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Augusto Cesar Sandino's political thought and its impact on the Sandinista National Liberation Front

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Augusto Cesar Sandino's political thought and its impact on the Sandinista National Liberation Front

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AUGUSTO CESAR SANDINO'S POLITICAL
THOUGHT AND ITS IMPACT ON THE
SAND INI STA NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT
by
Raymond Ivor Saborio
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(Political Science)
December 1997
Copyright 1997 Raymond Ivor Saborio
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UMI Number: 138999 8
Copyright 1997 by
Saborio, Raymond Ivor
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UMI Microform 1389998
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
T H E G R A D U A TE S C H O O L
U N IV E R SIT Y P A R K
L O S A N G E L E S . C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This thesis, •written by
CHZ/a
under the direction o f his. Thesis C om m ittee,
and approved by a ll its m em bers, has been pre
sented to and accepted by the D e a n o f The
G raduate School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t o f the
requirements fo r the degree o f
DtMM
/
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
1. Introduction.......................................... 1
2.Revolutionary
Concept...............................................4
3.What Causes a
Revolution?.......................................... 10
4.Revolutionary
Theorists............................................ 15
5.Augusto Cesar Sandino and
His Unique Blend of Thinking............................32
6.The FSLN Tendency
Experience........................................... 78
7 . Conclusion........................................... 91
8.Work Cited........................................... 93
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ii
INTRODUCTION
Revolutions have become a normal occurrence throughout
all of Latin America. There are many different economic,
social, and political forces behind the appearance of
revolutions in certain societies rather than others.
Revolution serves as the foundation for some societies as a
final act of others. To many revolution is a horror to be
avoided at all cost; to others, it is a necessary means to
reach a utopian reality; while for some it is an end in
itself.
Revolution is not a phenomenon just relegated to the
twentieth century; it has been a characteristic of human
history almost from the beginning. This study will be
undertaken to briefly examine the historical foundations and
academic interpretations of the concept of revolution. This
historical introduction will lay the groundwork for the reader
to identify and comprehend the causes and reasons for
revolutions. Two classical revolutionary theorists' work has
been incorporated into this study to compile a comprehensive
qualitative analysis. In order to properly examine
revolutions, one must not overlook the contributions of Karl
Marx and Alexis de Tocqueville who provide decidedly different
theoretical explanations to the same revolutionary events
observed by both, although there are many points on which the
two agreed. This awareness of revolutionary conceptualization
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and theory, it is hoped will serve the purpose of clarifying
the problem of its use and misuse.
The second section will qualitatively look at the
intellectual sources and foundations of the Nicaraguan
Revolution identified in the writings of Augusto Cesar Sandino
and the reincarnation and utilization of that philosophical
thinking by Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). For
the Sandinistas, Sandino's example is important, but so was
his political thought. The Sandinista hierarchy believed that
the revolution began with Sandino rather than with the FSLN
movement, emphasizing the significance of his political
thought and its influence on the leadership of the Sandinista
movement. This section will concentrate on Sandino's
political thought acquired from his trip to Mexico; his
exposure to different political, spiritual, social and
economic philosophies that molded his thinking; and the
intellectual history aimed at clarifying the philosophical
ideals of the revolution.
The last section climaxes an analytical approach focusing
on the unique political thought of Sandino with the
principles/strategies of the FSLN movement, resulting
ultimately in a triumphant revolution. The Marxist-Leninist
dominated strategy adopted by the Sandinistas, solely could
not entice and convince the majority of the Nicaraguan
population to support a revolutionary movement. The movement
married the thinking of Sandino, opting to retrieve particular
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advantageous philosophies, while omitting the more complicated
and less attractive political theories. The movement was
nationalistic in nature, its primary objective was national
liberation. It was not a revolution professed by some
scholars to be solely the work of a Marxist-Leninist
foundation, rather it was an intertwining and integration of
Sandino with Sandinismo. The crystallization of rival
tendencies within the FSLN proved the movement was
characterized by a multitude of political theories from a
variety of different sources. The close study of the three
tendency groups will abolish the myth and image that the FSLN
movement was only a Marxist-Leninist revolution led by the
peasant-working class, rather than a complex political
strategy which encompassed the broad spectrum of people from
an oppressed society to the forefront of social
transformation.
