Nicaragua: The Other Revolution Betrayed
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- Published on Tuesday, 08 January 2019 03:32
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1736 ... January 8, 2019
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Nicaragua: The Other Revolution Betrayed
Nathan Legrand and Éric Toussaint
The violent repression against demonstrators protesting brutal neoliberal policies, which resulted in more than 300 people being killed by regime forces since April 2018, is just one of the reasons why different leftist social movements have condemned the Nicaraguan regime led by President Daniel Ortega and Vice-president Rosario Murillo. The Left has many more reasons to denounce the policies of the regime. To understand this, we must go back to 1979.
The Sandinista Revolution
1979 saw the victory of an authentic revolution in Nicaragua that combined a popular uprising, self-organization of cities and neighborhoods in rebellion, and the action of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (in Spanish -- Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional... -- FSLN), a political-military organization inspired by a Marxist-Guevarist/Castrist model. The revolution put an end to the 42 year-long authoritarian rule of the Somoza dynasty, which had appropriated the state (its armed forces, administration and significant parts of its economic assets) and established a strong alliance with the United States -- the Somoza dictatorship proving to be an effective bulwark against progressive political forces -- whose multinationals could maintain and increase their plundering of Nicaragua’s national resources in exchange for commissions which added to the increasingly important wealth of the Somozas.
