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."