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REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT
To study a revolution, the first task is to identify what
do we mean by revolution. Definitions abound and there is an
endless variety of applications associated with this
phenomenon, creating little consensus about what is a
revolution, let alone why it may occur. There is no single
dominant paradigm for the phenomenon, however some definitions
have several elements which share a degree of commonness. If
all possible meanings of the term revolution were to be
encompassed within a short definition, then perhaps a handful
of words would do : sweeping dramatic change. This definition
is broader than that of the Oxford English Dictionary, which
reads: " a complete overthrow of the established government in
any country or state by those who were previously subject to
it, a forcible substitution of a new ruler or form of
government" . The latter understanding of the concept may be
described as a revolution in technical terms. Concepts such
as industrial, scientific or cultural revolutions are
revolutions in the figurative sense. The latter definition
comes from a non-social scientific source.
In the real world, the change of the form of government
usually has wider implications; they are often the main reason
for its overthrow and the main issue in the process of
substitution. It is not only the sphere of government at
stake, but the whole complex of power relationships with their
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impact on wealth, social status, and social stratification.
David Robertson, in the Penguin Dictionary of Politics, views
a revolution as "a revolution, properly so-called, is a
violent and total change in a political system which not only
vastly alters the distribution of power. . .but results in major
changes in the whole social structure." This is a revolution
in the sociological sense.
Force is being used on both sides and not necessarily
only within the country involved. The complete overthrow of
a government and a change of the political regime, however,
may occur several times. Revolution then appears to be not
a single event but a protracted period of turbulent, dramatic
events, which may be better styled as a revolutionary process.
Aristotle understood revolutions to be qualitatively
different from a simple change in political leadership,
although he made clear that success was a requirement of a
revolution. In Politics. Aristotle wrote that there were:
two sorts of changes in government; the one affecting
the constitution, where men seek to change from an
existing form into something other, the other not
affecting the constitution when, without disturbing
the form of government, whether oligarchy or monarchy,
or any they try to get the administration into their
own hands (cited in Pettee, 1938: 25).
These two definitions resonate with many of those
proposed by political scientists. Most definitions imply that
in order for a phenomenon to be labelled a revolution, the
uprising must be a success. Baecheler defines a revolution as
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a "protest movement that manages to seize power, " (1985:91) and
Neumann expands the definition to include a "sweeping,
fundamental change in political organization, social
structure, economic property control and the predominant myth
of a social order [thereby] indicating a major break in the
continuity of development" (1979:333) . Trimberger calls
revolution "an extralegal takeover of the central state
apparatus which destroys the economic and political power of
the dominant social group of the old regime,"(1978:12) which
again implies a degree of success in the definition.
The latter definition also implies the use of violence in
a revolution; and like many other political scientists,
positions violence to be a critical and vital ingredient of
their analysis. Thus Friedrich defines revolution as "the
sudden and violent overthrow of an established political
order"(1966:5). Samuel Huntington offers a different
perspective, calling it "a rapid fundamental and violent
domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society,
in its political institutions, social structure, leadership,
government activity, and policies"(1968:264). Skocpol
provides perhaps the most comprehensive and concise structural
definition: "Social revolutions are rapid, basic
transformations of a society's state and class structure; they
are accompanied and in part carried through by class based
revolts from below" (1979a:4). One social scientist attempts
to modify this requirement of violence by arguing that
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revolution refers to events "in which physical force (or the
convincing threat of it) has actually been used successfully
to overthrow a government or regime" (Calvert, 1970:15).
But is success a requirement for a revolution to be
identified and labelled by that name? Such a definition would
mean that revolutions that fail be called something else, thus
restricting the number of actual cases. This would exclude
qualitative and quantitative data from revolutions that are
not considered revolutions; eliminating clues to the causes
and the process of failed revolutions as opposed to those that
succeed.
