Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!rrizzo
From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.motss,net.religion
Subject: Definitive expose' of Sandinistas?
Message-ID: <1520@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 14:46:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1520
Posted: Mon Aug 12 14:46:44 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Aug-85 04:14:56 EDT
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 164
Xref: linus net.politics:9734 net.motss:1643 net.religion:6957



**************************
PSEUDO-SANDINISM UNMASKED?
**************************

John Silber, controversial president of Boston University & a member
of the President's National Bipartisan Commission on Central America
(the Kissinger Commission), wrote the following review of Shirley
Christian's NICARAGUA: REVOLUTION IN THE FAMILY, a brand-new study of
revolutionary Nicaragua, and possibly the definitive expose' of Sandi-
nista tyranny and deceit that's been lacking for so long.  

Is Silber's review accurate?  Is Christian's critique valid?  Get a
copy of the book and read it!  I am.  I'll post synopses when I finish
reading it.

I'm cross-posting to net.religion because of information about "libe-
ration theology" & Sandinist manipulation/persecution of religion, &
to net.motss, because many lesbian & gay activists have expressed
support for the regime, believing it was different from Cuba's.

Greater Boston residents:  Wordsworth's in Harvard Square, Cambridge,
carries the book, probably at its usual discount.

					Better well-read than Red,
					Ron Rizzo



[ Reprinted in its entirety from Boston Sunday Globe, 8/11/85, pp. A10-11
without permission. ]


DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE SANDINISTAS
===============================


NICARAGUA
Revolution in the Family
By Shirley Christian. Random House.
337 pp. $19.95.


By John R. Silber


	It would have been useful if, through some time warp, the 
members of the Kissinger Commission had had Shirley Christian's "Nica-
ragua: Revolution in the Family" as we sat in Managua listening to 
Nicaragua's foreign minister, Father Miguel D'Escoto, blame the United 
States for the sins of the Sandinistas.  He was lying, and we told him so.  
But Christian's book would have made the refutation definitive and public:  
She cuts through mendacity and obfuscation with a powerful combination of 
thorough research, eyewitness experience and reportorial savvy.

	Christian shows that the history of our involvement in Nicaragua
is not a subject for endless breast-beating but for honest appraisal.  
She reminds us that William Walker, the freebooter who took over the 
country just before the Civil War, was opposed by major US business 
interests and by our government, which refused to receive his ambassador.  
She thoroughly demythologizes Augusto Cesar Sandino, whom the Sandinistas
use to give Marxism-Leninism a Nicaraguan accent, pointing out his stubborn
and vociferous anticommunism.  Sandino despised communism for its inter-
nationalism, a prescient attitude, considering Nicaragua's present status
as a pawn of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

	She also shows that the early presence of the United States was 
not mere imperialism, but an attempt to stabilize the country in response 
to a genuine threat of foreign influence.  Sandino himself, refusing to 
lay down his arms because his liberal party was not guaranteed a suffi-
cient share of power, twice offered to come to terms if the US Marines
would remain in Nicaragua and run it until elections were conducted.

	By contrast, Christian writes, "The leaders of the Sandinista 
Front intended to establish a Leninist system from the moment they 
marched into Managua."  She clearly shows that long before the revo-
lution, the Sandinistas were Marxist-Leninist in thought and action. 
She details the deceits and opportunism by which they alternately
flaunted and obscured their intentions.  Anyone who thinks a Marxist-
Leninist regime can be trusted or who finds it hard to conceive of
ostensibly "progressive" rulers committed to deceit, rigid ideology
and the ruthless exploitation of others, should read this book.

	Christian limns superbly the attitudes and personalities of 
the players, and the locales and ambiance in which they appear.  She 
has been told or has witnessed some very interesting stories.  Reading
her book, one hears clearly the voices of genuine democracy: an earnest,
wounded Arturo Cruz, analyzing his mistaken support of the Sandinistas;
the dignity, courage and sorrow of Violeta Chamorro; the spunk and 
intelligence of the market women who continue to defy Sandinista 
harassment and brutality; or Adolfo Calero telling Somoza, whom he 
opposed, that he had better change fast, because  "You're going to
lose your best friends, the gringos.  They are going to try and get 
your ass."

A "liberation" church service

	Christian strikingly juxtaposes the hollow rhetoric of Marxist
adventurers such as the Sandinista secret police chief, Tomas Borge,
with the genuine concern of religious leaders and human-rights activists
forced out of the country.  Her protrait of a "liberation" church
service at which, for an audience of foreign visitors, various members
of "the people" perform like trained seals, is devastating.  So is her
account of a Sandinista "intellectual seminar" in which participants
explain to each other what Sandino "would have said" if he had only
understood Marxism.

	Christian's book is less instructive about the future.  There
has been and will be a continuing effort by the Soviet Union and Cuba
to influence the course of events in our hemisphere.  This played an
important role in the Nicaraguan revolution and in US perception of
it.  Internal politics (the "family" referred to in Christian's sub-
title) played a major role in bringing about the revolution.  But the
revolution's consequences will be determined not by the family, but
by the Soviet Union and Cuba, by conditions in Nicaragua and by the
United States.

	Christian correctly says that the revolution against Somoza
was not a phenomenon of class struggle.  She goes into some detail
on the frustrations of the Sandinistas as they tried to stir up
peasants and agitate the working class.  "One of the first priorities
of the Sandinistas," Eden Pastora recently told one of my associates
with tongue in cheek, "is to turn peasants and farmers into proleta-
rians.  They will do this," he added more seriously, "by starving
them."  The 1979 uprising succeeded because the press, the middle
class and organized labor in Nicaragua deserted Somoza.  They were
subsequently used as dupes and front men by the Sandinistas, whose
years of Leninist study finally paid off.

Carter administration faulted

	On the issue of US intervention, Christian rightly faults
the Carter administration for trying to have it both ways.  When
President Carter appeared before the Kssinger Commission, we asked
him why he had denied support to the democratic forces after the
revolution.  His answer was that this would have been intervention.
He was justly proud, however, of his withdrawal of support for Somoza
- an intervention as consequential as that he rejected.

	Christian concludes that "The Sandinista Front would have
become a footnote to history had a moderate regime been able to
assume power in Nicaragua before the end of 1978.  But the Carter
Administration could not make the decision to do what was necessary
to bring this about."  Our failure proved tragic for the Nicaraguan
people:  With Somoza stripped of US support, and the democratic
forces weaponless, the triumph of the Marxist-Leninists was inevi-
table.

	Although she does mention the Sandinistas' New York public
relations firm, Christian plays down a subject on which she has been
eloquent elsewhere:  the role played by the media in romanticizing
the Sandinistas.  In a 1982 article on the Washington Jounalism
Review, she demonstrated the extent to whic the press had been 
responsible for sweetening the image of the Sandinistas.  Neither 
the Carter Administration nor the Reagan Administration was under any
such illusions, but some members of Congress were.  And congressional
vacillation was a reflection of congressional and public misperception
of the Sandinistas.

	The words Christian applied in 1982 to the US media apply
equally well to the public and the Congress:  "Intrigued by the
decline and fall of Anastasio Somoza, they could not see the coming
of Tomas Borge."