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p Analysing the lessons of the September uprising, the Sandinista National Liberation Front declared in a communique issued on 17 October 1978, "We accuse of complicity in this bloodbath (meant is the punitive extermination of the population during and after the uprising—Auth.) the arch- reactionaries among the military in El Salvador and Guatemala, who at once sent aircraft and more than 500 men to Nicaragua to help the dictator exterminate our people. Yet a still greater measure of blame devolves upon the reactionary circles in the US Administration who created and nurtured the Somoza dynasty and its criminal National Guard.... In this war, the napalm and the phosphorous and block-buster bombs which the US Administration gave Somoza were dropped from aircraft which again the US Administration had given Somoza, and which were piloted by Americans and Nicaraguans trained at US military bases.”

p We follow with two more excerpts, one from the article "In the Bunker" in Newsweek’s New Year issue, according to which Nicaraguans say the Carter Administration was silent when National Guardsmen killed 3,000 in suppressing the September uprising (it wasn’t 3,000, but more than 5,000 civilians—Auth.), but was quick to offer mediation when realising how popular the Sandinistas were. In short, " Washington has apparently decided that the Sandinistas must be stopped. Towaids that end, Ambassador William Bowdler, chief US negotiator in Nicaragua, traveled early last month 77 to Costa Rica and Panama, two nations that have given overt support to the guerillas. Acoidmg to one high government official, Bowdler’s message to officials in both countries was ’heavy-handed and accompanied by hints of possible American sanctions if not obeyed’.”

p However, moderate and Left-wing oppositionists reportedly believe that Washington, afraid of "another Cuba”, prefers stability to social and economic change, or even human rights and is repeating the US policy of 1912-33 Nicaraguan occupation followed by support for the Somoza family.

p The third excerpt is from the Costa Rican weekly La Verdad dated 8 October 1978, quoting Eden Pastora ( Comandante Cero) to the effect that one Raymond Molina, a Cuban counter-revolutionary, had opened in Miami, the USA, an office to recruit mercenaries, who, according to Pastora, piloted the aircraft that bombed insurgent Nicaraguan cities in September. He also claimed that active in the country were military from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and fugitive Van Thieu ex-soldiers from Vietnam.

p Mentioned in these three passages are "the reactionary circles in the US Administration”, Washington, which had "decided that the Sandinistas must be stopped”, and a seemingly private individual, a certain Raymond Molina, who had opened in Miami an office to recruit mercenaries. These were not at all a motley (assemblage of forces, each doing its own thing. Closer scrutiny reveals that the US ruling circles coordinated the efforts of all seeking at all costs to bar the establishment of a democratic government in Nicaragua. Evidence follows:

p The Florida Tampa Tribune in a report of 18 June 1977 about the Nicaraguan Congressional lobby, said that "Molina, a Miami resident, is one of the names listed on a lobby registration statement filed by the American-Nicaraguan Council with the House Clerk’s Office June 3. The organisation said it was formally known as Citizens for the Truth About Nicaragua and listed as its address 475 L’Enfant Plaza, S. W., Suite 4100, the address of Cramer’s law firm".

p Who on earth is Cramer? On 16 June 1977, the Tampa Tribune reported that the Washington law firm of Cramer, 78 Haber, and Becker is paid annually $100,000 to counsel the Republican National Committee, and that Cramer often plans its procedures and strategy. "Cramer’s Washington law firm registered as a foreign agent for the Nicaraguan government last week and said it expects to be paid $50,000 in fees and expenses for the lobbying efforts . . . This is in addition to the $57,000 in fees paid ... by the Institute de Fomento Nacional, the joint government-private Nicaraguan economic development agency.... William C. Cramer of St. Petersburg . .. has been active in behind-the-scenes lobbying to obtain $3 million military aid to Nicaragua—a country accused by two Congressional committees of using its National Guard to beat and torture civilians.”

p In the last Congress, Young replaced Cramer as Representative from Florida. Again the Tampa Tribune on 19 June 1977 says of Young, "Young replaced Cramer in Congress.... They were part of the so-called ICY political machine in Pinellas County, named for the initials of Cramer aide Jack Insco, Cramer, and Young. . ..”