To postulate success of the revolution as a definitional
criterion also leads to a serious teleological problem, in
which the political theorists interpret the origins by their
outcomes. During a potential revolution, a mob of citizens or
a mass of peasants may attempt to seize power, and they may
think they are making a revolution. Why would social
scientists only permit a successful attempt to be labelled a
revolution? Are not all such efforts revolutions - some
succeed and some that fail? May the intent of the
revolutionary attempt change after the fact if the rebels are
unsuccessful?
By the same token, a theory of revolution must be able to
explain its opposite; our eventual under standing of revolution
must be able to explain counter-revolution as well. As Tilly
explains:
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...a theory of revolution, or an analysis of a
specific revolution, which provides no understanding
of the presence of counter-revolutionary forces in the
midst of society in revolt must leave us unsatisfied.
If a theory purports to tell us when and why a society
is ready for rebellion, it also ought to tell us which
sectors of the society will resist the rebellion, and
why. Exceptions prove the rule. Counter-revolutions
test our explanations of revolution (1964:30).
Expansion to include efforts at transformation, whether
successful or not, must be considered and applied to the
definition. Mueusel suggests that a revolution occurs "when
the upper class cannot and the lower class will not continue
the old system without making the success of that class and
the success of the lower class as explicit, formal criteria
for the definition" (1970:368) . Dunn defines revolutions as "a
form of massive, violent and rapid social change. They are
also attempts to embody a set of values in a new or at least
renovated social order"(1972:12). Lastly, Zagorin provides
perhaps the most encompassing definition of all, combining
questions of success, violence, and the object of the
revolutionary change:
A revolution is any attempt by subordinate groups
through the use of violence to bring about (1) a
change of government or its policy, (2) a change
of regime, or (3) a change of society, whether this
attempt is justified by reference to past conditions
or to an as yet unattained future ideal (Zagorin 1982,
Vol.l, 235).
A revolution may be successful or be a failure - the
emphasis is on the effort - and may choose as its object a
political transformation, a social transformation, or a
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simple change of ruler. It has always a purpose, with a
developed ideological justification, and invariably entails
violence. But even this definition equates a change in the
regime, perhaps even the replacement of one ruler by another,
with a revolution.
There must be a distinction between revolutionary
situations and revolutionary outcomes. We can of course
imagine situations in which a revolution takes place, but the
outcome does not yield the type of society envisioned by the
revolution, or in which the forces of the old regime are
victorious, either by their own strength or by soliciting aid
from abroad. Thus these are revolutions also, and they are
far more numerous than the successful transformations. To
include them in understanding and definition, and draw
contrasts and comparisons between them and between successful
revolutions, can only be beneficial to those who examine the
revolutionary phenomenon.
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WHAT CAUSES REVOLUTION?
An obviously vital question concerns the causes of
revolutions. A wide variety of economic, political, social,
cultural, religious, and ideological forces can influence the
revolution and the specific arrangement of these forces gives
each revolution its unique historical shape. Yet some of
these forces are more decisive in causing a revolution than
others. Aristotle believed that inequality was the chief
cause of revolution. "Everywhere," he wrote in Politics.
"inequality is a cause of revolution, but an inequality in
which there is no proportion - for instance a perpetual
monarchy among equals; and always it is the desire of equality
which rises in rebellion"(cited in Pettee, 1938:31). Many
other political theorists have offered a variety of
combinations among these factors, assigning different
determinant weights to each of these variable forces.
Just as the problem of the unit of analysis sets the
spatial dimension of revolution, the problem of causation sets
the temporal dimension. Revolutions do not simply occur
because of an economic crisis, or because a fanatical
religious leader urges his/her followers to rebel against the
establishment, or because a group of people suddenly find
themselves discontented with the political arrangements in
their society, or because a nation is defeated in a war and it
is therefore vulnerable to mass discontent - although, at one
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time or another, each of these has been offered as a casual
explanation of revolution. One must take into account, when
examining a revolution, the history of that society.
