Contra Conflict Cuts Sandinista Social Programs

Just north of Managua, on a broad swath of scrubland good for cattle and not much else, a recent visitor was surprised to find a commodity somewhat rare in Nicaragua: contentment with 5 1/2 years of Sandinista rule.

The residents do have complaints common to thousands of their compatriots--high prices, shortages of beans, rice and milk and the disintegration of transportation and roads.

However, in conversations outside their wooden shacks, they also expressed satisfaction with the land reform program that had given them pasture, the easy access to farm loans, and the new school, rudimentary clinic and water wells.

‘Work in Tranquility’

“We work in liberty with the support of the government,” said Rene Obando, a former day laborer who now belongs to a cooperative of 17 farm families at the fork-in-the-road village of Sanroque. “We work in tranquility.”

And what of government control, constant mass mobilization, political lectures and the intent of the Sandinista government to create in everyone something officially known as “revolutionary consciousness?”

“We don’t see too much of Sandinista officials. They stay over in San Francisco,” said Obando, waving a wide forearm vaguely at a town that is 20 miles away. “We don’t hear much from the capital, even on radio. We can’t afford batteries.”

In its isolation, Sanroque has escaped what is a main feature of Sandinista rule--dominance by state organisms. In Sandinista Nicaragua, government direction is viewed as necessary to keep the country from slipping back into the clutches of capitalist exploiters lurking everywhere.

One of the goals of the Reagan Administration in backing a rebel war against Sandinistas was to weaken the Marxist-led government here. But the rollback in the Sandinista revolution so far has been in concrete programs, not control. The government’s reach into the lives of Nicaraguans is being maintained and, despite the example of Sanroque, growing.

The war against the rebels, known as contras , has drained resources from social programs. Advances in health care are being reversed; malaria, once virtually wiped out, has made a comeback.

Budget cuts have halted expansion of education; Sanroque can’t get a second teacher so older children can attend school. In the cities, streets are potholed, phones don’t work, factories are closing and basic goods are scarce.

Institutional Side Flourishes

However, despite these setbacks, the institutional side of the revolution--the creation of a ruling party to lead every facet of life, the control by an endless string of political organizations, the reign of secret police--continues apace.

The ruling Sandinista Front for National Liberation dominates government ministries, trade unions, cooperatives, schools, state-owned businesses, the army and the police. The slogan of its 50,000 members, unquestioningly loyal to the nine ruling comandantes, is “National Directorate, give us an order.”

The party and the government are essentially one. The front’s red-and-black flag adorns government buildings. There is no armed forces of Nicaragua or Nicaraguan police, only the Popular Sandinista Army and Sandinista police.

The front is the “vanguard of the people” and, as in Marxist dogma, it often knows what’s good for the people before the people do.

Recently, the government decided to move peasants against their will from rebel-dominated areas into protected hamlets. “The peasants are sometimes backwards and uneducated,” an official said, “so naturally, there were some complaints.”

No matter, Sandinista officials said. In the long run, it will be better for them because now they are in closer touch with the government and its programs.

The will of the front is put into action through groups called mass organizations. There is a mass organization for almost everyone: Sandinista unions, women’s groups, neighborhood committees, youth groups, cattlemen’s associations, cotton growers, journalists.

For a while, the government promoted a pro-Sandinista popular church, but it has muted its support because of opposition from Roman Catholic Church leaders.

Technically, association with mass organizations is voluntary. There are, however, incentives to join.

For instance, members of the Sandinista Workers Confederation can buy scarce items such as beans, cooking oil and rice at low prices. Such commissary privileges are withheld from members of the few non-Sandinista unions.

“They put us at a grave disadvantage,” said Nilo Salazar, head of the Construction Workers Union, which is affiliated with the Nicaraguan Socialist Party, a Communist group to the left of the Sandinista Front. “We can’t compete with the benefits.”

In urban neighborhoods, vigilante Sandinista defense committees have used their control of ration coupons to prod residents into participating in night guard shifts and attending political meetings.

“If you are not with them, they make life miserable,” said Arminda Pastora, a housewife in the Sanjudas neighborhood of Managua.

When resistance to Sandinista policies crosses some unspecialized threshold, in steps the secret police force, called the General Directorate of State Security. A recent report by the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights charged the force with using threats and other psychological pressure to obtain confessions from Nicaraguans accused of being subversives.

“Psychological forms of coercion typically include threats of physical harm, including death,” the report said. “Some detainees reportedly have been undressed and told they would be raped; others have been taken outside and told they would be killed.”

Not long ago, prominent opposition leaders were called into state security offices and charged with conspiring against the government. They were told they “would pay the consequences.” Other opponents of the regime who are outside the country have been denied permission to re-enter.

Nicaragua has not experienced the reign of terror that marked the early days of the Cuban revolution or the systematic killing characteristic of past army repression in El Salvador. A Nicaraguan jail, or sometimes merely a sinister warning, will do.

Despite the reach of Sandinista organizations and security forces, domination of Nicaraguan institutions is far from complete.

An estimated half of the economy remains in private hands. And those entrepreneurs are a font of dissent.

During a recent meeting of the opposition Superior Council of Private Enterprise, business leader Enrique Bolanos made a speech that included the caustic criticism that the Sandinistas “remain in power only through force.”

That is not the kind of sentiment one is likely to hear, say, in Cuba.

However, private enterprise is at the mercy of government control of prices, foreign trade and foreign exchange. In addition, businessmen and many private farmers are pointedly excluded from politics unless they join one of the ubiquitous Sandinista mass organizations, in essence, accepting Sandinista rule.

The Roman Catholic Church remains an organized counterforce to the Sandinistas. Recently, the archbishop of Managua, Miguel Obando y Bravo, called for government talks with the guerrillas who are fighting the Sandinistas.

Criticism in the Press

In addition, censored, but still harsh, attacks on the government leap daily from the opposition newspaper La Prensa.

Nor are all Sandinista creations centralized. The government has refrained from institutionalizing state-run farms, preferring to let farmers manage their own cooperatives without interfering.

In places like Sanroque, Sandinista rule seems benign, more a response to rather basic desires than a constant quest to force everyone into a particular grand ideological design.

“I’ve heard that President Reagan thinks the Sandinistas are Communist,” said Anselmo Gonzalez, another cooperative member at Sanroque. “I don’t know from communism. It doesn’t seem to be practiced here.”

Sanroque residents say they voluntarily contribute men to the local militia. None, they say, have been sent to the front to fight.

The main preoccupation of the village is the need to increase its borrowing this year to cover rising costs. Gonzalez foresaw no problem in obtaining the loan.

“We paid off last year, so there’s no reason not to get more this year,” he said.

No one in Sanroque knew if somehow the Sandinistas over in San Francisco might take more of an interest in their affairs.

“I don’t see why,” said Gonzalez. “We take pretty good care of ourselves.”