Political Report 1464 - Nicaragua: Chronicle of an Election Foretold

by LAP Editor, William I. Robinson

Posted by NACLA

With seven opposition presidential candidates imprisoned and held incommunicado in the months leading up to the vote and all the remaining contenders but one from miniscule parties closely allied with President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the results of Nicaragua’s November 7 presidential elections were a foregone conclusion. The government declared after polls closed that Ortega won 75 percent of the vote and that 65 percent of voters cast ballots. The independent voting rights organization Urnas Abiertas, meanwhile, reported an abstention rate of approximately 80 percent and widespread irregularities at polling stations around the country.

The vote was carried out in a climate of fear and intimidation, with a total absence of safeguards against fraud.The vote was carried out in a climate of fear and intimidation, with a total absence of safeguards against fraud. In a complete breakdown of the rule of law, Ortega carried out a wave of repression from May to October, leading the opposition to issue a joint statement on October 7 calling for a boycott of the election. Several dozen opposition figures—among them, presidential candidates, peasant, labor, and student leaders, journalists, and environmentalists—were arrested and detained without trial, while several hundred others were forced into exile or underground.

Among those exiled were celebrated novelist Sergio Ramirez, who served as Ortega’s vice president during the 1980s revolution. While the government charged Ramirez with “conspiracy to undermine national integrity,” his crime was provoking the ire of the regime by publishing his latest novel, Tongolele No Sabía Bailar, a fictionalized account of the 2018 mass protests that marked the onset of the current political crisis and the degeneration of the regime into dictatorship. The book was promptly banned in the country, with customs authorities ordered to block shipments at ports of entry.

Latest LAP issue! The Nicaraguan Crisis and the Challenge to the International Left

edited by William I. Robison

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/48/6

Debate is heating up among scholars over the ongoing crisis in Nicaragua. For some, the Ortega-Murillo government is a continuation of the 1980s Sandinista revolution while for others it is a corrupt and nepotistic regime that has promoted capitalist expansion while carrying out harsh repression against its opponents. This symposium brings together 10 scholars who debate the crisis at a time when it is generating deep fissures among the left and progressives in and out of the academy.

This issue also includes two commentaries on the July 11, 2021 protests in Cuba as well as nine additional articles on a variety of topics including indigenous movements, agriculture, precarious work, religion, and film as well as a number of book reviews.

Table of Contents

Virtual Forum - The Nicaraguan Crisis: A Left Perspectives

hosted by NACLA and WGNC

with introductory remarks from William I. Robinson, LAP Editor and editor of LAP's latest issue The Nicaraguan Crisis and the Challenge to the International Left.

The crisis in Nicaragua has divided the Left in the United States and throughout the Americas. Significant sectors of this international Left claim that President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo represents a leftist project for Nicaragua that should be defended, and that the United States is trying to overthrow the government. This event aims to address those claims from an explicitly leftist perspective. As well, as a reminder, the latest issue of LAP features a symposium/debate on the Nicaraguan crisis.

WHEN: October 7, 2021, 8:00pm-9:30pm EDT

Please click on this link to register. Registration is free:

https://nacla.salsalabs.org/thenicaraguancrisis/index.html

Abstract: Evolving Relationships: Nicaragua, Israel, and the Palestinians

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Evolving Relationships: Nicaragua, Israel, and the Palestinians

by Marshall Yurow

Nicaragua occupies a special place in the Israeli-Palestinian impact on Latin America. Israeli–Somoza Dynasty ties and Palestinian-Sandinista ties have been well documented over the past 35 years. Yet while the facts are available, the interpretations are still fiercely debated. Both relationships have been portrayed largely in polemical terms. The Israeli-Somoza relationship was viewed as a pariah-state alliance or a “debt of honor.” The Sandinista-Palestinian relationship was viewed as a terrorist connection or brotherhood against a common enemy. Both relationships were seen as static when in fact, having begun as realpolitik, they evolved over time.

Nicaragua ocupa un lugar especial en cuanto al impacto israelí-palestino en América Latina. Los lazos israelí-dinastía Somoza y los vínculos palestino-Sandinistas han sido bien documentados en los últimos 35 años. Sin embargo, aunque los hechos están conocidos, las interpretaciones siguen intensamente debatidas. Ambas relaciones han sido presentadas en gran medida en términos polémicos. La relación israelí-Somoza fue vista como una alianza de estados parias o una “deuda de honor.” La relación Sandinista-palestina fue vista como una conexión terrorista o hermandad contra un enemigo común. Ambas relaciones se consideraron estáticas cuando, de hecho, comenzando como realpolitik, evolucionaron con el tiempo.

