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p Occupying an area of 148,000 square kilometres, Nicaragua, the largest of the Central American states, is bigger than many European states, such as Greece, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland or Denmark. However, it has a population of but slightly over 2,000,000.

p “The Military and Political Platform of the Sandinista National Liberation Front”, published on 4 May 1977, provides the following numerical breakdown of the country’s work force:

p “Of our population of 2,000,000-odd, employed in the economy according to official statistics are 650,000; they are engaged in farming, hunting, fishing, mining, at factories, in construction, in the power industry, in commerce, transport, services, petty private enterprise, etc.

p “Of this number, more than 300,000 are engaged in farming and fishing, 4,000 in mining, upwards of 60,000 at factories, 50,000 in construction, 4,000 in power industry and utilities, 60,000 in commerce, 23,000 in transport and communication, 100,000 in banks, insurance firms, etc.

p “Factory hands, building workers, and miners comprise together with farm labourers a permanently employed work force of 150,000, and represent the country’s urban and rural proletariat.

p “Factory proletariat and building workers are concentrated in Managua, Granada, and Chinandega, and to a lesser extent in Esteli and Rivas. Most farm labourers are found in the 39 Chinandega and Leon neighbourhoods, where cotton and sugar cane are grown, in Jinotepe and Matagalpa coffee regions, and also in the neighbourhoods of Managua, Carazo, and the Pacific Coast. Steadily employed farm laborers engaged on banana and tobacco plantations and on cattle and poultry farms are mostly in Chinandega, Esteli, Leon, Rivas, Boaco, and Managua.”

p To furnish a notion of the plight of Nicaragua’s toiling masses, a few mid-1976 statistics will be adequate. At that time, some 40,000 breadwinners were fully unemployed; this number includes only the officially registered. Of every 100 of the population, an average of 65 can neither read nor write; in the countryside the proportion is still higher, as many as 9 of every ten. To every 10,000 of the population, there are but six doctors; however, the situation is still worse when one realises that most medical personnel are concentrated in the bigger cities and towns. Several districts have not a single hospital. According to official data from the 1976 report of the National Building Chamber, a third of the country’s building workers were without work. Some 300,000 people dwelt in absolutely substandard housing.

p A 24 August 1978 Prensa Latina News Agency report from San Jose put the country’s external debt at 1,000 million dollars, or a per capita $434, a sum almost equal to the gross per capita income for all of 1977. One will easily surmise that the monthly per capita income stood at only $38. However, that is an average, deduced by lumping together the incomes of high-ranking representatives of the dictatorship raking in an annual profit of $1,000,000 and the pay of an agricultural labourer whose monthly earnings are never more than $10-15. Note how low are the living standards of the Nicaraguan workingman at a time when the dictator himself is “worth” $500,000,000!

p The country’s economy is gripped by crisis across the board. The British Financial Times remarked on 28 November^^1^^ 1978 that its foreign debt stood at $983,000,000.

p Aware of the plight of the ordinary Nicaraguan, one will realise that sooner or later the people had to rebel against the much-hated dictatorship. On 9 September, this year, the 40 Sandinista National Liberation Front exhorted the people to support the spontaneous armed uprising.

p The beginnings of the Sandinista revival date back to 1958, when Ramon Raudales, a comrade of Augusto Cesar Sandino’s, launched a guerilla movement in Northern Nicaragua. He was past 60, when with a small band he took to the mountains and exhorted the people to take up arms against the Somoza dictatorship. Though a National Guard punitive squad wiped out this tiny guerilla force with its "whitebearded Patriarch”, as friends had nick-named Ramon Raudales, others caught up the Sandino banner. The very appearance of a group pitting itself against the dictatorship with arms in hand spelled a Sandinista revival.

p The Nicaraguans whom Ramon Raudales inspired were far younger, only 18-20, young enough to be his grandsons, and their leaders were as young. In 1961, several young people formed an underground revolutionary organisation which in the following year assumed the name of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Its seven members were its leader, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Jorge Navarro, Silvio Mayorga, Santos Lopez, Francisco Buitrago, German Pomares, and Tomas Borge.

