Marxism Is Out; Gringo-Bashing, Too : Nicaragua: Democratization of Central America is complete; its success depends on political and economic integration within the region and with North America.

The Nicaraguan election has dealt the all-but-final blow to Marxist-Leninist revolution as an alternative in this hemisphere. It initiates the closing episode of the tumultuous era that began in 1959 with the Cuban Revolution and will conclude with the fall of Fidel Castro.

Thankfully, this part of the world, like Eastern Europe, has finally given up Marx for Montesquieu. The Sandinistas, by showing mature acceptance of their defeat, have apparently learned to value the checks and balances on power that are the fundamental guarantee of Western civilization.

Even if the Sandinistas had won the election Sunday, it was already clear to them that their primitive attempt to establish a Marxist-Leninist government in Nicaragua was doomed. Although the U.S.-backed Contras contributed to the pressure on the Sandinistas to accept free elections, they were not the decisive factor. The transformation of the Sandinistas was primarily a consequence of the momentous changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It had became clear to them that the kind of help they needed to carry out their revolution would not be forthcoming from Mikhail Gorbachev or their rapidly collapsing Communist allies in Eastern Europe. And without Soviet backing, Cuba’s support was useless.

As realists, the Sandinistas decided to save what they could of their revolution. Although a free election posed the risk of their losing power, they thought that at least they could salvage their legitimacy as the major unified presence capable of influencing Nicaragua’s future. The only other alternative was to suffer the same isolation as Cuba. Unless they undergo a significant split, the Sandinistas still have a viable future.

The effect of the Nicaraguan election on the enigma of Cuba is unclear. History is not only a matter of impersonal social forces but of human beings; of chance and accidents. Fidel Castro is a historical accident. Persons are unpredictable, and Cuba is a personalized regime. But the election in Nicaragua makes Castro’s choice strikingly clear: Either he can take the path of Daniel Ortega--who followed the lead of Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia--or he can follow the path of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania. With each passing day, Castro seems less disposed to take the path of the Sandinistas.

As it relates to Mexico, the defeat of one-party rule at the Nicaraguan polls will certainly be used by the opposition to Mexico’s ruling party, the PRI, to press for more rapid democratization. Although the pace of democratization might be too slow, it has been solidly under way in Mexico for some time. Under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the PRI realizes, as the Sandinistas did, that democratization is a matter of their life or death as a viable party.

Significantly, the Sandinista defeat can also be read as something of a defeat for the anti-gringo sentiment that has plagued Latin America long past its historical reality. After all, the Nicaraguan people elected the candidate openly endorsed by the President of the United States, George Bush, who was a key supporter of arming the Contras. And, contrary to predictions, the U.S. invasion of Panama last December did not unleash a nationalist backlash to cement the Sandinista hold on power. The abandonment of anti-gringo sentiment, which is evident across Latin America, will be a key factor in confronting the problems of a Central America at peace.

The new peace will present President-elect Violeta Barrios de Chamorro with the pressing tasks of Nicaragua’s reconciliation and reconstruction. These can be effected only through broad integration, not only with the rest of Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico but with the heretofore customarily vilified United States as well.

The division of Central America into six countries is an artificial remnant of extreme decolonization. Since these countries don’t have historic national identity and lack economic and political viability on their own, the only solution for them is to unite into a regional common market and political association like the European Community. These would be linked in turn with a larger integration in a North American community.

If these tiny countries remain alone in the 21st Century, they will remain the poor and impotent pawns of outside powers, a situation that has already led to so much bloodshed in this century.

Now that the ideological rift has diminished in Central America, the main threat to the promise of integration, as in Eastern Europe, will be resurgent nationalism. Here, too, democratization is the best guarantee against nationalist reaction. In Latin America, anti-U.S. sentiment has resided mainly in intellectuals and aristocrats who inherited Spanish tradition. The Conservative Party of Mexico, for example, asked the help of Napoleon III to defend against the “gringo menace.” In this century, the custodians of anti-Americanism have been on the left, not the right. Anachronistic intellectuals, primarily of the left, are the last to change.

The kind of democratic developments we have just witnessed in Nicaragua, however, will make economic integration more appealing than nationalism

Economic integration alone, of course, will not close the gap between rich and poor or reconcile freedom and equality. It will only be the condition for such a possibility. As in the United States and Europe, the likely order will be a mixed economy: a free market with state intervention to alleviate gross inequality.

The Sandinista defeat, like the defeat of the Marxist left generally, is the defeat of fantasy. The communist remedy to social injustice proved worse than the malady. Now our challenge is to find the political imagination to address those injustices that have outlived their untenable solution.