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Abstract, The Perils of Reconciliation: Achievements and Challenges of Daniel Ortega and the Modern FSLN

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The Perils of Reconciliation: Achievements and Challenges of Daniel Ortega and the Modern FSLN

by Héctor Cruz Feliciano

Against the background of unprecedented levels of support and popularity since recovering power, the experience of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) shows that alliances unorthodox for a leftist party have rendered electoral results at the cost of putting more profound structural transformations on hold. Ten years after its electoral comeback, the FSLN has a lot to show for itself, largely because of the stable climate attributable to its decision to make peace with its historical foes. At the same time, its efforts at empowering the citizenry have been limited at best. Entrenched in the wealth of political capital it has accumulated, it is in a good position to take calculated risks in favor of bold redistributive policies. Not taking more daring steps toward the socialist transformation of society at this juncture could in due time cost it its role as articulator of the leftist agenda in Nicaragua.

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Abstract, Globalization, Governance, and the Emergence of Indigenous Autonomy Movements in Latin America: The Case of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua

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Globalization, Governance, and the Emergence of Indigenous Autonomy Movements in Latin America: The Case of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua 
by Luciano Baracco


A revisiting of Salvador Martí i Puig’s approach to globalization and the turn toward governance in explaining the roots and impact of the political mobilization of Latin America’s indigenous peoples since the 1990s recasts governance as a disciplinary regime that in the case of Nicaragua co-opted potentially radical oppositional movements into the neoliberal project that accompanied Latin America’s democratic transition. The discussion takes as its empirical case the autonomy process on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, which in its twenty-fifth year represents the most sustained devolution of power to indigenous peoples in Latin America. 

Political Report # 1370 Complicating the Narrative on Nicaragua

by James Phillips, NACLA

Recent news coverage of the crisis in Nicaragua has sought to simplify a complex reality. The prevailing coverage lays the blame for the conflict on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and presents a politically narrow and historically shallow context. As a result, the message implicit and sometimes explicit in the coverage-that Ortega is the villain and his departure from office would end the conflict or solve the problems underlying the crisis-is distorted and misleading. This rhetoric, furthered by penalizing measures taken by the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress, targets Ortega and by extension Nicaragua as a brutal dictatorship and human rights disaster. Meanwhile, Washington applauds and offers moral and material support for the government of Nicaragua’s neighbor, Honduras, where there is indeed a brutal dictatorship and a human rights disaster. Unlike President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras, Ortega is not seen as a faithful ally of the U.S. and thus faces strong scrutiny and condemnation. This hypocritical double standard highlights the fact that for a long time Ortega himself and Nicaragua, in company with Cuba and Venezuela, have represented a largely symbolic challenge to U.S. hegemony. The anger of U.S. administrations toward Nicaragua, Ortega, and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) goes back to the revolution that in 1979 succeeded in toppling the 43-year-long dictatorship of the Somoza family-Washington’s faithful and corrupt ally through successive Democratic and Republican administrations from Franklin Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter. The current crisis is not simply the story of a brave opposition and a brutal Ortega. It is a long-simmering conflict among different groups within Nicaragua that has been carefully manipulated over the years to put Nicaragua firmly and securely back under U.S. hegemony.

Political Report # 1363 The Nicaraguan Crisis and the Manicheanism of the US Left

by William I. Robinson, Verso (LAP Editor)

Washington's primary interest in Nicaragua is not getting rid of Ortega but in preserving the interests of transnational capital in the country and the hegemony of capital over any post-Ortega political project. In accord with the infantile manichean view of a significant portion of the US Left, the world is black and white and there are good guys and bad guys. This is a template into which everything must by political dogma fit. Since the US is intervening in Nicaragua (which it is, and which is condemnable) then, ergo, it is doing so in order to overthrow the regime of President Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, and ergo this regime must be the good guy. In these accounts there is absolutely no focus on - apparently a quite studious non-observation of - the internal contradictions in Nicaragua that have given rise to the crisis. There is little or no inkling of an understanding of the internal class, social, and political dynamics in the country, much less what exactly what the US is up to in Nicaragua or what its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding actually seeks to achieve. Typical of a spate of articles in US Left media outlets charging that the Nicaraguan crisis can be explained by US regime change against a revolutionary government, a “color revolution," and a “right-wing coup d’état” by Washington and its allies, Roger Harris published an article in early August, “Regime Change in Nicaragua,” duly reprinted in a slew of Left media venues. In it, Harris points to high growth rates that he notes have received accolades by the IMF and the World Bank, the reduction of poverty, the provision of free health and education. He attributes allegedly “inexplicable” violence that erupted in April to the Ortega-Murillo regime “being targeted by the US for regime change” because “the good things it has done provoked the ire of the US.” He also points to $1.5 million dollars recently approved by USAID for NED for the purpose, in his words, of “overthrowing the government.” He concludes, “any replacement of Ortega would be more, not less, neoliberal, oppressive, and authoritarian.”

