Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-07 Thread Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism

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On 9/5/2018 11:23 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:


I think socialists really need to reflect on the direction the colonial
revolution has taken over the years, because Ortega is not some lone
exception

How has the colonial revolution degenerated so much? Isn't what we're
seeing visible proof of the theory of permanent revolution? After all, the
leadership of none of these revolutions linked the colonial revolution with
the overthrow of capitalism itself.

I don't think the Nicaraguan revolution "degenerated" at all. It was 
defeated, destroyed. Crushed. Drowned in blood and I believe that had 
been consummated before the election of Mrs Chamorro.


In the year 2000 I wrote a very long post on this list going over my 
experiences in Nicaragua where I lived for several years. About a year 
ago I put it on my blog and it is here: 
http://hatueysashes.blogspot.com/2017/01/from-archives-how-1980s-sandinista.html


Rereading it now, there are a couple of things I remember saying in 
other posts from that time. Mainly that there simply was no basis in 
Nicaragua for what they were trying to do economically and socially, 
though I'm not sure I put it that baldly. The policy of pressured 
collectivization ("forced" would be an exaggeration) was a conscious 
choice with the idea that this would smooth their transition to a 
planned economy, and that the social programs and economic benefits 
would help them sell it. Wheelock seemed to be totally committed to it.


This affected not just the worker-peasant alliance but the 
"worker-worker alliance." A lot of workers viewed themselves as 
displaced small farmers and what they wanted was land and to be left 
alone on their little homestead.


I'll repeat what I said in my post from 18 years ago: in four years I 
was in Nicaragua I never met a single peasant who had gotten  land to 
work on his own account from the revolution. On the contrary, I saw the 
FSLN oppose movements by agricultural workers to break up cotton estates 
and distribute them for their families to work individually. And I was 
on  the lookout because Mike Baumann and Jane Harris, who preceded me 
and my companion as Militant correspondents there, made a point of 
telling me that had been their experience.


In 1986 or 1987 the government did make a show of handing out land 
titles but to people who had long worked their parcels on the 
agricultural frontier and to people on state farms (technically turning 
them into cooperatives, a distinction  without a difference).  It did 
not change things internally, it was mostly paper. Although I do think 
it is true that it showed the FSLN leadership had realized the problem 
with the agrarian reform, and was beginning to change course.


As for the rest of their economic and social programs, they required a 
lot of resources from  abroad that was increasingly withheld. The one 
resource they did have was Cuba, but it could offer mostly personnel, 
and Nicaragua had decided to forgo the aid of Cuban civilians (like 
teachers and doctors) after the Grenada invasion. In part the reason was 
that they could not be armed, but with the war spreading, they were 
sitting ducks.


But of course that hit programs in the countryside especially hard 
because the Cubans were willing to go places the government  had a very 
hard time recruiting Nicas for.


So Nicaragua in a lot of ways got ahead of itself, and then was left 
twisting in the wind by the Soviets for the Americans to use as a 
punching bag. And I mean that quite literally. The Nicas had sent people 
to Eastern Europe to train as fighter pilots and helicopter pilots. They 
even built a military airport. Only a handful of helicopters had made it 
before the Soviets cut them off.


In the CNN documentary series Cold War produced in the 90s there are 
interviews with former Soviet foreign ministry officials that confirmed 
this is exactly what took place.


Could the revolution have survived if they'd gotten timely military 
resources to defeat the contra war? Looking back at the 1990s, I doubt 
it. The United States would have strangled them economically. And there 
was a very grave economic problem: they had already embarked on the road 
outlined in the Communist Manifesto:


*  *  *

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working 
class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win 
the battle of democracy.


The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, 
all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of 
production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised 
as the ruling 

Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-05 Thread Richard Fidler via Marxism
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You are right about the Trotskyist parties' dogmatic adherence to a literal 
understanding of the Russian revolution experience. 

An exception: the US Socialist Workers Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s 
began to rethink these questions around their analysis of what they considered 
a transitional phase of "workers and peasants/farmers government." They were 
influenced in this by a re-examination of the Cuban experience and of course 
what they were following in Nicaragua, to which they gave close attention. 

