When I heard the election results from Nicaragua, the first thing that came to mind was Ronald Reagan's promise, "We'll make them cry uncle." After 10 years of war and economic devastation imposed by the United States, the Nicaraguan people had enough and cried "uncle." The White House called the results a triumph for democracy.
In a real sense, the Nicaraguan people had been given the gift of democracy, but not by the United States government or its favorite clients, the contras. The gift of democracy to the Nicaraguan people came from the Sandinistas, whom Washington consistently excoriated as totalitarian Marxists who would never give up power except by the gun. Instead it is the United States and the contras who have killed 30,000 Nicaraguans, injured tens of thousands more, and utterly destroyed the Nicaraguan economy with a virtual stranglehold.
The free and fair election carried out by the Nicaraguan government and attested to by 3,000 international observers was the most closely scrutinized of any in modern memory and proved that the hysterical U.S. characterizations of the Sandinistas have been dead wrong. The election was not a vindication of the contras, as their sponsors in the White House and the Congress have claimed; it was instead a vindication of the democratic aspirations of the Nicaraguan revolution which the United States had sought to destroy as its number-one foreign policy objective of the 1980s.
War weariness and hunger became the decisive electoral realities in Nicaragua. "The people voted with their bellies," said one observer. "Everyone is so exhausted by war and economic hardship," said another. The state of the economy was the Sandinistas' most vulnerable weakness. Economic issues are central to most elections all over the world and were certainly paramount on February 25 in Nicaragua.
The Sandinistas were unable to convince the Nicaraguan people that they could end the war and the tremendous suffering the nation has sustained. In contrast, U.S.-backed Violeta Chamorro could promise that, with her election, the war would end, economic sanctions would be lifted, and aid from Washington would follow.
In the short run, that's what the Nicaraguan people most need and the Sandinistas were unable to deliver. Indeed, the hard line taken by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in the last weeks of the campaign, and the contra pledges to continue fighting, held out little hope for peace or a normalization of relations with the United States, even if the Sandinistas won a victory in free elections. Their vague campaign slogan of "everything will be better" simply wasn't convincing to a people who could endure no more.
Despite the fact that the Nicaraguan people "voted with a gun to their heads," as Daniel Ortega said, the ruling Sandinistas have promised to respect the results and cooperate with the peaceful transition to a new government. If that promise is faithfully carried out, the Sandinistas will deserve enormous credit for political maturity and service to their country. They will have respected democracy, unlike their American adversary whose one criterion for free elections is whether the winners are people that Washington likes.
UNDER THE U.S.-BACKED SOMOZA regimes, elections in Nicaragua were neither free nor fair. Under the Sandinistas, two elections have now taken place (in 1984 and 1990) that have been affirmed in their fairness and integrity by international observers.
Even in defeat, the Sandinistas remain the single most powerful political party in the country, having won more than 40 percent of the vote in the National Assembly. The victorious UNO coalition is an uneasy partnership of very diverse political factions, from the extreme Right to the far Left, only united in their opposition to the Sandinistas. If the Sandinista front resists splintering into hard-line and moderate factions, while continuing to abide by the election verdict, it could become a mass-based revolutionary party playing by electoral rules in a pluralistic democratic system. That might open up new possibilities for Nicaragua.
Perhaps there are also lessons for the Sandinistas in defeat. Economic mismanagement and ideological rigidity combined with the crushing burdens of war and embargo to ruin the country. And while the war provided the official justification for heavy political control and security systems, many Nicaraguans grew to resent the degree of state intrusiveness and propaganda. The extent of militarization and, especially, the massive military draft also became increasingly unpopular. Even though international human rights organizations consistently documented systematic abuses by the contras as much more severe than the Nicaraguan government's, the Sandanista human rights record raised significant concerns, especially in regard to treatment of the the Miskito Indians of the Atlantic Coast, where the vote went strongly against the ruling party.
Nevertheless, whatever the Sandanistas did wrong, what the United States government has done in Nicaragua is absolutely indefensible. The U.S. history of intervention, political violence, and economic exploitation against its small neighbor to the south is utterly shameful.
After decades of violating Nicaraguan sovereignty and self-determination, Washington's prideful boast of helping to restore democracy in that suffering land is the height of arrogance and deceit. A decade of sponsoring contra atrocities, economic terrorism, and the bald-faced political manipulation of another nation's internal affairs (most dramatically illustrated in the recent election campaign) disqualifies the United States from claiming any moral victory from the results of February 25.
As former president Jimmy Carter recently said, "The U.S. has a major responsibility to rebuild this country that has been damaged by our own policies." The United States should immediately demobilize the contras as both Ortega and Chamorro have called for. The economic embargo must be lifted, with substantial aid quickly offered. The people of Nicaragua who have suffered so much must now be allowed at least to eat and to live in peace.
Despite the election results, there is still determination in Nicaragua to carry out the goals of the Nicaraguan revolution in education, health care, land reform, and social justice. As one church worker told me two days after the election, "We will fight, and we won't let the new government take away all the things that we have struggled for with such suffering and love."
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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