TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072489/07248900.027

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 9.3 KB | 185 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 26

NICARAGUA

Decade of Despair


The Sandinistas promised a better life but delivered hard times

By John Moody/MANAGUA


    Nicaragua has a precise way of marking time, like a.m. and
p.m. or B.C. and A.D. Everything that happened during the 43
years prior to July 1979 took place "during the dictatorship";
everything afterward is "since the triumph of the revolution."
Ten years ago this month, a victorious band of guerrillas who
called themselves Sandinistas, embraced a unique brand of
tropical Marxism, and promised to educate, heal and enfranchise
the poor triumphed over the corrupt rule of Anastasio Somoza
Debayle, the inheritor of a family dynasty begun in 1936. The
Sandinistas had ridden to power on an armed uprising, aided by
a cutoff of U.S. support to Somoza and pressure from Nicaragua's
Latin neighbors. Jubilant Nicaraguans believed their national
darkness had been lifted at last. With Somoza gone, things would
have to improve.

    They were wrong. After ten years of rule by the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.), the misery that marked
life for most of the country under Somoza is, if anything,
worse. The red and black anniversary valentines that bedeck
roadside billboards aptly reflect what has always been the
regime's strong suit: romantic rhetoric, not reality. The sole
success of the F.S.L.N. is holding on to power, despite an
eight-year war by the U.S. and its contra rent-an-army. Says
Alfredo Cesar, a former contra director and now an opposition
political leader in Managua: "The Sandinistas are good fighters.
But they never made the transition from being guerrillas with
guns to a government with laws."

    The price of that failure is immense. Nicaragua is a wreck,
inhabited by despair. A report secretly commissioned by the
Sandinistas confirms the country's plight: with an annual per
capita income of $300, Nicaragua is possibly the poorest
country in the western hemisphere. Unemployment may reach 30%
this year. Those who have skills to sell and some place to go
get out: more than 10,000 have joined the contra
counterrevolution, and at least 250,000 out of the population
of 3.5 million have fled, many to the U.S.

    Those who stay behind dwell in a Latin version of
Dickensian squalor. Managua is a succession of seedy
shantytowns, abandoned buildings and lots where cows, goats and
horses forage. Twice a week water is cut off, and rotating power
blackouts add to the capital's desolation. In the countryside
some farmers live well off their own land, while a few miles
down the road naked children from a dusty village drink from and
relieve themselves in the same brown stream.

    Inflation last year skyrocketed to 36,000%. The national
currency, the cordoba, is virtually useless; some merchants
just price their goods in dollars. Public transportation barely
exists. In Managua or along country roads, knots of people wait
for buses that may come in an hour, a day, or, if the driver
cannot find gasoline, not at all.

    Victims of illness or accident who cannot afford treatment
outside Nicaragua must rely on scandalously inadequate health
care. The leading cause of death among children is diarrhea.
Dysentery, malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis plague
communities. Dengue fever, wiped out in Somoza's day, is again
a common menace. Malnutrition is a growing killer.

    The government blames every adversity on the eight-year war
against the contras, which ground to a halt when the U.S.
Congress cut off military aid in 1988. The conflict did exact
a terrible price. Some 23,000 persons were killed and twice that
many injured, many of them civilians. The bill for destruction
of property hovers around $12 billion. Then in 1988 Hurricane
Joan compounded the pain, causing more than $800 million in
damage. On top of that, the U.S. trade embargo initiated in 1985
has paralyzed the economy.

    Much of the country's desperation, however, rests with the
Sandinistas' administrative incompetence and ideological
intransigence. Loans and credits from once generous
contributors, such as West Germany and France, gradually dried
up as the regime refused to adopt basic political and economic
freedoms. Disillusionment with Sandinista rhetoric became clear
during President Daniel Ortega's hunt for handouts in Europe
last April and May. Instead of the $250 million he sought,
Ortega attracted only $32 million. To a suggestion that more
democratization in Nicaragua might again loosen European purses,
Ortega declared, "No more concessions!"