However, they still saw the transition from the intermediary w and p government 
to a proletarian dictatorship (workers state) as occurring quite rapidly, which 
led them in the latter years of the Sandinista revolution to impose an analysis 
on Nicaragua that bore a curious resemblance to the permanent revolution 
template they claimed to have rejected. See their Central Committee's balance 
sheet of the Nicaraguan experience, which in my opinion is based on a set of 
hypothetical possibilities for deepening the revolution after the peace accord 
with the Contras that was quite unrealistic -- based in part on my own 
observations during an extended stay in Nicaragua in 1987. (The Militant, 
September 7, 1990 - it's online at http://themilitant.com/, Click on Search and 
follow the leads.) But by 1990 the SWP as a whole was a mess and incapable of 
serious theoretical debate and understanding, for reasons that have been amply 
explored on this list in the past.

For a more balanced assessment, see the final chapter (epilogue) in Matilde 
Zimmermann's excellent book, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan 
Revolution, published in 2000. Zimmermann, a former vice-presidential candidate 
of the SWP in the 1970s, worked in the Managua bureau of The Militant during 
the 1980s. She long ago left the SWP and now pursues an academic career, I 
believe.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:l...@panix.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2018 1:25 PM
To: Richard Fidler; 'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

On 9/5/18 1:07 PM, Richard Fidler wrote:
> Actually, Trotsky did generalize his theory in the late 1920s in the book
> Permanent Revolution.

Trotsky wrote: "Does this at least mean that every country, including 
the most backward colonial country, is ripe, if not for socialism, then 
for the dictatorship of the proletariat ? No, this is not what it means."

My statement is based on what Trotsky wrote: "Does this at least mean 
that every country, including the most backward colonial country, is 
ripe, if not for socialism, then for the dictatorship of the proletariat 
? No, this is not what it means." My experience is that just about every 
Trotskyist party did not grasp what Trotsky wrote here and particularly 
when it comes to Nicaragua.


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Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-05 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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On 9/5/18 1:07 PM, Richard Fidler wrote:

Actually, Trotsky did generalize his theory in the late 1920s in the book
Permanent Revolution.


Trotsky wrote: "Does this at least mean that every country, including 
the most backward colonial country, is ripe, if not for socialism, then 
for the dictatorship of the proletariat ? No, this is not what it means."


My statement is based on what Trotsky wrote: "Does this at least mean 
that every country, including the most backward colonial country, is 
ripe, if not for socialism, then for the dictatorship of the proletariat 
? No, this is not what it means." My experience is that just about every 
Trotskyist party did not grasp what Trotsky wrote here and particularly 
when it comes to Nicaragua.

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Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-05 Thread Richard Fidler via Marxism
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Actually, Trotsky did generalize his theory in the late 1920s in the book
Permanent Revolution. The problem is that the general thesis -- that "only the
workers and peasants will go all the way," as Sandino and Carlos Fonseca, the
Sandinistas' founder, put it, tells us nothing about immediate tasks upon the
seizure of power, or the tempo of the revolutionary process. That depends
entirely on many factors, both domestic and international, and above all the
development of mass consciousness in the given state.

The Sandinista leaders were influenced by the Cubans, above all. But the context
of their revolution was very different. Nicaragua lacked the profound historic
anti-imperialist traditions of Cuba. Its workers movement was smaller and had no
Marxist traditions. The Soviet bloc (with the exception of Cuba) was not
interested in providing anything like the material support and solidarity Cuba
enjoyed in the early 1960s, crucial to Cuba's survival and radicalization in the
conflict with the USA. Nicaragua was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, while in
Cuba the clergy was foreign-dominated (Spanish and Canadian origin) and widely
discredited by its integration with the landlord-bourgeois oligarchy. And so on
and on...

The Sandinistas can hardly be compared in any significant way with Mugabe or
Assad or many other nationalist leaders. The FSLN had a socialist project, but
in the given conditions (especially the contra war) had to make many retreats
and concessions. And of course they made many errors, some of which (e.g.
Atlantic Coast) they corrected, although perhaps too late. And they did not even
have a real party, or a party congress, until 1991 after their electoral defeat.
By then the cadre had been worn down, the masses were demoralized and simply
wanted peace. Ortega built his personal domination on the ruins of the FSLN
strategy and program of the 1980s. It's just that many of us (Lou included,
apparently) failed to pay much attention to Nicaragua after 1990 until we were
rudely awakened by the state repression of mass democratic opposition this year.

