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Nicaragua's Failed Coup: The Slow Pace of Reform
| Article
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19547 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
2,792 Words |
| Author
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David Hirschmann
David Hirschmann is vice president for programs at the Council
for Inter-American Security in Washington, D.C. He traveled
to Nicaragua last May as part of a congressional delegation
investigating mass graves containing victims of Sandinista
repression. |
During the presidential campaign in Nicaragua last year, former President Jimmy Carter tried to broker an agreement between Violeta Chamorro and the ruling Sandinistas that would ensure that, regardless of the outcome, each side would agree to try to heal Nicaragua's deep political wounds by incorporating members of the losing campaign into the new government.
The Sandinistas--confident of victory--refused to do so. However, Carter's plan was better received by the man who has now emerged, after the Sandinista defeat, as the power behind the Chamorro throne: Antonio Lacayo, Cahmorro's campaign manager, son-in-law, and now minister of the presidency.
Rumors of the election-eve Carter "deal" so enraged Chamorro's supporters that Carter was forced to deny them. However, on inauguration day, at the urging of Venezuela's President Carlos Andres Perez, Chamorro elected to keep Humberto Ortega, brother of defeated President Daniel Ortega, in charge of the Sandinista army. The rumors of a secret deal between Lacayo and the Sandinistas started anew. A few days after the inaugural, graffiti (Nicaraguans' favorite form of political expression) denouncing the deal appeared: "NO TO THE UNO-FSLN CO-GOVERNMENT."
These charges appeared so exaggerated, and goodwill toward Chamorro was so great, that most reasonable observers dismissed them--hoping instead that democratic reforms would soon follow. Even some conservative analysts defended Chamorro's decision to keep Ortega as a wise move to keep him in check.
'Rule from below'
In the year and a half since the inauguration, no hard evidence of a formal "secret deal," as alleged by Chamorro's conservative opponents, has surfaced. However, whether through blackmail or negotiation, Daniel Ortega's postelection threat to "rule from below" has proven to be prophetic.
What is clear is that after the Sandinista defeat became evident on election night, Carter began negotiating a transition of power between the Ortegas and Chamorro. On March 4, 1991, barely one week after the election, Carter's top aide and former Latin Amercia NSC staffer, Robert Pastor, published an article in the Washington Post urging a "better way." He hailed the appointments of "practical and mature leaders," Humberto Ortega and Antonio Lacayo, to head each side's transition team and urged that President Bush not receive Chamorro's
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