Still a Minority in Nicaragua, They Blend Elitism, Populism : After Decade, Sandinistas Survive on Mystique

In an obscure vacant lot here, Nicaragua’s Sandinista leaders gathered recently at the spot where Julio Buitrago, one of their first martyrs, died in single-handed combat against scores of guardsmen a full decade before the Somoza dictatorship collapsed.

Comandante Carlos Nunez, one of nine former guerrillas now running the country, stood on a dais near Buitrago’s elderly mother and choked with emotion.

“For many dark years of struggle,” he said in a speech, “we marched alone, carrying the hopes of fallen companeros in our hearts.”

The solemn ceremony, honoring 725 senior party militants for their years of service, showed the elitist side of the Sandinistas as they observe today’s 10th anniversary of their guerrilla triumph. A minority among Nicaraguans, they are a fraternity of survivors, the self-appointed leaders of a socialist transformation in the name of the poor. This is their revolution.

Leninism, Populism

But in other rallies across Nicaragua this week, the comandantes are blending the Leninist vanguard image with a traditional populist look. Pledged to the trappings of Western-style democracy, they are passing out land and housing titles by the thousands in a feverish bid for popular support in national elections next February.

Both faces of the weeklong anniversary celebration reflect the central drama of Nicaragua in the 1980s. The Sandinistas survived the Reagan Administration’s Contra war, but the economy was wrecked in the process, and their social reforms bogged down. With the country still divided into hostile camps, much of their initial popularity is gone.

Nicaragua’s per capita income has sunk to little more than $300 a year, now the poorest in Central America. An average worker’s buying power is less than 10% what it was a decade ago, down to levels of the 1930s, when Augusto C. Sandino, the ruling party’s namesake, was fighting a U.S. Marine occupation. But more than 120,000 peasant families have received farm land for the first time, and poor people have better access to schooling and health care.

“Our main achievement, after 10 years, is the very existence of a revolution that the United States tried to destroy,” President Daniel Ortega said in a brief interview after a Sandinista rally Sunday.

“The majority of the people, the poor, the humble--they are not in paradise. But until this revolution, they had no rights. They still have those rights, despite the deterioration of the economy.”

Poor Farmer’s Lament

Ortega is striking this theme in his bid for reelection against a 14-party opposition bloc. The comandantes agreed on his candidacy two months ago but are withholding an announcement until the formal start of campaigning in August. Even so, “Daniel para Presidente” banners are nearly as common as the black-and-red hearts that festoon all 10th anniversary propaganda.

After a rally in Leon on Sunday, held to mark a decade of land reform, poor farmers in the crowd mobbed the president, seeking attention to their grievances.

“Mr. President, I’ve been working the same land for 18 years, but the owner’s son sold it, and the new owners want me out,” complained Hector Torres Chavez.

“Who are they?” Ortega asked, as his regional delegate, Marta Cranshaw, took notes.

“Julio Lopez and a Mr. Montalban.”

“Don’t let them throw you off,” the president insisted. “That land is yours. We’ll arrange a land title, and that will be it. Later, we’ll deal with those landlords.”

The old peasant beamed. “Correcto, jefe!” (“Right, chief”), he said.

Bourgeois Tradition

In recent weeks, Ortega and other comandantes have handed out 29,000 housing deeds at ceremonies in Managua. Some of the recipients had been renters, but most were homeowners who had waited years for promised government papers.

The populist theme of the anniversary is on display in street parties and in beauty contests, a bourgeois tradition the Sandinistas have revived. The Little Miss Revolution pageant, a contest for preteen girls, was the main event Monday, the so-called Day of Joy, commemorating President Anastasio Somoza’s panicked flight to Miami two days before the Sandinista takeover.

But many Nicaraguans drawn to hot, dusty plazas by merengue bands and mini-skirted cheerleaders fade away when the comandantes show up to speak. That leaves audiences made up mostly of members of Sandinista party organizations, an elite comprising less than a tenth of the national population.

“Not everyone who calls himself a Sandinista is a Sandinista, except those who fulfill their duties, who are Sandinistas every minute of their lives,” Tomas Borge, the ruling party’s lone surviving founder, lectured supporters in a poor barrio here Saturday.

Borge, an articulate exponent of the Sandinista “mystique” of invincibility, asserted that the party will win the elections for the same reason it won the Contra war--”because we are the best.” He lashed out at the foreign media and independent opinion polls for suggesting that the government is backed by only a minority of Nicaraguans. With theatrical flourish, he held up a copy of La Prensa, the opposition newspaper, and flung it across the dais.

As the comandante spoke, teen-agers wearing Sandinista Youth headbands started forming a human pyramid.

‘Happy and Disciplined’

“Listen, boys!” he shouted. “I’m speaking to you. We have to be happy, but let’s be disciplined and respectful. You don’t own the truth. You must comprehend what I’m saying, analyze it and repeat it.” The pyramid suddenly collapsed.

Good Sandinistas are supposed to spread the comandantes’ collective wisdom among the people.

“Being in the (Sandinista) Front is like being an apostle of Christ,” said Daniel Nunez, a farmers union leader who was decorated twice last weekend--for his decade of Sandinista militancy and his work in land reform. “It’s like the priesthood. If you believe in the cause and put the common good above your own, you do whatever the Front asks.”