Gerald Brant
Wednesday, Sept 3, 2003

But the truth shows that in places like Nicaragua and El Salvador, communism is not only a vibrant force, but poised to take power once again.

Back in the 80s, hotspots like Nicaragua were on the front pages with “Contra” rebels battling the Cuba backed Sandinista government as President Reagan implemented his doctrine to “roll back” Communism from the Western Hemisphere.

In 1980 despite promising free elections, free enterprise, an independent judiciary, and an end to political oppression, the Sandinistas seized television and radio stations, censored newspapers, and established a Cuban-modeled internal security apparatus. Weapons and equipment sent by Cuba through Nicaragua began making their way to rebels in El Salvador.

Concern about the Sandinistas’ internal repression, their growing military force, their ties to the Soviet Bloc, and their support for the Salvadoran insurgency led Washington to consider ways to increase assistance to the regime's opponents. These opponents came to be called the “Contras”.

After signing a cease-fire agreement with the Contras, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas finally agreed to hold open elections. Believing their own press releases, the Sandinistas thought they were shoe-ins for victory. To their surprise, and many liberal American media, the Nicaraguan public tossed them out of power – or so it seemed.

In February 1990, Violetta Chamorro, the widow of newspaper editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, was elected Nicaragua’s first female President. The Sandinistas not only lost to the National Opposition Union (UNO), but decisively so, 41 percent to 55 percent.

Seemingly, the ideological conflicts and political violence of the 1970s and 80s subsided as Central America moved toward democracy and the protection of human rights. Peace accords in El Salvador and Guatemala followed and a new era in Central America appeared to be burgeoning.

But the movement toward democracy may have been either a chimera or short lived.

According to analysts such as The Miami Herald’s respected Latin America columnist Andres Oppenheimer, leftist and authoritarian candidates with questionable democratic credentials may win upcoming elections in Central America and, in a possible “nightmare scenario”, unleash a new cycle of violence in the region.

In an August visit to Honduras, U,S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US and Latin America faced a “terrible problem” from terrorism and narco-trafficking and suggested that US military forces might be realigned in Central and South America.

In El Salvador, the Marxist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, known as the “FMLN”, has established itself in one election after another and is poised to sweep into power.

Nervous investors and the middle class may be ready to accept the FMLN as legitimate political leaders rather than the leftist, armed terrorists of the 70's and 80's, but it is in Nicaragua that we find an even more troublesome reality.

The Sandinistas Remain a Real Power

The post-Sandinista period in Nicaragua beginning in 1990 has been fraught with difficulties and corruption problems.

The Sandinistas' loss of the presidency in 1990 was not a total loss of power - far from it. In fact, the Sandinistas have maintained a strong grip on the country’s military and police.

The issues of inequality, poverty and low living standards that contributed to the 1979 Sandinista Revolution remain largely unresolved. Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, with 67.4 percent of the population living under poverty.

While Nicaragua has held four peaceful presidential elections in the last two decades, a closer look at the political landscape suggests that democracy remains fragile or maybe not as real as it seems.

'Comandante' Daniel Ortega Re-Emerges

Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) will likely again be the opposition presidential candidate in the next election in 2005.

The Sandinistas lost power in the 1990 elections, and Ortega, the party’s perennial presidential candidate, lost two later contests. He is considering yet another run for office.

After 24 years of mutual distrust and violent squabbles, leaders of Nicaragua’s Catholic Church and the country’s Sandinista party have embarked on a new relationship. Former President Daniel Ortega has asked the church’s forgiveness, and a top Catholic official blessed a July 19 celebration marking the anniversary of the 1979 triumph of the Sandinista revolution.

Sandinista officials recognized that lingering tensions with church leaders continue to plague the campaign and the public reconciliation that occurred on July 19 is already seen as a boost for Ortega’s candidacy.

The Sandinistas seem acutely aware of how to recover power in Nicaragua and are taking all the necessary steps to do so. They remain a potent force in Nicaraguan political life despite the repeated defeat of Daniel Ortega. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans identify themselves as Sandinistas today.

Nicaraguan Army Head General Javier Carrion was a leading Sandinista guerilla in the 1970s. Although the army is no longer called "The Sandinista Army" and is officially called "the Nicaraguan army", the statue of revolutionary General Augusto Sandino still casts a shadow. Sandino’s statue is illuminated every night on Army property and still stands over the capital city of Managua.