p In a vote on military aid to Somoza, two Florida Representatives, Bill Young and Bill Chappell, cast their votes for it. We thus come the full circle from Raymond Molina, to William Cramer, to Bill Young. Birds of a feather.

p Some Congressmen yielded to the Nicaraguan lobby, others of their own accord voted in 1977 for military aid to Nicaragua, as a result of which Somoza obtained $2.5 million for military hardware and another $600,000 to train the punitive National Guard.

p To provide a notion of the arguments adduced to assign for Nicaragua the American tax-payers’ money, allow me to quote from the stenographic record and more specifically, from a speech made by Congressman Rudd:

p “Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment to restore the $3.1 million in military assistance to the pro-American Government of Nicaragua. I suggest ive do what is best for the United States of America. (My emphasis here and further.—Auth.).

p ”. . .The United States has a moral obligation to assist the friendly Nicaraguan Government with military aid in order to 79 maintain stability and freedom in that country, a stability desperately needed.

p “Nicaragua’s President Anastasio Somoza is an educated man who was trained at West Point.

p “He is pro-American, and stands out clearly as a man for stability and against blood-thirsty terrorists. He deserves our Government’s continued support—to protect his people and his country’s free institutions. . . .

p “Why unnecessarily kick a friendly government in the teeth by denying Nicaragua $3.1 million of needed military assistance?

p ”. . .Leftists have, therefore, mounted a massive propaganda campaign against Nicaragua on the human rights theme to achieve this objective.

p “During the committee hearings about alleged human rights violations in Nicaragua, I am not aware of a single witness who gave credible firsthand evidence of such violations. . . .

p “These reports have been thirdhand accounts taken without verification.”

p What "thirdhand accounts" did this venerable lobbyist for the Somoza dictatorship have in mind? Here is but one, an excerpt from a Washington Post story of 13 June 1977:

p “More than 200 peasants have been killed in Nicaragua’s northern jungles in a ’reign of terror and unjust extermination’, according to the country’s Catholic bishops.

p “Most of the victims, including women and children, were killed by Nicaragua’s National Guard, which doubles as army and police following charges of collaboration with a guerilla band of 50 leftist university students operating in the area around the Valslala River in the western part of the department of Zelaya, the bishops say.

p “Zelaya’s priests, schoolteachers, peasants, and even some local sheriffs say s that the collaboration charges are a pretext to seize the peasants’ land and other spoils of war including cattle and household goods, and to rape peasant women. Capuchi friars from the US who are in charge of the Vicariate of Zelaya report that 26 rural chapels have been converted into barracks and torture centres by the National Guard. . . .

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p ”. . .After congressional hearings on the reported abuses by the Nicaraguan National Guard the State Department announced that it would withhold military assistance funds for 1977. The Department asked for a 1978 appropriation, however, in case the situation improves. In 1975 the National Guard received $1 million worth of anus and training assistance from the United States. . . .

p ”. . .A January pastoral letter by Nicaragua’s Catholic bishops denounced ’arbitrary detentions, torture, rape and executions without previous trial’ in the northern jungles, which include much of Zelaya, and Matagalpa. The letter emphasised ’the increasing concentration of land and wealth at the expense of humble peasants who have been disposessed of their fields’. . . .

p ”. . .The process already is well advanced, with 1,800 ranches occupying 50 percent of Nicaragua’s cultivated land, while 96,000 small farms occupy the rest. President Anastasio Somoza and his family own 8,260 square miles, an area approximately the size of nearby El Salvador. . . .

p ”. . .Whole districts have been wiped out by the National Guard on the pretext of guerilla collaboration, yet there was no evidence of any support for the guerillas, said another source, adding that in several cases the land of murdered peasants was redistributed among the National Guard or turned over to the large ranchers.

p “According to informed sources, some 1,200 acres along the Jyas River in the Sofana district of Western Zelaya were ceded to the local military chief, Col. Gonzalo Everts, last year, after the National Guard shot 40 Sofana peasants, including the family who owned the land.

