The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.59/No.29           August 14, 1995 
 
 
Nicaragua: Stability Still Eludes Capitalists  

BY FRANCISCO PICADO

MANAGUA - Five years after Violeta Chamorro and the U.S.- backed Opposition National Union (UNO) coalition won the elections here, their dreams of capitalist stability are still far from being a reality.

The government was virtually paralyzed recently by a four-month-long constitutional battle between a majority of the National Assembly and President Chamorro. Although an agreement was finally reached June 15, in part under pressure from international aid donors, the underlying causes of the conflict have not gone away.

Land disputes in the countryside continue to smolder. On one side are peasants who received land from a Sandinista- led government placed in power by the popular armed insurrection that overthrew the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship in 1979, and those who have occupied land in more recent years. On the other are the previous large owners who want the confiscated land back, new landowners who were given large holdings in the aftermath of the electoral defeat of the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front), and both government and private-owned banks, which have been slow to give loans to those who obtained land through the revolution.

Austerity measures and free market policies - initiated under the FSLN at the end of the 1980s and deepened since 1990 under the current regime - have battered working people in the city and countryside. Many refuse to give up their "Sandinista roots," as one telephone worker described the gains made during the revolution.

The Chamorro government points to the new factories in Managua's free trade zone as a glowing success for the free market and capitalism in Nicaragua. Sergio Novoa, Human Resources consultant for the government-run Free Trade Zone Corp., said in an interview that things have been improving since the defeat of the "Sandinista communist government."

Since 1991 employment in the zone has jumped from 900 to more than 6,000. Even the old prison at the outskirts of the zone has been converted for the 15 businesses there. Owned by U.S., Taiwanese, Korean, and Nicaraguan capitalists, the shops mostly make clothes for export to the United States for J.C. Penny, Wal-Mart, Sears, and K- Mart.

Until 1990 most of the factories there were government owned. Now they are all private.

`An abundance of peasant women'
"Foreign investors are really impressed when they see what we have here," Novoa said. "We have an abundance of peasant women who come from having done nothing but milk cows all their life, to running industrial machinery. They learn fast, and become agile, rapid, versatile, high- quality workers.

"And a big part of the attractiveness is how cheap labor is," boasts Novoa. "It's cheaper than in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, or Mexico."

But there are still problems, he added. "Some investors come from New York trembling with fear. We have to convince them that the Sandinistas and the strikes of tire- burning workers are a thing of the past."

There is not one union in the free trade zone, even at a shoe factory owned by a member of the FSLN.

Three workers at the new enterprises in the zone, formerly employees at the state-owned ENAVES garment factory, were taking their lunch break as these reporters were leaving.

"It's the same now," one of the women said. "Except that in 1990 we received a free lunch every day, free transportation to and from work, and a package that included rice, beans, soap and other essential items each month, and there was a bus that picked us up every morning. Now all those things have to come out of our wages."

"That means it's not the same," added another worker. "I only make 140 córdobas a week (about $19). Do you know what it means living on that?"

"We've been forced to speed up our work. And any one who talks union is fired," said the first woman.

Carlos Borge, a leader of the Sandinista Workers Federation (CST), said that the CST has lost 50 percent of its membership in the last five years, mostly due to growing unemployment. At the same time, he noted, the Ministry of Labor has blocked union recognition including in the free trade zone.

Strikes are harder now, commented Mario Malespin, head of the Enrique Schmidt Telecommunications Union and a leader of the CST. "Workers are afraid to lose their jobs."

Few new unions have been formed. "This is true even in the many businesses now owned by the FSLN," Malespin, himself a member of the FSLN, said. "As far as I know not one of them is union. They are just like any other recalcitrant capitalist."

A fight is now brewing at the state-owned phone and mail company Telcor. The government is planning to sell Telcor - one of the most profitable companies in the country - ostensibly to raise money to compensate capitalists for land that was confiscated and turned over to peasants and farm workers during the revolution.

"We're fine just the way we are," said Veronica Wayman, a cashier and operator at Telcor in Managua. "Privatizing would mean layoffs and a loss of benefits." Phone workers make triple and quadruple what garment workers in the free trade zone make and they still get free medical, dental, and eye care, and a food package each month.

"I'm not against compensating the old landowners," she said. "But not at our expense."

In 1990 Telcor workers went on strike in spite of opposition from the FSLN leadership.

Headache for capitalists: land disputes
Ongoing land disputes in the countryside are at the center of the problems the capitalist class in Nicaragua faces trying to establish some kind of stability.

In the early to mid-1980s, the Sandinista-led government confiscated the landholdings of capitalists tied to the Somoza dictatorship and some other large capitalists. Thousands of acres were distributed to landless peasants, most to cooperative and collective farms. Other large estates were organized into state-owned enterprises.

After its 1990 electoral defeat, the FSLN distributed additional farm land to peasants and lots in the city for housing.