p Carlos Fonseca Amador, who was born on 23 June 1936 in Matagalpa, enrolled in the Law Department at the University of Leon in 1956, in which year with fellow student Tomas Borge, Francisco Buitrago, and the Guatemalan Manuel Angel Carillo Luna, he organised the first communist cell. In 1957 he left for Europe to attend the Sixth World Youth Festival in Moscow and the Fourth World Youth Congress in Kiev, and on 7 November took part in celebrations in Moscow of the 40th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Back home, he wrote a book called A Nicaraguan hi Moscow, and had 2,000 copies of it printed. At the time he was often seen in Managua, offering to sell his book to a passerby.

p Time and again he was arrested for vending the newspaper of the Nicaraguan Socialist (Communist) Party, and for taking part in protest demonstrations against the visit of Milton Eisenhower, the US President’s brother. Once he was 41 arrested at night, when painting "Long live Sandino!" on a wall. The National Guard tossed him into solitary, where he went on hunger strike. He was released seven days later. He usually topped the monthly list of vendors of the communist weekly Orientacion Popular with most copies sold.

p In 1959 he was re-arrested in Managua and deported to Guatemala, where with several comrades he began to gear himself for guerilla warfare against the dictatorship. In that same year a few score Nicaraguans formed a small guerilla force, and infiltrated Nicaragua. They called themselves the Rigoberto Lopez Column, after the patriot who assassinated Anastasio Somoza the First. However, nine of their members were killed in their first engagement, while Carlos Fonseca, grievously wounded, escaped by a fluke.

p Upon recovery, Carlos moved to Costa Rica, where with Tomas Borge and Silvio Mayorga he started the newspaper Juventud Revolucionario. Shortly afterwards, he went back to Nicaragua where he was again arrested and deported to Guatemala.

p The last time he was arrested was in Costa Rica in 1969. His comrades, to secure their leader’s release, hijacked in Costa Rica in 1970 a United Fruit Company plane with representatives of its management on board. They demanded in exchange the release of Carlos and several other political prisoners in Costa Rican prisons. The authorities had to give in.

p Before he was killed on 8 November 1976 in the fighting against Somoza punitive forces, Carlos commanded Sandinista guerilla detachments in Northern Nicaragua.

p When in the late 1950s Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, Tomas Borge, and their comrades decided to form guerilla detachments, they still had no clear action programme, nor any firm link with the masses, which inevitably set the scene for their defeat in the field.

p In December 1959 the Central Committee of the Nicaraguan Socialist (Communist) Party, at the time deep underground, held a plenary session which resolved that a revolution of liberation would be impossible without an armed popular uprising directed and led by an independent working class party. This document went on to say that thorough 42 preparation had to be made before an armed revolutionary movement could be initiated, and that at the time the Party did not have enough manpower and resources to do so.

p The Nicaraguan Socialist Party was founded in 1944 on the crest of an unprecedented worldwide democratic upsurge inspired by the brilliant victories which the anti-Hitler coalition had scored over fascism on the fighting fronts in the Second World War It announced its foundation at a mass rally in Managua in early July that year, and since then Nicaragua’s Communists have marked the day as the anniversary of their Party.

p However, it was able to operate legally only for fourteen months In this short period, it made great headway Its influence was felt in the trade unions and it started party schools and centres, a publishing house, and its own newspaper Then, in the face of a massive reactionary offensive, it had to go underground In 1948 it was cruelly hit when the dictatorship arrested most of its leadership, broke up the Party centres, and jailed scores of Party activists.

p By the late 1950s, it had overcome its crisis and had considerably extended and strengthened its influence among the masses However, it was of the view that it was still too weak to turn to preparations for an armed uprising, and believed military operations against the dictatorship prematuie True, some of its younger members, especially from among college students and factory hands, called for decisive vigorous action guerilla warfare, and armed struggle against the dictatorship Some of these young people revived the Sandimsta movement.

