Jim Chrystie: Nicaragua: Somoza goes – the struggle continues

[Militant, 27 July 1979]

He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.“ President Roosevelt’s words on installing the first Somoza as head of Nicaragua in 1933 came home to roost last week.

In the first successful mass uprising in Latin America since Castro came to power twenty years ago, the hated Somoza dynasty was overthrown.

American imperialism desperately tried to pick up the pieces and encourage a moderate new regime before too much damage was done to their interests in Nicaragua and before the revolt grew in the neighbouring dictatorships of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The victory over Somoza led by the Sandinista guerillas (FSLN) was a considerable defeat for American imperialism.

The American ruling class has always looked on Central America and the Caribbean as its own backyard.

In 1954 they overthrew a left-wing government in Guatemala, which threatened the United Fruit Company. In 1961 they helped Cuban exiles invade Cuba in the abortive Bay of Pig operation.

Even as late as fifteen years ago they sent marines into the Dominican Republic when it looked as if the people there might elect someone whom American leaders did not approve of.

They had wanted to send in troops this time too. But the US government proposal was defeated at a meeting of the Organisation of American States on 23rd-24th June. The Latin American leaders feared the repercussions to their own regimes if they openly supported an American invasion of Nicaragua.

They have seen the wave of revolt against the capitalist puppet regimes which has swept the small islands in the Eastern Caribbean this year.

In Grenada and Dominica the governments have been deposed. In Central America left-wing guerrillas have begun to cause major problems for the El Salvador dictatorship.

The American Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, has stated that he intends to make Central America and the Caribbean one of his highest priorities during his (last) one and a half years in office. One leading State Department official warned:

There is not an island in the Caribbean that couldn’t go the way of Grenada within five years. If you take Central America as the western point and the mini-states as the eastern one, you could say we’ve got the potential for a ‚circle of crisis‘ right on our doorstep.”

The crisis will not go away, as it is rooted in the capitalist economic system which throttles the area. In Nicaragua the popular unrest against the Somoza regime rested on an unemployment rate of 50-60%, an inflation rate of over 20%, on a GNP which fell by 7% last year, and on a foreign debt of $1.8 billion.

In the end many businessmen turned against Somoza’s rule. “We must have a political solution, Our economy cannot stand the crisis any more,” declared the President of the Central Bank of Nicaragua. Many middle-class and businessmen supported the Sandinistas, and were the main supporters of one of its main groupings, the Terceristas.

They are now hoping to hold back the revolution. But already all of Somoza’s holdings in the country have been nationalised. This means that with this one move much of industry and land is in the new government’s hands.

Between an estimated one-tenth and one-quarter of the country’s arable land; the national airline, shipping industry, a large fishing fleet, transport, newspapers, retail stores, cement construction and food-processing industry, together with extensive interests in property, banking and insurance.

The problems facing the Nicaraguan regime are enormous. Up to 40,000 people were killed in the uprising. In a population of just over 2 million hundreds of thousands are homeless and starvation is a real threat.

One member of the junta stated: “We have to reconstruct the country, feed and educate the people, wipe out illiteracy, help the sick and mutilated. In sum we have to start from scratch.”

Now the dictator has been overthrown, the people’s aspirations are high. It will not prove possible to satisfy them by maintaining the old system without Somoza. In Nicaragua and throughout the regime [region?] the struggle for a decent society will continue.


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