Political Report # 1340 Capitalist Development in Nicaragua and the Mirage of the Left

By William I. Robinson, Truthout

The image carefully cultivated by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his supporters as the standard-bearers of the popular revolutionary process led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the 1980s has all but crumbled in the wake of the mass protests that broke out last month against pension reform that left dozens of people dead, and hundreds injured and jailed. For some, the protests were a plot organized by the United States to destabilize a revolutionary government. For others, it was an explosion of mass discontent against a corrupt and authoritarian regime. While the United States and the traditional Nicaraguan oligarchy would certainly like to have a more pliant regime in place, they have accommodated themselves to the Ortega government. The Sandinista inner circle has hacked its way into the ranks of the country's elite in a process dating back to the aftermath of the 1980s revolution, proving capable of overseeing a new round of capitalist development since coming back to power in 2007. Ortega and the FSLN have dressed in a leftist discourse their attempt to establish a populist multiclass political alliance around this project of capitalist development under the firm hegemony of capital and Sandinista state elites. While the FSLN retains a mass, if dwindling, base among the country's peasantry and urban poor, the FSLN leadership has made pacts with the traditional oligarchy; suppressed dissent; enriched itself through plunder of state resources and an alliance with transnational capital; and deployed the army, police and paramilitary forces to violently repress peasants, workers and social movements opposing its policies. Now capitalist development is entering into crisis in Nicaragua. The government's announcement that it would cut pension payments to retirees and increase the contribution required by workers and businesses into the pension was the spark that ignited the April uprising. But political tension and social conflict has been building up for years, and it is this crisis of capitalism that forms the larger backdrop to the recent events.

Political Report # 1257 To "Afflict the Comfortable"

By Jonah Walters, NACLA/Jacobin

During his decades as a public figure, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann- Nicaraguan politician, priest, and former president of the United Nations General Assembly- managed to escape much of the international notoriety visited upon his Sandinista comrades. But from the beginning of his political life to his death earlier this month, he was never far from the struggle. D'Escoto, who died on June 8 from apparent stroke complications, was a lifelong proponent of a radical politics that once seemed to promise restoration for a battered and disoriented international left. He led a tripartite life-as a revolutionary, a priest, and a public servant-during a period of profound change in his home country, when an insurgent egalitarianism swept through popular consciousness to saturate both secular and Catholic worldviews. Throughout the 1980s, grassroots movements pushed the struggle over the Catholic Church's social mission out of the Vatican and into the glare of the Central American sun.Throughout the 1980s, grassroots movements pushed the struggle over the Catholic Church's social mission out of the Vatican and into the glare of the Central American sun. As poor people's movements in the Global South, particularly Latin America, repeatedly challenged elite power and wealth, some factions of Catholics broke with the Church hierarchy to advance a radically transformed vision of Catholic social doctrine. This reinterpretation of the Church's obligation to the poor went beyond the historic Catholic commitment to charity to advocate involvement in political struggles-including revolutionary ones. Known in Latin America as "liberation theology," this tendency also found some adherents in the North American Maryknoll missionary order, which had long included political activism as part of its ministry. In the 1960s, after much internal debate, the Vatican seemed to legitimate liberation theology, but by 1985 this emergent radicalism had grown militant enough to rattle Church elites. Pope John Paul II retaliated by stripping four Nicaraguan priests of their holy orders. D'Escoto, a Maryknoll priest and Nicaragua's foreign minister at the time, was one of them.