p The young Sandimsta leaders, who believed armed action against the dictatorship all-important, manifestly overlooked the need for political campaigning among the broad masses They thought a mood of revolutionary awareness would infect the freedom fighters in the process of armed action Several refuted the Party’s vanguard lole in the revolutionary movement, objecting to all who said that before attempting a revolution there must be a Party to direct it, moreover a Party with a clearcut programme defining the aims of the struggle for the sake of which the people would follow this Party.

p In short, the Nicaraguan Socialist Party believed it 43 premature to initiate an armed struggle against Somoza and mostly dedicated itself to building up an opposition, calling upon the working masses to struggle for the satisfaction of economic demands On the other hand, the Sandinistas ignored explanatory work among the masses, and believed that only armed action would bring success.

p From my point of view, in the early 1960s both Sandinistas and Socialists were maximalists when deciding what sort of tactics to follow in the anti-dictatorship movement It would be appropriate at this point to quote two of Lenin’s pronouncements made in 1905, the time of the beginning of Russia’s first bourgeois-democratic revolution.

p In a letter of 16 October 1905, addressed "To the Combat Committee of the St Petersburg Committee,” Lenin wrote "Squads must at once begin military training by launching operations immediately, at once Some may at once undertake to kill a spy or blow up a police station, others to raid a bank to confiscate funds for the insurrection, others again may drill or prepare plans of localities, etc But the essential thing is to begin at once to learn from actual practice have no fear of these trial attacks They may, of course, degenerate into extremes, but that is an evil of the morrow, whereas the evil today is our inertness, our doctrinaire spirit, our learned immobility, and our senile fear of initiative Let every group learn, if it is only by beating up policemen a score or so victims will be more than compensated for by the fact that this will train hundreds of experienced fighters, who tomorrow will be leading hundreds of thousands " (Collected Works, Vol 9, p 346 ) Somewhat earlier, in June 1905, under the heading "On Confounding Politics with Pedagogics,” Lenin wrote, "It is our duty always to intensify and broaden our work and influence among the masses.... Without this work, political activity would inevitably degenerate into a game.... This work, as we have said, is always necessary After every reverse we should bung this to mind again, and emphasise it for weakness in this work is always one of the causes of the proletariat’s defeat " (Ibid , Vol 8, p 453 )

p Guerilla tactics, armed action should not be scourned even if guerilla strength is small and it is clearly impossible to win 44 through such action; at the same time the need for political action, the need to deepen and extend influence among the masses, should not be lost sight of for a moment. Only this combination will yield the results desired. Further we shall see that, eventually, Nicaraguan progressives arrived at this conclusion. However, in the 1960s by virtue of their differences, Nicaragua’s patriots operated in isolation, without coordination, without a common platform, let alone a common programme. As a result, the dictator was able to stay in the saddle and smash his opponents piecemeal.

p With their comrades, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomas Borge, and Silvio Mayorga organised several guerilla groups that operated in the areas of Nueva Segovia and Rio Jorjo near the border with Honduras, and also in the Matagalpa and Jinotega Highlands. Originally calling themselves the Juventud Patriotica, the guerillas then changed their name to Frente de Liberacion Nacional, and in 1962 renamed themselves the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, which name they have retained to this day.

p When in 1962-64 many guerillas were killed in action against the National Guard, the survivors began to gird themselves for a new phase, which they opened up in 1967.

p They began to combine armed action in the highlands with urban and village operations, mostly bank raids, and started to carry on political educational work among the population. "By that time,” Plutarco Hernandez, a Sandinista leader, recollects, "the people already knew who we were, acknowledged us, and watched our struggle with sympathetic interest.” Upon entering one or another inhabited locality, the Sandinistas would call a meeting of peasants to describe their aims and purposes, and to exhort them to actively participate in the struggle to overthrow the dictatorship. As Plutarco Hernandez recalls, "In some places, as for instance Yaosca and Uluse, we were able to call to a meeting as many as 300 peasants at once.

p Only eight years after the start of armed struggle, in 1970, the Sandinista National Liberation Front issued its Programme, in which it called itself a "military and political organisation whose aim is to overthrow the bureaucratic and military 45 machine of the dictatorship, seize political power in the country, and form a Revolutionary Government based on a workerpeasant alliance in which all the country’s patriotic and antiimperialist forces would be involved.”