It’s also worth noting that Sixty percent of Nicaraguans are age 25 or younger, and the voting age in that country is 16. Most of the voters never knew pre-Sandinista Nicaragua and have no idea what Sandinista Nicaragua was like.

For much of Nicaragua’s youth, Daniel Ortega may seem like nothing more than a benevolent elder statesman who was recently seen receiving the Sacrament of Penitence at the hands of Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo.

El Salvador: The FMLN Smells Victory

In El Salvador, former Marxist guerrilla leader Shafik Handal's Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) is leading in the polls for the March 21, 2004 presidential elections.

The FMLN, which laid down its weapons in 1992 after the end of a civil war that claimed 75,000 lives, has become the single largest legislative bloc in El Salvador's Congress.

While the conservative ARENA party has held the presidency in El Salvador since 1989, since the 1991 peace accords the FMLN has transformed itself into the second largest party in the country. The FMLN gained a parliamentary majority in March 2003 when the former rebels claimed victory against the ARENA in Congressional and Mayoral elections and won over 100 of 262 mayorships at stake in the country.

As such, the FMLN looks well placed to improve its political support, ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for 2004 The FMLN’s Handal, 72, is considered one of the most backward-thinking Marxist leaders in Latin America. He talks about turning his country into a socialist state and recently sent a letter to Cuban President Fidel Castro supporting the jailing of 75 peaceful oppositionists on the island.

U.S. officials are not shy about expressing their concerns about Handal. Dan Fisk, a ranking U.S. State Department official, was quoted by the Agence France-Press news agency recently as saying that the FMLN's speeches ``look like they have been written in Havana.”

The New Pro-Castro International Network

Fidel Castro’s goals of spreading “la revolucion” have not changed since 1959, nor since the end of the Cold War. In 1990, Castro co-founded the Sao Paulo Forum with Brazil’s current President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva as its chairman.

This organization is a successor to Castro’s Tricontinental Congress which, beginning in 1966, increased collusion among revolutionary groups from Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.

The Sao Paulo Forum is named after the city in Brazil where the first meeting was held in 1990 and since then, it has annually brought together all the communist, radical and revolutionary political organizations of Latin America.

During the 1990s, Castro decided on a new strategy: helping radical political leaders friendly to him take control of their countries by winning national elections in which they present themselves as “populists”, opposed to corruption, while concealing their ultimate purposes.

The strategy is working. Since its first meeting in 1990, the São Paulo Forum, has grown to include parties that in total represent some 50% of the electoral preference amongst the population of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Forum describes itself as "anti- imperialist" and its annual workshops, discussions and observations frequently refer to Cuba as an example of what a socialist alternative to “neoliberalism” can achieve and as an alternative for societies that would, in the long term, go "beyond capitalism".

Participants at the 2001 Forum meeting in Cuba and the December 2002 meeting in Guatemala included communist and radical parties from nearly every state in Latin America including the Worker’s Party of Brazil and Hugo Chavez’s MVR of Venezuela.

The resurgence of Sandinismo in Nicaragua and the Sao Paulo Forum’s electoral successes are examples of how traditional capitalism, often referred to as “neoliberalism” in Latin America, has created significant disillusionment in Latin America.

Traditional democratic parties in the region would be well advised to offer compassionate and effective market oriented solutions to the problems of underdevelopment or face continued defeats at the polls.

President George W. Bush and the presidents of Central America assert that a Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will bring prosperity to the impoverished isthmus. In the long term, freer trade can provide a brighter future for the Americas.

Nicaragua’s current President Enrique Bolaños has asked his National Assembly to approve the sending of 230 soldiers to Iraq to provide medical services and disarm mines.

According to Bolaños, it’s time for Nicaragua to correspond to the “abundant solidarity received” and claims his “sapadores” – specialists in mine removal – are the best in the world. Nicaragua’s sapadores have deactivated 83,392 mines of a total of 135,643 spread by the Cuba backed Sandinista army in the 1980s.

Honduras is also sending troops to support the coalition forces in Iraq. The Hondurans have dispatched about 370 soldiers as part of a Latin American security contingent that will operate in south-central Iraq as part of a Polish-led division. They are to replace the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in September after training with a Spanish brigade in Spain and in Kuwait.

[Gerald Brant is Brazilian-American and was a candidate for Federal Deputy (Congress) in Brazil last year.]

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