Elections in Nicaragua today ... here's a chap wondering if the Reagan-North gang have been completely cleaned out of the halls of power, and whether a new United Fruit action is on the way ... under a 'war against terrorism' almost anything could be justified, using controlled 'information' and surreptitious military power, just like in the olden days, i think we need to stay alert for this .... personally i think Ortega a demented socialista chingón, but if the people rally behind him then he is the presidente, and that's that -
This Time, Stay Out of Nicaragua's Affairs
By JONATHAN POWER, Jonathan Power is a London-based columnist
At least former President Reagan is too ill to feel
the pain. If Daniel Ortega and his colleagues from
the revolutionary Sandinista movement are swept
back into power in Sunday's general election in
Nicaragua, it won't be Reagan's feathers he ruffles.
Still, there are enough old Central American
warriors in the Bush administration--Elliott Abrams,
chairman of the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom, for example--that there could
be pressure for the U.S. to send in the CIA to head
off an apparently unfriendly government. How will
they put it? Perhaps as Reagan did: "If we ignore
the malignancy of Nicaragua, it will spread and become a mortal threat to the
entire New World." Or again, "The Sandinistas are just two days' drive from
Harlingen, Texas."
Rhetoric like this cost Central America--there also were left/right civil wars in
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras--thousands of lives and left villages and
towns decimated. They were unnecessary wars and the U.S. had no business
supporting a small, unyielding land-owning class against a small minority of the
underdogs who dared to use violence against them. The history books have
revealed what many of us suspected at the time, that the reports of Soviet or
Cuban support for the rebellions were misleading or exaggerated. In
Guatemala, a U.N. commission found that only 3% of the deaths were caused
by the rebels and 97% by government forces. The way for Washington to look
at Nicaragua is for its potential, if given the right kind of help. Now years of
neglect combined with drastically falling coffee prices and a vicious drought
have reduced many to penury, unable even to feed their families--all this, as
Reagan said, only two days' drive from Texas.
Central America has known better times. In the 20 years following World War
II, export-led economies expanded at a handsome 6% a year. War and the
collapse of commodity prices have sabotaged this growth. The old
development pattern was marred by fatal distortions. The benefits of growth
were assumed by a small elite. The agricultural boom in the 1960s and '70s
caused the increase in landlessness that has been a major contributor to social
unrest and civil wars. Except in Costa Rica and Panama, government policies
were almost feudal.
To get the economies going again means, first, emergency help. The food aid
Nicaragua receives today is paltry, although more is in the pipeline. Revolving
funds and communal banks should be set up to finance crops. Also urgently
needed are clinics capable of mounting mass inoculation campaigns and oral
rehydration programs to eliminate the biggest killer among children, diarrhea.
Add to this emergency water supplies, latrine construction, temporary housing
and school repairs. Does Washington have the inspiration, energy and money
for that or just for the clandestine services that can only dig Nicaragua's hellhole
even deeper?
Reaching those in immediate need is only a first step. Beyond that is the job of
restoring economic growth--and that does not mean aid but applying
free-market principles that Washington lectures the world about: removing the
protectionism that hurts the Nicaraguan textile, shoe, vegetable and flower
industries. For Nicaragua, it means investing in land reform, increasing popular
education and diversifying exports.
All this was said in a report of a commission chaired by former Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger more than a decade ago. No one took real notice. By
the time the Sandinistas had given up the bullet in favor of the ballot, the U.S.
had lost interest.
But what goes around can come around. Does Bush want conflict on his Latin
American flank? Or can he let the vote in Nicaragua go whichever way its
people want and give the country the help it deserves?
latimes.com
As for 'give the country the help it deserves', i think Canadá and México have a duty here as well, we are all on this rock together ... all three Can-US-Méx do now to some degree help Nicaragua of course, Clinton did anyway, don't know where the bushistas stand on the question |
