Bananeras: Workers, Peasants, and Democracy on a Nicaraguan State Farm

Abstract

Soon afta the triumph over the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the Sandinista government expropriated many of Nicaragua's export industries, mostly owned by Somoza and his associates, and turned diem into state-managed enterprises. By collectivizing and statizing many export industries (such as sugar, coffee, cotton, and banana production), it was hoped that worker participation in man agement decisions and in the administration of life on the plantations could become institutionalized, thus helping workers overcome their alienated position in Nicaraguan society. Although significant gains were made in democratizing the workplace, limita tions imposed by U.S. economic sanctions and civil war severely restricted the development of full worker participation. These factors, combined with de pressed world prices for Nicaragua's export crops, led this dependent and vulner able nation into an economic crisis that sapped the resources needed to implement revolutionary change. Nicaragua's dependent position in the world economic system, created and maintained through U.S. hegemony, hindered the development of collective production and truncated efforts to build a more se cure existence for state farm workers. The results of my field research on state banana farms, located within a system of banana plantations called Bananeras in western Nicaragua, suggests that resource shortages encourage the social stratification that remains the princi pal block to democratization of decision making on such enterprises. I lived and worked on one of these banana fincas for two-and-a-half months during the