http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2008w28/msg00038.htm
Tom Baker here sharing with you a recounting of the history of the
people of Nicaragua.
It is the work of Bob Siegel, member of the Executive Committee of
Nicaragua Network
Alliance for Global Justice, with me, and responding to the Peace
Action group in NYC
where some, like too many others have long since, it seems, forgotten
everything,
including Father Miguel D'Escoto
Bob writes
This is a letter I wrote recently to Peace Action of New York State
regarding their selection of Fr. Miguel D'Escoto to receive an award
this fall. It contains a lot of information regarding the full scope of
the U.S.' savage history vis-a-vis Nicaragua and the Sandinistas'
extraordinary human rights record that I thought would be of
considerable interest to those who seem to have forgotten.
I wrote the letter in response to someone raising the possibility
that some Peace Action members might have " a problem with honoring a
Sandinista." This is the headline I refer to in the second paragraph of
my letter
Peace Action as an organizational entity and on the individual
member level, can not just focus on peace in a general, amorphous way;
on eliminating this or that weapons system; on calling for the
withdrawal of U.S. troops from whatever poor, small, weak Third World
country is the target of U.S. aggression at a particular point in time.
Peace Action has to be thoroughly grounded in, and fully integrate into
its work, a crystal-clear, comprehensive, incisive understanding of the
full, stark reality of U.S. foreign policy. And, Nicaragua is the
ultimate case study in that reality. Countless countries all around the
world have been brutalized and savaged by the U.S. No country has been
brutalized longer and more consistently than has Nicaragua. The U.S.
has used every form of violence, every form of terror to dominate
Nicaragua, to control Nicaragua, to subjugate Nicaragua.
From the 1850s to 1926, the U.S.savaged and dominated Nicaragua
through direct military attack and invasion, invading Nicaragua a total
of 14 times. The last of these 14 invasions/occupations, from
1926-1933, was the longest and most murderous. During this occupation,
the U.S. for the first time in history used the airplane as an
instrument of war against civilians, killing over 400 Nicaraguan men,
women, and children in the town of Ocotal in 1928. Starting in 1927, an
army of Nicaraguan workers and peasants was formed to drive out the
occupying U.S. troops. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, this
Nicaraguan people's army courageously and effectively fought the
occupying U.S. troops to a standstill. This people's army was organized
and led by General Augusto Sandino, Nicaragua's national patriotic hero.
Augusto Sandino, who was known, not only in Nicaragua, but throughout
Latin American, as The General of Free Men. Augusto Sandino, after whom
the Sandinistas are named. Based on U.S. promises that its brutal
occupation of Nicaragua would end, Sandino and his men were persuaded to
disarm. U.S. troops did, in fact, leave Nicaragua in 1933, but not
before installing the first of the hated Somozas----Anastasio Somoza
Garcia----as the head of the Nicaraguan government. In 1934, when
Sandino went to the capital city of Managua to negotiate a longer-term
peace treaty, he was murdered in cold blood by Somoza's henchmen, with
the "kill order" coming from U.S. Ambassador Arthur Bliss. In the
ensuing weeks and months, Sandino's followers throughout Nicaragua were
killed.
The stage was now set for the second form of violence and terror
the U.S. employed to dominate Nicaragua: rule by a proxy dictatorship
and a proxy army.
During its military occupation, the U.S. created the National
Guard. The National Guard was created specifically to do the dirty work
of subjugating Nicaragua that had been done for the previous
three-quarters of a century by U.S. troops. For the next nearly
half-century, the U.S. financed, trained, armed, and equipped the
National Guard. During its 47 years, the National Guard murdered,
tortured, raped, and disappeared tens of thousands of Nicaraguans. The
National Guard was the instrument of terror of, and maintained in power,
the Somoza dictatorship from 1934 to 1979.
The Somoza dictatorship, aside from being one of the most brutal
and savage in the world, was, also, one of the most corrupt. An American
businessman was quoted in Newsweek magazine in 1978 as saying: " You
just don't do business in Nicaragua without offering Somoza a share in
it from the beginning." When Somoza fled Nicaragua in July 1979, he took
with him nine hundred million dollars. This in a country that had a
total Gross Domestic Product of only three billion dollars.
