SANDINISTA ABUSES OF MISQUITO INDIANS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M01152R000300300009-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 28, 2009
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: March 29, 1985
• Content Type: MEMO

 United States Department of State
Broken Promises:
Sandinista Repression of
Human Rights in Nicaragua
October 1984
 INFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION IN NICARAGUA
by Frank Gomez
CENTRAL AMERICAN OUTREACH PROGRAM
 Approved For Release 2009/09/28: CIA-RDP87M01152R000300300009-2
Sandinista corruption and violence breed bitter opposition.
NICARAGUA'S UNTOLD STORIES
BY ROBERT S. LaKw
THE 72-YEAR-OLD senora lives in a solid stone house
constructed by the Sandinista government. Her son,
German Pomares, was a founder of the Sandinista Nation-
al Liberation Front (F.S.L.N.) who perished leading the
final offensive against Somoza in 1979. Set off by a well-
kept garden from the shacks of the cotton field workers of
El Viejo, Mrs. Pomares's home appears comfortable. But
inside, the mother of the nationally revered martyr sleeps
on a cot covered with rags, and she hobbles through bare,
unfurnished rooms. She lives on a pension equivalent to
$10 a month. She has made four trips to the local hospital,
but has yet to succeed in getting a doctor's appointment.
Three times she has requested an audience with Coman-
dante Tomas Borge, now the sole surviving founder of the
F.S. L.N. Each time, her son's old comrade has refused to
receive her.
For one who has sympathized with the Sandinistas, it is
painful to look into the house they are building, but it is
unwise not to. I spent ten days in Nicaragua in August,
accompanied by my brother, a trade unionist from Boston.
It was my sixth visit since the revolution, and my longest
since 1981. 1 have testified in Congress against aid to the
contras and have supported (and continue to support) ne-
gotiations to end the civil war in El Salvador. Yet each
succeeding trip to Nicaragua drains my initial reservoir of
sympathy for the Sandinistas. Last year I wrote in my
introduction to a book treated by the press as the "Demo-
cratic alternative to the Kissinger Report" that the Sandi-
nistas "failure to preserve the revolutionary alliance with
the middle class and small producers as well as sectarian
political and cultural policies [had] polarized the country,
led to disinvestment, fading productivity and wages, labor
discontent, and an agrarian crisis." This visit convinced
me that the situation is far worse than I had thought, and
disabused me of some of the remaining myths about the
Sandinista revolution.
Everywhere we went we confronted the disparity be-
tween these myths and the unpleasant truth. The Sandi-
nistas blame Nicaragua's economic crisis on the contra war
and U.S. economic sanctions. Yet the standard of living in
Nicaragua was deteriorating well before the U.S.-backed
contras turned to economic sabotage in the spring of 1983.
Robert S. Leiken is a senior associate at the Carnegie En-
dowment and the editor of Central America: Anatomy of
Conflict. (Pergamon-Carnegie).
A December 1981 internal staff memorandum of the Inter-
national Monetary Fund found that real wages had fallen
71 percent since July 1979. They have continued to decline
in succeeding years. And even with the U.S. "economic
boycott," over 25 percent of Nicaragua's exports still go to
the United States, not much less than under Somoza.
Nicaragua can no longer sell sugar at subsidized prices to
the United States, but what it has lost in this market it has
sold to Iran at prices above those of the world market. The
war and U.S. sanctions have compounded a mess created
by the Sandinistas themselves.
Nicaraguans themselves do not seem to accept Sandi-
nista claims that Yanqui aggression is responsible for the
general scarcity of consumer goods. Peasants are obligat-
ed to sell their goods to the Ministry of Commerce and
Industry, and contend that its prices are too low to enable
them to make ends meet. A large portion of the peasantry
'is now producing only for its own consumption, and the
resulting shortages have dramatically driven up prices.
The marketplace, once the bustling center of Nicaraguan
life, is now a daunting experience for buyers and sellers
alike. As shoppers make the rounds looking for rice,
beans, milk, toilet paper, soap, or light bulbs, the shop-
keepers' constant reply is "No hay" (There isn't any). For
anyone unable to afford the inflated prices or without the
foreign exchange to shop at the new foreign currency
stores, Eastern European-style queuing is now routine.
One of the most depressing aspects of our trip was to
hear from so many that their lives are worse today than
they were at the time of Somoza. Before the revolution
Nicaraguans ate well by Central American standards.
Thanks to the country's fertile soil and its small popula-
tion, even poor Nicaraguans were accustomed to beef and
chicken. Now consumer goods available to the masses in
other Central American countries are no longer obtain-
able. Barefoot children are hardly uncommon in the re-
gion, but I had never seen so many completely naked. As
we encountered them, their distended stomachs display-
ing the telltale signs of malnutrition, Nicaraguans would
bitterly recall the government slogan, "Los ninos on los
mimados de la revolution" ("Children are the spoiled ones of
the revolution").
The shortage of basic necessities is also breeding perva-
sive corruption. When we asked a rural storekeeper why
he was able to sell Coca-Cola while many restaurants in
Managua were not, he said that he had obtained the soft
16 THE NEW REPUBLIC
Approved For Release 2009/09/28 : CIA-RDP87MOl152R000300300009-2
 Approved For Release 2009/09/28: CIA-RDP87M01152R000300300009-2
.s-
La Prensa Editor's Statement
on Lack of Press Freedom in Nicaragua
Introduction
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, Jr., the Co-director of La Prensa
-- Nicaragua's only opposition newspaper -- has gone into exile
to Costa Rica with his family. Chamorro charged that the
Sandinista's censorship and further restrictions made his work
impossible to continue. Mr. Chamorro is the son of the late
publisher of La Prensa, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, a harsh critic
of the Somoza regime and whose murder in 1978 sparked vast
Nicaraguan and international condemnation of Somoza.
The following text is the statement Chamorro made upon his
arrival in Costa Rica, December 15, 1984, on self-imposed
exile. Chamorro explained that he left, Nicaragua because of
the persistent and flagrant censorship, and that he Would use
his journalist's pen outside of Nicaragua, where his writings
could be published and be more effective. The crackdown on
La Prensa and the ban on opposition leaders' departure from the
country since the November elections is further evidence of
Sandinista disregard for political pluralism.
Writing, reporting and giving my opinions for publication
...that is my profession. For almost three years I have not
been able to exercise this right because a government censor
dictates from day to day what can be published and what cannot
be published.
I have borne with patience the whimsical dictates of the
censor during all these years, but my patience is exhausted.
I feel that our job as an information medium is definitely
curtailed by the imagination or the whims and fancies of a
censor, who sees in every informative paragraph, in every
editorial, or in every opinion expressed by a citizen, an
attack against the all-powerful and ever-present "security of
the State".
A news item about a 96-year-old lady who committed suicide
because she was tired of her existence, is looked on as an
attack against the psychic health of the people and, therefore,
an attack against the "security of the State".
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