On July 17, 1979 Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled to the United States, the imperialist power that installed his father, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, as head of the National Guard in 1933 and assured his ascension to the presidency in 1936.
At daybreak on July 19, hundreds of National Guardsmen, the mainstay of the Somoza regime, shed their weapons and uniforms and left them lying in the streets of Managua. More than 5,000 members of this routed army fled, many with their arms and belongings, into Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in search of refuge.
A massive popular insurrection in the main urban centers combined with a major military offensive by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) have overthrown the dictatorship and destroyed the institutions of the Somoza regime.
In the month and a half since the insurrection, the masses have gained instruments of struggle and power-the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS). They have formed a popular militia that fights along with, and under the direction of, the FSLN. These have been the most decisive elements in the evolution of the situation since the victory over the Somoza tyranny.
The extent and determination of the mass participation in the insurrectionespecially that of the youth-and the masses' high level of self-organization have upset the plans for an "orderly transition" cooked up by sectors of the bourgeois opposition in Nicaragua, various Latin American ruling classes, and Ameri can imperialism. The latter has suffered a resounding defeat in Nicaragua, especially in light of the fact that, since the Cuban revolution, Washington had closely incorporated Nicaragua and other Central American regimes into its political and military strategy for counterrevolution.
The schemas of a "democratic stage" put forward by the various tendencies within the FSLN were also scuttled by the col. lapse of the basic institutions of the Somoza regime under the impact of the military victory and the insurrectionary mass movement. The dynamic of the permanent revolution is now unfolding.
1978: The Turning Point
Nineteen seventy-eight was a pivotal year in the crisis of Somozaism.
On January 10, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro was murdered by Somoza's henchmen. He had been editor of the major daily newspaper of the bourgeois opposition, La Prensa, and founder of the Democratic Union for Liberation (UDEL). Chamorro's killing eliminated the only leader of the bourgeois opposition with enough prestige and authority to offer a viable bourgeois alternative to Somoza and to win over a significant section of the mass movement. Since 1974, when the UDEL was formed, Chamorro had been put forward as the opposition candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for 1981. He received the support of the European Social Democracy. He established ties with some sectors of the American bourgeoisie. And the Stalinist Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN) worked with the UDEL.
The year 1978 was marked by a rise in the mass movement. After the employers' strike of January 1978 in protest over Chamorro's murder, the struggles against the dictatorship multiplied. They included a national student strike; massive mobilizations and the first insurrections in León, Diriamba, Chinandega, Managua, and Masaya in February; a national day of protest against repression; a hunger strike by political prisoners; occupations of land by the peasants; mass demonstrations in July to welcome back a wing of the bourgeois opposition, the "Group of Twelve"; a strike by workers in the national district; mobilizations and protests against tax hikes; a strike by hospital workers; and a general strike called on August 25 by the Broad Opposition Front (FAO) and the United People's Movement (MPU).
On the occasion of the general strike, the MPU, under the influence of the FSLN, declared, "It is important that the working class participate in a decisive way in this great day, which will allow it to unify and strengthen its forces to the maximum in order to deepen the crisis of the Somoza regime and lead to its overthrow by the people's forces."
At the same time, the military actions of the various FSLN tendencies increased, in particular under the influence of the Tercerista current. They grew from wellplanned attacks against military installations to huge operations in the urban centers. On August 22, 1978, the Terceris-
Nicaragua- Analisis Internretativa Prou sional
Nicaragua_ Provisional Interpretiv Analysis], September 24, 1978, Universidad Centroamericana, p. 10.
Since 1975, productive investment had stagnated. In 1978 it fell. The country's gross national product (GNP) shrank by 7% that year. The flight of capital abroad accelerated, accompanied by speculation and a drop in bank deposits and invest ment. The Central Bank estimated that $220 million in capital left the country in 1978. The foreign debt climbed rapidly.
Since the 1972 earthquake, reconstruc tion was based largely on a policy of state investments, financed primarily by loans from private imperialist banks and international financial institutions, owing to the growing deficit. These credits were naturally channeled by Somoza and his clique into their own businesses. Military expenditures increasingly worsened the balance of payments deficit (Israel, Argentina, and the United States were the main sources of arms). Inflation reached a crisis rate.
All these tendencies sharpened in 1979: investment in industry fell close to zero; it declined heavily in agriculture; the GNP diminished by about 25% during the first half of 1979 (according to the Latin American Economic Commission of the United Nations [CEPALD; the flight of capital was estimated at $315 million; inflation reached 20% in April and May, according to official figures, following a 43% devaluation of the cordoba in April.
