Target Nicaragua
UnpublishedJanuary/February
1982
Volume:
16
Number:
1
Article
Peter R. Kornbluh
While in the past we have had to endure incomprehension and at- tacks from many countries, today several of them are falling into step with us, though we have changed nothing. So our struggle has been a just one.
The Administration is caught in a moving vice of its own making. Pressuring from the right are those who for ideological or strategic reasons are congenitally incapable of con- templating coexistence with revolutionary states in their backyard.
Ronald Slaughter
During the summer and fall of 1978, unmarked transport planes landed in Nicaraguan airports after evening curfew to provoke as few questions as possible. In- side the planes were military sup- plies much needed by Somoza to beat back the popular insurrec- tion.
"Were it not for imperialism," said an FSLN leader in November, as Haig was noisily refusing to rule out options against Nicaragua, "we could talk to the business sector, establish rates of profit based on their productive ex- perience and say to them, this is the new situa- tion of Nicaragua. And with the popular power that the revolution has, these businessmen could accept it as a real consequence of the political phenomenon that Nicaragua has lived through.
On the Report's Trail Have NACLA Reports been on assigned reading lists for a school course? Has a particular issue formed the basis for a study group? Has information provided in the Report filled in gaps in an article you were writing? We'd like to hear from you about how the magazine is used. The many letters we receive help us keep sight of who we're writing for and what kind of material is most useful.
NICARAGUA George Black, Triumph of the People-The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua (Zed Press, 1981). $9.
"Somocismo No! Comunismo No!" The first variant on what would become an endlessly repeated theme came from Francisco Urcuyo, Nicaragua's 43-hour president who loyally presided over the final destruction of Somoza's National Guard and fled to Guatemala City in the grey dawn of July 19, 1979. Other, similar slogans followed, some from centrist parties op- posed to the FSLN, some from marauding gangs of ex-National Guardsmen in the moun- tainous wilds of Matagalpa.
"When Communism threatened to engulf Guatemala in 1954 the American people became uneasy," wrote Milton S. Eisenhower, ambassador and presidential representative to Latin America the previous year.