Next Sunday's
critical
election in Nicaragua
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments directly
to JonatPower@aol.com
November 1, 2006
LONDON - Can one imagine when (and if) Daniel Ortega
Saavedra and his ex-revolutionary Sandinistas are swept back into office
in next Sunday’s general election the late U.S. president, Ronald
Reagan, saying calmly from his grave, “Here we go again”,
and then, after a thoughtful pause, “So what?”
It was Mr Reagan, after all, who said of the Sandinista regime, “If
we ignore it will spread and become a mortal threat to the entire New
World”. The Sandinistas were “just two days drive from Harlingen,
Texas” and, as Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, added,“Defending
the mainland ranks above all other priorities.”
Rhetoric like this cost Central America- there were also left/right civil
wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras- hundreds of thousands of
lives and left villages and towns decimated. They were unnecessary wars
and the U.S. had no business supporting a small, unyielding, land-owning
class against a small minority of the underdogs who dared to use violence
against them.
The history books have revealed what many of us covering the wars suspected
at the time, that the reports of Soviet or Cuban support for the rebellions
were misleading or exaggerated. In the early days Cuba lent a hand with
basic arms supplies. But Moscow rebuffed all attempts to get it involved.
Similarly, the guerrillas were depicted by Washington as terrorists incarnate;
the army and the “Contras” (conservative irregulars and death
squads sometimes funded and trained by the U.S.) were protected from scrutiny
and their operations vigorously defended. But as we now know from a UN
investigation in Guatemala, in part financed by the Clinton Administration,
only 3% of the deaths were caused by the rebels and 97% by the government
forces. So revealing was the UN report of the role played by the CIA in
the Guatemalan war that President Bill Clinton went to Guatemala and said,
“For the United States it is important that I state clearly that
support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence
and wide-scale repression was wrong.” This led the Washington Post
to editorialise, “We Americans need our own truth commission.”
But seven years after Clinton’s mea culpa on behalf of the U.S.
we have two men who held high positions in the Reagan Administration and
were deeply involved in the murkier side of this clandestine war fighting
holding important posts today- Elliot Abrams is deputy National Security
Advisor in the White House and John Negroponte is the director of National
Intelligence.
In Nicaragua as the election campaign proceeds the U.S. has not been reticent
about throwing its weight around. While we can only surmise what is going
on in the background, in the foreground the U.S. ambassador, Paul Trivelli,
has publicly intervened in the electoral debate on the side of Ortega’s
opponents.
It’s 16 years since President Daniel Ortega, the guerrillas’
former commander in chief, decided to stop the fighting, call an election,
and then lost in a landslide. Since then Nicaragua has been a democracy,
albeit with a heavy dose of corruption that has helped insure that Nicaragua
remains the poorest country in Central America and, after Haiti, the second
poorest in the hemisphere. El Salvador, in contrast, which suffered an
even bloodier civil war, has done well, partly by cosying up to Washington.
If Ortega does win on Sunday Washington has some tough decisions to make.
It can choose to work to undermine him, which will not be difficult given
the precariousness of the economy. Withholding aid and discouraging private
investment will be sufficient to give him a hard time. Or it can decide
to let bygones be bygones and deal with him in the expectation that he
is the reformed character he presents himself as. It also means not just
reducing trade barriers to Nicaraguan textiles, shoes, vegetables and
flowers, actively encouraging private investors but also reversing Washington’s
hostility towards land reform, which was always a central plank of the
Sandinistas. It has to be tolerated, even encouraged, because without
it the rural areas can never move forward, either economically or politically.
Ironically, all this was said in a report of a commission chaired by former
Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, more than 15 years ago. No one took
real notice. By the time the Sandinistas had given up the bullet in favor
of the ballot the U.S. had lost interest.
Inconsequential and small though the Central American backyard may be,
but America’s backyard it will always be. Every 30 years or so,
over a century and a half a cycle of uprising, repression and American
intervention occurs. Now that all seems quiet in Central America and old
local enmities are being subsumed into electoral politics it is time for
Big Brother in Washington to give the locals, good and bad, some breathing
space.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Get
free articles &
updates
Follow this link to read about - and
order -
Jonathan Power's book written for the
40th
Anniversary of Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
Här kan du läsa om - och
köpa -
Jonathan Powers bok på svenska
"Som
Droppen Urholkar
Stenen"
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
 
|