p “Everts’ successor, Col. Gustavo Medina, recently authorised the takeover of lands south of the Dudu River by a large cattle rancher with adjacent holdings along the MatagalpaZelaya frontier, informed sources said. Of the 100 peasant families living on these lands, only 18 are left, the rest having fled or ’disappeared’, meaning they were probably shot by the military.

p “Sources who know the area well said a similar pocess has occurred in the nearby Varilla district, where 44 men, 81 women, and children were killed by the military in January, after the local sheriff accused the head of the Gonzalez family of collaborating with the guerillas. Although there was no evidence to support the sheriff’s charge, the National Guard slaughtered the entire Gonzalez family, their married daughters and their families, including 29 children, burying the bodies in a common pit, the sources said.”

But for Congressman Rudd these facts are "thirdhand accounts”, and therefore devoid of credibility. As all will clearly realise that it is impossible to get firsthand testimony, that is, from peasants slain by Somoza’s punitive squads, allow me now to quote the testimony of a man who escaped death by a fluke after being captured by National Guardsmen. His testimony was taped in San Jose, capital of Costa Rica, on 3 February 1979.

The Testimony of Marcel Morales Velasquez

p “I used to live in the Department of Carazo in Jinotepe. My mother is a housewife, my father, a social security clerk. I shall now tell you what happened to me in 1978. Like all my friends, I was interested in politics, wanting to understand what was going on in the country and how we ought to live. Early last year, I took part in the occupation of our educational establishment, and had my first whiff of gunpowder, as the National Guard fired upon us. I was a member of the Secondary School Association and head of the school students in the San Iglesias area. I lost my right arm on 9 July last year, when a bomb, a home-made contact bomb, blew up in my hand. I was to carry it to a certain place, but was pursued by National Guardsmen. As a matter of fact, I was making for a meeting, an undercover meeting of school students. At any rate, the National Guardsmen chased me simply because they saw a young man all by himself in the street at seven o’clock in the evening, when it was already dark. One couldn’t go out of doors at the time because of the curfew. I pulled the bomb out of my pocket wanting to throw it at the National Guardsmen, but accidentally touched a wall, and it exploded in my hand. The Guardsmen ran off, 82 and I was picked up by strangers and secretly attended to by a doctor.

p “After fifteen days, to let the stump of my arm heal, I decided to leave the place as I was a hunted peison who had exploded a bomb he had wanted to throw at the National Guard. Coming to the hovel where my friend and his family lived, I was detained by National Guardsmen. I have been in five prisons, five different jails, at first in Monte Limar, then in Via Carmen, in San Juan del Sur, in Campot del Mar, and finally in La Central. They are crammed with political prisoners. In four of the prisons I was tortured. At first I was simply beaten up for long and most painfully. Then a sergeant, a butcher whose name is Machanero, tortured me with electricity. He stuck electric wires into my ears and switched on the curent. Then he wrapped a live wire around the stump of my arm and passed electricity through it. I was told I would be transferred to the Modelo Jail, the so-called model prison, but my father asked a friend of his, who had a captain for his friend, to help to get me off. Father paid a 10,000 cordobas fine and I was released. I was let out, of course, to be arrested again at once. But I went to earth and a little later was told that they were hunting for me high and low. Incidentally, father receives a monthly salary of only 5,000 cordobas, and he had to mortgage our cottage to scrape together the money, a bribe which was pocketed by the jailers. A little later, I was smuggled out into Costa Rica. I was a high school student. I had completed primary school and was in the second form at high school. When the National Guardsmen seized me and tortured me I was 13. Now I’m 14.

p “I’d also like to tell you about a chum of mine, Alvaro Sanchez by name. In broad daylight in Managua, at one o’clock in the afternoon, he was detained by National Guard patrol and deposited in the Managua jail, where he was tortured and then riddled with bullets, 52 altogether. At five o’clock in the afternoon, National Guardsmen brought his body home. The name of one of the torturers is Washington. This harassment of our students began after we had organised school and student organisations and Somoza’s National Guard 83 learned that we were all Sandinistas, that we all sympathised with and supported the Sandinista National Liberation Front. That is why they subjected us to such brutal torture and persecuted us in every way possible and wherever possible.

