4,000 Workers Stage Managua Protest March

At least 4,000 workers marched peacefully Sunday through the streets of Managua demanding an end to wage controls and to discrimination against anti-Sandinista trade unions.

It was the largest labor demonstration against the revolutionary government in 8 1/2 years of Sandinista rule and the opening salvo in a new opposition effort to exploit popular discontent with Nicaragua’s war-battered economy.

Since the lifting of a wartime state of emergency last month, dissidents are freer to stage such protests, and workers have regained the right to strike. On Sunday, the police listened passively to militant anti-Sandinista chants for two hours as marchers snaked through working-class neighborhoods near Managua’s Eastern Market.

‘Discontent of Workers’

“This rally bears witness to the discontent of workers who are supposedly the backbone of the revolution,” labor leader Alvin Guthrie told the crowd. “The workers have learned that the revolution is the road to backwardness and hunger.”

The march was organized by all four anti-Sandinista labor federations, which are allied with the Social Christian, Social Democratic, Socialist and Communist parties. They claim to represent a third of the country’s 300,000 unionized workers.

Leaders of the coalition said they will send written demands to government officials this week. They seek the end of government-imposed wage controls, the right to free collective bargaining with employers and the protection of state employees from arbitrary dismissal.

They also demand equal access to special government stores where workers belonging to the ruling party’s Sandinista Workers Central now buy basic consumer goods at huge discounts. Only by equalizing such privileges, they say, can all workers enjoy the constitutional right to free association.

One marcher claiming to be hurt by discrimination was Brunilda Lopez, 54, a seller of fruit drinks in the Eastern Market. She said that she is put out of work for months at a time when state stores run low on sugar and restrict their sales to members of Sandinista unions.

“If I buy sugar on the black market and charge (customers) enough to cover the costs, the inspectors take away my license,” she said. “Before the revolution we were free, but now there is only repression. Before I die, I want to see some kind of change.”

Speakers addressing the marchers from a platform outside a movie theater said the government must be held more accountable for the economy now that the U.S. Congress has refused to give more military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels.

Luxury Cars

“The Sandinistas have been telling us that the country is paralyzed because of aggression financed by the North American government,” said Communist labor leader Roberto Moreno. “But the comandantes (Sandinista leaders) have to be honest. Many (fuel) tanks could have been filled if dollars had been spent for gasoline instead of luxury cars for the Sandinista hierarchy.”

The economy is crippled by six straight years of wartime recession and runaway inflation that halved the value of the cordoba--Nicaragua’s unit of currency--in January alone. Gasoline, electricity and water are under emergency rationing, and 17 factories have been closed this month to save energy.

Under the circumstances, labor leaders admit, such forceful action as a general strike might only worsen the economy before it wins them any concessions.

“For the Sandinistas, a strike would be seen as an act of insurrection, but if they are not flexible it could come to that,” Carlos Salgado, a Socialist labor leader, said in an interview. “The symptoms are there. There is great discontent. A strike could happen spontaneously.”