BTW, it is worth consulting the UN Human Rights inventory on the Nicaragua
repression, as it stood in mid-August:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/08/1017992. The full report is hyperlinked in
the first sentence.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2018 11:32 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

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On 9/5/18 11:23 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:
> How has the colonial revolution degenerated so much? Isn't what we're
> seeing visible proof of the theory of permanent revolution? After all, the
> leadership of none of these revolutions linked the colonial revolution with
> the overthrow of capitalism itself.

Permanent revolution? Nicaragua?

Trotsky's theory is a product of his study of the Russian 
class-struggle. He did not develop it as a general methodology for 
accomplishing bourgeois-democratic tasks in a semi-colonial or dependent 
country. He was instead seeking to address the needs of the 
class-struggle in Russia. In this respect, he was identical to Lenin. 
They were both revolutionaries who sought to establish socialism in 
Russia as rapidly as possible. Their difference centered on how closely 
connected socialist and bourgeois- democratic tasks would be at the 
outset. Lenin tended to approach things more from Plekhanov's "stagist" 
perspective, while Trotsky had a concept more similar to the one 
outlined by Marx and Engels in their comments on the German revolution.

Trotsky sharpened his insights as a participant and leader of the 
uprising of 1905, which in many ways was a dress-rehearsal for the 1917 
revolution. He wrote "Results and Prospects" to draw the lessons of 
1905. Virtually alone among leading Russian socialists, he rejected the 
idea that workers holding state power would protect private property:

"The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its 
economic enslavement. No matter under what political flag the 
proletariat has come to power, it is obliged to take the path of 
socialist policy. It would be the greatest utopianism to think th

Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-05 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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On 9/5/18 11:23 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:

How has the colonial revolution degenerated so much? Isn't what we're
seeing visible proof of the theory of permanent revolution? After all, the
leadership of none of these revolutions linked the colonial revolution with
the overthrow of capitalism itself.


Permanent revolution? Nicaragua?

Trotsky's theory is a product of his study of the Russian 
class-struggle. He did not develop it as a general methodology for 
accomplishing bourgeois-democratic tasks in a semi-colonial or dependent 
country. He was instead seeking to address the needs of the 
class-struggle in Russia. In this respect, he was identical to Lenin. 
They were both revolutionaries who sought to establish socialism in 
Russia as rapidly as possible. Their difference centered on how closely 
connected socialist and bourgeois- democratic tasks would be at the 
outset. Lenin tended to approach things more from Plekhanov's "stagist" 
perspective, while Trotsky had a concept more similar to the one 
outlined by Marx and Engels in their comments on the German revolution.


Trotsky sharpened his insights as a participant and leader of the 
uprising of 1905, which in many ways was a dress-rehearsal for the 1917 
revolution. He wrote "Results and Prospects" to draw the lessons of 
1905. Virtually alone among leading Russian socialists, he rejected the 
idea that workers holding state power would protect private property:


"The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its 
economic enslavement. No matter under what political flag the 
proletariat has come to power, it is obliged to take the path of 
socialist policy. It would be the greatest utopianism to think that the 
proletariat, having been raised to political domination by the internal 
mechanism of a bourgeois revolution, can, even if it so desires, limit 
its mission to the creation of republican-democratic conditions for the 
social domination of the bourgeoisie."


Does not this accurately describe the events following the Bolshevik 
revolution in October, 1917? The workers took the socialist path almost 
immediately. If this alone defined the shape of revolutions to come, 
then Trotsky would appear as a prophet of the first magnitude.


Before leaping to this conclusion, we should consider Trotsky's entire 
argument. Not only would the workers adopt socialist policies once in 
power, their ability to maintain these policies depended on the 
class-struggle outside of Russia, not within it. He is emphatic:


"But how far can the socialist policy of the working class be applied in 
the economic conditions of Russia? We can say one thing with 
certainty--that it will come up against obstacles much sooner than it 
will stumble over the technical backwardness of the country. Without the 
direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of 
Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary domination into 
a lasting socialistic dictatorship."