Revolutions have their structural roots embedded in the past
of their own society. As nineteenth-century reformer Wendell
Phillips once wrote, "Revolutions are not made, they come. A
revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of
the past. Its foundations are laid far back"(cited in Ruiz,
1980:406) .
For a more indepth explanation of revolutionary change,
a look at multiple causation must be discussed. " A study of
the causes of the French Revolution and of other revolutions
of recent centuries leads to the conclusions that there is a
combination of five causes which, together, give a more
satisfactory explanation of important revolutions than any
other theory" (Betancourt 1991:56).
The first two of the five causes of revolution may be
placed in a single category. That category may be called
demand. The kind of demand that helps to create a revolution
consists of two parts. It is not mere discontent or despair.
Discontent is personal and subjective. "...mere personal
discontent leads so definitely to an intensification of the
struggle for personal existence or for personal improvement
that the discontented do not have time to think in terms of
social betterment" (Betancourt 1991:71). To be a factor
creating social change, something more is required than
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individual discontent or despair. That more general feeling
is found in the social dissatisfaction that comes from
widespread provocation.
The first cause of revolution, therefore, is referred to
as provocation if it results in dissatisfaction sufficiently
general to create an epidemic desire for action. When the
provocations are sufficiently intense, they create not only
strength for the revolutionaries but also weakness for the
ones in power. But provocations alone do not create
revolutions. If they did, we should always be having
revolutions, for some of them are constantly to be found in
human society.
The second factor in creating that kind of demand for
change which leads to a revolution is a solidified public
opinion. "The fact that I am discontented will not lead me to
revolution unless I am aware that quite a number of other
people are equally discontented and are likely to unite with
me in the expression of my discontent" (Friedrich 1982:34).
General awareness of resentment against the provocations,
together with the provocations themselves, creates that kind
of demand for change which becomes effective in making
revolutions.
Demand alone, however, as everyone knows, does not create
supply. In order to have a revolution, there must be not
merely a demand for revolution but also a certain hope for
success. Hope, therefore, can be constituted as the second
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category of revolutionary causes. It can be divided into two
parts. Hope of revolutionary success comes first from the
fact that there exists a " . . .program of reform. In providing
programs the intellectuals play their major role. To be sure,
they also help to create that general awareness of
dissatisfaction" (Friedrich 1982:124).
A popular program does not by itself guarantee
revolutionary success. It will not even make people hopeful
unless they also feel that someone whom they trust is going to
lead them to the achievement of that program. The trusted
leader must not only take the first step, must not only serve
as the flagship in the attack upon the existing establishment,
but must also assume responsibility for any further steps,
should the first one succeed.
Thus leadership is another important factor in creating that
sense of hope which makes for a potentially successful
revolution. Leaders are themselves the end product of many
factors: social, cultural, and biographical.
The last and most vital of the five causes of revolution
is the weakness of the establishment. "This is the necessary
immediate cause of revolution. Despite the universal demand
for revolutionary change, despite intense hopefulness of
success, unless those who wish to maintain the status quo are
so weak that they cannot maintain themselves, there is little
likelihood of a successful revolution" (Friedrich 1982:137).
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Many variables help to create a weak status quo. One of
the decisive factors may be conflict within one of the ruling
classes or disagreement among them, it may be the disaffection
of the military, or a shift in international alliances.
Increasing poverty, inflation, bankruptcy, corruption and
treachery, military reversal or diplomatic incompetence, are
also obvious factors contributing to the weakness of
governments and dominant classes. These variables are usually
the same as those that created provocations necessary toward
a demand for revolution.
" A revolution occurs when the upper class cannot and the
lower class will not continue the old system" (Muesel, 368) .
The four variable causes of revolution explain why those who
are rising to power and wish to overthrow the status quo, are
not willing to preserve the existing establishment. The fifth
(immediate) cause indicates why the dominant groups are not
able to preserve the existing regime. The identification of
that immediate cause of any particular revolution thus becomes
simple. It is that event which demonstrates clearly that the
status quo are no longer able to resist the revolution.
