La historia del Sandinismo y los implicaciones para los ONGs (NGOs)

Understanding the history of the Sandinistas is essential to understanding the present state of NGOs here. Why are they here in the first place? How can they help?

To be honest, before  I read Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle by Thomas Walker I didn’t realize the extent of the revolution that happened in 1978-79. In case your history is rusty like mine was – essentially a thoroughly corrupt military-backed dictator, Somoza, whose family had held the presidency for nearly forty years, like a dynasty, was overthrown by a massive confluence of grassroots movements than culminated in a brief armed conflict combined with massive civil unrest and rebellion. The “Sandinistas“, whose namesake, Augosto C. Sandino, led a guerilla insurgency agains US occupation in the 1930’s, then took power (they were the party that organized the uprising and trained armed guerilla soldiers). This was, in all respects, a revolution by the people, for the people.

Surprisingly, the Sandinistas were not just the proleteriat – they were from all classes; disgust with the Somozas was total and had no boundaries of class. The Sandinista government was demonized horribly in the US through propaganda, portraying them as “a grim, totalitarian Communist regime” when in reality they did not impose a Communist, or even Socialist economic system, instead implementing a “mixed economy with heavy participation of the private sector.”

Similarly, their achievements socially were actually extremely impressive, with expanded spending on public (read free) education, healthcare, low-interest loans, subsidized basic food, public works, and other investments in their people. Their grassroots base and emphasis on volunteerism allowed them to embark on the National Literacy Crusade of 1980 in which 60,000 educated young people volunteered to leave school for five months to travel to the most remote, neediest parts of the country and teach literacy. 25,000 more went into the pooriest barrios of the cities to do the same. All were trained beforehand in a massive effort that was actually made comparatively easy due to the extensive grassroots networks already established. Because of this, the national literacy rate rose to more than 87% from less than 50%.

Please take a moment to digest that. Five months. EIGHTY FIVE THOUSAND VOLUNTEERS. In a country with only three million people. That’s nearly 3% of the population.

It yielded a 37% gain in literacy nationwide.

This is the power of grassroots organizing. The power of the people to make change for themselves – and not in the hokey “participatory development” model that so many NGOs tout to their donors.

No NGO could ever dream of such large-scale success. Today the NGO I interviewed, Asofenix, described to me the difficulty of even mobilizing one leader in a community to petition the government to help his/her community and take charge of his community’s well-being. That’s now. How did this happen? How did we go from 85,000 volunteers to practically 0?

I don’t mean to oversimplify things. These issues are extraordinarily complex. But one thing is clear: the Sandinistas were destroyed by US imperialism and the funding and training of the contras – rebel soldiers operating mainly out of Honduras during the latter half of the 1980s that acted as a kind of “pest” for the Sandinista government. They forced the government to spend so much of its already limited funds fighting them that by the late 1980s they were forced to cut back to nearly pre-revolution levels of social services.

Similarly, the US instituted a complete trade embargo with Nicaragua in 1985. While Nicaragua had other trading partners, the US was its primary partner, so this was a huge loss that further hurt the ability of the Sandinista government to continue its social reforms.

The Sandinistas were of course not perfect, but the success and popularity that they had in the pre-embargo, pre-contra half of the 1980s, with impressive gains in economic growth, income equality, social services, free speech, and human rights, all based on a grassroots support base show that they had potential. Incredible potential. And of course, we (the US) strangled them since they didn’t fall into line with our economic and geopolitical interests.

Now, after a decade of war, the people are fed up. All who I talk to speak of the horrors of war and, while many supported the Sandinistas, most have now have lost that “spirit” of revolution. Similarly, some speak poorly of the performance of the Sandinistas, but probing further one realizes that they are speaking of the latter years, when the Sandinista’s good ideals went on the backburner as they fought a proxy war against the US contras. The popular support of the Sandinistas was actually enormous during the first half of the 1980s.

Today, after two decades of neoliberalism (shrinking government, “free” markets, reduced social expenditure, etc.) NGOs play an enormous role in service provision. But, as my title suggests, I’m skeptical. Can NGOs really save Nicaragua while neoliberalism and US interference still exists? The Sandinista revolution was an example of grassroots organization that came from the people, not from Westerners with…”good intentions.” Why do NGOs think that they can “organize” the people better than the people themselves?

Hopefully I can find at least a partial answer in the next nine weeks. Stick around – I’m hoping it will be bumpy ride. I’ll be posting pictures when I can – I love photography but it’s unseemly and dangerous to take pictures with my “fancy” camera in the streets here in Managua alone. But as soon as I get out to other places I’ll be posting lots of photos for you to enjoy!

¡Entonces, vamos a ver – tuani Nicaragua, aquí yo vengo!