While there is disagreement between Lenin and Trotsky on the exact 
character of the Russian revolution, there is none over the grim 
prospects for socialism in an isolated Russia. We must keep this 
uppermost in our mind when we consider the case of Nicaragua. 
Well-meaning Trotskyist comrades who castigate the Sandinistas for not 
carrying out permanent revolution should remind themselves of the full 
dimensions of Trotsky's theory. According to this theory, Russia was a 
beachhead for future socialist advances. If these advances did not 
occur, Russia would perish. Was Nicaragua a beachhead also? If socialism 
could not survive in a vast nation as Russia endowed with immense 
resources, what were Nicaragua's prospects, a nation smaller than 
Brooklyn, New York?


Our Trotskyist comrades are very picky and choosy. If a revolution is 
not up to their exacting standards, they will give it thumbs down. While 
they are unanimously in support of the Russian revolution, there is 
divided opinion over the Cuban revolution. Cuba tends to get some thumbs 
up and some thumbs down.


Let us consider Russia first within the paradigm of permanent 
revolution. In a very real sense, the collapse of the Soviet Union and 
its allied Eastern European states is a very real negative confirmation 
of the theory of permanent revolution. Let us leave aside the question 
of whether or not an alternative course was possible. Trotsky's best, if 
often misguided, efforts, failed to lead to revolutionary victories in 
China, Spain, France, Germany or elsewhere. The isolation of the Soviet 
Union led to horrible economic and social distortions that eventually 
led to 

Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-05 Thread John Reimann via Marxism
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I think socialists really need to reflect on the direction the colonial
revolution has taken over the years, because Ortega is not some lone
exception. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe led a left wing guerrilla struggle against
colonialism and racism for years, and look at where he ended up. We have
the ANC in South Africa, which is in a similar situation. Even Assad: Yes,
he inherited the throne from his right wing father, but consider the longer
term history. It all comes from the Ba'ath Party which had a left wing
anti-colonialist element to it.

How has the colonial revolution degenerated so much? Isn't what we're
seeing visible proof of the theory of permanent revolution? After all, the
leadership of none of these revolutions linked the colonial revolution with
the overthrow of capitalism itself.

As for the confusion of the protesters: In Iran a wing of the protesters
there today is monarchists, calling for a return to the old Pahlevi
dynasty. Does that mean we should reject the protests? And in Syria,
"socialism" is reported to be widely discredited exactly because it's
associated with Assad.

With the collapse of the socialist movement, with the extreme weakening of
the working class traditions all around the world, confusion is inevitable
in any new movement. Just because some right wing ideas infiltrate the
movement doesn't mean that we should not support protests against a
repressive, pro-capitalist and corrupt regime.

John Reimann

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-04 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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On 9/4/18 11:59 AM, Richard Fidler via Marxism wrote:

The key word of course is "maintains." That is, no major difference from the 
record under previous governments.


Whatever. I just wonder if the Scientific American article can cite one 
of Chamorro's fellow gangsters as an authority on Green values, what 
else in the article needs to be fact-checked? I am too busy with another 
task to do this.

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Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-04 Thread Richard Fidler via Marxism
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The key word of course is "maintains." That is, no major difference from the 
record under previous governments.

As to upholding a government because you can see no progressive alternative, 
isn't that the same argument used by "anti-imperialists" in Syria: that if 
Assad is overthrown, it will just mean placing ISIS, or Russia, or USA, or 
Turkey -- who else?  -- in charge. Better to support the monkey than the 
organ-grinder. In Nicaragua, the reality is that Ortega has removed from 
contention one opposition group after another, and barred the road to the 
emergence of a progressive alternative. Such an alternative is more likely to 
emerge from a powerful grassroots opposition movement that has managed through 
its own efforts to overthrow an autocratic regime.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:l...@panix.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2018 11:48 AM
To: Richard Fidler; 'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

On 9/4/18 11:20 AM, Richard Fidler wrote:
> Earlier today, Lou posted a reply to an article in the Scientific American by 
> a
> critic of Nicaragua's environmental abuses. It is worth reading the article 
> that
> is the target of the author, Paul Oquist: Nicaragua's Acions Cast a Shadow 
> over
> Its Leadership of Major Climate Group,

It is also noteworthy that the Scientific American article states:

Nicaragua maintains a “policy of permanent destruction of natural 
resources,” according to an e-mailed statement from environmental 
scientist Jaime Incer Barquero, who directed the country’s Ministry of 
Environment and Natural Resources during the presidency of Violeta 
Chamorro in the 1990s.

