The National Bourgeoisie in Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua

Abstract

The triumph of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) over the Somoza dynasty on July 19, 1979, brought a broad-based coalition to power in Nicaragua. Some businessmen followed Somoza to Miami, but there was nothing resembling the exodus and the widespread acts of sabotage by industrialists and plantation owners that took place after the Cuban revolution. The difference lies in the alliance of Nicaraguan business interests with the popular sectors leading the revolutionary struggle. The assassination of La Prensa editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro on January 10, 1978, became a rallying symbol for the bourgeois opposition to Somoza, and the general strike subsequently called by business leaders was an important milestone in the struggle against Somoza's rule. By the final months of the fighting, with Somoza's national guard actually bombing Nicaraguan cities, opposition to the dictatorship was nearly universal. Yet the unanimity of the negatively defined opposition struggle did not guarantee consensus behind a post-revolutionary project. Divisions were perhaps inevitable, given the genuinely multi-class composition of the movement which culminated in Somoza's overthrow. Everyone felt the revolution to be their own. Some flexibility in resolving these competing claims (or postponing their definitive resolution) was afforded by two factors: 1) the availability of vast somocista lands for redistribution, and 2) a widespread appreciation of the immediate exigencies of the reconstruction tasks. However, these two temporary legitimizing resources were eventually exhausted. On July 19, 1981-the second anniversary of the revolutionary victory-the Sandinistas passed a series of land reform and confiscation decrees which went beyond the expropriation of somocista property. On September 9 of the same year, the government passed a set of austerity measures and other controls known as the social and economic emergency decrees. As the revolution entered its third year, two fundamental questions remained: What kind of transformation does the Nicaraguan revolution represent, and when is the emergency over? By its third year, the revolution stood at a crossroad in both a practical and a theoretical sense, and the bourgeoisie occupied a pivotal position in this conjuncture. As a practical matter of immediate survival, the Sandinista government is dependent on the support of private owners of the means of production (i.e., of capital, land, factories, herds of livestock, etc.), not only for the physical reactivation of the economy, but also for the generation of the kind of international credibility which attracts foreign loans and makes it more difficult for foreign governments to commit overt acts of aggression. The practical political dilemma is