p “There are today some 900 membeis of our school and student oigamsations in SOIIIOZA jails. In so small a country as ours 900 school and college students alone have been arrested by Somoza’s hangmen.”

p US Representative John Murphy, mentioned earlier in this book, a close friend and staunch advocate of Somoza, speaking in Congress on 21 July 1977, thus worded his arguments for 1978 aid:

p ”. . .The strong identity of the United States with Nicaragua is characterised in a State Department report on political issues:

p “Nicaraguan foreign policy stresses the maintenance of the closest possible ties with the United States. Nicaragua voted with the US in the last UN General Assembly on the antiZionism resolution, on Korea, and on the decolonisation resolutions. The Government of Nicaragua is increasingly nervous about a potential threat fiom Cuba, particularly after Angola, and this reinforces the impulse to identify with the US.

p ”. .Look at the support Nicaragua has given us... especially when compared to communist-dominated (sic!) Costa Rica. A partial listing . . . will give us an indication of the kind of courage this government. . . has.

p “First. Terrorism: Nicaragua has always supported and worked hand in hand with the United States in the common cause against international terrorism and has opposed the Soviet bloc on this issue.

p “Second. The Expulsion of Nationalist China: Nicaragua is the only Latin American country that supported the position of the United States to avoid the expulsion of China from the United Nations. Costa Rica refused to support the United States.

p “Third. Israel: Whenever the United States asks Nicaragua to speak in defence of an Israel position in the United 84 Nations . . . the Nicaraguan delegation has supported Israel’s position. . . .

p “Fourth. Disarmament: At the request of the United States delegation, Nicaragua has taken the floor and argued against the USSR and for the American position on disarmament.

p “Fifth. South Korea: At the request of the United States,— Nicaragua co-sponsored the US-backed Korean peace plan.

p “Sixth. Puerto Rico: Whenever Cuba has presented draft resolutions in different committees and the General Assembly calling for Puerto Rican independence, Nicaragua has supported the United States.

p “Seventh. Cuba: Whenever the Cuban delegation has insulted the US government and/or their President, for example, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Nicaragua has taken the floor in defence of the United States and its several administrations.

p “Eighth. In the Security Council: Nicaragua has consistently supported the different motions presented by the United States.

p “Ninth. Nicaragua was one of the two Latin American countries that supported the US military base in Iceland. Costa Rica voted against it.

p “Tenth. Cuba: Nicaragua voted with the United States against lifting the OAS ban on Cuba. Costa Rica was in favour.”

p Such was the attitude of US reaction prior to Nicaragua’s September uprising, and it did not change after Somoza managed to stay in the saddle.

p On 19 September 1978 the Wall Street Journal, mouthpiece of the US business world, noted:

p ”. . .Like it or not, the US is unalterably intertwined with this remote land of earthquakes, volcanoes, gambling casinos and cockfights. We established the National Guard, trained it and gave it guns. We educated Gen. Somoza at West Point and discouraged his political opponents because he offered stability. We launched the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba from here. The picture of a recent US ambassador adorns Nicaraguan paper money and there were even widespread rumors once that the late billionaire Howard Hughes—who lived atop 85 the pyramid-shaped Hotel Intercontinental Managua for a spell—planned to buy the country from ’Tacho’, whose family has carefully groomed Nicaragua into a sort of family heirloom.”

p Aware that Somoza would evidently not be able to hold on for long, Washington back in September 1978 embarked upon a policy of giving the country a "Somozaism without Somoza” facelift and entered into talks with representatives of the Broad Opposition Front.

p These ruses were nailed not only by genuinely progressive Nicaraguan oppositionists. Furiously assailing everyone who seemed in their eyes to be attacking the dictatorship, Right-wing extremist American Congressmen, especially the notorious Somoza-paid John Murphy, unwittingly blurted out plans devised by different US services, including the State Department. There follow extracts from the Congressional Record of Murphy’s 21 September 1978 speech:

p “This so-called group of eleven of pro-terrorist politicians which is the political front for the FSLN, has also been promoted by the State Department activists as an alleged ’Third Force’ in Nicaragua, a ’Third Force’ of Las Doces and UDEL, now the FAO, (the Democratic Union of Liberation created in December 1974—Auth.) to offer a ’moderate’ alternative to the traditionally anti-communist, pro-American centralised government headed by President Somoza and to a possible military coup by the Nicaraguan National Guard.