For the toiling masses, this economic crisis meant a very sharp attack on their living standards, which had already suffered terribly as a result of the 1972 earthquake and its aftermath.
In the urban areas, real average wages did not fluctuate much between 1961 and 1970. But from 1970 to 1975 they fell by 14%. Since then, this tendency has increased, with an even greater decline in 1977, 1978, and 1979.2
During the relatively favorable period of the economic plan at the beginning of the 1970s, unemployment, according to official figures, oscillated around 12% in the urban areas and 22% in rural regions. These figures did not take into account underemployment (disguised unemployment). For instance, those who worked two months out of the year on the cotton or coffee harvests were counted as employed.
At the end of 1978 and during the first half of 1979, unemployment shot up as a result of the fall in investments, the sharp contraction of trade within the Central American Common Market, the shrinking of the domestic market, the fluctuations in the price of agricultural products on the world market in 1977-78, and the disruption of the agricultural cycle in Nicaragua in 1978-79.
In addition, the length of the working week increased, to between fifty and sixty hours.
This brutal attack against the living standards of the masses in 1977, 1978, and the beginning of 1979 came on top of their already miserable conditions, which are reflected in the following figures:?
Forty-three percent of the population was illiterate in 1970. Only 364,000 inhabitants, out of a total population 2,325,000, had running water in 1977. During the same year, for every 10,000 persons there were only an average of 22 hospital beds, 2.9 clinics, 6.4 doctors and nurses, and 0.8 dentists (such averages give no indication of the sharp inequalities in health care between town and country and between different social classes).
The infant mortality rate, life expectancy level, and extent of infectious and contagious diseases place Nicaragua at the bottom of the scale of the countries of Central America.* Imperialism and dictatorship have shown here how they "normally" function.
All these factors help explain the mobilization of the masses, particularly in the cities, in the struggle against Somoza. The Social Forces of the Revolution
Like many underdeveloped capitalist countries, Nicaragua experienced a high rate of urbanization over the past decade. This urbanization resulted both from a relative industrialization (and its byproducts in the service sector) and changes introduced in the countryside by the development of agribusiness.
The total population of Nicaragua rose from 1,836,000 in 1970 to 2,409,000 in 1978. The urban population increased from 838,000 to 1,265,000 in the same period, while the rural population rose from
998,000 to 1,145,000. The economically active population rose from 545,000 to 740,000.5
The urban proletariat has thus been strengthened in recent years, although it still remains modest. Statistics indicate that there are 60,000 industrial workers, strictly speaking. The relative industrialization has not been able to absorb the bulk of those who have been displaced toward the cities. The urban centers thus include a large plebian layer, which has participated massively in the struggle. The youth are in the front ranks. Nearly 60% of the population is under twenty years of age.
Nevertheless, the urban proletariat played an important role in the overthrow of the dictatorship. In 1973-74, it was construction workers who were at the head of a strike movement and who launched a struggle against Somoza.
The actions of the working class led to political differentiations inside the FSLN
3. CEPAL, on the basis of facts from the Central Bank of Nicaragua and UNESCO.
in 1975-76. The "Marxist-Leninist proletarian tendency" began to do trade-union work and reevaluated the role of the urban working class in the development of the revolution.
The participation of the workers in the insurrection, their involvement in the CDS, and the very big movement toward within the unionization
Sandinista
Workers Federation (CST) indicates that they will play a role in the future of the revolution.
In the rural areas, an agricultural proletariat was formed among the workers on the coffee, sugar, and cotton plantations. A large part of this proletariat is migrant, involving some 300,000 persons. They work several weeks or months a year, according to the rhythms of the agricultural cycle.
For example, in 1973, out of a total of 228,000 workers in cotton, only 26,000 were employed permanently by the big landowners. Temporary work, for a maximum of four months a year, remained the lot of the other 202,000.
The agricultural proletariat comprises
, and within it the cotton workers occupy the decisive position.
The miserable conditions of this section of the working class have in recent years prompted land occupations and unionization of sugar workers. Movements have been launched for higher wages (the wages of a migrant worker during the cotton harvest range between 6 and 15 cordobas [US$0.60 to $1.50]) a day and against the high prices of goods sold to agricultural workers in the stores run by the big landowners, who in that way recover part of the workers' wages.®
Nevertheless, the traditions of union organization and mobilization of agricultural workers, among whom the youth and women hold an important place, is limited. This sector of the Nicaraguan proletariat is a decisive social force for pushing forward a radical agrarian reform and in the building of a social bloc that can deepen the process of permanent revolution.
