Even in Nicaragua, the Blood of the Proletariat is Exposing “Socialism of the 21st Century”

It is not like the Nicaraguan government has become bourgeois and bloody today, all the sudden. The Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) was already bourgeois from its origins when, as a guerrilla movement, based on the oppressed masses, it overthrew the government of Anastasio Somoza.

Its government later managed the interests of the bourgeoisie, securing social control with propaganda, politicking, and violence.

With the imposition of Chavez in Venezuela, which waved the banner of “Socialism of the 21st century”, and the emergence of a series of equally characterized governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, and Honduras, the bourgeois government of Nicaragua has not hesitated to align itself in spreading that populism and that demagoguery that have allowed the secure perpetuation of capitalist exploitation and the growth of corporate profits. The number of workers enrolled in the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) in March 2018 fell by 1.5%, with respect to the same month in 2017: 896,869 versus 910,621. In March, the nominal average monthly salary was 10,737.8 Córdobas, about 342 dollars. Between April 2017 and April 2018, the rate of inflation was 4.75%. However, in Nicaragua, illegal employment, with low wages and no social security, continues to be over 70%. Of the total population of 6,279,712, 50% are considered economically active; this also counts the unemployed and those who worked only one hour.

Agriculture is one of the main activities of the country, representing 60 percent of exports, a with strong employment, but there are also some industrial centers and the extraction of precious minerals.

The Government of Managua has also fulfilled its commitments with the IMF, signed in 2005, when it had remitted the debt, as long as it respected an adjustment plan for the economy, so much so that in 2012 the debt of Nicaragua to the IMF was reduced to zero. In 2006 the country also signed the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the Dominican Republic and the other states of Central America and the United States.

In an agreement with Chinese companies, the Government of Nicaragua in 2014 presented the “Great Inter-Oceanic Canal” project: a blueprint of 278 kilometers, from the mouth of the Punta Gorda river on the Caribbean coast to the mouth of the Brito river on the Pacific coast, in which 50,000 workers would have to work. This project opens a new space for trade and geopolitical confrontation between the United States and China.

Therefore, in Nicaragua the capitalists are fine, although with some contrast with the IMF regarding the policies to carry out regarding pensions and social security, and with the US government mainly due to the penetration of Chinese capital.

So, for many years Nicaragua has not come on the front pages of international newspapers: although the says only that which the bourgeoisie wants to make known, and with distorted versions of reality, the truth is that a lot of time has passed without it hearing anything of trade union conflicts, of the social situation and the repressive action of the government.

But, as in a volcano, underground pressure accumulates until the lava of social struggle explodes, pushed by the contradictions between capital and labor.

The government had announced a series of laws aimed at guaranteeing the financial sustainability of the INSS, reforms that it intended to agree upon with the representation of the businessmen, the Superior Council of Private Business (COSEP). However, without having reached an agreement with COSEP, it approved a decree that increased the contributions that companies and workers deposit into the national pension system. COSEP rejected the decree because it would have increased the cost of work, launching screams about the reduction of competitiveness and the employment ability of the companies. Obviously, it opposed the decree not in defense of workers, pensioners, and social security, but because of the threat to corporate profits.

The government then admitted that the INSS would not have had the funds to pay pensions before the end of the year. For this reason, the provision expected that the insured workers would have paid more (from 6.25% to 7%), employers from 19% to 22.5%, while to the pensioners the pension would have been reduced by 5% and the State would have contributed, although with a minimum.

But last April a spontaneous explosion of rage and protest surprised both the government and the various movements and political groups. The reaction of the workers was immediate. Only the National Employees Union supported the reform and saw some small concentrations of public sector workers who expressed their support for the government, against the “destabilizing violence of the right”. 

The bourgeois government, led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, then ordered a massacre across the country; proletarian blood once again flowed through the paved streets in Managua, where there were counted at least 27 dead, then in the cities of Masaya, Leon, Esteli, Matagalpa, and Bluefields, with a further 50 dead and more than 400 wounded.