p “This ’Third Force’ method of finding some ’alternative’ of existing governments friendly to the United States has been the State Department’s main tactic for attacking American allies since the early 1950s. As usual, the Nicaraguan ’Third Force’ is an ally not of the Free World, but of the Communists, and ends up playing the role of a ’front man’ for a Communist takeover. R. Harris Smith wrote in his book, ’OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency’, that the most ’notorious failure of the "Third Force" theory was in Cuba where Fidel Castor’s 26th of July Movement played that role. . . .’

p ”. . .This open hostility of the US government towards the Nicaraguan government is a matter of public record. One 86 of its leading architects is Mauricio Solaun, the US Ambassador to Nicaragua. Ambassador Solaun will be remembered for his sensational ’confirmation’ of false press reports that US mercenaries were serving in a combat capacity with the Nicaraguan National Guard. . . .

p “But Ambassador Solaun has done much more. Another of his projects was to work with the Nicaraguan opposition group, the Democratic Union of Liberation (UDEL) and pursuade President Somoza to engage in a political dialogue, in other words, to make concessions to the group.”

p John Murphy also said that the US had friendly relations of cooperation with Nicaragua, that there were no disputes between the two countries, that Nicaragua supported the USA and pursued its line on major international issues, and that as far as Nicaragua was concerned, the USA had a stake in having it continue that line and wanted to help its government. Here Murphy was putting his best foot forward to defend his pal Somoza, and was going against the State Department, which sought to retain a US hold in Nicaragua, even to the extent of sacrificing Somoza to that end, but without scrapping the existing economic and political setup. In other words, the State Department prefered to have "Somozaism without Somoza”, and was amenable to sacrificing the dictator—against which Murphy was dead-set.

p However, imperialist designs for "Somozaism without Somoza" in Nicaragua were promptly nailed. In protest against backstage manoeuvring to install a government in which the Sandinistas would not be represented, the most influential Group of 12 and several other democratic organisations withdrew from the Broad Opposition Front (FAO).

p FSLN leader Miguel Castafieda told me how US imperialism’s designs failed.

p “What they wanted to do,” he said, "was to get conciliators break with the opposition forces and agree to preserve in a revised form the dictatorship that the people wanted to throw out, in other words, what the whole world now calls ’Somozaism without Somoza’. Keeping intact the economic setup that had existed under the dictatorship, they intended to jettison Somoza and, reaching agreement with the 87 reactionary wing of the national bourgeoisie, suppress the popular movement. At this juncture, the FSLN repeated time and again that the fight would go on, were there to be ’Somozaism without Somoza’. We shall stop fighting only when the people decide the lot of their country for themselves. In this situation, progressives in the FAO, in which mainly represented is the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, seeing through the stratagems of imperialism’s agents, refused to have any part in this farce, and withdrew from the FAO. First to do that was the Group of 12, who exposed the ruses of North American imperialism. There also walked out the National Confederation of the Workers of Nicaragua and several other organisations. All these forces agreed with the FSLN to form the National Patriotic Front.”

At a conference in early February 1979, the Communist and Workes’ Parties of Central America, Mexico, and Cuba discussed Nicaragua and published a communique stating in part: "We believe it vital to constantly fuel worldwide solidarity with Nicaraguan patriots and energetically expose imperialist manoeuvres to weaken and spike the popular movement by ousting Somoza, but keeping intact that regime of violence and exploitation which exists due to Somoza’s National Guard, the Nationalist Liberal Party, and the Somoza clan’s undivided economic sway. The main vehicle there is the OAS, which heeding the dictation of North American imperialism and in collusion with arch-reactionaries among the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, tried to get the heroic people of Nicaragua effect conciliation with the dictatorship through ’dialogue, mediation, and negotiation’. The soundest patriotic forces of Nicargua’s people have spurned and spiked these imperialist manoeuvres.”