Book Review – Truth-Telling about Nicaragua’s Long Revolution for Liberation and Democracy / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Photo :}} _{^{nicaraguasandino.com/vida-y-revolucion-my-name-is-daniel-kovalik/}}

Daniel Kovalik, Nicaragua, a History of US Intervention & Resistance, (Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2023), ISBN; 978-1-949762-64-8, www.claritypress.com, 303 pages.

Prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves, speaking in Nicaragua in 2022, points out that the United States “is 350 million people [and is] the strongest military force in the world. Nicaragua is 6.2 million people, a country in Central America seeking to develop itself and its people.”

And so, “Why in God’s name, with a country so large, with so many resources, with such military strength, why would [the U.S.] want to pick on a small country like Nicaragua? I ask myself that question every day.”

Peace activist and Vietnam War veteran S. Brian Willson, speaking in South Paris, Maine, on September 13, 1998, had answered the question: “This neoliberal economics, the latest stage of capitalism, does not allow for alternative political or economic ideas or values. We already knew that any country that seriously threatened our model either had to assimilate or be eliminated.”

Willson had acted. On September 1, 1987 in Oakland, California, he put himself in front of a train to prevent a weapons delivery to U.S.- backed “Contra” mercenaries fighting revolutionaries in Nicaragua. The train did not stop and Willson lost two legs.

Daniel Kovalik’s valuable new book “Nicaragua, A History of US Intervention & Resistance” demonstrates the truth of Willson’s insight. Kovalik is a labor lawyer, human rights activist and teacher, and prolific author (his other books are here).

In that summer of 1987, college student Kovalik was part of a reforestation project in Nicaragua. The Contra war was in progress, and he heard machine gun fire “nearly every night.” The suffering was “simply shocking.” He writes that photos he took of children there “makes me want to cry.” The “Veterans Peace Convey” of humanitarian aid to Nicaragua, which he joined in 1988, was “possibly the most profound experience of my life.” Kovalik’s book is immensely appealing, not least because of personal experience that he relates.

He makes effective use of extended quotations from various reports, other histories, analyses from international agencies, and commentary from participants. Kovalik states that the object with his book was to present “the realities of U.S. intervention [in Nicaragua,] past and present,” highlight Nicaraguans’ abilities to overcome U.S. “assaults,” and promote solidarity with Nicaraguans in their struggle for self-determination.

The book’s first sections review Nicaragua’s history prior to the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s (FSLN) accession to power. It covers Tennessean William Walker’s attempt to set up his own slavocracy in 1855, U.S. Marines’ occupation of Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933, U.S. formation of Nicaragua’s oppressive National Guard, and U.S. support after 1936 for the brutal Somoza-family dictatorship.

Kovalik reports on Augusto Cesar Sandino’s guerrilla army that fought the Marines from 1927 until their departure. He writes about the struggle of the FSLN rural insurgency after 1960 to bring down the Somoza regime. Over 50,000 Nicaraguans died in the year preceding its collapse on July 17, 1979.

Most of the book is about the FSLN in power, their electoral defeat in 1990, the U.S.-led Contra counter-revolution in the 1980s, the “Dark Days” of neoliberal rule after 1990, and the Sandinistas in power again after 2007. There are these points:

· Until recently, the Sandinistas, originally an alliance of three factions, governed with allies including Catholic Church representatives, business leaders, capitalists, Marxists, and rural collectives.

· Women’s lives have improved in equality, political participation, and leadership opportunities.

· Sandinista approval ratings have remained high, even in stressful times, for example, 80% in 2018 prior to the protests of that year and up to 90% before the 2021 elections.

· Dissent within FSLN ranks and FSLN differences with its opposition have reflected divisions between city and countryside and between intellectual callings and manual work.

· The Catholic Church, now far removed from liberation theology, has consistently harassed the Sandinistas.

· Kovalik inveighs against U.S. leftists who have abandoned the Sandinistas. They “claim to know better about the nature of Daniel Ortega and the FSLN than the Nicaraguan people,” he points out.

· Sandinistas in power have accomplished much: nutritional gains, agrarian reform, food sovereignty, housing access, widespread electrification, increased literacy, more jobs, youth programs, universal access to schools and healthcare, infrastructure improvements, and lowered mortality rates.

Until 2020 or so, far fewer Nicaraguans were migrating north than were the peoples of other Central American countries. Their reduced numbers testify to the benefits of change in Nicaragua.

Kovalik finishes his book with a look at the interplay of recent anti-government protests, harsh penalties exacted by the government, and mounting criticism of the FSLN government by sectors of the U.S. and European left.