---

Maybe most people reading the article have no clue what was happening 
under Violeta Chamorro but citing the head of the Ministry of 
Environment and Natural Resources is rather disingenuous. Everybody is 
ready to see Daniel Ortega overthrown but until the student movement 
puts forward a program that makes clear its opposition to him being 
replaced by the gang that ran Nicaragua before Ortega's reelection, 
count me out of the Dan La Botz brigades.


 From Environmental Justice: International Discourses in Political 
Economy, edited by Paul Thompson, 2002:

Although having adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, successive 
former Presidents Violeta Chamorro and Arnoldo Aleman showed a 
willingness to sacrifice environmental quality, worker health and 
safety, and decent wages and social services in favor of "structural 
adjustment" and neo-liberal economic policy. Private investment in 
resource extraction is being encouraged. In 1996, the Ministry of 
Environmental and Natural Resources (MARENA) and President Aleman 
granted Solcarsa, a subsidiary of the giant Korean-based multinational 
corporation Kumkyung, a 30-year timber concession covering 62,000 
hectares in the Autonomous North Atlantic Coast Region (RAAN)—the 
largest and longest ever granted in Nicaragua's history. The logging 
inflicted enormous damage on indigenous communities and the second 
largest rainforest in the Americas, and was a clear violation of 
Nicaragua's laws against mahogany exports and the right of the region's 
indigenous peoples to determine the use of local resources under the 
1987 Autonomy Law (the logging concession was later declared 
unconstitutional in February of 1997 by the Supreme Count of Nicaragua 
on the grounds that it violated Article 181 of the Constitution). 
Although the concession was revoked in late February 1998 because of 
local and international protests, another concession was granted to a 
"new company" PRADA two months later.

Government-owned industry and natural resources have been privatized, 
and new laws allow foreign interests 100 percent owner-ship of 
Nicaraguan companies. As a result, Canadian companies practicing 
open-pit gold and copper mining (which uses cyanide leaching to remove 
the precious metals from ore), are now creating severe environmental and 
human health problems throughout the country. Although some 
environmental programs will be maintained, it appears likely that the 
more comprehensive environmental programs initiated under the Sandinista 
government (and which do not receive external funding) will continue to 
be dismantled until there is a change in power. And in the wake of the 
devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch, there will undoubtedly be 
increased exploitation of natural resources to generate foreign exchange 
and rebuild the collapsed economy. This is very likely to fur

Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-04 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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On 9/4/18 11:20 AM, Richard Fidler wrote:

Earlier today, Lou posted a reply to an article in the Scientific American by a
critic of Nicaragua's environmental abuses. It is worth reading the article that
is the target of the author, Paul Oquist: Nicaragua's Acions Cast a Shadow over
Its Leadership of Major Climate Group,


It is also noteworthy that the Scientific American article states:

Nicaragua maintains a “policy of permanent destruction of natural 
resources,” according to an e-mailed statement from environmental 
scientist Jaime Incer Barquero, who directed the country’s Ministry of 
Environment and Natural Resources during the presidency of Violeta 
Chamorro in the 1990s.


---

Maybe most people reading the article have no clue what was happening 
under Violeta Chamorro but citing the head of the Ministry of 
Environment and Natural Resources is rather disingenuous. Everybody is 
ready to see Daniel Ortega overthrown but until the student movement 
puts forward a program that makes clear its opposition to him being 
replaced by the gang that ran Nicaragua before Ortega's reelection, 
count me out of the Dan La Botz brigades.