During 1978 and 1979, when the Sandinista-led national rebellion
against the Somoza dictatorship was gaining increasing momentum, the
U.S. tried mightily to preserve Somoza's rule. The U.S. sharply
increased its shipments of weapons to Somoza. Flying U.S. planes and
dropping U.S.-made bombs, Somoza's Air Force waged a savage air war
against the Nicaraguan people as, for 10 to 12 hours a day, every
Nicaraguan city was relentlessly bombed. In June 1979, the U.S. formally
proposed to the Organization of American States that it authorize the
sending of troops to Nicaragua to preserve the Somoza dictatorship and
prevent a Sandinista victory. The OAS, for the first time in its
then-31-year history, rejected this formal U.S. proposal.
When the Sandinistas eventually overthrew the Somoza dictatorship
on July 19, 1979, the U.S. then moved to the third phase of its attempt
to control Nicaragua through any violent means possible----- the
creation of a mercenary army, the contras. President Jimmy Carter
started the ball rolling in this regard by illegally using airplanes
with phony Red Cross insignias to fly more than two dozen National Guard
officers out of Nicaragua to Miami after the fall of Somoza. President
Ronald Reagan then formalized the creation of the contras via Executive
Order ( National Security Decision Directive # 17 ) on November 23,
1981, authorizing the CIA to organize, train, arm, equip, and finance
the contra force.
All 12 of the contras' ruling body, the General Staff, were former
National Guardsmen. The contras consciously patterned themselves after
the paramilitary death squads of El Salvador and Guatemala ( those death
squads, in turn, having been organized, trained, and armed by the U.S.,
starting with John Kennedy's notorious " counterinsurgency program" in
the early 1960s ). The contras' entire modus operandi was the
terrorization of Nicaragua's civilian population. The contras murdered,
mutilated, tortured, raped, and abudcted thousands upon thousands of
Nicaraguan men, women, and children. They specifically targeted for
destruction hospitals, health care clinics, schools, job training
centers food processing and storage facilities and specifically targeted
for murder health care workers, teachers, and farmers.
In June 1986, the World Court---- as part of a decision finding the
U.S. guilty of criminal aggression against the nation and people of
Nicaragua and ordering the U.S. to pay to Nicaragua $ 17 billion in
reparations----- formally labeled the contras a " terrorist force."
Knowing this history is essential to comprehending----truly
comprehending----what extraordinary people Fr. Miguel D'Escoto and the
Sandinistas are. Knowing this history is essential to fully
comprehending the incredible forgiveness, mercifulness, and humanity the
Sandinistas showed during, and after, their governance to those who had
so brutalized them and the Nicaraguan people. The core ideals of Peace
Action are peace, non-violence, and meeting human needs. No government
has lived those ideals more than the Sandinista government.
Peace and Non-Violence. In the words of a visiting Canadian
Parliamentary delegation to Nicaragua in the mid-1980s, " No government
in human history has shown more Christ-like forgiveness, more
Christ-like humanity than the Sandinista government of Nicaragua."
The Sandinistas demonstrated this " Christ-like forgiveness,
Christ-like humanity " from the very first day. On July 19, 1979, the
date of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, the first act of the
Sandinistas was to outlaw the death penalty. Since the overwhelming
majority of Nicaraguans had at least one member of their families
murdered, tortured, or raped during the Somoza dictatorship, the
Nicaraguan people were clamoring for the execution of Somocista
officials and National Guard officers----- nearly all of whom were
deemed by the United Nations to be guilty of " crimes against humanity."
But, the Sandinistas would not accede to that desire on the part of so
many of the people for retribution, no matter how understandable that
desire was. Not only did the Sandinistas abolish the death penalty, they
abolished lifetime imprisonment as well, setting the maximum criminal
penalty at 30 years' imprisonment. And, these Somocista and National
Guard mass murderers did not come close to serving even that
sharply-reduced punishment since, in an act of amnesty, the Sandinistas
released all of them after only 10 years.
