[The following statement was given to the leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Managua September 3 by a delegation from the United Secretariat of the Fourth International consisting of Manuel Aguilar, Jean-Pierre Beauvais, Hugo Blanco, Pedro Camejo, Barry Sheppard, and Charles-André Udry.]
Through a heroic popular insurrection under the revolutionary leadership of the FSLN, the Nicaraguan people have overthrown the bloody Somoza dictatorship, which had the direct backing of the United States.
The Nicaraguan working masses, women, youth, and FSLN fighters have thus provided an irreplaceable example to the peoples around the world who are fighting the oppression and exploitation of imperialist rule.
Under the banner of the Sandinista movement, the people of Nicaragua today are continuing their struggle to safeguard the independence of their homeland and to establish a society where social and economic justice will reign, in which there will be no place for exploiters and oppressors.
Faced with their inevitable defeat, the imperialists and Somoza did not hesitate to resort to genocide and massive destruction of the country. Confronted with the gigantic tasks of the revolution, the Nicaraguan people, under the leadership of the FSLN, are showing the same courage and determination they did in the struggle against the dictatorship.
It is the duty of all revolutionary and democratic forces in the world to solidarize with the struggle of the people of Sandino and the FSLN. They should mobilize to carry out a vast international campaign with the goal of defeating any attempt at counterrevolutionary intervention, and to see that Nicaragua receives massive material aid immediately and unconditionally. The Fourth International and all its members pledge to devote their full energies to this necessary campaign of solidarity with the Nicaraguan revolution.
To defend this revolution means to support the struggle whose vanguard is the FSLN. All activities which seek today to create divisions between the mobilized masses and the FSLN are contrary to the interests of the revolution.
This was the case, specifically, with the activities of the "Simón Bolívar Brigade." This group actually had a dual policy: to capitalize on the prestige of the FSLN, it cloaked itself with the Sandinista banner; but at the same time, in the mass organizations its sectarian policy tried to separate the workers from their vanguard.
According to certain assertions that have appeared in the press, the activities of this group represented the attitude of our organization toward the revolution and its leadership. This is totally false. This group acted on its own.
In a political and economic situation that required the greatest possible unity in struggle, the FSLN was right to demand that the non-Nicaraguan members of this group—which defined itself above all as a military organization—leave the country.