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REVOLUTIONARY THEORISTS
Karl Marx is, perhaps, the foremost theorist of
revolution in all social science, "the greatest theorist...
revolutions ever had" (Arendt 1975:55) . Revolution forms the
analytic core of his historical theory, and also dominates his
prognosis of the future.
As Tucker noted:
The idea of revolution is present in nearly everything
that Marx wrote. It is a favorite subject in the
voluminous correspondence that he carried on with
Engels and others. And his major work, Capital,
together with his other economic writings, is
essentially a political economy of revolution, an
inquiry into the conditions of capitalism's
revolutionary self destruction. In a basic sense,
therefore, revolution was the master theme of Marx's
thought and an exposition of the Marxian revolutionary
idea in complete form would be nothing other than an
exposition of Marxism itself as a theoretical system
(1966:218-219).
Revolution is, to Marx, not only the mechanism that
brought us here, but it is also our ineluctable future.
Marx's theory of revolution can be identified and understood
as composed of three separate principles, each intertwined and
linked to his overall model of the dynamics of society.
First, discussions on how revolutions are the inevitable
outcome of the differential rates of development of the
structural contradictions that defines any society. Second,
examinations on how revolutions have taken place through world
history to establish the contemporary capitalist society and
how Marx maintains that revolutions are the inevitable outcome
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of the dynamics of this social formation. The last principle
focuses on how these abstract theoretical claims are
transformed or modified when Marx concentrates his attention
on concrete historical cases of revolution.
For Karl Marx, revolutions happen when the objective
conditions necessary for them have developed. Society, he
argues, is held together by a dynamic tension between the
means (or forces) of production - the technical, material,
natural, and the human resources that are brought into play in
the provision of life's necessities, such as food, clothing,
and shelter - and the relations of productions, which consist
of those social arrangements that groups of men and women
develop by which to organize the provision of those
necessities. "Life involves before everything else eating and
drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things," wrote
Marx in The German Ideology (1978 [1846] : 156) . "The first
historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy
these needs, the production of material life itself" (Marx 1978
[1846] :157) .
Historically, Marx observes, this process of production
is social and yet the means of production have been privately
owned, thus dividing society into two irreconcilable classes:
those who own the means of production and those who own
nothing but their capacity to labor. The division of labor
into two classes based on their relationship to the means of
production is the central objective fact of all societies that
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have ever existed; in the opening lines of The Communist
Manifesto (1848) Marx writes "the history of all hitherto
existing society is the history of class struggle" (1978
[1848] :473) .
Although social dynamics differ within any particular
mode of production, the combination of the means and relations
of production, the fact that production is social and the
means of production privately owned impels their development
to proceed at different rates. The means of production always
developed more rapidly than the relations of production. For
example, technological breakthroughs, new production
techniques, the development of new materials all occur within
the existing relations of production, which are then
reorganized to accommodate these dramatic changes in the means
of production. Thus, the objective forces - technology,
economics - develop first, and social changes are efforts to
keep pace with these changes in the productive foundation of
society. It is a form of 'culture lag' in which human
relationships are constantly scrambling to keep pace with
structural changes. It is important to recall that these
productive forces are objective social facts to Marx; "the
productive forces appear as a world for themselves, quite
independent of and divorced from the individuals, alongside
the individuals" (Marx 1978 [1846]:190).
At certain moments, the development of the means of
production proceeds so far that the existing relations of
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production can no longer accommodate those changes within the
existing social framework. At these points, Marx argues, an
era of social revolution has arrived. The development of
insoluble contradictions within society "prepares the way for
social crises, which burst out in political revolutions, "
Marx told a Cologne jury in 1849 (cited in Draper, 1978,
vol.2:19) .
