[Marxism] a. bendana

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, Walter, Bendana is a FSLN militant. He publicly broke with Ortega over 
the Zoilamerica affair in 1998 and denounced him as a batterer (see 
http://www.ibw.com.ni/~cgenica/zoilaabe.htm), but as far as I know, he 
never resigned from the party. I should note that the CEI 
(http://www.ceinicaragua.org.ni/), which Bendana founded and heads is 
considered an FSLN think-tank. But, unless you are making an ad hominem 
attack, what's the difference? The point is what he wrote.

I considered this statement disparaging, if you are referring to Bendana:

> But as I did say before, it's much easier to write eloquent
> criticisms than to actually make a revolution and retain
> state power. Doing THAT involves making compromises with
> what one might like to do in a textbook. When I first started

He actually was making a revolution, making those compromises and fighting 
to retain state power, as the FSLN's UN rep. He's definitely NOT a Saturday 
morning quarterback as both you and Lou implied or stated. I had the 
opportunity to meet with him twice: once in the DRI in Managua and once in 
Casa Nicaragua, in New York, and on both occasions he defended Sandinista 
diplomatic compromises against the types of sectarian criticisms 
(including, perhaps, my own?) to which you may be referring. He and Bill 
Robinson, who I knew well when I  worked for Barricada (Bill was working 
for Agencia Nueva Nicaragua), are both good coin, as far as I am concerned 
(although I haven't read anything of Bill's recently). Clearly, we should 
read everything critically. But, if you read Bendana's article carefully, I 
don't think you'll find anything particularly outrageous. And he puts the 
blame for the FSLN's "fall from grace" squarely where it belongs: on U.S. 
imperialism.

For those who are interested in Bendana's politics, I reprint below 
sections of a couple of pertinent recent articles he has written.

-------------------------------------------------
http://www.peoplesgovernance.org/press/Nic_LA_lessons.htm

NICARAGUA´S AND LATIN AMERICA´S "LESSONS" FOR IRAQ
Alejandro Bendana

(Alejandro Bendana served as Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry, and 
was the former Sandinista Government Representative to the UN from 
Nicaragua. He is at present founder and President of the Board of theCentro 
de Estudios Internacionales in Managua, Nicaragua. He will be going to Iraq 
this April 8-15 as part of the International Fact Finding Mission to 
investigate the political process in Iraq.)

· An analytical distinction should be made between US political 
interventions employing primarily economic weapons in order to destabilize 
a popular or nationalistic government, AND a US military intervention 
employing (subsequently) political and economic means in order to 
"stabilize" an implanted regime. Most interventions US interventions in 
Latin America took the form of the first, albeit indirect proxy military 
pressure was placed on Nicaragua. However the 2004 intervention in Haiti, 
as with Iraq and Afghanistan, belong to the second category. The strategies 
and the stakes are different, but the end goal is the same: control.

Traditionally the US will act against elected governments in Latin America 
that show inclinations to redistribute wealth and challenge 
imperial/corporate hegemony. Aside from destabilization as was the case 
against the Allende government in Chile in 1973 utilizing covert operations.

Additionally, in recent times, interventions makes use of political and 
electoral mechanisms to help insure the victory of pro-US candidates and/or 
denying legitimacy to independently elected official, particularly those 
that refuse to undergo privatization and liberalization. In Venezuela, the 
United States is making use, through the pro-US opposition, of the 
Electoral Council and the Judiciary, along with the principal press organs, 
to force President Chávez out of office. Coup makers one year ago proved 
to be funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, whose mandate in 
general is to "strengthen" democracy.

In Nicaragua and elsewhere, the National Democratic Institute and 
especially the International Republican InstituteÂ?respective 
congressionally funded foreign policy wings of the Democratic and 
Republican parties engage directly with pro-US oppositions, including media 
and labor unions. At the same time the US government and the International 
Financial Institutions will cut off loans, credits and aid pushing 3rd 
country donors to freeze cooperation, as was the case in Haiti and 
Nicaragua. The political interventions do not shy away from violence, 
fomenting provocation and confrontations with authorities: All in the name 
of democracy.

Oil wealth makes it difficult for the US to employ economic intervention as 
effectively in Venezuela, as it has in the cases of Nicaragua and Haiti. 
Washington exploits and expands existing social-cultural contradictions in 
order to further its interests, creating if need be its own social base.

During the 1980s the Sandinista Government resisted US military pressure 
and an economic embargo. The government resisted the military (contra) 
pressure, but lost control of the economy, forced to call elections in 1990 
in which the Sandinista Party lost to a US-organized and financed legal 
opposition coalition, while holding the contra army in reserve in case the 
FSLN won at the polls as was expected. The US would support the results of 
a "free" election only if its own side won. The US and the right wing in 
Central America have made extensive use of scare tactics to influence the 
electoral results, most recently in El Salvador in the March 21, 2004 
elections.

Regime imposition as the product of military intervention introduces new 
variables, although other elements remain constant. The objective is 
sustaining a regime created by the US and which it must uphold at almost 
any cost. Haiti (following the overthrow of Aristide), Kosovo, Afghanistan 
and Iraq may be examples.