p Over the next five years, the Sandinistas extensively popularised their ideas, concentrated on training cadres, and acquainted the world with the aims and purposes of their movement. By 1978 they comprised a major opposition force with which the dictatorship had to reckon.

p Yet as the Sandinista movement grew, it divided into three trends, differing on the tactics to employ to accomplish the common goal of overthrowing the dictatorship. The GPP, the Guerra Popular Prolongada (Prolonged Popular War), believed victory would be won in a protracted war by mountain-based guerillas. The Proletaries on the contrary contended that political work among the urban working class was vital to overthrow the regime. The third trend, who called themselves the Terceristas or “Third-Roaders”, tried to have the GPP and Proletaries come to an understanding. Plutarco Hernandez, a Terceristas leader, noted, "The political platform of the GPP is right and so is the political platform of the Proletaries. However, we must coordinate our operations in the highlands with operations in rural and urban localities, not concentrate only on one or the other form of struggle.”

p In an interview in the Latin American periodical Resumen in late 1978, he time and again noted that "of late, the presence of three trends in the Sandinista National Liberation Front is less and less evident”, and that "to all practical purposes, we have already passed the phase during which different trends in the Sandinista movement were manifest”. As we shall see subsequent developments demonstrated that precisely the lack of effective joint action was chiefly to blame for the adverse results during the September 1978 events.

p Towards the close of 1978, the FSLN had a seven-men leadership, the headquarters organising and directing the activities of regional branches. Such was the political setup.

p The military setup was somewhat different. There were four fighting fronts: the Southern Front, known as the Benjamin Zeledon Front, which took in the Departments of 46 Managua, Granada, Masaya, Carazo, and Rivas; the Northwestern Rigoberto Lopez Perez Front, which was active in the Chinandega and Leon neighbourhoods; the First Northern Front, named after Carlos Fonseca Amador, that operated in the regions of Nueva Segovia and Esteli; and finally, the Second Northern Front named after Pablo Ubeda, the undercover name of the guerilla Rigoberto Cruz, that was active in the neighbourhoods of Matagalpa and Jinotega.

p Concluding the history of the Sandinista revival, one must note the following important point—the publication on 4 May 1977 of the FSLN Military and Political Platform for the Abolition of the Dictatorship, as the second enlarged and deepened programme of the Sandinista Front.

p To form a notion of how much better Sandinista political awareness had become and to what extent they had been able to jettison certain abortive conceptions obstructing development of FSLN into a truly vanguard organisation capable of leading the broad masses, it will be appropriate to note the basic points made in the afore-mentioned programme.

p Its historical section says that "by now ... the Sandinista Popular Revolution has entered the supreme concluding phase of revolutionary upsurge. . . . Evident is a worker-peasant alliance prepared ... to initiate a struggle to overthrow the Somoza gang. We then plan to form a revolutionary popular democratic government, to allow us, proceeding from a proletarian ideology and Sandino’s historic behests, to make socialism triumphant and create that society of free people of which Augusto Sandino dreamed".

p As for the aims and purposes of the revolution, the document singles out two basic goals, which are to deliver the country from foreign imperialism and from exploitation. It is pointed out that "both historical goals will be secured, given a Marxist-Leninist approach and a firmly knit vanguard to direct the revolutionary process". (My emphasis—Auth.)

p Explaining its concept of a future national leadership, this document says that the "overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and establishment of a revolutionary democratic government represent the immediate aim of the Sandinista Popular Revolution. This government. .. will strive for national sovereignty 47 against imperialist economic and political influence. ... It will create a Sandinista worker-peasant army that will replace the National Guard and be capable of protecting the revolution’s interests. ... It will place the land in the hands of those who till it. These are some of the tasks that will face the revolutionary people’s democratic government. The workers, the peasants, the students, and the revolutionary intelligentsia will comprise its social basis". (My emphasis—Auth.} And further: ”. . .We shall go towards socialism inscribed on whose banner is the slogan, ’From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work’.”