Chamorro, during her campaign for president, promised to give land back to many of the previous landowners or compensate them. Some small factories have been returned to the previous owners. But in the countryside, for the most part, Chamorro has not tried to evict peasants from the land they won or occupied. Instead she offered government bonds to the expropriated capitalists, many of whom refused the offer. Unable to get any financing or other assistance a number of peasants have sold their land.

In early July former U.S. president Jimmy Carter brought the opposing sides together and worked out a deal. The Chamorro government agreed to recognize the titles of the peasant and peasant cooperatives and guarantee a major portion of the bonds with dollars in part by selling off Telcor. Some capitalists still insist on getting their land back and have refused to back the accord.

State-owned farms, however have already been divided up in a process that began several years ago. According to Jose Adan Rivera, an executive committee member of the Rural Workers Association (ATC), the government, the ATC, the FSLN, and others agreed to a four way division: 29.5 percent of the farms were returned to their old owners, 21.3 percent to former contras, 17.2 percent to Sandinista Army veterans, and 32 percent to farm workers and the old state farm administrations.

All sides agreed to maintain the same benefits and not to fire current employees. But many former owners, and new owners, have violated this agreement, Rivera said. Farm workers are in bitter disputes over these lands.

Many farm workers and small peasants complain that most, and the best, of the land destined for veterans and former contras, was given not to rank and file soldiers, but to Sandinista Army officers and high-ranking ex-contras.

The other problem has been credit to work the land. The government has refused to recognize the titles of many cooperatives and state farms. Without titles, the private and state-owned banks refuse credit. Without credit, small peasants and other farmers cannot buy what they need to farm.

Thousands of peasants led by the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) marched in Managua June 16 to demand that the government recognize the titles of all those who received land.

Farm workers and peasants, with the support of the ATC, have been camping out on the grounds of the University of Central America in Managua to highlight their demands for titles and credit. Twice a day, 150 rural toilers block the street in front of the university. Every week, some head back to their farms and others take their place. The "sit-in," as they call it, began in May.

"The government is fighting for the bourgeoisie," said Santos Paez from San Juan del Rio Coco, who works at La Dalia coffee plantation, formerly a state-owned farm that is now formally owned by the farm workers. The workers were forced to "hire" the old administration, which in turn has the power to hire and fire, and to set wages. The government "doesn't care about the peasants. We want titles and credit."

FSLN promises `stability'
In the midst of the deepening economic crisis and continuing resistance, 40,000 people overflowed the Plaza of the Revolution July 19, the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution.

Workers, students, and army veterans, many dressed in the red and black colors of the Sandinista flag, some with home-made signs, turned out to hear speeches by FSLN leaders Tomás Borge and Daniel Ortega. The latter is expected to be the FSLN candidate in the 1996 presidential elections.

"The FSLN is the only alternative for those of us that have nothing," said Alcino Benavides.

Ortega portrayed the FSLN as the party that can bring stability to Nicaragua.

The FSLN is "the poor peoples' front, the peasant front, the workers' front, the front of the hungry, the unemployed, the barefoot and the humble," Ortega said.

"But that is not enough," he added, calling for unity among everyone including professionals, merchants, and "capitalists who stayed in our country and are willing to really work for Nicaragua."

The former president of Nicaragua also said, "The FSLN is willing to indemnify all of those who should be compensated," for land that was taken from them.

Dozens of FSLN leaders, led by former Nicaraguan vice- president Sergio Ramirez, recently split from the FSLN and formed the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). Almost the entire FSLN faction in the National Assembly are with the MRS with a few exceptions. Former FSLN leaders in the new party include Dora Maria Tellez, Carlos Zamora, Daisy Zamora, Reynaldo Tefel, and Rene Arce. Other long-time figures have left the FSLN without joining any other party, including Ernesto Cardenal.

Several leaders of the MRS have stated that they will never form an alliance with the "corrupt" FSLN or the government.

Constitutional crisis
Ortega said little about the still simmering constitutional crisis. For months Nicaragua in effect had two constitutions. Neither President Chamorro nor the National Assembly majority would recognize the validity of each other's actions. After months of negotiations involving Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a behind-the- scenes deal led to a version of the National Assembly reforms finally being adopted.

This deal includes limiting the presidential term to five years instead of six, prohibiting the election of anyone to president for more than one term in a row, prohibiting relatives of the current president from running for office in the election immediately following the term, and strengthened the role of the assembly. The reforms also call for increasing the Supreme Court from 7 to 12 justices and dropping the word "Sandinista" from the name of the army and the police.

The FSLN deputies in the assembly abstained on the final vote, while the MRS voted in favor.

Few workers saw the debate over the constitution as something that mattered to them. But the constantly shifting alliances, along with the splits in the FSLN and the traditional bourgeois parties, underscore the continuing inability of the capitalist class in Nicaragua to resolve the deepening crisis in their favor.

 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home