Sandinistas Want to Keep Their Farms : Nicaragua: Peasants fear that Managua’s new government will try to return confiscated land to the old owners.

Benigno Blandon tends his potato fields each day with a machete in one hand and an AK-47 assault rifle in the other.

At night, the 48-year-old farmer takes a two-hour shift guarding the Augusto Cesar Sandino peasant cooperative.

Farmer and militiaman; militiaman and farmer--the job is one and the same for Sandinistas such as Blandon, who received land in the revolutionary government’s agrarian reform. For eight years, these verdant fields in northern Esteli province have doubled as trenches against the U.S.-backed Contra guerrilla war.

And now, the farmers warn, the lands could become the front line in another war under the post-revolutionary government, elected Feb. 25, which vows to return to original owners or give compensation for most of the land confiscated by the Sandinistas.

“This land used to belong to our grandfathers, but the rich people tricked them out of it,” Blandon said. “Now, it is ours again, and we are not going to give it back. We will not return one hair on one head of cattle, and we are not going to give up our guns, in case we have to defend the gains of the last 10 years.”

Nicaragua’s rich black farmland is one of the most emotional issues facing the government of President-elect Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, and potentially the most violent.

Chamorro’s advisers say they plan to put fallow, state-owned lands back into private hands. Their agrarian reform platform “guarantees revision of those (confiscations) that deserve it” and says that exiles whose lands are occupied and producing will be compensated with bonds or other property.

The president-elect promises that none of the more than 112,000 families who benefited from land reform will be displaced under her National Opposition Union (UNO). Although her advisers intend to disband inefficient cooperatives, they say that all of those working the cooperatives will receive titles to individual plots.

But the armed farmers are not counting on UNO promises. They worry that there may be confusion about idle lands, since many acres in the war zone could not be farmed amid the fighting.

The land issue reaches into the cities, as well, where the Sandinistas confiscated houses, factories and urban tracts on which squatters were given titles to build their houses. The new government plans to sell off most state enterprises and repossess the private homes of returning exiles. But they say they will not uproot the new neighborhoods of urban immigrants.

UNO leaders say there is ample land for everyone in this country the size of Iowa with 3.5 million people. Yet, it was for land that many poor farmers originally joined the Sandinista guerrillas in their fight to oust dictator Anastasio Somoza. He and his family owned more 20% of the nation’s farmland.

When the Sandinistas toppled Somoza in 1979, they confiscated his vast holdings and those of his wealthy cronies. The government launched a sweeping program of agrarian reform, placing most people in state-run cooperatives that hold title to the land. Only 8,486 families received individual land titles, according to a government report.

The ranchers and businessmen, meanwhile, fled to Honduras where they organized the Contras to fight for the return of what had been theirs. Under U.S. support, the rebel ranks were swelled with independent farmers enraged by early Sandinista attempts to control production and farm prices. Many of those farmers then lost their land, too.

The 17 cooperatives in Miraflor, about 95 miles north of Managua, have been attacked and burned repeatedly throughout the guerrilla war.

Both Chamorro and President Daniel Ortega have called for disbanding the Contras to allow for a peaceful transfer of power, but throughout the embattled countryside, fear and distrust are still running high.

Farmer Blandon said: “If the Contras come back with the intention to work the land, our policy is to include them. But if they want to kill us or take our land, then we will eliminate them.”

Daniel Nunez, leader of a Sandinista farmers union, said that a rancher who went to inspect his confiscated lands in Matagalpa province last week was chased away by farmers shooting into the air.

Many farmers are asking for more guns, Nunez said.

Farmers who voted for the Sandinista Front said they trust that the party leadership will continue to defend them from the opposition, which will soon be the government. Meanwhile, some said they hope Chamorro’s victory will bring peace with the United States.

Not all of the cooperatives are armed, and not all farmers who benefited from the Sandinistas’ land reform voted for the ruling party.

At the Bartolo Castro cooperative in Jinotega province, farmers gave up their guns in 1986 after a Contra attack left five dead there. On Feb. 25, they voted for Chamorro by a margin of 6 to 1 because they said the Sandinistas failed to deliver on their promise of individual titles.

But now they, too, feel vulnerable.

“Violeta said the land we were given will not be taken away,” said Bartolo Olivera, a member of the Castro cooperative. “But many people are worried Violeta will take all the land back.”