Interesting, Noice, Different - Brief History of Nicaragua

Occupying an area of some 130 000 square kilometres, roughly twice the size of Tasmania, Nicaragua is located in Central America between Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south.

 It is home to a population of 4.91 million people, almost 70% of whom are of mixed Indian/European origin, the remainder consisting of white residents (17%), black Jamaicans (9%) concentrated on the Caribbean Coast and an indigenous population of 5%.

The culture of Nicaragua reflects the Indian and Spanish-European heritage of the people. Only the indigenous Indians of the eastern half of the country remain ethnically and culturally distinct, retaining tribal rituals and languages.

William Walker (May 8, 1824– September 12, 1860) was an American lawyer, journalist and adventurer, who organized several private military expeditions into Latin America, with the intention of establishing English-speaking colonies under his personal control, an enterprise then known as "filibustering."

Walker became president of the Republic of Nicaragua in 1856 and ruled until 1857, when he was defeated by a coalition of Central American armies. He was executed by the government of Honduras in 1860.

One cannot attempt to explain the history of Nicaragua without referring to their superpower presence to the north. Since the 1850's, when US President Franklin Pierce authorised US naval forces to destroy the Nicaraguan town of San Juan del Norte, relations with the US have shaped the history of the country.

 In that instance, the crime of Nicaragua was granting permission for the building of a transport line carrying passengers between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in direct competition with the line established by American Entrepreneur, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Subsequent US involvement, while not quite so direct, has often wrought similar devastating effects on the people of Nicaragua. In 1934, the head of the US-trained National Guard, Seageant Anastasio Somoza engineered the assassination of opposition liberal rebel leader, Augusto Sandino.

 Three years later Somoza officially came to power on the back of fraudulent elections and so began the Somoza dynasty; an era of rapacious corruption backed by the brutal repression of the population by the National Guard.

In 1956 Anastasio Somoza was assisinated. His son, Luis Somoza, took his place before Luis's younger brother, Anastasio Jr, 'Tachito' took control in 1966. 'Tachito' perhaps knew better than his brother how to play the system. He happily accepted money from the Kennedy administration's new 'Alliance for Progress' fund that was to help modernise Latin America, paying lip service to the ideals of freedom and democracy which the funds were ultimately supposed to promote.

 Some of this money was diverted to his own accounts while some was used to set up export agriculture enterprises. These new farms displaced traditional peasant subsistence farmers from their land and forced them to become labourers for the new crops of coffee and cotton. While this strategy grew the economy during the 1960s, it also increased the total number of poor.

With the other hand, Samoza accepted other US funds to fight revolutionary activity. This allowed the National Guard to combat the Sandinista Front for National Liberation, a nationalist movement established in 1961 that took inspiration from the Cuban Revolution.


 The Sandinistas' inititiated a guerrilla war against the Samoza regime, however, the superior military training and experience of the US-backed National Guard tempered the effectiveness of the revolutionaries.

Then, in 1972, the Nicaraguan capital of Managua was hit by an earthquake. Measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, the quake resulted in the deaths of between 12,000 and 20,000 people and the homelessness of around half a million residents.

Foreign aid came flooding in and Samoza and the top officials of the National Guard proceeded to take a large share of the contributions for themselves. Even the business community, which had previously turned a blind eye to the excesses of Samoza and the Guard, were outraged. As a consequence, support grew for the Sandinistas and their revolutionary struggle.

In a bold stunt on Christmas Eve, 1974, the Sandinistas gatecrashed the party of a leading Somoza supporter, taking hostage of several guests, including high-ranking officials and diplomats. Somoza had to pay $US5 million and release Sandinista political prisoners as ransom.

For the humiliation, Somoza responded with brutality. Over the next five years the National Guard's behaviour consisted of raids, roundups, tortures and murders. However, this did not discourage the rebels and in fact fuelled the steady stream of young, angry recruits.

Other events were also unfolding to undermine the rule of Samoza. Under the guidance of Carter, US foreign policy underwent a change. To Somoza's dismay, Carter took human rights seriously, cutting US aid to the regime in 1978. By this time a full scale war had enveloped Nicaragua, with the rebels holding parts of several major cities. Even los muchacho's (teenagers and children) joined in the fighting using rocks, weapons stolen from guards and home made Molotov cocktails.

Samoza ordered the Air Force to bomb and strafe the guerrilla-held cities. Thousands died in the bombing, with thousands more becoming homeless. Nonetheless, the Sandinista's continued their campaign and, with the help of los muchachos in the cities, held hard-fought ground.

Eventually Samoza realised the war was over, fleeing with his family to Miami, Florida on the 17th of July, 1979. The National Guard collapsed and by the 19th of July the Sandinistas held power.

Hundreds of thousands of jubilant Managuans greeted the ragtag Sandinista rebels in celebrating the overthrow of the hated Somoza and the Guard. However, no sooner had the revolutionaries come to power than their old foe was plotting moves against them.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan won office partly on the back of a renewed anti-communist foreign policy. All aid was cut to Nicaragua, economic sanctions were imposed and loans from the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank were effectively halted. Worse though than the economic strangulation was the CIA-guided formation of the contras, a counterrevolutionary force comprised largely of former National Guard officers.

By late 1981 the Contras were terrorising peasants living in the northern areas bordering Honduras. These incursions continued throughout the early 1980s, leading former CIA director, Stansfield Turner, to describe the Contras' behavior as 'state sponsored terrorism'.

 Indeed, in light of the current 'war on terrorism' it is interesting to note that in 1985 the International Court of Justice at the Hague ruled that the United States was guilty of terrorism against Nicaragua, estimating that the Americans owed the Nicaraguans some $14 billion for damages.

In 1985 the US Congress voted to cut aid to the Contras. However, by this stage the CIA could not let go and continued to fund the Contras though secret arms sales to Iran. The Sandinistas continued to defeat the Contras on the battleground but incurred a steady drain of resources and loss of human life for their struggle. By the late 1980s, with their superior source of funding, the Contra strategy was to fight a war of attrition.

The strategy worked. In 1985 elections the Sandinistas' won 60% of the vote but the result reversed in 1990 elections, with some 60% of the votes going against them. In the face of the protracted war, Nicaraguans had lost their enthusiasm for revolutionary ideals and their stomach for continued violence. Washington's candidate, Violeta Chamorro, had won power for the Liberal party.

Subsequent elections held in 1996 and 2001 saw the Liberals retain power. Nicaguan voters understandably had no desire to provoke the Americans with the wrong election result, despite the fact that Sandinista policies have undergone major changes.

 No longer do the Sandinistas denounce the US as the "enemy of humankind", rather they have gone out of their way to convince Washington that a future Sandinista government would play by their rules, promising prompt debt repayment, strict adherence to structural adjustment programs, a commitment to free enterprise and the desire for swift integration into the Free Trade Area of the Americas scheme. 

Huge US flags even decorated the Sandinistas closing 2001 campaign rally. Reminiscent of a repentant Winston Smith feeling love for Big Brother at the end George Orwell's novel 1984, the back of the Nicaraguan revolutionary struggle has been broken, with the Sandinistas proclaiming their love for their big neighbour to the north.

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