Nicaragua: Life in the Bunker Republic

As Uncle Sam gets bellicose, the Sandinistas grow sullen

For weeks, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, White House Counsellor Edwin Meese and other senior U.S. officials have been issuing a series of increasingly bellicose warnings about the behavior of Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinista government. The U.S. is concerned about what Haig calls the “drift toward totalitarianism” of the Nicaraguan regime, the presence of some 1,500 Cuban military advisers in the country and the role of Nicaragua in supporting the left-wing guerrillas in El Salvador. Haig is also irked by Nicaragua’s own heavy arms buildup, which he believes is sponsored by Cuba and the Soviet Union. As one U.S. official put it, the buildup threatens to turn the tiny republic (pop. 2.7 million) into “a superpower in Central American terms.”

Despite those sharp expressions of concern, the Reagan Administration was at pains last week to show that it was still trying to hold its temper. At a meeting of the Organization of American States on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Haig said that the U.S. “is prepared to join others in doing whatever is prudent and necessary to prevent any country in Central America from becoming the platform of terror and war.” As Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann listened gravely, Haig added that “if Nicaragua addresses our concerns about interventionism and militarization . . . we do not close the door to the search for proper relations.”

There is no ignoring Nicaragua’s military buildup. The Sandinista arsenal now includes some 30 Soviet tanks, and the Reagan Administration suspects that MiG-21 aircraft may soon be shipped to Nicaragua, giving that country clear air superiority over its neighbors. On the ground, Nicaraguan military strength is already well established; the Sandinista army of 26,000 is at least twice the size of any other in Central America. In addition, Nicaragua has a “ready reserve” force of 40,000.

Reagan Administration officials maintain, despite Nicaraguan denials, that Soviet arms in Nicaragua are, in turn, being handed on clandestinely by the Sandinista government to aid Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador and other neighboring countries. For that reason, Washington in January decided to suspend some $15 million in promised U.S. aid to Nicaragua. That was possibly an unwise decision, since it reinforced Sandinista charges that the Reagan Administration is merely out to ruin the country. In their recent statements, both Haig and Meese have ruled out unilateral U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua as an antidote to the flow of arms, but they have ruled out little else. Both officials, in fact, have said that a naval blockade of Nicaragua or other drastic measures could not be excluded as an eventual possibility.

The Reagan Administration’s tough stand comes at a time when the exuberant optimism that followed the July 1979 overthrow of the government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle has all but evaporated. After 28 months in power, a kind of bunker mentality seems to have settled over the nine-member Sandinista national directorate that controls the country. Economically, Nicaragua is on the rocks. Politically, the Sandinista leadership is betraying itself as insecure, arbitrary and determined to hold on to power, come what may. Says one Western diplomatic analyst in Managua: “They’ve made up their minds they can’t come to an understanding with the U.S., largely because of the El Salvador question. I think they are willing to take this country down to a subsistence economy and absolute misery if necessary.”

The basis of that Sandinista position is evident enough: stubbornness, a condition that Washington’s statements have only helped deepen. Still, the stridently pro-Cuban and pro-Soviet policies of the directorate are not at all what most Nicaraguans had in mind when they welcomed the conquering guerrillas into power in 1979. Ever since then, the Sandinistas have been trying to impose some form of one-party, Marxist-Leninist rule on the country, while pluralistic forces, especially the private business community, are trying to retain free speech, a free press and the right to free assembly.

In September the Sandinistas declared a “state of economic emergency,” banning strikes, profiteering and the distribution of news or information deemed to be injurious to the economy. The government also increased its attacks against the Superior Council of Private Enterprise, known by its Spanish acronym COSEP, which represents the beleaguered 50% of Nicaraguan private enterprise that has not been nationalized since the 1979 revolution.

Sandinista speeches also began to take on a decidedly paranoiac tinge, helped along, in part, by U.S. naval maneuvers last October off the nearby Honduran coast. When Nicaraguan Defense Minister Humberto Ortega warned that the country’s enemies “will be hanging along the roads and highways” in the event of a U.S. invasion, COSEP leaders reacted. In an open letter, they charged that “the national economy shows no signs of recuperation, social peace has not been found, the country finds itself in spiraling debt, with no foreseeable end.” The directorate thereupon threw four COSEP leaders in jail, along with 22 Communists.

In one sense, the Sandinistas had reason to be thin-skinned, since the Nicaraguan economy is in shambles. The country’s foreign debt has more than doubled, from $1.5 billion at the time of the revolution in July 1979 to $3.5 billion today. Per capita income has dropped from $300 a year to less than $200. Nicaragua faces a balance of payments deficit next year of $450 million. The Sandinistas have been borrowing to the limit from Mexico, the Soviet Union and, most recently, Libya. Says one Western diplomatic observer: “They say no country really ever goes bankrupt, but no country has quite had Nicaragua’s experience before.”

As the economic crisis has deepened, gangs of Sandinista goons, known as turbas, have roughed up outspoken critics of the government, including, in at least one case, a Roman Catholic bishop. Last month, the directorate also tried to squelch publication of the first major public opinion poll taken in Nicaragua since the revolution. Sponsored by the staunchly independent newspaper La Prensa, the poll showed that 70% of Nicaraguans want free elections (which the directorate has postponed until 1985 at the earliest), and that 64% feel that their lives have not improved since 1979.

At the same time, the Sandinistas have shown little sign of abandoning their support for the guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador. Signs at Managua’s Cesar Augusto Sandino Airport proclaim: REVOLUTION OR DEATH. EL SALVADOR WILL BE VICTORIOUS. It is an open secret in Managua that the Salvadoran guerrillas maintain a major military command post in the Nicaraguan capital, on the same avenue as the American embassy. The city also serves as a way station for Salvadoran guerrillas who are either recuperating from their warfare or are in transit to Cuba.

Despite Sandinista stubbornness, there has been a pause lately in the frequent temporary shutdowns of La Prensa.

The government hints that it will soon release the imprisoned COSEP leaders. A source close to the Sandinistas has declared that a completely Marxist-Leninist state may be “out of reality” for Nicaragua right now.

The signs of reasonableness, however, may be no more than a temporary tactical accommodation on the part of the Sandinistas. As one diplomat in Nicaragua puts it, “the periods of accommodation are getting so brief that they are invisible.”

Warns another critic of the regime: “For a long time the Nicaraguans have always had a sense of when to pull back. I’m just afraid that the Sandinistas lack the intelligence, or the capability, or simply the will to do it this time.” —By George Russell. Reported by James Willwerth/Managua Despite the Reagan Administration’s concern over Nicaraguan support for subversion in Central America, there was one pleasant surprise in the region last week. In Honduras (pop. 3.8 million), a country doctor, Roberto Suazo Córdova, scored a landslide victory in the nation’s first free presidential elections since 1971. Suazo Córdova, a conservative member of the Liberal Party, defeated his National Party opponent, Ricardo Zúñiga Augustinus, by some 650,000 votes to 500,000. The Liberals also are expected to capture 46 seats in Honduras’ 85-seat Congress. The election was the result of two years of U.S. pressure on the corruption-riddled military government of Provisional President Policarpo Paz García, who has ruled the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (after Haiti) since 1978.

The country Suazo Córdova will take over in January is hardly a bargain: an archetypal banana republic with foreign reserves of only about $13 million; a tattered credit rating; and a growing paranoia, induced by guerrilla conflicts in the surrounding region. The new President’s main task will be staying in power. Since 1949, seven of Honduras’ eleven governments have been toppled by the military.