(ee os OY TT FEATURE Nicaragua: guarding the future amidst a gathering U.S. storm By DOUG CHAPMAN L. revolutionary Nicaragua, 1982 was aptly named ‘‘the year for unity against ag- gression,” and when I arrived in min- November, it was obvious that the army is ‘the people. Carrying machine guns, young men and women in uniform or dressed in blue jeans appear in the streets, shops, buses and everywhere. I attended a children’s festival for peace in Managua, in a newly constructed outdoor sports park and observed among the hun- dreds of children many parents carrying a machine gun in one arm and a small child in the other. One young attractive Sandinista mother managed to juggle her weapon while with a diaper pin in her mouth, she changed her baby. There is good cause for this vigilance. The number of invasions into northern Nicaragua from Honduras by ex-Somoza National Guardsmen is rapidly increasing and the accounts of the attacks, killings, kid- nappings and destruction of crops, appear almost daily in the newspapers and on the radio and television. By the end of October 1982, the Sandinista government had tallied 420 attacks on Nicaragua territory in the past three years, while in November alone there were 50 persons kidnapped from coffee plantations and taken across the border into Honduras. During my 30-day visit in Nicaragua there were 16 attacks involving killings, kidnappings and crop destruction and I saw several funeral processions and protests and demonstrations against the United States. It didn’t take the recently published ac- counts of CIA personnel in Honduras finan- cing and directing these invasions to con- vince the people of Nicaragua that their real enemy is the United States government. In fact, U.S. intervention in their country began in 1854 when San Juan del Norte was destroyed ‘‘to avenge an insult”? to the American minister to Nicaragua and it con- tinued from 1926 to 1933 when U.S. marines _ occupied Nicaragua. Immediately after this occupation the United States government in- stalled the hated Somoza family which ruled Nicaragua as its private fiefdom until July 1979, when after bombing his own people and sacking the treasury, the tyrant Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled Nicaragua to the United States in the face of the vic- torious Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Nicaragua is now in a declared state of emergency and a visitor observes among its citizens a dedicated determination. No Pasaran! (They shall not pass!) is written everywhere and the citizens of each city neighbourhood are organized into defence committees which 24 hours a day stand guard against possible attacks. In Managua, Leon, Grenada, Jinotepe, Masaya and San Carlos I observed militia groups performing military exercises, often with wooden guns. Nicaraguans are survivors. They have to be. Out of a population of only 2.5 million 20,000 were killed when a devastating earth- quake levelled Managua in 1972. During the revolutionary struggle Somoza’s National Guard killed 50,000 peo- ple, most of whom were between the ages of _ 12 and 22 years. In the bloody dictatorship, torture was rampant and included the castration of at least one captured Sandinista leader and the supervision and training of young children to gouge out the eyes of prisoners with spoons. After pillaging the public purse, Somoza left behind a legacy of economic chaos. Over PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 4, 1983—Page 10 600,000 people were homeless, more than one million people were without adequate food and the Sandinista government found itself saddled with a 1.64 billion dollar foreign debt, the highest per capita debt of any Latin American country. . Therevolutionary government undertook _to repay this debt, although the amount scheduléd-for repayment in 1979 alone was greater than the country’s total income from exports. Add to this the enormous waste of money and human resources being directed towards their military defence and one begins to understand the abject poverty and economic shortages that are the reality of Nicaragua today. Although the cost of food, housing and transportation have been kept within reach, the people of Nicaragua are in desperate need of foreign aid. I spoke with petroleum engineers, mining experts, mechanical technicians, doctors — and teachers from Canada, Mexico, Colom- bia, Cuba, Venezuela, Italy, Norway and Sweden who are all working in Nicaragua through United Nations organizations, governmental agencies or on their own, in an effort to assist the Nicaraguan people. The Dutch contingent is substantial and TOP: Popular support for the San- dinistas is illustrated by sign on house in Nicaraguan village. CENTRE: Militiamen in