President Ronald Reagan and Nicaragua
excerpted from the book
Lying for Empire
How to Commit War Crimes With A Straight Face
by David Model
Common Courage Press, 2005, paper~snip~
When the Sandinistas took power, the educational system in Nicaragua was one of the poorest in Latin America. Limited spending on education and severe poverty forced many children into the labour market before their education was complete. By the time Somoza went into exile only 65 percent of primary school-age children were enrolled in school and only 22 percent of those who attended primary school completed the full six years. In rural areas, most secondary schools had only one or two grades and there was a 75 percent illiteracy rate. To improve the educational system, the Sandinistas doubled the proportion of GNP spent on primary and secondary schools, increased the number of teachers, and built more schools. Using volunteer teachers, the Sandinista government succeeded in reducing the illiteracy rate from 50 percent of the population to 23 percent. Enrollment in colleges skyrocketed from 11,142 students in 1978 to 38,570 in 1985.
Health care was a disaster under the Somoza regime with many Nicaraguans having limited or no access to modern health care. The Sandinistas completely restructured the entire health care system by spending substantially more on health care, increasing the number of students entering medical school from 100 to 500, building five new hospitals, and building 363 primary health care clinics.
The Sandinistas, who had themselves been victims of the brutal dictatorship of Somoza, were determined to construct new political institutions and to introduce a new constitution which guaranteed human rights.
The new Minister of the Interior, Tomás Borge Martinez, was committed to eliminating human rights abuses and as a start he allowed all people imprisoned by Somoza to be given a fair trial. As an urgent priority, the Sandinistas wrote and passed a new provisional constitution called the Fundamental Statute of the Republic of Nicaragua which guaranteed human rights, equal justice under the law, the right to free expression, and the abolition of torture.
To replace the National Guard, the Sandinistas created the Sandinista People's Army and a new police force. The goal of the Sandinistas was to build a well-equipped professional military.
An important step toward democratization was the creation of mass organizations representing most popular interests such the Sandinista Workers' Federation representing labour unions, the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan Women's Association, and the National Union of Farmers and Cattlemen.
All these progressive measures were interpreted by the new American President, Ronald Reagan, as symptoms of communism requiring immediate action by the United States. David Womble, in The CIA in Nicaragua stated that:
In January 1981 Ronald Reagan took office under a Republican platform which asserted that "...it deplores the Marxist Sandinista take-over of Nicaragua" and he greatly expanded the CIA's guerilla warfare and sabotage campaigns. In November 1981 Reagan authorized a covert plan for $19 million to help the Argentina dictatorship train a guerilla force operating from camps in Honduras to attack Nicaragua.
William in Killing Hope wrote that:
The President
moved quickly to cut off virtually all j.. forms of assistance to the Sandinistas, the opening salvos of his war against their revolution. The American whale, yet again, felt threatened by a minnow in the Caribbean.
p179
To overthrow what George Shultz, former Secretary of State, referred to as a "cancer right here on our land mass," the United States decided to create a surrogate guerilla force, feigning to be Nicaraguans, to rise up against the evil communist government in Managua. The alternative, an invasion by American forces, was ruled out for fear of a backlash from the American public who were not quite over the Vietnam War. The CIA covertly created a paramilitary force known as the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) or the Contras, many of whom were former members of Somoza's National Guard. By 1983, there were between 16,000 and 20,000 Contra troops who were operating along the Honduran border and from bases in Costa Rica.
The purpose of the Contras was not to defeat the Sandinista army in battle but to use terrorist tactics to destroy infrastructure, health, and educational services. Their intention was not to confront Sandinistas but to blow up bridges, power plants, oil pipelines, ports, schools, health clinics, grain silos, irrigation projects, and farmhouses. The underlying purpose of these acts of terrorism was to destroy the morale of the Nicaraguan people and to force the Nicaraguan government to divert a high proportion of its budget to defence as discussed in detail below. Diverting government resources to the war, forcing the Sandinistas to cut back on their reform programs, had a considerable negative impact on the people of Nicaragua. David Womble., in The CIA in Nicaragua, discussing the atrocities of the Contras called attention to:
Witness For Peace, an American Protestant watchdog body, collected a list of Contra atrocities in one year, which include murder, the rape of two girls in their homes, torture of men, maiming of children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, amputating the genitals of people of both sexes, scraping the skin off the face, pouring acid on the face, breaking the toes and fingers of an 18 year old boy, and summary executions. These were the people Ronald Reagan called the "freedom fighters" and the "moral equivalent of our founding fathers."
The Contras were trained by the CIA in terrorist warfare and were provided with a manual of instruction which encouraged the use of violence against civilians. According to William Blum, in Killing Hope:
The CIA manual, entitled Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare gave advice on such niceties as political assassination, blackmailing ordinary citizens, mob violence, kidnapping, and blowing up public buildings. Upon entering a town, it said, "establish a public tribunal" where the guerillas can "shame, ridicule and humiliate" Sandinistas and their sympathizers by "shouting jeers and slogans".
More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Reagan_Nicaragua_LFE.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
