From: tommi.hoynalanmaa@iki.fi   
      
   Mike kirjoitti:   
   > The Black Book of the Sandinistas   
   > By Jamie Glazov   
   > FrontPageMagazine.com | November 21, 2006   
   >   
   > Daniel Ortega, the former leader of Nicaragua's Sandinista Marxist   
   > regime (1979-1990), has regained power after winning his country's   
   > presidential election last Tuesday.   
   >   
   > Fears abound in Washington that Ortega will join the anti-U.S. bloc in   
   > Latin America being manufactured by Hugo Chavez.   
   >   
   > Many questions remain. One of them: why was this ruthless dictator   
   > voted into office by a people who once threw him out? There are no   
   > simple answers, but a peoples' support for their own tormentors is,   
   > obviously, no new phenomenon. Russia, for instance, is currently   
   > experiencing a resurgence of nostalgia for Joseph Stalin -- as new   
   > monuments are being erected in several Russian communities to honor the   
   > former genocidal dictator.   
      
   Sandinistas gained power by overthrowing Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and   
   they won elections in 1984.   
      
   >   
   > Aside from the economic and political frustrations facing Nicaraguans,   
   > another factor clearly played a key role in the election drama: young   
   > Nicaraguan voters had no real memory of who the Sandinistas were and   
   > what crimes they perpetrated against their own people.   
   >   
   > A trip down memory lane is in order:   
   >   
   > Upon capturing power in Nicaragua in July, 1979, the Sandinistas   
   > immediately Stalinized the country and aligned themselves with Castro   
   > and the Soviet Empire, making their country a base for the export of   
   > Marxist revolution throughout Central America.   
      
   There is nothing wrong with supporting armed liberation movements.   
      
   >   
   > Like all of its communist role models, the new regime constructed a   
   > fascistic apparatus to maintain rigid control. Following in the   
   > footsteps of Castro's Cuba, it set up neighborhood associations as   
   > local spy networks for the government. Each neighborhood had a Comité   
   > de Defensa Sandinista (CDS - Sandinista Defense Committee) that served   
   > the same totalitarian purpose as the Cuban CDR and the Nazi regime's   
   > block overseers --although the power of the CDS extended far beyond the   
   > Nazis' model. [1]   
      
   Neighborhood associations sound quite democratic. After the revolution   
   in 1979 the Sandinista government was attacked by the contras. USA has   
   attacked against Leftist governments in Latin America several times.   
   Defense against internal and external counterrevolutionary elements is   
   not totalitarianism.   
      
   >   
   > In emulating Castro and their other communist heroes such as Stalin and   
   > Mao, the Sandinistas took control of everything in the country: mass   
   > organizations, the army, police, labor unions, and the media.   
      
   In Bourgeois states there is usually a conservative hegemony in the army   
   and in the police.   
      
   I myself support a Marxist hegemony over all the society since Marxism   
   is the ideology of the oppressed. You don't have to be neutral in the   
   struggle between good and evil.   
      
   Sandinistas had quite large popular support and they won elections in   
   1984. So what is the problem if they took control of the whole society?   
      
   > They   
   > censored all freedom of speech, suspended the right of association and   
   > ruthlessly crushed the freedom of trade unions.   
      
   I remember that I have read some books about Sandinist Nicaragua.   
   According to them the opposition could express its ideas quite freely   
   there. AFAIK opposition parties could operate in Sandinist Nicaragua.   
      
   > Faithful to their   
   > Marxist ideology, the new tyrants seized the means of production. State   
   > controls and nationalization spread, aid to the private sector and   
   > incentives for foreign investment disappeared. To put it plainly,   
   > another 20th-century experiment with socialism annihilated a nation's   
   > economy along with a peoples' prospects for a better life.   
      
   Nationalization is democratization of the economy.   
      
   >   
   > Thousands of Nicaraguans who attempted to protect their property -- or   
   > who simply committed the crime of owning private property -- were   
   > imprisoned, tortured, or executed by the new despots.   
   >   
   > Unlike the previous regime of Anastasio Somoza, the Sandinistas did not   
   > leave the native populations on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua in   
   > peace. In Khmer Rouge style, they inflicted a ruthless, forcible   
   > relocation of thousands of Indians from their land. Like Stalin and   
   > Mao, the new regime used state-created famine as a weapon against these   
   > "enemies of the people." [2] The Sandinista army committed myriad   
   > atrocities against the Indian population, killing and imprisoning   
   > approximately 15,000 innocent people. The Sandinista crimes included   
   > not only mass murders of innocent natives themselves, but a calculated   
   > liquidation of their entire leadership -- as the Soviets had   
   > perpetrated against the Poles in the Katyn Forest Massacre, when the   
   > Soviet secret police executed approximately 15,000 Polish officers in   
   > the spring of 1940.   
      
   AFAIK the conflicts between Indians were part of the war against contras.   
      
   >   
   > The Sandinistas quickly distinguished themselves as one of the worst   
   > human rights abusers in Latin America, carrying out approximately 8,000   
   > political executions within three years of the revolution. The number   
   > of "anti-revolutionary" Nicaraguans who disappeared while in Sandinista   
   > hands numbered in the thousands. By 1983, the number of political   
   > prisoners inside the new Marxist regime's jails was estimated at   
   > 20,000. [3] This was the highest number of political prisoners in any   
   > nation in the hemisphere -- except, of course, in Castro's Cuba. By   
   > 1986, a vicious and violent Sandinista "resettlement program"   
   > forced some 200,000 Nicaraguans into 145 "settlements" throughout   
   > the country. This monstrous social engineering program entailed the   
   > designation of "free-fire" zones in which Sandinista government   
   > troops shot and killed any peasant of their choosing. [4]   
      
   Are these figures reliable?   
      
   Were there some people who were executed because of their crimes during   
   the Somoza dictaroship?   
      
   Furthermore, there may have been people executed or jailed because of   
   armed counterrevolutionary resistance. Sure you don't count these in   
   your figures?   
      
   >   
   > The Sandinista Gulag also institutionalized torture. Political   
   > prisoners in Sandinista jails, such as Las Tejas, were consistently   
   > beaten, deprived of sleep and given electric shocks. They were   
   > routinely denied food and water and kept in dark cubicles known as   
   > chiquitas (little ones), that had a surface area of less than one   
   > square meter. These cubicles were too small to sit up in, were   
   > completely dark, and had no sanitation and almost no ventilation.   
      
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