They live for the most part in the regions along the Pacific Ocean, where the main export crops are centered and where land ownership is highly concentrated.
Finally, there is the pauperized and proletarianized peasantry. They are forced to sell their labor power, after harvesting crops on their own plots of land. They are another active force in the revolution.
These peasants suffer under the weight of debts, usury, speculation that affects the prices of manufactured goods that they must buy, and fraudulent practices when they sell part of their harvests (when they have enough to sell). The women frequently have to work as domestic servants in order to earn a skimpy supplementary income.
These proletarianized peasants have often given their support, in the north and along the Atlantic coast, to the guerrilla fighters of the FSLN. For that reason, they were the targets of brutal repression by the dictatorship.
These peasants have had a tradition of land occupations as long as they have been the victims of oppression. In 1977, a section of the poor peasantry began i to organize themselves within the Agricultural Workers Association (ATC) and carried out organized land occupations, with the backing of students and workers in the urban centers. The organization of the ATC facilitated the participation of these peasants in the civil war. Thousands of them rose up during the recent period of upsurge against the dictatorship.
The plebian urban masses, the industrial proletariat, the agricultural proletariat, and the pauperized and proletarianized peasants were the driving forces behind the struggle against the dictatorship. Their actions and their degree of mobilization and organization will weigh heavily in the future of the revolution.
In addition, the student movement also played a role in the struggle against Somoza, standing at the head of a number of struggles. Teachers and hospital workers likewise contributed to the fight against the dictatorship.
Since 1977, an organization of women, comprising about 1,000 activists and with a wide peripheral influence, has stood in the front ranks of all the mobilizations in defense of democratic rights, for the release of political prisoners, and for the demands of women themselves. The Association of Women Concerned with the National Problem (AMPRONAC) was the only mass organization linked to the FSLN that could function legally. It had its roots in the poor neighborhoods and, given its origins, played a significant role in the formation of the MPU.
Somoza's Isolation
Underlying the crisis of Somozaism were the actions of these various sections of the toiling masses who, under the impact of the ever sharpening social and economic crisis, gave increasing support to the struggle initiated by the FSLN. That support was facilitated by the place of Sandinism in the historical memory of the Nicaraguan people. The people's identification of Sandinism with the struggle against
American imperialism and the dictatorship is total. The ability of the FSLN to fuse itself with the Sandinista traditions greatly increased its prestige and author ity.
The crisis of Somozaism was hastened by its structural inability to provide a democratic opening, aside from a few short-term maneuvers. The thirty-threemonth state of seige, from December 1974 to September 1977, led to an extreme political isolation of the dictatorship. The National Guard and imperialism appeared more and more as its only props.
This state of siege was used by the Somoza clique to increase to the maximum its economic advantages. The process of economic reconstruction following the earthquake made possible all sorts of speculative operations. The corruption reached heights undreamed of even in the Italian government.
The so-called opposition bourgeoisie, even important groups like the Pellas family, came to view Somoza and his lieutenants as disloyal rivals who made private use of the state apparatus to strengthen their competitive position in all sectors of the economy.
The dictatorship blocked the development of a new model of capitalist accumulation within the framework of the Central American Common Market, as well as of a new reorganization of the international division of labor. The conflict between these sections of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship could only grow sharper, especially given the former's consciousness of the necessity to anticipate the rise of the mass movement so as to contain it.
The repression during the nearly three years of the state of siege was so ferocious that the church, like the opposition bourgeoisie, had to take its distance. In the eyes of broad layers of the population, this repression legitimized moreover, armed struggle-direct confrontation with the dictatorship-as the sole path of political action.
By the end of 1977 deep fissures had appeared in Somoza's system of domination. This was the context in which the rise of mobilizations in 1978 and 1979 occurred, as well as the renewal and broadening of the FSLN's military offensives.
A Popular Insurrection
Outlines of the popular insurrection, which left an indelible imprint on the struggle to overthrow Somoza, could be seen as early as the beginning of 1978. After the bosses' lockout in January 1978, at the end of February a genuine insurrection broke out in an Indian neighborhood of Masaya, in Monimbó.
A similar uprising occurred in the Subtiava neighborhood in León, three days later, February 27. In September 1978 uprisings occurred along with FSLN military operations in León, Estelf, Masaya, Chinandega, and other cities. The fundamental tendency that was to burst forth in strength in 1979 had therefore already been present since 1978.
In September 1978 a counteroffensive by the National Guard blocked attempts by the FSLN to come in from Costa Rica and take first Peñas Blancas and then Rivas. Uprisings in these cities were bombed by the National Guard, an operation that claimed more than 10,000 lives.