Anti-government protests with street actions and barricades prevailed in mid-2018. In his afterword that concludes Kovalik’s book, Orlando Zelaya Olivas indicates that 198 civilians and 22 police officers were murdered. Mainstream news reports uniformly blamed the police for killing peaceful demonstrators. The truth was otherwise.

Kovalik, citing sources, shows that the protesters had been paid and prepared, that many had criminal records, that snipers rather than the police did most of the killing, and that lethal violence continued even after the police were withdrawn. These were fake protests programmed toward destabilization and eventually a coup.

Kovalik shows the U.S. hand in creating turmoil. The U.S. government had funded opposition NGOs, youth groups, religious organizations, and dissidents who included former Sandinistas. U.S. agents and funding were behind the anti-government messaging on social media that played a prominent role.

Nicaragua’s government arrested and jailed many of those who in 2018 had violated laws against terrorist activities and against unauthorized service to a foreign government. In June 2019, the government amnestied hundreds of those caught up in the coup attempt. Dozens of jailed coup plotters were released on promising that they would no longer conspire against the government.

Criticism exploded again in 2021 after those who had promised to give up on plotting were imprisoned again on grounds that they were aiming to destabilize upcoming elections. Kovalik states that, “the first duty of a Revolution is to defend itself, for if it cannot meet this most essential goal, it obviously cannot serve and defend the people as they deserve.”

There was the added element of the imprisonments supposedly constituting interference in the elections of November 7, 2021 that gave Daniel Ortega a fourth consecutive presidential term.

Writing from Nicaragua, Stephen Sefton explains that the jailed opposition leaders were not opposition candidates. The political opposition in 2011 had split into regular political parties and “an extra-parliamentary opposition based in local NGOs.” The latter sector had “mounted the violent, US designed coup attempt” of 2018 and were arrested according to Nicaraguan Law. The opposition’s contending political parties had no part in planning a coup in 2021, according to Sefton

After Daniel Kovalik’s book was published, solidarity with the Sandinistas took a big hit. On February 9, 2023, the government released 222 prisoners, mostly those who had been arrested in 2021. It expelled all but a few to the United States. The government took away their citizenship and that of a 100 or so others, and confiscated their properties. Criticism has resounded, for example, from the Economist magazine, the United Nations, to the left-leaning Colombian government.

Taking away someone’s citizenship surely is an extraordinary step, certainly in the United States, and only slightly less so in the U.K. The grounds would be treason. A rationale for such a judgment emerges out of Kovalik’s book.

One imagines a favored few in Nicaragua who are oblivious to decades of U.S. military attacks, violence, pay-offs, trickery and manipulations. They spurned the government’s long efforts at collaboration and coalition building. One equally imagines the grief attending decades of popular resistance against the U.S.-backed dictatorship and, afterwards, the U.S.-backed opposition.

What’s left is desperation, especially what with population elements who reject the idea of justice and dignity for all Nicaraguans and who once more are shown to be dependent on the U.S. government. Meanwhile, U.S. economic sanctions are non-stop.

The book’s basic point is that rescue and recovery of oppressed, marginalized, and poor Nicaraguans have required a very long process. It’s no wonder that some counterparts today of Tom Paine’s “summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” have dropped out.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Indigenous rebellion continues as post-coup Peruvian government flounders / By William T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Anti-government protesters chant slogans against Peru’s President Dina Boluarte, on the shore of lake Titicaca in Puno, Peru, Tuesday, March 7. | Juan Karita / AP}}

Revived democratic struggle in Peru is well along into a second act. There was the parliamentary coup on Dec. 7 that removed democratically-elected President Pedro Castillo and the “First Taking of Lima” in mid-January, when embittered and excluded Peruvians occupied Lima and faced violent repression. Then, on March 1, protests renewed as the Indigenous inhabitants of Peru’s extreme southern regions prepared once more to demonstrate in Lima and would shortly be protesting in their own regions.

The resistance’s make-up was fully on display.

Protesters throughout Peru were rejecting a replacement president and an elite-dominated congress and calling for early elections and a new constitution. They belonged for the most part belonged to Aymara communities in districts south of Lima extending from Lake Titicaca both west and northeast, into the Andes region.

Their complaints centered on wealth inequities, rule by a Lima-based elite, inadequate means for decent lives, and non-recognition of their cultural autonomy. Their support and that of other rural Peruvians had brought about the surprise election to Peru’s presidency in 2021 of the inexperienced Pedro Castillo. He had defeated Keiko Fujimori, daughter of a now imprisoned dictator and favorite of Peru’s neo-liberal enablers.

