The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0100/01009.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 14KB | 246 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01009}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Chapter 1    U.S.-Nicaragua Relations: Background}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{somoza
nicaragua
states
united
government
nicaraguan
sandinistas
support
national
sandinista}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Iran-Contra Affair: The Report
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter 1    U.S.-Nicaragua Relations: Background

     On July 17, 1979, President Anastasio Somoza Debayle and his family fled
Nicaragua.  A civil war that had devastated the nation's economy and caused
more than 130,000 casualties was at an end, as was the autocratic and corrupt
43-year rule of the Somoza family.  But the battle for Nicaragua's future was
just beginning.

     The United States had long played a role in Nicaragua's affairs.  Under
the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the United States had declared the Western
hemisphere, including Central America, off-limits to European powers.  For the
rest of the 19th century, U.S. influence was episodic.  An American privateer
named William Walker briefly seized control of Nicaragua in 1855, opened its
borders to slavery, and appointed himself President before he was deposed and
executed.  The opening of the Panama Canal, however, increased the strategic
importance of Nicaragua to the United States in the early 20th century.

     A treaty signed by the United States and Nicaragua in 1911 gave the
United States an exclusive right of intervention in return for the
reorganization of Nicaragua's finances.  One year later, President Taft
invoked this pact as a basis for dispatching 2,700 Marines to Nicaragua. The
Marines initially arrived at the request of a U.S.-supported Nicaraguan
President, ostensibly to protect American property and citizens.  They stayed,
with one brief intermission, until 1933.  During this period, Nicaragua was a
virtual dependency of the United States.

     From 1927 to 1933, the Marines and the Marine-trained Nicaraguan National
Guard, with General Anastasio Somoza Garcia at its head, fought a guerrilla
war against the forces of General Augusto Cesar Sandino, who opposed the
U.S.-backed Conservative Government of Adolfo Diaz.  Sandino, whose aim was to
rid Nicaragua of "U.S. imperialists," became a national hero to many
Nicaraguans during those years; the Sandinistas were named after him.  When
U.S. forces withdrew in 1933, Sandino accepted a truce.  He was shot dead a
year later.  Many authorities believe Sandino was killed on direct orders from
Somoza, who seized power from the civilian government in 1936.

     From 1936 to 1979, Anastasio Somoza Garcia and then his son, Anastasio
Somoza Debayle, ruled Nicaragua.  The rule of Anastasio Somoza Debayle was
characterized by corruption; the Somoza family owned nearly one-third of all
the land and controlled much of the country's wealth.

     In 1961, opponents of Somoza formed the National Liberation Front (FSLN),
popularly known as the Sandinistas.  This fledgling resistance organization
drew much of its early support from students.  Fidel Castro provided some of
its initial financial backing.  Through the early 1970's, the FSLN was a
marginal group, unable to succeed in its low-level guerrilla war or to marshal
popular support.

     The 1972 earthquake that devastated the capital city of Managua, however,
changed the nature of the conflict between the rebels and the Government.
Following the earthquake, Somoza reaped immense profits from international
relief efforts.  His show of greed in the face of so much suffering was an
important fact in his loss of support from the growing Nicaraguan business and
professional classes.  Another was his grooming of his son, known as Tachito,
to inherit his position.

     Successive attacks by the FSLN were met by increasingly harsh reprisals
by the National Guard.  Strikes, street protests, and guerrilla raids prompted
Somoza to order the wholesale shooting of alleged peasant collaborators and
the clearance of large areas of the countryside where opposition fighters
found sanctuary.  Somoza's human rights abuses led the Carter Administration
in April 1977 to reduce military and economic aid to the regime.  Six months
later, the aid was restored after Nicaragua promised to curb the excesses of
the National Guard.

     Despite Somoza's promises, the situation deteriorated.  In January 1978,
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the editor of La Prensa, Nicaragua's foremost
opposition newspaper, was assassinated.  His assassins were never found, but
the public reacted against the Government.  A wave of protest swept the
country.  The ranks of the FSLN swelled with new recruits.  Business, trade,
and church groups joined the rebellion.

     The FSLN was the only force trained and capable of opposing the National
Guard.  The fact that the movement had taken on the rhetorical trappings of a
leftist insurgency seemed of little consequence to Nicaraguans eager to remove
Somoza.  Following the killing of Chamorro, non-Marxist resistance groups
began to gather around the FSLN, leading ultimately to the creation of the
Broad Opposition Front seeking to draw all economic classes, ages, and
professions.  By the beginning of 1979, the movement could claim the full
backing of Cuba, the unqualified support of the democracies of Venezuela and
Costa Rica, and broad sympathy throughout Latin America.

     In February 1979, the State Department announced that, because of
Somoza's unwillingness to accept a negotiated settlement, the United States
was recalling more than half of its officials in Nicaragua and suspending all
new economic and military aid.  The end of U.S. backing cut the last props of
support for the Government, and the end of the Somoza dynasty came on July 17,
1979.

     The Sandinistas were enormously popular when they began their rule.  A
Provisional Government of National Reconstruction was formed to lead the
country.  At its head was a five-person directorate composed of Violetta
Chamorro (widow of the murdered La Prensa editor), Alfonso Robelo, Sergio
Ramirez, Moises Hassan, and Daniel Ortega.  Hassan and Ortega came from the
militant wing of the Sandinista Party.  Members of the 18-member cabinet and
the 33-member council were drawn from a broad spectrum of Nicaraguan public
life.  Though Nicaraguans were generally satisfied that the new Government
represented the Somoza opposition, the United States was not, pointing to
Ortega and Hassan as left-wing radicals.

The Sandinistas Take Over

     The Sandinistas set out to court public favor and international support.
They promised free elections, a free press, free enterprise, an independent
judiciary, and an end to political oppression.

     Yet, the Sandinistas took over television and radio stations and censored
the newspaper La Prensa, which opposed repression whether by the Sandinistas
or by Somoza.  The Sandinistas forced the two moderate members of Nicaragua's
governing council, Chamorro and Robelo, to resign, pressured opposition
parties, continued political detentions, and expropriated land. The
revolutionary party organization assumed the functions of state.  On September
19, 1980, the Government announced that it would not hold national elections
until 1985.

     Americans were divided on how to interpret Sandinista intentions.  If the
Carter Administration did not openly embrace the Sandinistas, neither did it
close all doors to a possible reconciliation.  Immediately following the
Sandinista victory, the United States donated $39 million in emergency food
aid to Nicaragua, and in 1980 Congress appropriated an additional $75 million
in emergency economic assistance (Public Law 96-257).  Similarly, Washington
supported the provision of aid to Nicaragua from international lending
organizations.

     The Carter Administration accepted the fact that the United States was in
"competition" with Cuba to win over the Nicaraguan Government, but it hoped
that friendly relations could be maintained.  Yet while providin