Somoza adopted a policy of genocide. The fierce repression unleashed in September 1978 had a twofold result. On the one hand many young people left the cities to join the FSLN, which had not suffered many casualties. On the other hand the masses, driven to the wall by the National Guard's brutality, were impelled toward a definitive break with the dictatorship rather than toward any demoralization that the slaughter might have provoked.
This is the background for the offensives undertaken by the FSLN, whose three tendencies united in December 1978. In January 1979 they were confronted by an extremely harsh response by the National Guard, which unleashed an even more savage wave of repression, striking primarily at young people.
Literally every day, ten to twenty young people were killed in the major cities of Nicaragua. In March 1979, when the FSLN occupied Estelí, the city's population made clear their support for the guerrillas, attesting to the prestige they had won in the past few months. In April and May, military operations were launched in several sections of the country.
On June 4 the FSLN called for a general strike. Since February the FSLN united command had been preparing the insurrection, both militarily and politically, in the neighborhoods of the major cities. AM- PRONAC, for example, took responsibility for setting up clandestine clinics, gathering bandages and medicine, and assembling the materials necessary for the construction of Molotov cocktails and contact bombs.
On June 10, without waiting for instruc tions from the FSLN, the people of Managua rose up in rebellion. By June 17, FSLN forces occupied León and other cities, which they held until the end. The plebian masses of the cities-the workers, the youth, and a large number of womenentered into combat with a courage having few precedents in history.
For more than eighteen daya the people of the capital resisted aerial bombardment, artillery, and tanks before some 6,000 of them withdrew in orderly fashion to Masaya, about twenty-eight kilometers away. They had very little in the way of armsjust a few dozen automatic weapons.
The heroism of the combatants-many of whom were very young-and the ruses common to all insurrections took care of the rest. In face of the determination of the masses, the National Guard did not dare to attack the barricades unless they had tanks for protection. In several barricaded sections of the city they did not even dare enter.
The Committees
In the course of the insurrection, organs of the power of the masses began to develop. The insurrection was characterized by a strong tendency toward selforganization. This reflected the breadth of the forces that had come into motion, which went far beyond anything forseen by the FSLN leadership.
In cities such as Masaya, Diriamba, Jinotepe, León, and Matagalpa, the overthrow of the dictatorship was not limited to a military defeat of the National Guard. It resulted in the destruction of all the dictatorship's structures of domination, which were replaced by the instruments of power the masses had acquired in the course of combat.
The most widespread committees were called Civil Defense Committees. They appeared after September 1978; their function was to organize the response against repression and in defense of democratic rights. In one way or another, they frequently particpated in the preparation of the insurrection.
In the course of the insurrection itself, they became not only the rallying point of the masses but also carried out tasks of a military nature, distribution of food, organization of health care, and, more generally, administration on the city-wide level. In the rural zones, such as Chinandega, rank-and-file committees of peasants arose.
Through the CDCs popular militias were often formed, which would participate in a real way in the urban military confrontations. While these militias arose in a spontaneous manner, they were in most cases rapidly given a structure by the FSLN, which enjoyed a great deal of military and political authority. The arming of the militias was completely done on a catch-as-catch-can basis. It was only after the liquidation of the National Guard and the fall of the regime that the members of the militias, by seizing the army's weapons, obtained quality arms.
The FSLN's military forces grew considerably during the insurrectional and preinsurrectional period through bringing in a large number of young fighters. This resulted in a deepgoing transformation of the organization, which had traditionally been made up of small groups of guerrillas.
The month and a half of popular insurrection, which came after a year and a half of intense struggles, stimulated the maturation of the consciousness of the masses as only a revolution can. This is even more important since the political, organizational, and combative traditions of the workers movement in Nicaragua are relatively limited.
The high degree of self-organization as well as the high degree of combativity of important sectors of the masses-on the social and political planes-were, in fact, to dictate the evolution of the situation during the crucial days of July 17-19. While the defeat of the maneuver by the Somozaist congressman Urcuyo precipitated the events, the result is understandable only if we take into account the relationship of social and political forces established by the insurrectional move. ment.
Notes
2. Pedro Belli, Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas, March 1978.
4. Las condiciones de salud de las Americas, 1971-1973 [Health Conditions in the Americas, 1971-73], Organización Panamericana de la Salud.
5. CEPAL, August 1979.
6. Nicaragua-La crisis del sistema capitalista [Nicaragua-The Crisis of the Capitalist Sygtem], December 1978, Universidad Centroamericana.