Then, the second act of the Sandinistas was to outlaw the use of
torture. Under the U.S.- maintained Somoza dictatorship, nearly all of
the Sandinistas were subjected to the most horrific torture.
Electrocution, suffocation, drowning, savage beatings were the norm. A
particularly ghoulish form of torture was administered to Daniel Ortega
when he was locked in a coffin for 9 months. For 2 of those months, he
was starved and survived only by drinking his own urine. Yet, far from
hating his torturers, Daniel Ortega, displaying that " Christ-like
forgiveness, Christ-like humanity," repeatedly said to his torturers: "
Brother, why are you doing this to me"? The National Guard kept having
to reassign new people to torture Daniel Ortega since, after being with
him for a few weeks, Guardsmen did not have the stomach to administer
the torture.
Tomas Borge, one of the three founders of the Sandinista Party in
1961 and the Interior Minister in the Sandinista government, was
described by Amnesty International in the early 1970s as " the most
tortured political prisoner in the world." What did this " most tortured
political prisoner in the world " do after the Sandinista victory? On
July 21, 1979, two days after the Sandinista triumph, he went to the
detention center where the National Guardsman who supervised his torture
was being held and personally forgave and freed his torturer.
Then, throughout the 1980s, the Sandinistas displayed this "
Christ-like forgiveness, Christ-like humanity " to the contra
terrorists. In general, contra foot soldiers who were captured or who
surrendered were free to return to their home towns without serving any
jail time if they turned in their arms and forswore any further
violence. It was, by and large, only the contra officers who served any
jail time. And, the following says it all about how incredibly humanely
these contra terrorists were treated in jail. After being permitted
unlimited access to interview contra prisoners, a delegation from
Amnesty International reported in November 1985 that the sum total of
the contras' complaints about prison conditions was three: 1 ) light
bulbs in their cells burned all day and night; 2 ) they were made to
stand during questioning; and 3 ) they were fed too many meals,
supposedly, in the contras' eyes, to make them think that time was going
by more quickly.
And, from 1990, even when they no longer were the governing party,
the Sandinistas-----led by Fr. Miguel D'Escoto------continued to show
incredible " Christ-like forgiveness, Christ-like humanity " toward the
contra terrorists. Continuing a sordid history that had been in effect
since the early 20th century, the U.S.------in violation of
international law as well as U.S. law, to say nothing of Nicaraguan
law------ massively intervened in every respect in Nicaragua's February
25, 1990, national elections. By funneling in enormous amounts of money
and threatening the Nicaraguan people with an endless continuation of
the terrorist war if they dared to re-elect the Sandinistas, the U.S.
literally stole the election from the Sandinistas and effected the
election of its hand-picked candidate, Violeta Chamorro and the UNO
party which the U.S. cobbled together from 13 splinter parties.
After the UNO " victory," the contras, who described themselves as
the military arm of UNO, instigated a new wave of violence, murdering,
mutilating, and torturing hundreds of farmers and peasants who were
Sandinista supporters. After taking office in April 1990, Violeta
Chamorro reneged on her previously-made promises to the contras to
provide them with veterans' benefits, medical benefits, pensions, jobs,
and parcels of land. Given that these were, also, demands of former
Sandinista soldiers, Fr. Miguel D' Escoto saw this as an opportunity to
establish common ground with the contras. Through constant, unflagging
efforts, Fr. D' Escoto overcame the contras' hostility, gained their
trust and confidence, and persuaded them to work with him to obtain
desperately-needed benefits for all ex-combatants.
Thus, literally single-handedly, Fr. D' Escoto de-fused a renewed
wave of contra terrorism and averted a calamitous civil war.
Meeting Human Needs.
On April 12, 1986, the Executive Director of the United Nations'
Development Programme said " In my 25 years at the U.N., I have never
seen a government more committed to the elimination of poverty,
injustice, and oppression than the Sandinista government of Nicaragua."
In every area of human endeavor, the Sandinistas' achievements were
historic and unparalleled.
