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The Crisis in Nicaragua
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21920 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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6 / 1993 |
2,318 Words |
| Author
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Arturo J. Cruz, Sr
Arturo J. Cruz, Sr., served as a member of the ruling junta in
Nicaragua from 1980-81. |
It was the interplay of unique circumstances that made for Violeta Barrios de Chamorro to win the 1990 elections. Her advisers opted to make concessions for the Sandinistas to facilitate her accession to the Presidency of Nicaragua. They are the root of the ongoing national crisis.
Nicaraguans ardently, desperately, voted for security, freedom, and work--all of which had been absent throughout the previous 11 years under the ruling Sandinista Front. The Nicaraguan people on election day caught the Sandinista leadership off guard. The contingency of defeat was never part of their electoral strategy. The people, feeling protected by the presence of international observers, eagerly cast an avalanche of votes against them.
It goes without saying that such an unpleasant surprise enraged the Sandinista comandantes. They were forced to exercise a certain degree of self-restraint for the sake of appearances. However, they were not to waver in their determination to retain their hegemony, notwithstanding the aforesaid concessions made by the winners. Thus, they set out a plan to surrender the government but not power and to rule from below. Ironically, political rivalries within Camorra's camp help them to achieve these goals.
The elections took place by virtue of an agreement under the Central American President's Esquipulas peace initiative, which also provided an end to the U.S.-backed Contra war.
SANDINISTA MISCALCULATION
The Sandinistas, in the first place, called for elections due to a miscalculation of their popularity and under international pressure. Even in the heyday of their popularity, they had exhibited an ideological abhorrence of elections. Both Ortega brothers, Daniel and Humberto, had decried them as "a ruse of the bourgeoisie to keep its own privileged elites in power."
Realpolitik forced the Sandinistas' decision. The international setting had abruptly changed from the time of their 1979 military victory. In those days both Havana and Managua were convinced that the Soviet Union would win the Cold War. Suddenly they were watching the disintegration of their sponsor, the Soviet empire, and the emergence of their enemy, the United States as the sole world power.
Furthermore, they needed a respite because the rebels, at long last in
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