Managua. BOTTOM: Part of a mass demonstration in Managua pro- testing U.S. involvement in helicopter crash which killed 75. Managua, like Toronto is a sister city of Amsterdam. Early this year a contingent of 90 Cana- dian and American eye doctors, nurses and technicians travelled to Nicaragua to con- duct a-massive eye health campaign which included everything from eye surgery to prescribing and supplying eye glasses for an expected 10,000 Nicaraguan patients. This demonstration of individual Canadian’s concern is in direct contrast to the apathy of the Canadian government and the Canadian media. For Nicaragua, the support is of major significance. Days before it was to arrive, the French ship Incotrans Spirit, brining goods collected and donated by the B.C.-based Coalition for Aid to Nicaragua, was front- page headline news in newspapers in Managua. ' The need is so great. The Reagan ad- ministration’s ‘*destabilization program’’ includes denying the Nicaraguan people American-controlled in- ternational monetary assistance. This is hav- ing a profound effect. Dental equipment, school supplies, automotive equipment and PHOTOS —DOUG CHAPMAN parts, trucks, buses and gasoline, in fad everything, are badly needed. I rode 0 several jammed buses with holes in the foo! large enough to see the pavement flashing by and most of them had dashboards without@ single working instrument. Many brokel down buses were being pushed along the road by passengers. In early December, I travelled south 150 kilometres by ship the length of Lak Nicaragua, to the town of San Cail0s situated near the Costa Rican border whet the lake empties into the Rio San Juan. 1wa invited by Petter Buvollen, a Norwegia! friend, who, at the urging of the San government, was about to conduct # sociological study of the geographi isolated people in the town of San Juan de Norte, located where the river flows into ti Caribbean Sea. ‘ We slept in the Sandinista people’s radio station, “Radio 13th of October — Th Voice of the Rio San Juan.”’ October 13 ¥# the date in.1977 when a small group of youl men and women from nearby Solentinamé attacked Somoza’s National Guard bah racks in San Carlos. The attack sparked thé revolution and was lead by Alejandt® Guevara, presently one of the Sandi . leaders in the Province of Rio San Juan. In Solentiname, Ernesto Cardenal, a Catholic priest, now the country’s ministé! of agriculture, had taught a new revolv: tionary theology which portrayed Christ 454 poor peasant worker fighting against 1 justice, represented by Somoza and his crudl bullies. , : The radio station, a community institu tion to which everyone has access, ¥ always filled with farmers and citizens wh? held on-the-air discussions of communily problems and land reform. : In San Carlos, I watched a graduatio® ceremony for students who were the product of Nicaragua’s amazing literacy campaig? Under the Sandinista red and black flag most of the town’s population was in pro! attendance. Later, I was with Sandinist4 soldiers who gathered tree boughs which were used by the citizens in their pl& Christmas religious worship. ‘ One night, while Alejandro, Petter and ! were discussing some recent attacks upo? Nicaragua from Costa Rica, only 3 kilometres away, the topic came up ? | Reagan’s dishonest media campaign, jus! part of the United States’ attempt 1 ‘destabilize’ the Sandinista government. Alejandro stated, ‘‘We are portrayed 4 Marxist and yet more than half the economy is in private hands. We are criticized for thé way we treat the Miskito Indians ye American trained and equipped invaders até killing them in the north almost every day- He added, ‘‘Reagan and Israel’s (Ariel) Sharon have both recently been in Honduras and they have agreed to make Honduras intO a mighty armed camp from which to attack us. We want to be left alone in peace. If thé people of this country are not fully behind the Sandinista government, why do you think we would give them arms?’’ _ When I left San Garlos for Managua, Pet ter and 10 Sandinista education and health Officials were still waiting for fuel to powe their boat down the river to San Juan del Norte. In Managua the day before I returned tO Canada, tens of thousands of people, in- cluding hundreds of Miskito Indians, maf- ched through the streets and gathered in the city’s main plaza to mourn the tragic death of the 75 Miskito Indian babies who perished in a fiery helicopter crash while being evacuated from the war zone near the Hon- duran border. The many anti-North American protest signs, speeches and clen- ched fists clearly indicated where the blame lay. Asa North American among them, I felt ashamed, Doug Chapman is a troller and former lawyer. He travelled to Nicaragua in November and December of 1982.