By March 1, residents of provinces close to the city of Puno were arriving in Lima to carry out the so-called “Second Wave of the Taking of Lima.” Demanding the de facto President Dina Boluarte resign, as of March 4 protesters had not been able to break through police lines surrounding key government buildings. The main action, however, was going on in the epicenter of police and military repression ever since Boluarte had taken office on Dec. 7.

That would be the Puno area, where most of the 60 deaths caused by violent repression have occurred, with 19 protesters having been killed on Jan. 9 in Juliaca, a town 27 miles north of Puno city.

On March 5, violence was again playing out in Juli, a town 58 miles south of Puno, also on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Demonstrations along with roadblocks were in progress throughout the extended region, all in sympathy with the concurrent protests in Lima. Involved were Indigenous groups, small farmer organizations, and social movements.

In July, the demonstrators, confronted by military units and police in civilian dress, set fire to judicial office buildings and the police headquarters. The troops fired, shots came from open windows, and tear gas was released from a helicopter; 18 demonstrators were wounded.

Demonstrators blocking a bridge over a river prevented the entry of troops into the nearby town of Llave. Rains had caused flooding and in the process of swimming across the river, one of them drowned and five others disappeared.

Protesters captured 12 soldiers; community leader Nilo Colque indicated they were released after they admitted to trying to break the “strikes” but that they too opposed the military’s actions. Colque predicted that soon 30,000 Aymaras would be descending on Juli and nearby population centers.

Aymara activists in Llave announced a strike of indefinite duration. A “committee of struggle” in Cusco announced the beginning as of March 7 of an indefinite strike in 10 provinces. The president of the national “Rondas Campesinas” (peasant patrols), said to represent two million Peruvians in all, announced a big march on Lima from all regions set for March 13.

Meanwhile, Peru’s chief prosecutor has embarked upon an investigation of President Boluarte and other officials for crimes of “genocide, homicide resulting from circumstances, and causing serious injury,” that allegedly took place mostly in southern regions in the weeks immediately after her taking office.

There are these other developments:

Peru’s Supreme Court on March 3 heard a proposal that the “preventive imprisonment of ex-President Castillo be extended from 18 to 36 months. Another court had previously denied his appeal for habeas corpus.
The Congress as of March 6looked to be on the verge of, for the fourth time, refusing to advance new presidential elections from April 2024 to sometime in 2013.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has released a preliminary report accusing the new Peruvian government of excessive use of force against protesters.
Polling results currently go one way: 77% of Peruvians reject the Dina Boluarte government, 70% say she should resign, 90% denounce Peru’s Congress. 69% favor moving general elections ahead to 2023, and 58% support the demonstrations. Most of those making up these majorities live in rural areas, according to the report.

The opposing sides in the Peruvian conflict are stalemated. Powerbrokers presently lack a government capable—willing though it may be—of providing structure and organization adequate for protecting their political and economic interests.

Marginalized Peruvians are without any effective historical experience from which revolutionary leadership and strategies might have developed, such that now they might have direction and focus. The people’s movement there is not as lucky as its counterparts were in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

Now, the U.S. government meddles with this state of precarious balance in Peru. And not surprisingly: it has long intruded militarily and is competing with China economically.

Speaking on March 1, State Department Ned Price did insist that in Peru, “our diplomats do not take sides in political disputes … They recognize that these are sovereign decisions.” He added that the United States backs “Peru’s constitution and Peru’s constitutional processes.”

But political intervention was on the agenda already. Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols on February 28 urged Peru’s Congress to expedite early elections and Peru’s president to promptly end the crisis caused by ex-President Castillo’s “self-coup”—whatever that was.

People’s World has an enormous challenge ahead of it—to raise $200,000 from readers and supporters in 2023, including $125,000 during the Fund Drive, which runs Feb. 1 to May 1.

Please donate to help People’s World reach our $200,000 goal. We appreciate whatever you can donate: $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, or more.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

_{People’s World, March 9, 2023}

Rural-Based Popular Resistance Confounds Peru’s Post-Coup Government / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{The repression of the protests in Peru fail to appease them, quite the opposite | Photo: Prensa Latina}}

Crisis in Peru is moving into a second act. It follows both the congressional coup December 7 that removed democratically elected President Pedro Castillo and the protests and violent repression that culminated in mid-January. Now, from March 1 on, demonstrators have been filling streets in Lima and protests have spread across southern regions of the country.

In Lima and elsewhere their demands remain: departure of de facto President Dina Boluarte, the closing down of Peru’s Congress, moving new elections from 2024 to 2023, and a referendum on a constituent assembly for forming a new constitution.