    In spite of its evident failures, the F.S.L.N. stays firmly
in power, not least because of the bedrock support of the
70,000-member Sandinista People's Army. As the name implies,
its job is to defend the party, not the nation. The army is a
well-oiled machine, its comandantes agile tacticians at
outmaneuvering the counterrevolutionaries. Soldiers attend
mandatory political-education classes, and most can recite, if
not explain, the party line.

    The F.S.L.N. also promised to bring a better life to
Nicaragua's poor, pledging dozens of reforms the Sandinistas
have yet to deliver. It assured struggling mothers like
39-year-old Esperanza Lopez that her children would flourish.
But her job as a maid in Chinandega pays only about $10 a month,
to support three young ones. Says she: "I can only feed them
once a day. Maybe it's true that we earned less under the
dictatorship, but you could buy more with it."

    Many children learn the skills of survival at a painfully
early age. Today some 23,000 homeless children, compared with
an estimated 2,000 a decade ago, roam the streets of Managua.
At a busy intersection, a twelve-year-old girl throws a pack of
cigarettes through a car window into a driver's lap. As she
stuffs a wad of money into her torn blouse she blows a kiss,
leans forward and asks, "Do you want to see more?"

    The Sandinistas undertook to wipe out illiteracy, and for
a while they almost did. But the voracious military budget
swiftly eroded the gains, and by 1985 illiteracy had shot up to
30%. Children lucky enough to go to school often lug their own
desk and chair from home to class.

    The revolution promised religious freedom. But when
Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the Primate of the Roman
Catholic Church, offered help in rebuilding the country, he was
curtly told to mind his own business. Obando became one of the
regime's chief critics. Says he: "We just can't stand by with
our arms folded. You can pray to God, but you must also do your
part." Priests who criticize the government have been expelled
from the country, and the Catholic radio station is
intermittently shut down.

    The F.S.L.N. vowed to root out corruption. Instead, it has
developed its own nomenklatura, a cadre of top leaders who live
better than everyone else. Sandinista comandantes have moved
into mansions once inhabited by Somoza's cronies. A former top
aide to Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, the President's
brother, says both Ortegas have salted away funds outside the
country.

    As the regime lurches into a second decade, it is almost
totally isolated diplomatically. Hoping to fare better with
President Bush, Daniel Ortega proffered fresh promises of
reform: no more confiscation of private property and fair
elections next February. But so far, the Sandinistas seem to be
backtracking, intimidating opposition leaders, denouncing labor
leaders and restricting press access. Although the Bush
Administration has bowed to Congress's refusal to continue
financing the contras, it remains unimpressed with Nicaragua's
reformist talk.

    Nicaragua's Latin neighbors have pressed the Sandinistas to
adhere to a peace plan they signed in 1987. But progress has
been minimal. Last week, after five hours of talks with the
plan's drafter, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, Daniel Ortega
promised vaguely to discuss election rules and press access for
the opposition but gave no guarantees.

    The Sandinistas attained power through force, and they make
it plain they will not give it up without a fight. Having
outlasted Ronald Reagan and held off the contras, the regime is
in no immediate danger of being toppled. Opposition political
parties, riven by petty disputes, pose little threat as long as
the F.S.L.N. controls the electoral machinery. Nor is a popular
uprising likely among a people worn out by war and unsure whom
to blame for their suffering.

    But Nicaraguans cannot expect much in the way of a better
life anytime soon. The prospects for new international
assistance are dim without some semblance of democracy. The Bush
Administration has abandoned Reagan's goal of overthrowing the
Sandinistas, but it is mainly interested in containing the
Sandinistas, not helping them. Ortega's Central American
neighbors will keep trying to nudge him toward democracy, but
without much hope of success. Even the Soviet Union, Nicaragua's
major backer, has reduced economic aid significantly.

    The Sandinista triumph in 1979 rid Nicaragua of one
dictatorship only to replace it with another. The victors'
soaring rhetoric counts for little against the plain fact of a
decade of misrule and the grim prospect of a future filled with
still more empty promises.