Nicaragua BeforeandAfter ByPattySomlo Amanda Espinoza is a middle-aged womanwho has spent a lifetime struggling to eke out a living in the countryside of Nicaragua. Prior to the overthrowof the SomozadictatorshiponJuly 19,1979, Espinozaandherfamilywereluckytoeat oncea day. Unsanitary living conditions anda poor, insufficient diet causedmembers of the family to contract numerous and sometimes fatal diseases. Infact, when askedwhat differencetheNicaraguanrevolutionhadmadeinherlife, Espinoza, wholost sixchildren at birth and five during their first year of life, responded. “Now1won’t have to watch my children die anymore.” To understand what is happening in Nicaragua a little more than three and one-half years since the victory of the Sandinista-led forces over the corrupt Somoza dictatorship, it is important for North Americans to look at the pre-revolution living conditions of the Espinozas and the rest of Nicaragua’s poor and mostly rural majority. For it is here that the seeds of the revolution were sown and nourished by poverty, hunger, disease, and when resistance surfaced, by torture and repression at the hands of the National Guard and other security forces. Here, also, lie some of the most critical challenges facing the young Nicaraguan leadership. BeforetheRevolution I magine yourself to be a typical 1 Nicaraguan before the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, writes Joseph Collins, co-founder with Frances Moore Lapp6 of the San Francisco-based Institute for Food and Development Policy, in his recently published book, What Difference Could a Revolution Make? You are 17 years old and like two-thirds of all rural families, yours owns no land or not enough on which to survive, says Collins, who has advised the Nicaraguan government on agrarian reform and food policies for the past three and one-half years. The seven members of your family share a one- room shack, with no electricity or running water. You cannot read and write, nor can anyone in your family. While each member of your family works on the huge coffee, cotton and sugar estates, there is still not enough money to provide even a simple, adequate diet for all of you. Working from dawn to dusk, you are lucky to earn a dollar. In Somoza’s Nicaragua, you are not one of a small minority of very poor people. Like you, more than 55 percent of your country’s population are peasants, earning a per-capita income of less than $120 a year. As a result, malnutrition is widespread, taking the lives of nearly 60 percent of all children under the age of four. Like the majority of Nicaraguan peasants, your family’s land was taken by a large landowner who wanted additional acreage to devote to cotton, coffee and sugar production or cattle grazing. Now, the wealthiest two percent of the population owns over 50 percent of the Sincethevictoryin1979, over40,000landlessrural families havereceivedaccesstolandonwhichtogrowfood. country’s land, and nearly all of its best acreage. But instead of growing crops for domestic consumption, these large landowners devote most of their acreage to export agriculture. This pattern of land ownership, the resulting poverty and suffering of the majority of the population, and the repression and violence carried out by the military to keep such a system intact have all contributed to a “ legacy of underdevelopment,” which, according to Collins, Nicaragua shares with other third world countries. The underdevelopment occurs in both the economic and human spheres and has three important consequences. First, since the best land is used for export crops and not to feed local people, the country’s resources tend to further enrich the already wealthy elite at the expense of the poor. Secondly, the focus on a small number of export crops means that the country’s economy is extremely dependent and susceptible to fluctuations within the international marketplace. A drop of a few cents a pound on one commodity can spell disaster for the entire economy. And, finally, since such a system can only be maintained through the use of force, the people have no experience in democratic decision making. To speak out under such conditions means to risk your life. SinceJuly 1979 This legacy of underdevelopment, the destruction left by a war which took the lives of 50,000 Nicaraguans and wounded another 100,000, a hostile U.S. government and the demands of the poor for change were what faced the mostly young and inexperienced Nicaraguan leadership once victory over Somoza was realized in July 1979. According to Collins, the new leadership’s purpose was to build a country based on “ the logic of the majority.” But as a result of the country’s underdevelopment and to resist U.S. attempts at destabilization, the leadership saw the need to build “ national unity.” This meant not only trying to satisfy the demands of the poor for land, but also to ensure large private landowners that they would be allowed to continue owning their land and making a profit from it. This has obviously created the need for an intricate balancing act by the Sandinista leadership, in order to simultaneously meet the needs of two opposing classes. It has meant taking certain steps in the development of an agrarian reform policy to ensure that large landowners will continue to produce crops for export, a necessity for Nicaragua to earn dollars to pay off a huge Somoza- incurred debt and to import needed materials, and that they will have the necessary labor to plant and harvest those crops. It has also meant expropriating acreage in a just way to satisfy the poor’s demand for land, while not angering the large export-oriented growers, thereby jeopardizing much- needed export earnings and giving fuel to U.S. government charges of repression and “ totalitarianism.” In this balancing act, the Nicaraguan government has made numerous errors, says Collins. They have also not solved all the problems. However, even with the mistakes and operating under considerable constraints, including an increasingly hostile U.S. government, Collins says they have been able to make substantial gains. He readily admits that some charges made by the U.S. government against the Nicaraguan leadership have validity. Yet, he adds that the Nicaragua he has seen in his more than 12 visits during the past three and one-half years is a far cry from the “ totalitarian state” depicted by U.S. media. According to Collins, since the victory in 1979, over 40,000 landless rural families have received access to land on which to grow food. Production of basic food crops is up, and food self-sufficiency is at hand. Consumption of basic food crops has also soared. Corn consumption is up 18 Clinton St. Quarterly
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