Popular mobilizations in early March were remarkable for their geographical base and for the protesters themselves. Both in Lima and in southern cities, they are mostly Aymara inhabitants of rural districts in Peru’s South that extend west from Lake Titicaca and northeast into the Andes foothills.

Their support and that of rural people throughout Peru had been key to the surprise election in 2021 of the inexperienced Pedro Castillo to Peru’s presidency. He had defeated Keiko Fujimori, daughter of an imprisoned dictator and favorite of Peru’s neo-liberal enablers.

At issue for aroused working-class Peruvians are the political arrangements of Peru’s business and commercial elites who owe their good fortune to the economic yield of extractive industries. These include steps taken to suppress masses of Peruvians and bypass their aspirations. Andy Higginbottom’s recent article “Peru and capitalist extraction–the imperial mining powers behind the throne” is essential reading. He elaborates upon the role of foreign investors and foreign interests generally in maintaining Peru’s status quo.

Activists from provinces near the southern city of Puno were arriving in Lima as of March 1. They were the “Second Wave of the Taking of Lima,” the first having been the protesters in mid-January. Four days later they had not been able to break through police lines surrounding key government buildings.

The main action was happening back in Puno. The Puno region has been a center of police and military repression ever since Boluarte became president on December 7. Most of Peru’s 60 deaths due to military and police violence have occurred in that southern region; 19 protesters were murdered on January 9 in Juliaca, a town 27 miles north of Puno city.

On March 5, demonstrations and roadblocks were in progress throughout the extended region. Indigenous groups, small farmer organizations, and social movements were demonstrating in Juli, a town 58 miles south of Puno, also on the shore of Lake Titicaca.

Confronted by military units and police in civilian dress, demonstrators there set fire to judicial office buildings and police headquarters. Troops fired, shots came from open windows, and tear gas was released from a helicopter; 18 demonstrators were wounded.

Demonstrators blocking a bridge over a river prevented the entry of troops into the nearby town of Ilave. Rains had caused flooding and in the process of swimming across the river, one soldier drowned and five others disappeared.

Protesters captured 12 soldiers; community leader Nilo Colque reported they were released after admitting they were strike breakers and confessing that they too opposed the military’s actions. Coolque predicted that 30,000 Aymaras would soon be descending on Juli and nearby population centers.

Aymara activists in Ilave announced a strike of indefinite duration. A “Committee of Struggle” in Cusco announced the beginning as of March 7 of an indefinite strike in 10 provinces. The president of the national “Rondas Campesinas” (peasant patrols) – they supposedly represent two million Peruvians – announced a march from regions mainly in the North that would be arriving in Lima from March 9 on.

Meanwhile Peru’s chief prosecutor has embarked upon an investigation of President Boluarte and other officials for crimes that include “genocide” and that allegedly occurred in southern regions in the weeks after she took office.

There are these other developments:

· Peru’s Supreme Court on March 3 heard a proposal that the “preventive imprisonment of ex-President Castillo be extended from 18 to 36 months. Another court denied his appeal for habeas corpus.

· Peru’s Congress, as of March 6, looked to be on the verge of once more refusing to advance new presidential elections from April 2024 to sometime in 2023.

· The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released a preliminary report accusing the new Peruvian government of excessive use of force against protesters.

· Polling results go one way: 77% of Peruvian reject the Dina Boluarte government, 70% say she should resign, 90% denounce Peru’s Congress, 69% favor holding general elections in 2023, and 58% support the demonstrations. The report indicates these results mostly reflect opinion in rural areas.

The opposed sides in the Peruvian conflict are each floundering. Powerbrokers presently lack a government capable – willing though it may be – of providing structure and organization adequate for protecting their political and economic interests. Marginalized Peruvians have the handicap of lacking historical experience out of which revolutionary leadership and a mature strategy might have developed that would provide them with direction and focus.

The people’s movement in Peru is not as lucky as counterparts were in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and even in Chile and now in Colombia under President Petro.

The balance is precarious and the U.S. government is meddling; it has long intruded militarily and now is competing with China economically,.

Speaking on March 1, State Department Ned Price did insist that in Peru, “our diplomats do not take sides in political disputes … They recognize that these are sovereign decisions.” And the United States backs “Peru’s constitution, and Peru’s constitutional processes.”

But political intervention is on the table still: Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols on February 28 urged Peru’s Congress to expedite early elections and urged Peru’s president to promptly end the crisis caused by ex-President Castillo’s “self-coup” – whatever that is.