same dude was elected by the National Assembly (I think that's it, right?) for like 40 years. That's the weirdest, most unlikely democratic outcome imaginable. They're not revolutionaries, they're not "anti-imperialists", they're not "fighting the class war for us" to the best of their abilities. I don't see any evidence for that. And I get concerned when I hear about human rights groups being kept out, judges being condemned by political figures during trial, people being arrested for dissenting political views, opinions and affiliations.

Personally, I like to focus on the "negative" stuff, I think that's the best way to scrutinize. Only see the need to bring up the "positive" stuff when it's questioned or outright denied. If you wanna analyze a traffic system, for example, it would make sense to look at how many deaths occur, right? Sure, you can compare it to the old system, the old regulations and point out how many less deaths there are this year, how accidents are down, etc., but that doesn't allow you to scrutinize much. It might tell you that you're on the right track, but it won't show you where you need to improve. Looking at how many deaths you did have, how many accidents did happen this year, how they occurred, could've been prevented, etc., that's what you focus on if you want improvement, right? So, same goes with any type of system, situation, person, as far as I'm concerned. You can bask in the glory of all the "good" things, or you can focus on the negative and how to fix it, how to change it. I don't care about the "good" my government does, I care about the things that need to change, the negative affects they have on people. I don't see that as a bad thing, personally.

(09-10-2011 11:28 PM)Mein Manifesto Wrote:  ...to be honest don't really know why i said that guess I wasn't thinking...

...its seems like its the way the media portray leaders of foreign countries who don't do what the US wants (as dictators). I guess the media and US public schooling has successfully implanted that image somewhere in my mind....

First time I was schooled about Palestine, I asked a kid what was going on there, why "Palestinians were crying about getting attacked? Why do they cry about it, why don't they just fight back?" The kid then explained, in frustration (he was a Palestinian Christian), that "They don't have anything to fight back with! They throw rocks, they don't have an army or guns or tanks or anything!" One of the many lessons that taught me to go out and learn about shit. I wouldn't sweat it.

You're exactly on point there, when people call Chavez (or Ortega) a dictator, they're lying, straight up or are grossly misinformed, probably banking their views on rhetoric and unsourced media claims. I asked my buddy to name one incident of "repression", "oppression", or one example to qualify his belief that Chavez and Castro are "bad guys". I told him that I could give examples, I could cite examples of repression, etc. because I'd looked them up. I wasn't basing my view on reference-free rhetoric. He couldn't bring up one example. It's like 5 days later. I'm still waiting.

My buddy, like most people will do when they're asked the right questions, conceded that his views weren't based on anything credible, just on the notion that if all the mainstream sources say the same thing, or seem to, it must be true. He admitted this basically, yet still stuck to his belief that Chavez and Castro are "bad guys". lol. Funny thing is, you can find a lot of conflicting stuff in mainstream sources. You can find mentions that Hamas accepts the 2 state solution, that Gaddafi substantially raised the standard of living for Libyans, that Cuba has excelled in providing healthcare and education for it's population under unimaginable circumstances, that the Taliban offered up bin laden multiple times, and on and on. You can find all this stuff tucked away here and there in mainstream sources, BBC, Guardian, Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera, The Economist, to name a few. But this stuff is not going to be front page headline stuff, the little wire reports they flash on the bottom of the screen, repeatedly, all day long. It's gonna be in the back pages, you have to sift through articles to find the info.

One thing I referenced up there, from Brown university I think, was not coming from a favorable position. They were going on about Soviet ties and trade early on, which doesn't support other stuff I've read. But it seemed like they were citing one guy on this issue. In that same piece, they were going on about the popular appeal of the Sandinistas, the involvement of the population in politics. The info's there, but it does take some effort to find. It's completely understandable why people sometimes repeat rhetoric, that's all they see. But I feel like after a point, if you're not checking, if you're not moving outside those mainstream sources to broaden your understanding, then yeah, you're accepting that ignorance, you're choosing not to look for the truth, to make up your mind. Just the fact that you were curious about learning more, looking for different perspectives, that's dope. You can't expect anymore from yourself. In all honesty, I was hoping that you'd read something, were gonna point something out that I didn't know about so it would motivate me to learn a bit more and expand my understanding, adapt my view. Just looking for the stuff I posted, I learned a whole bunch of shit, lol.

(09-11-2011 12:38 AM)1871 Wrote:  In the first link shakur towards the end of the article it was described how Nicaragua had descended into being a sweatshop supplier for businesses to the US market. Thats disappointing.

Is it that we prefer to remember this...

...rather than the commentaries now of many disillusioned former Sandinistas and these accounts;

I think this is very important, and speaks to the concerns about Ortega grabbing a next term, something that may be an issue with Chavez also, in the near future. Looking for stuff, there's a lot of info about Ortega basically aligning himself with people/groups to the right of the Sandinistas, after the first few years had past. Now whether this was a case of him "selling out" or trying to survive, I'm not educated enough on Nicaragua to have a good opinion about it. On Palestine, I could tell you right away that Arafat sold out, he had limits too, but he did sell out. Nicaragua, Ortega? I don't know enough. Thanks for posting that article, really good read. Again, I don't know enough to scrutinize it well, don't know if anything's being misrepresented or whatever, but there are definitely some things that pop out. No independent observers for the elections, harassment of the opposition, and the writer seems to be extremely sympathetic to the Sandinistas, at least in the 80s, so I don't really know what to make of it, but it was some good info, so thanks again for posting.

[1871]

^
Agree.

I dont know enough about Ortega and why people felt that way also which is why I asked Giaconda Belli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gioconda_Belli to post here. I'll ask her again. I wonder if, re; the 'sweatshops' charge that really there wasnt much else choice? After all Nicaragua isnt sitting on huge oil reserves.
Sounds like thet are stuck - those circumstances have to be taken into account.
But again - this is something else to research.

A lot of people criticise Castro also - but generally I think, economy wise, and keeping his country a fairly good place in terms of people having somewhere to live,work etc - he did quite good.

I think the danger with the left is that we 'iconise' people - there are 'heroes' - like che - this is understandable we all do this because they embody values we see as being against the things that oppress - but its also negative because it leads people to turning a blind eye to things that do not fit the 'heroic' narrative - the heroic/revolutionary personality -so then it becomes a case of denial of the truth. People worship 'heroic individuals' - thats just the same for the left as the right - and yet the politics of the left isnt about hero worship - so it says - its about the PEOPLE. But the people are the amorphous MASSES. They can wave the flag behind the great grand hero of the revolution. And then if they criticise the workings of the NEW revolutionary system that is taken as a personal insult against the hero/heroes who won the revolution andagainst the 'PEOPLE' themselves.... they are then counter-revolutionary traitors !

Sergio Donati really wrote intelligently about this in relation to the process of revolution in A Fistful of Dynamite - one of the best studies of 'revolutionb' ever (if that doesnt sound too much like hero worship lol);




^
And the following scene warns about the danger of throwing the Bakunin book away ... and doesnt that just sum up the danger of abandoning the idea of socialism and libertarianism just to return to the kind of shit WE KNOW doesnt work and why the revolution had to be fought in the first place! lol

Just referring to the economy - Winning a revolution is probably a lot easier than trying to make an economy work once the revolution has been won.