In health care, the Sandinistas built more hospitals and health clinics
than had ever been built, trained more doctors, nurses, and health care
workers than had ever been trained in Nicaragua's history. Long-time
killer diseases such as polio and diphtheria were eliminated. The infant
mortality rate was slashed by 80%, On three different occasions, the
World Health Organization cited Sandinista Nicaragua for its
achievements in health care.
In education and literacy, the Sandinistas' slashed the illiteracy
rate form 50% to 12% in only 18 months, an unprecedented achievement ,
for which they were given UNESCO's highest award. They built more
schools than had ever been built and trained more teachers than had ever
been trained in Nicaragua's history.
The Sandinistas implemented the most comprehensive, successful land
reform program the world has seen. The 35% of Nicaraguan territory
stolen by the Somozas and the National Guard was redistributed to
500,000 landless Nicaraguans ( one-sixth of Nicaragua's then-total
3,000,000 people ). In addition to being given land ownership for the
first time in their lives, the new landowners were given by the
government bank credits to purchase seeds, fertilizers, farming tools,
poultry, and livestock.
The Sandinistas built thousands of new homes. They provided, for the
first time, electricity, sanitation, running water to hundreds of remote
towns and villages.
Even U.S. officials acknowledged the historic, unprecedented
achievements of the Sandinistas in improving the welfare of its people.
In a confidential memorandum written in August 1983, the U.S.
Executive Liaison to the International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) stated: "
The Sandinistas' implementation of economic and social development
projects has been superb. In many cases, the best in the world."
In a 1986 off-the-record, confidential interview with U.S.
journalist Holly Sklar, a U.S. Ambassador to another Central American
country stated: " The Sandinistas have given the Nicaraguan people, for
the first time in their history, a sense of national pride and dignity.
They have brought landmark economic and social improvements throughout
Nicaragua, in to the country's tiniest capillaries. These things are
against
U.S. objectives."
Two final points.
First, the Reagan Administration, in 1983, created an entire propaganda
agency to coordinate and direct its relentless torrent of Orwellian
propaganda, disinformation, and lies against the Sandinistas. This
propaganda agency was the Office of Public Diplomacy ( OPD ) and it
operated under the aegis of the State Department. The OPD was described
by senior White Officials as " a massive propaganda operation of the
kind usually directed enemy populations during wartime."
This orchestrated propaganda/disinformation campaign was, in turn,
( with rare exceptions ) parroted uncritically by the major print and
electronic media outlets in this country. Including, and especially,
those outlets considered the most influential and respectable. Elliot
Abrams was the Reagan Administration's point man for its terrorist war
against Nicaragua. Abrams' reputation as a congenital and notorious liar
was so well known that, for the first time in American history, the U.S.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee refused to take even ordinary and
routine testimony from Abrams unless he gave such testimony under oath.
In 1987, Abrams was asked which media outlets had, in his opinion,
the " best " coverage of Nicaragua. Without a moment's hesitation, he
replied " The New York Times" And, then, quickly added " The Washington
Post."
Thus, any self-perceived liberal/progressive who would be " tense '
about honoring a Sandinista should seriously re-examine and re-evaluate
how he/she processes information.
Second, the history, actions, policies, and behavior of the
Sandinistas stand in direct, polar contrast to those of the United
States. Would that we, in this country, had 300,000,000 "
dyed-in-the-wool Sandinistas. If we did, we would not have any need for
Peace Action.
Sincerely,
Bob
JULY 19 We Celebrate with the People of Nicaragua
29th Anniversary of The Peoples' Trimph over the Somoza US
dictatorship.
Which means, we sit and talk on porch steps, tell stories, here at my
home.
We have videos and NEWS on what's now happening down there.
It's a what has happened and what is happening, what next, scenario
Please bounce this back or phone 773 973 6529 - Want to make sure
we got enough Flor de Cana.
Evening event, 7pm to later
Stop by, share your time, share your views
We live in Rogers Park, Lunt near Sheridan. Phoning ahead makes it
easier
to get you here.
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