Book, "The New Latin American Left: Cracks in the Empire" Edited By Jeffrey R. Webber and Barry Carr

The New Latin American Left 
Cracks in the Empire 
EDITED BY JEFFERY R. WEBBER AND BARRY CARR 
Hardback Paperback eBook

Book, The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories by Florence Babb

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The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories 
by Florence Babb

In recent decades, several Latin American nations have experienced political transitions that have caused a decline in tourism. In spite of—or even because of—that history, these areas are again becoming popular destinations. This work reveals that in post-conflict nations, tourism often takes up where social transformation leaves off and sometimes benefits from formerly off-limits status.

Comparing cases in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru, Babb shows how tourism is a major force in remaking transitional nations. While tourism touts scenic beauty and colonial charm, it also capitalizes on the desire for a brush with recent revolutionary history. In the process, selective histories are promoted and nations remade. This work presents the diverse stories of those linked to the trade and reveals how interpretations of the past and desires for the future coincide and collide in the global marketplace of tourism.

Book, "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century" Edited by Steve Ellner

:::::: Book ::::::

Book:  "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century"
Edited By Steve Ellner. Foreward by William I. Robinson

Book, "The New Latin American Left: Cracks in the Empire" Edited By Jeffrey R. Webber and Barry Carr

The New Latin American Left 
Cracks in the Empire 
EDITED BY JEFFERY R. WEBBER AND BARRY CARR 
Hardback Paperback eBook

Book, "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century" Edited by Steve Ellner

:::::: Book ::::::

Book:  "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century"
Edited By Steve Ellner. Foreward by William I. Robinson

Book, "The New Latin American Left: Cracks in the Empire" Edited By Jeffrey R. Webber and Barry Carr

The New Latin American Left 
Cracks in the Empire 
EDITED BY JEFFERY R. WEBBER AND BARRY CARR 
Hardback Paperback eBook

Political Report # 1059 Nicaragua is Not for Sale: The Culmination of President Ortega’s Inconsistent Presidency By Amalia Perez, Research Associate at COHA

Featured Photo: March Against The Nicaragua Canal                  From: Jorge Mejia Peralta

"¡Nicaragua no se vende!" protesters in the central city of Juigalpa exclaimed during the most recent demonstration opposing the proposed Nicaraguan Canal.[1] This rallying cry, Nicaragua is not for sale, reverberates throughout the country in momentous opposition to the construction of the canal-a $50 billion USD project spearheaded by Chinese venture capitalist billionaire, Wang Jing, and enthusiastically approved by the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega.[2] The pair intend to slice Central America's largest country in half with a canal three times the size of Panama's, displaced communities and environmental degradation be damned. A SECRET DEAL; A PUBLIC OUTCRY In a characteristically clandestine arrangement, the Ortega administration approved the operation during a seven-day Congressional session in 2013, without parliamentary debate, public consultation, or prior feasibility/environmental impact studies.[3] The approval granted a 100-year concession to Wang Jing's Cayman Island-based firm, the Hong Kong Nicaraguan Canal Development Investment Company (HKND). The parameters expropriated land rights to the 172 miles long by an average 1,000 feet wide stretch of Nicaraguan land on which the proposed project will be built, giving HKND carte blanche authority, without having to pay taxes, for the ensuing century.[4] Subsequently, the concession goes so far as to grant HKND the unqualified rights to construct "two deep sea ports, a free trade zone, an airport, cement and explosive factories, an electricity plant and upmarket hotels," the Daily Beast reports, at the expense of land-owning Nicaraguans.[5]

Book, "The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective" By Emelio Betances

The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective 
By Emelio Betances

The Cuban Revolution. Half a Century. by Saul Landau

The Cuban Revolution. Half a Century.
by Saul Landau
Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He has produced 10 books and more than 40 films on social, political, and historical issues and worldwide human rights and is the recipient of Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins award for human rights. 

Five Cuban intelligence agents sit in federal penitentiaries across the United States because they infiltrated anti-revolutionary groups in Miami intent on doing violence in Cuba. These five men represent a long line of those who have acted from an understanding of their roles in the long human historical drama.

Cuba! Cuba! Cuba! by William I. Robinson

Cuba! Cuba! Cuba! 
by William I. Robinson 
William Robinson is Professor of Sociology, Global Studies, and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent book is Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective, published in 2008. 

It was Fall 1980. I had recently returned to New York from a three-year stint in Africa and would shortly be heading to Nicaragua, where I would spend the next 10 years. At the time I did not know much about the Cuban Revolution, but my political awakening had taken place on a continent that was still in the process of overthrowing the shackles of colonialism.