Having Survived 10 Years, Sandinistas Enter a 7-Month Political Test

The Sandinista revolution turned 10 on July 19--an anniversary that was inevitably a joyous occasion for its leaders and supporters and a sobering one for its opponents inside and outside Nicaragua.

The revolutionaries’ main reason for celebration, of course, was sheer survival. At many points along the way, chiefly between 1983 and 1986, it was far from evident that they would last 10 years in power. But, whatever their incompetence in other fields, the comandantes took everything Ronald Reagan was able to throw at them for eight years, and won. A U.S.-sponsored counterrevolutionary force (the Contras), a trade embargo and financial cut-off, the mining of harbors, a complicated conspiracy within the U.S. government--all failed to achieve their central purpose: the removal of the Sandinistas from power. It is doubtful that many other governments in Latin America could have successfully resisted a similar onslaught, with or without Soviet aid and Cuban advisers.

When seen from Washington, the Reagan Administration’s efforts may have appeared bumbling, hand-tied by Congress, powerless. The view from Managua was quite different. It is seldom understood how overwhelming the United States can be when seen from a country of 3 million inhabitants living in abject poverty. Regardless of the outcome one might have hoped for, it must be admitted that the Sandinistas’ resistance to the Reagan offensive was a remarkable political and military feat.

Some of the reasons for this were apparent in Managua last week. The Sandinista front’s true popularity will be tested in next year’s presidential elections, but already there are signs pointing to a strong Sandinista showing. Even a poll taken by opposition newspaper La Prensa put incumbent Daniel Ortega in a dead heat with Violeta Chamorro, the newspaper’s owner and the leading opposition candidate.

For a sitting president who has been his country’s leader for a decade, and who has overseen a dramatic drop in the population standard of living as well as seven years of war, to be even with his main opponent in a poll taken by her own newspaper is not the worst shape to start a campaign in.

More important, though, the bond remains strong between the Sandinistas and their core support, roughly one-third of the population. This was shown by the huge crowd at the central celebration event--a crowd brought together with virtually no acarreo, or forced assembling, Mexico-style. And at the “people’s balls” in the capital, one could witness a phenomenon, by Latin American standards: the youth of Managua’s poor barrios mingling on the dance floor with soldiers and police officers with no visible tension or hostility.

Whether all of this will prove sufficient for the Sandinistas to win next year’s elections is a different story. The government’s IMF-style economic adjustment policies are incredibly harsh, and they are imposed on a population that has suffered immensely since 1978 and the war against Somoza.

The comandantes have learned a lot in 10 years, but they continue to show on many occasions an astonishing lack of sensitivity with regard to popular sentiment, as demonstrated, for example, by Ortega’s disconcertingly long-winded and poor speech on July 19. Similarly, the revolutionaries seem to be ultimately unconvinced about many of their own decisions and often appear to go back on them or carry them out only in part. Their on-again-off-again tactics with the opposition illustrate this indecisiveness.

The Sandinistas will stand or fall next February essentially on their economy’s performance--dismal so far--and on the opposition’s possibilities of presenting a united front and a single candidate. Then the world will see whether the government’s core of support extends beyond one-third of the population, and whether the Sandinistas will win a clean and closely monitored election or lose or steal an election in which the Nicaraguan people reject an extension of their rule. Only then will we know whether the power the comandantes have hung on to for 10 years under highly adverse odds was worth keeping, or if, despite Sandinista resiliency, the Nicaraguan people have had enough of their revolutionary experiment.