From Environmental Justice: International Discourses in Political 
Economy, edited by Paul Thompson, 2002:


Although having adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, successive 
former Presidents Violeta Chamorro and Arnoldo Aleman showed a 
willingness to sacrifice environmental quality, worker health and 
safety, and decent wages and social services in favor of "structural 
adjustment" and neo-liberal economic policy. Private investment in 
resource extraction is being encouraged. In 1996, the Ministry of 
Environmental and Natural Resources (MARENA) and President Aleman 
granted Solcarsa, a subsidiary of the giant Korean-based multinational 
corporation Kumkyung, a 30-year timber concession covering 62,000 
hectares in the Autonomous North Atlantic Coast Region (RAAN)—the 
largest and longest ever granted in Nicaragua's history. The logging 
inflicted enormous damage on indigenous communities and the second 
largest rainforest in the Americas, and was a clear violation of 
Nicaragua's laws against mahogany exports and the right of the region's 
indigenous peoples to determine the use of local resources under the 
1987 Autonomy Law (the logging concession was later declared 
unconstitutional in February of 1997 by the Supreme Count of Nicaragua 
on the grounds that it violated Article 181 of the Constitution). 
Although the concession was revoked in late February 1998 because of 
local and international protests, another concession was granted to a 
"new company" PRADA two months later.


Government-owned industry and natural resources have been privatized, 
and new laws allow foreign interests 100 percent owner-ship of 
Nicaraguan companies. As a result, Canadian companies practicing 
open-pit gold and copper mining (which uses cyanide leaching to remove 
the precious metals from ore), are now creating severe environmental and 
human health problems throughout the country. Although some 
environmental programs will be maintained, it appears likely that the 
more comprehensive environmental programs initiated under the Sandinista 
government (and which do not receive external funding) will continue to 
be dismantled until there is a change in power. And in the wake of the 
devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch, there will undoubtedly be 
increased exploitation of natural resources to generate foreign exchange 
and rebuild the collapsed economy. This is very likely to further deepen 
the vicious downward spiral of poverty and environmental deterioration 
which contributed to the disaster in the first place.


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Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

2018-09-04 Thread Richard Fidler via Marxism
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What has shocked so many -- especially those of us who were active in the
international Sandinista solidarity movement in the 1980s -- is the wave of
repression unleashed by the Ortega-Murillo regime since April 19. Never before
in Latin America has a government claiming to be on "the left" turned its police
(and, in Nicaragua, paramilitaries and sharpshooters) on peaceful, unarmed
demonstrators in the streets --  shooting hundreds, wounding thousands, even
denying them hospital care. 

Louis, in his rambling early attempt to figure out what was happening, cited
below, simply avoids referring to the initial repression, which in subsequent
weeks escalated until the Nicaraguan government itself now admits to some 230
deaths (overwhelmingly non-police), while independent human rights organizations
have documented more than 400. This balance sheet itself -- and the whitewashing
of it by the "oficialista" left (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc.) on the usual
pretext that the US must be behind it -- calls for serious reflection about the
state of the left today not only in Nicaragua but throughout the region. As Lou
demonstrates in his own reactions, we are facing here some of the same
conflicting reactions that we saw in the initial responses internationally to
the Assad regime's violent suppression of the popular protests in Syria.

Earlier today, Lou posted a reply to an article in the Scientific American by a
critic of Nicaragua's environmental abuses. It is worth reading the article that
is the target of the author, Paul Oquist: Nicaragua's Acions Cast a Shadow over
Its Leadership of Major Climate Group,
http://tinyurl.com/ybf9akgq.

As a quick google search reveals, Oquist apparently hires himself out as a
scientific "advisor" to poor countries in the Central American-Caribbean region.
In Nicaragua, Ortega has even given him cabinet rank. At the Paris climate
summit in 2016, where he represented Nicaragua in place of Ortega who couldn't
be bothered attending, Oquist cast the lone vote against the final accord saying
it did not go far enough. However, when Trump later pulled out of the agreement
Ortega decided to sign on to it, and with Syria's recent adhesion only the
United States lies outside of it.

But Oquist is not just an expert on climate change and environment. He is a
vocal defender of the politics of Ortega-Murillo. For example, take a look at
his defence of the regime in a two-part interview on Democracy Now: 
Extended Conversation with Nicaraguan Government Minister Paul Oquist on
Escalating Crisis
http://tinyurl.com/yc7qsmjp

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2018 10:07 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

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