What the imperialists term "nation-building" or "peace-building" refers to 
the need to construct and uphold a political and social regime in the 
"post-war", or more accurately, post-.military intervention scenario. It 
entails a qualitatively more intensive modality of engagement characterized 
by acute micro-management of the proxy government. According to the Rand 
Corporation's best practices study, "nation-building" is not primarily 
about rebuilding a country¹s economy, but about transforming its political 
institutions.

[...]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://sundial.ccs.yorku.ca/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0202&L=lacyork&F=&S=&P=147

WASHINGTON AND THE CAUDILLOS ?

CALCULATION AND MISCALCULATION IN MANAGUA BY ALEJANDRO BENDANA



From: NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS, Vol. XXXV, No. 4, Jan/Feb 2002

Alejandro Bendana is director of the Center for International Studies in 
Managua. He has been a frequent contributor to NACLA.

As foreign reporters descended upon Managua during the run-up to last 
fall's presidential election between Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and 
ex-Contra Enrique Bolaños, their favorite question was: "Has Daniel Ortega 
changed"? Bolaños, candidate of the governing Liberal Party, had been 
answering the question in the negative throughout the campaign by papering 
Nicaragua with photos of Comandante Ortega in his combat fatigues, usually 
juxtaposed with images of the long food lines of the Sandinista era and 
coffins coming home from the Contra war. Bolaños had a very clear message: 
Elect Ortega on November 4, and risk retaliation from the United States. In 
the end, voters were swayed by Bolaños' warning. He defeated Ortega by 9% 
of the vote.

Ortega had been one of the leading comandantes of the Sandinista National 
Liberation Front (FSLN) when the guerrilla movement ousted the brutal 
U.S.-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza-and his hated National 
Guard-in 1979. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, the FSLN was founded in 
1961 with the avowed goal of overthrowing the Somoza family dynasty, which 
had ruled Nicaragua since 1934. While the Carter administration bit the 
bullet in the summer of 1979 and tried to work with the victorious Marxist 
inspired Sandinistas, the soon-to-be-elected Reagan administration 
unleashed a less-than-covert war against them, arming and funding a rebel 
army that came to be called the Contras. The Sandinistas fought the Contras 
to a standstill, and Omega was formally elected president in 1984. He was 
defeated, with U.S. help, in his 1990 re-election bid, and in two 
subsequent attempts to regain the presidency. Despite this run of electoral 
defeats, he has maintained a tight grip on the FSLN, now the country's 
principal opposition party.

Its revolutionary beginnings notwithstanding, by 2001, the FSLN was bending 
over backward to convince everyone who would listen that it had indeed 
changed, that the party no longer believed in the famous verse of the old 
Sandinista anthem calling el yanqui the "the enemy of mankind." The FSLN 
hoped to capitalize on the rising discontent over the country's severe 
economic crisis and on the national anger with the governing party's venal 
corruption. Sandinista electoral strategists devised a "path of love" 
campaign for Omega with pink posters adorned with flowers in attempts to 
reach out to non-Sandinista critics of the ruling Liberal Party.

In fact, the Nicaraguan electorate, along with Washington and foreign 
nongovernmental donors, all had good reasons to be angry with the outgoing 
Liberal administration of Arnoldo Alemán. Washington and the donors were 
furious when, in the wake of the devastating 1998 Hurricane Mitch, massive 
relief aid somehow found its way to the beach villas of Alemán's financial 
partners-payment for not always apparent services rendered. And while 
Alemán and his friends replied they were simply practicing free enterprise 
and taking advantage of market opportunities, the World Bank and the IMF 
protested general economic mismanagement as many privatization deals lined 
the pockets of Alemán cronies. The doling out of bank credit to political 
influentials led to a collapse of A four banks in a period of less than two 
years. Donors curtailed cooperation and the IMF even suspended debt relief 
plans.

But despite its misgivings with the Liberals, the United States had long 
resolved to keep the influence of the FSLN in check. Washington's Nicaragua 
policy over the course of the 1990s-like its Latin America policy in 
general-was geared to eliminating all notions of revolutionary 
socio-economic entitlements and any alternatives to free market 
fundamentalism. It was at the beginning of the 1990s that the Bush Sr. 
administration had come to the conclusion that the Nicaraguan Contras, with 
their Miami-based, CIA bankrolled leaders, whom Colin Powell once referred 
to as "Gucci commanders," would never be able to defeat the Sandinistas in 
battle. The first Bush administration then took to waging war by political 
means. While keeping the Contras mobilized in Honduras, the administration 
funneled funds and covert support to anti-Sandinista candidate Violeta 
Chamorro in 1990, thus securing the first electoral defeat of Daniel Ortega 
and the FSLN.

So the most interesting question, clearly answered in the negative by the 
end of the 2001 campaign, was not whether Ortega had changed, but whether 
U.S. policy had changed over the course of the decade; whether, indeed, 
post-Cold War unipolarity might allow Washington to do normal business with 
a new Sandinista government headed by an old revolutionary like Ortega.

