Legacy of Anti-Americanism, Populism : The Sandinista Front: Dogma and Discipline

You must be at least 18, and you cannot lend money for interest or associate with “exploiters,” according to the official rule book.

Boy Scout-like qualities of honesty, fraternity and modesty help, suggests aspiring member Josefina Vigil. Secrecy is a prime virtue.

Perhaps most important, you must be prepared to obey without question the nine-member directorate, says high-ranking official Rafael Solis.

Such are the requirements for membership in the Sandinista Front for National Liberation, 50,000 strong and the core of support for Nicaragua’s Marxist-led government.

To President Reagan, who wants Congress to support anti-Sandinista rebels, the front is warden of a “totalitarian dungeon.” To believers, it is the sole agent of a better life in dirt-poor Nicaragua.

“Only the front has the moral authority to rule Nicaragua,” said member and neighborhood vigilante Norma Espinoza, a housewife and mother of six.

Such absolutist pronouncements are a Sandinista specialty. There once was a billboard on the airport road in Managua that said, “The Sandinista Front Is Immortal.”

Contradictory Parts

Other than its determination to remain in power, the ruling front often seems to be a hodgepodge of contradictions--part political party and part military brigade, part secret society and part community service organization, part cadre of ideological soul mates and part self-improvement group.

The front preaches pluralism of contending ideas, yet the decision of the nine comandantes composing the National Directorate is final--there can be no dissent.

In government, the front has been flexible, even prone to wild swings of policy, especially in the economy. Yet it maintains certain dogmas, including the concept that the United States is the enemy of mankind.

Augusto Cesar Sandino, a rough-and-ready mountain guerrilla leader who fought occupying U.S. Marines in Nicaragua during the 1920s and ‘30s, left the Sandinistas a legacy of anti-Americanism and populism. His portrait, invariably topped by a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, adorns walls in the grandest public offices and the homes of the party’s humblest sympathizers.

Not that the party’s members are all humble. Many are “bourgeois” Nicaraguans who have overcome their class background by a Leninist group therapy known as criticism and self-criticism. In fact, the front is looking for more poor workers and farmers to fill the ranks of what is supposed to be the vanguard of the lower classes.

The movement that bears Sandino’s name was formed in 1960, and in 1979 it succeeded in overthrowing Anastasio Somoza and the 40-year dictatorship of his family.

The leading remnants of the three factions that allied to bring down Somoza are now represented on the ruling directorate. There are few hints at who, if anyone, holds the balance of power among the directorate’s members.

The Ortega brothers, President Daniel and Defense Minister Humberto, are often reported to preach flexibility in dealing with opponents of the regime. Their Tercerista faction, also represented by Mexican-born comandante Victor Tirado, promoted a broad alliance of non-Marxists to make war on Somoza.

Tomas Borge, the last survivor of the front’s three founders, is said to be powerful both because of his credentials as a pioneer and his control of the police and security through the Ministry of the Interior. He, along with Sandinista political commissar Bayardo Arce and Henry Ruiz, belong to the faction called Prolong Popular War, which favored peasant revolution in the countryside.

Disputes Not Aired

Jaime Wheelock, the minister of agriculture, supposedly leads the more technocratic branch of the party. Wheelock, along with Carlos Nunez and Luis Carrion, formed the so-called Proletariate faction, which believed in urban warfare.

“What is remarkable about the directorate is that it has remained united,” a Western diplomat said. “No dominant personality has emerged. Disagreements, if there are any, are never aired publicly.”

The directorate heads a party structure that borrows from Lenin in its emphasis on a tight, elite center--democratic centralism in the Leninist lexicon. Debate and dissent, if any, end once a decision is made.

To Leninism, the nine comandantes have added the strongly Central American touch of tying the party closely to the military.

“We are different from typical Marxist-Leninist parties,” said Rafel Solis, the No. 2 Sandinista representative in the fledgling National Assembly. “We are a political-military organization.”