p The section considering a civil war as a means to overthrow the dictatorship notes: ”. . .We speak of a civil war insofar as it is hatched by the local reactionary forces resisting the revolutionary process. This will be a revolutionary war, insofar as, relying on a worker-peasant alliance and led by a Marxist-Leninist vanguard, it ... creates the conditions for carrying forwards . . . the process through the democratic phase towards socialism." (My emphasis—Auth.)

p Noted are the criteria for Sandinista organisation: ”. . .The principal agencies of the Sandinista vanguard must fully adhere to the revolutionary, partisan and disciplinary requirements deriving from the proletarian ideology and Party affiliation to the Sandinistas. In the bodies of administration, ideology, and propaganda ... it is essential to constantly ensure adherence to . . . the norms of Party life." (My emphasis—Auth.).

p The 1977 Programme already clearly defined the motive forces of the revolutionary process: "The urban industrial workers and rural agricultural workers comprise the basic class capable of effecting profound revolutionary changes in the capitalist system of exploitation. The strength, development, and organisation of this class are the guarantee that the socialist society desired will be attained. . . . Although the working class is the basic force of the revolutionary process of both today and tomorrow, it will not achieve its revolutionary aims without the broad backing of other segments of the people, especially the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie (students and intellectuals).... In our conclusions we emphasise that the working class is the basic force of the revolutionary process, 48 the force upon which we must always and primarily rely. The peasantry is the prime force of our revolution, by virtue both of its numerical strength and its traditional militancy and antiSomoza and anti-American spirit.. . . The students and intellectuals, as part of the petty bourgeoisie, also play an instrumental role in the revolutionary process, are an integral element in the struggle, in which the workers and peasants comprise the vanguard. The motive force of the revolution is represented by the alliance of the three classes of the proletariat, peasantry, and petty bourgeoisie.”

p Such was the platform that the Sandinistas published slightly more than a year before the September 1978 events. One must necessarily note that very little time had passed from this Programme’s adoption and the flare-up of the armed uprising, manifestly inadequate for the broad masses to accept this Programme as a guide to action. Yet the very fact of Sandinista recognition of the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary process, of the need for a worker-peasant alliance, of the point that the aims set could be secured only given a Marxist-Leninist approach and a firmly knit vanguard to guide the revolutionary process, already indicates the markedly heightened level of political awareness among the Sandinista leadership.

p Whereas at the beginning of the Sandinista revival, the leadership staked almost exclusively on immediate armed action against the dictatorship, and shelved political and ideological explanatory work even among its own ranks, let alone among the masses, in recent years exceptional heed had been paid to fostering a revolutionary ideology. The Sandinistas have started such underground periodicals as Rojo y Negro, Trinchera, and El Sandinista, have built a network of underground political study groups, and have organised the printing and distribution of leaflets, communiques, and other literature about Sandinista activities, which have helped to spread the revolutionary ideology.

p Several months after the Sandinistas published their military and political programme, twelve leading intellectuals, businessmen, and clergymen issued a Manifesto supporting the basic ideas of the Sandinista Programme. The Group of 12, 49 as they came to be known, was part of the newly emerging Broad Opposition Front, in which bourgeois parties were represented. The Group of 12 firmly stated that without Sandinista participation, it would be impossible to extricate the country from the crisis into which the Somoza dictatorship had plunged it.

p Published on 17 July 1978 was the Manifesto of a new political alliance, the MPU, the United Popular Movement, which knit together a large group of opposition forces, 23 different political and public organisations. The MPU Manifesto set out the three basic goals for which the alliance had been formed. These were: "Firstly, to mobilise the people to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship; secondly, to work towards the organisation and unification of the broad masses; and thirdly, to facilitate the developing process of the unification of revolutionary forces.”

p On 31 July 1978 the MPU published a 14-point Programme noting its aims and tasks, and which for the most part was similar to the Sandinista military and political programme.

p Hence, towards the second half of 1978 there were in Nicaragua in opposition to the dictatorship the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the United Popular Movement, and the Broad Opposition Front.

Although steps had been taken to consolidate anti- dictatorship forces, the opposition had still to achieve full unity. Meanwhile, Somoza was frantically and feverishly striving to fortify and broaden his repressive machinery, again relying on US help and backing.