In addition to keeping the Sandinistas in check, Washington had resolved to 
prevent an economic collapse in Nicaragua. For ideological and strategic 
reasons, the United States could not afford to have a capitalist breakdown 
follow on the heels of the collapse of the Sandinista "socialist 
experiment." Although U.S. aid dwindled over the course of the later 1990s, 
Washington was not able to claim "donor fatigue" and simply pull out of 
Nicaragua, as some of the West Europeans did. As in many places around the 
globe, however, free-market fundamentalism was at odds with itself in 
Nicaragua, as Washington demanded demobilization of the Sandinista military 
and massive privatization of the state economic sector inherited from the 
war. The combination proved disastrous; unemployment skyrocketed and 
corruption followed hard on the heels of the privatization of state-owned 
industries.

Few in Washington, however, realized that this fundamentalist neoliberal 
onslaught, while provoking severe social suffering in the population, was 
also pushing the Sandinista leadership to rapidly make ideological 
concessions in order to get a share of the political and economic pie. 
Increasingly influential Sandinistas with major economic and bank holdings 
had developed a vested interest in capital-centered stability and a share 
of the spoils of liberalization.

This conversion in Sandinista ranks also had a foundation in the heavy 
blows suffered by unions and rural laborers as the result of the new 
economics. The "free market" policies steadily brought about what the 
United States and the Contras could not accomplish by force of arms-or the 
Chamorro and Alemán governments by force of laws-that is, the 
reconcentration of land, wealth and power in fewer hands. Without access to 
credit and repayment facilities, and with no protection from cheap imports, 
farmers, cooperatives, small scale industrial shops shrank in numbers and 
influence. Many moved into the informal sector, which in time grew larger 
than the so-called formal economic sector. Revolutionary and even 
opposition politics gave way to strategic collaboration between the FSLN 
and the governing Liberal party chieftains. Leftist voices in the FSLN were 
effectively muzzled. A democratic development model was nowhere to be seen.

State weakness in post-Cold War Nicaragua, along with the gradual collapse 
of the export-oriented development model and the huge foreign debt-in 1994 
the debt stood at $11 billion in a $1.8 billion economy gave the 
international financial institutions (IFIs) and northern donors enormous 
influence over economic policy and the national budget. As the state's 
ability to respond to the critical situation dwindled, however, episodes of 
violence multiplied and the country became even less attractive to foreign 
capital.

Meanwhile the Sandinista Party, unable to govern, would prove quite adept 
at making Nicaragua ungovernable when it so chose, promoting or supporting 
strikes and protests one moment, yet negotiating with the government the 
next. Much to the initial chagrin of the United States, the Chamorro 
administration, followed even more strongly by its successor, the Alemán 
government, felt obliged to enter into agreements with tri the FSLN that 
would leave key privileges and government posts in Sandinista hands. Daniel 
Ortega made good on his post-electoralloss pledge to "govern from below." 
And given the recklessness with which structural adjustment and 
liberalization were pursued by the government and the IFIs, the Sandinistas 
had unwitting allies in their quest to make Nicaragua unstable and 
ungovernable; the economy and political order spun from crisis to crisis 
over the course of the 1990s.

In 1998 an infamous agreement-called the pacto - was signed between Alemán 
and Ortega. Under its terms Ortega not only secured de facto impunity from 
prosecution on charges of sexual molestation brought about by his 
stepdaughter, but also constitutional changes that gave the FSLN direct 
presence in electoral, judiciary and legislative posts. Most important, the 
electoral threshold for obtaining a presidential victory was lowered to 
35%. According to the independent analysts Etica y Transparencia, parties 
and candidates were improperly disqualified by an electoral board, now run 
by the two major parties. According to one U.S. observer,  "Ortega and 
Alemán have rigged some of the good institutions of government that were 
created, ironically, under the Sandinistas."

The pacto shut out non-Liberal and non-Sandinista alternatives that might 
have been more to the liking of an electorate-and a U.S. 
administration-disgruntled with both caudillos. The point of the pacto was 
to deprive Nicaragua and Washington alike of a third option. Alemán's 
proposition to the United States was the same as the one made to the 
Nicaragua electorate, to force a choice between the perpetuation of the 
rule of Alemán's tightly controlled Liberal Party, or the return of an 
"unrepentant" and "unchanged" Daniel Ortega.

The U.S. fear of Ortega's return to power may not, at that point, have had 
as much to do with the future of Nicaragua as with the future of the 
Americas as a whole. The Colombian conflict was now high on the U.S. 
agenda, Venezuela appeared unusually rebellious, and Cuba had reacquired 
importance under the new Republican administration. Ortega's candidacy was 
coupled with the return, under Bush II, of key Sandinista haters of the 
Reagan and Bush I administrations. Washington's revived Cold Warriors, 
always lurking in the background, began to worry about a 
Cuba-Venezuela-Colombia-Nicaragua axis. So by early 2001, with many 
observers and polls predicting that Ortega would win, the U.S. State 
Department began paying more attention to Nicaragua.

[...]

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