Decisions Filter Down

Decisions from the National Directorate filter down to party members--the majority of them said to belong to the army--through endless rounds of political meetings. The official newspaper Barricada publishes the official line seven days a week. Party members are said to pay special attention to page three, where editorials and essays lay out party policy.

In factories, on farms and neighborhoods, so-called Sandinista base committees assure that directorate decisions are carried out.

Such an organization is not open to casual followers.

“You just can’t come in and say you want to be a member of the front,” said Solis, scion of a wealthy cotton-growing family. “It is a long process.”

The process produces dedicated members, who aspire to the even more tightly knit and loyal ranks of “militants.” Militants wear small red and black pins with a portrait of the patron saint Sandino, and have presumably dedicated their whole lives to the revolution.

Revolutionary Trajectory

Membership and eventual qualification as a militant require the fulfillment of numerous tasks, Sandinista members and aspiring members say. The string of chores, ranging from volunteer coffee picking to fighting rebels in the hills, is known as one’s revolutionary trajectory.

An example is the trajectory of Josefina Vigil, 21, now a member of a Sandinista youth group. To gain merit that will lead to party membership, she volunteers to cut coffee, teaches peasants how to read, organizes students and once served in the army.

“My greatest ambition is to belong to the front,” she said. “It would mean I could walk among the best people in Nicaragua.”

Dressed in fatigue pants, T-shirt and gold earrings, Vigil said she spends much effort trying to suppress the weaknesses that come from a bourgeois background. In “criticism and self-criticism” sessions, colleagues attack, and she confesses, her shortcomings.

“It takes a lifetime,” she said. “One is really never finished.”

Hardening Minds, Bodies

Aspiring party members also talk a lot of hardening their bodies and minds by living the tough lives of peasants and workers.

“I sleep on the same ground as the farmers, eat the same food, walk the same dusty roads. That way I temper myself and learn the reality of our country,” said Yoemann Lopez, 24, another Sandinista youth group member.

There is also scholarly study for the members and would-be members: the history of Nicaragua, the lives of dead heroes, the speeches of leaders in the directorate.

Sandinistas are rather tight-lipped about what specific texts they read. Training schools are off limits to foreigners; the official history writers at the Institute of Studies of Sandismo refused interviews.

It is clear that Lenin is a major contributor to the Sandinista cache of ideology; bookstores are full of his works. Front founder Carlos Fonseca is required reading, although some of his criticisms of other Sandinistas, notably the Ortega brothers, have been expunged from his works.

Militants Favored

After years of completing tasks and reading and preaching, front members might finally be chosen for militancy by Sandinista representatives on base committees. Militants can aspire to higher party positions than simple members.

Disappointment is possible. Less than half of party members become militants, and if a trajectory seems to be petering out, a member can be dropped to make room for new aspirants.

“I think this is the last year I can aspire,” sighed Maria Cristina Arguello, a party member and official press spokesman for the government.

Arguello’s experience includes transporting fighters during the war against Somoza. After the insurgency, she worked in the ministry of housing and government. It might not be enough.

“If I don’t make it, I will still be the same person,” she said. “I will still be with the revolution.”

‘Too Great a Sacrifice’

Norma Espinoza, who lives in the working-class neighborhood of Riguero with her husband, a mechanic, seems to have a near-perfect trajectory. During the insurgency, she helped hide Sandinista operatives from pursuing Somoza soldiers. Since the 1979 victory, she has worked in the Sandinista Defense Committees, dispensing government information, organizing health drives and civil defense teams and keeping watch for enemies of the regime.

But though Espinoza belongs to the front, she does not aspire to militancy.

“It would require too great a sacrifice,” she said. “I believe children should not be left alone. I want to raise them. If I was a militant, I might be sent away to the mountains or the Atlantic coast. And I would have to go.”

Militancy is something for her children to attain. Two of them are studying in Cuba. One, who will return soon to work in a new Cuban-equipped sugar mill, left home at age 12 and has returned for a visit only once in five years.

“When he comes back, he will probably not stay at home long,” she said. “I am resigned. He belongs to the revolution now, not to me.”