The disproportionate military and police response against the demonstrators came after more than a decade of strict political and repressive control over the workers, of an intense action of suppression of their organizations of defensive economic struggle, to expand the corruption and capitulation of the existing unions. So That is why the reaction of the masses to the reform of the social security system has needed necessarily to occur in this manner, spontaneous and anarchic, since there do not exist forms of class-based organization that can channel and direct the struggles.

Naturally, the official version, like that of all the “workers” and “progressive” governments of Latin America, in line with “Socialism of the 21st century”, has proclaimed that in order to defend the workers that this reform was imposed on the employer, and to “not bend to the IMF”. In this propaganda, the Sandinistas are accompanied by international opportunism that repeats that Ortega has “faced the IMF” and the “imperialist right”, committed to destabilize his government, and defends the working class.

Thus, the government believed that to control the reaction of the masses it would have been sufficient, as in the past, its Collectives or its goon squads: it was not so. Although the university students have also publicly protested in their petty-bourgeois style, with them have united vast strata of workers who mobilized in the area. They erected barricades and there were street clashes. he government has turned off the free wi-Fi that since 2014 had been installed in all public places, since it was used to coordinate the protest actions.

The situation has reached such dimensions that the government has decided to call for dialogue and to review the reform of the INSS with the business community.

In the meantime, COSEP had announced a demonstration for April 23 in Managua; the population of the capital joined the procession of industrialists and the crowd overflowed.

Later they tried to broaden the negotiations also to the students and to the Church. On April 28 it was the Church that announced a “Pilgrimage for Peace”, that had had again a massive participation. The government for its part organized an event for the occasion of the 1st of May, ending with a speech by President Ortega.

The opposition movements have seen in this occasion the possibility to increase their weak forces. They know that if the bourgeoisie decided that the FSLN government no longer guarantees them the ability to exploit the workers in a climate of social peace, as in recent years, it has the possibility to choose between the opponents, who can equally guarantee their interests.

If COSEP rejects the reform of the INSS, because it damages the interests of the employers, the businessmen have however benefited from the government of a reduction of many taxes and have had facilitated the exploitation of the workers. Moreover, COSEP, like the businessmen in all the world today, push for an increase in the retirement age to 70 years and for the increase in contributions the burden of the workers.

The bourgeois solution that has taken up the negotiations is clear in the points of order of the day: investigations on the murders during the demonstrations; b) reform of the electoral system to guarantee “free and transparent” elections; c) institutional reforms that guarantee the “State of rights”, and elimination of corruption; d) resolution of the INSS crisis.

Both the bourgeois political fronts, the government and opposition, will act to prevent the masses of employees to join and organize on the basis of their goals, such as the request of a salary increase, a reduction of working hours, and a reduction in retirement age.

The president Daniel Ortega on April 22nd finally announced the repeal of the reform. But roadblocks, barricades and clashes continued in the month of May. Parts of the barricades were made by the “Movimiento Campesino Anticanal” (Anti-Canal Farmer Movement), against the expropriation of the land. Looting also began in stores. Therefore, the list of dead, injured and arrested has continued to grow. On May 13 a caravan of vehicles, with great attendance, left from Managua for Masaya, in solidarity with that city, where the clashes on Saturday the 12th had left at least 1 dead and about 150 wounded.

On May 12th, the Army in a declaration appealed to “non-violence” and to the resumption of “dialogue”. On May 14, the government announced to have authorized the Inter-American Human Rights Commission to come and observe the situation in the country, after the death of at least 54 demonstrators!

It is certain that it is due to the courageous revolt of the lower classes the success in the forced cancellation of the reform, at least for the moment. However, in all this clash, although violent and general, the independent participation of the working class has not yet emerged, nor have its exclusive claims been heard, nor have its forms of struggle been imposed, first of all the strike.

The opposition is now pushing for the resignation of Ortega or for the induction of elections. Whether after this crisis the government of the FSLN remains in office, or whether its opponents take control, Nicaraguan workers have nothing to foresee from either. As in the rest of the world, they must traverse the path of unity and organization at the base, to resume the claimed class struggle, outside of the unions of the regime and of the appeals to electoral solutions, the defense of the homeland, and the national economy, proclaimed by all the opportunists.