In summation, Marx believed that:
At a certain stage of their development, the
material productive forces of society come in conflict
with the existing relations of production, or - what
is but a legal expression of the same thing - with the
property relations within which they have been at work
hitherto. From forms of development of the productive
forces these relations turn into their fetters. Thus
begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change
of the economic foundation the entire immense
superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed (A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
(1978 [1859] :4-5) .
When Marx turns to capitalistic society specifically in
The German Ideology (1978 [1846] : 192-3) , the application is
visible of his abstract model:
In the development of productive forces there comes a
stage when productive forces and means of intercourse
are brought into being, which, under the existing
relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer
productive but destructive forces (machinery and
money); and connected with this a class called forth,
which has to bear all the burdens of society without
enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society,
is forced into the most decided antagonism to all
other classes; a class which forms the majority of all
members of society, and from which emanates the
consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental
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revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of
course, arise among the other classes too through the
contemplation of the situation of this class.
Marx insists that the mechanism that holds society
together in dynamic tension - the conflict between the forces
and relations of production - is also the force that will
create the objective conditions for a revolution. What is
more, these objective conditions occur independently, and
indeed are historically and logically prior to any
psychological motivation towards revolution by any social
groups. Revolutions may be made by discontented people, but
they can only do so when the objective structural conditions
are already conducive to revolution. "A radical social
revolution is connected with certain historical conditions of
economic development," (Marx 1978 [1875]:543) revolutions
cannot be made, no matter how much people may struggle, in a
non-revolutionary situation.
Therefore, as political scientists we can deduce that
Marx's theory of revolution is structural, in that it involves
dynamics between objective structural forces; economistic, in
that the development of a revolutionary situation, in the
final analysis, depends upon the sharpening of contradictions
in the sphere of economic production; non-voluntartistic, in
that revolutions do not depend upon the internal psychological
states of members of any collectivity, but rather on the
appearance of a revolutionary situation based on the
differential rates of development of the means and relations
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of production; and progressive, in that revolutions are the
culmination of historical processes and , by implication,
should occur first in the most advanced societies as well as
in the most advanced economic sectors within any one society.
In addition, by allowing the relations of production to catch
up with the economic capacity of the means of production, the
revolution clears away those social obstacles to increase
economic development.
The origins of revolution are structural, and its agents,
those who make revolution, are also derived from economic
relations. Classes make revolution in Marx's view, and they
do so to capture political power, enabling the transformation
of the superstructural relations to facilitate their
unfettered economic development.
The socialist revolution is the inevitable outgrowth of
the dynamics of capitalism, according to Marx. The
contradictions that lie at the heart of capitalism are the
structural sources of the revolution, with the proletariat as
its agent. The contradictions within capitalism are several.
First, production is oriented not towards meeting human needs
but towards the generation of profits; thus the proletariat is
not assured of material survival, and bourgeoisie is trapped
within an endless cycle of profit production. Second,
ownership and control are concentrated in private hands,
although production is increasingly social. Third, although
production in each individual factory is increasingly
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rational, disciplined, and planned, there is little or no
planning within the system as a whole, and from factory to
factory.
The consequences for the capitalist class and the
proletariat flow directly from these structural
contradictions. As competition for profits among capitalists
increases, as each tries to maximize his or her position in
the market and to undercut potential competitors, capitalists
will attempt to innovate to gain market position, or will
resort to suppressing wages and removing benefits given to the
workers as a way to recoup potential drops in the ability to
accumulate profits. Thus capitalists will manipulate the two
factors that compose capitalist production: the means of
production and human labor.
This process has important consequences for both classes.
First, the number of successful capitalists decreases while
their wealth increases. Capital is increasingly concentrated
into fewer and fewer hands, and those who are successful have
greater shares of society's wealth. At the same time, the
development of productive forces, in pursue of profits, is
dramatically expedited. Among the proletariat, however, the
consequences are the opposite. The number of proletarians
increases as members of the middle classes and former
capitalists lose out in the race for profits, and they are
increasingly concentrated into larger and larger physical
units as production is streamlined and factory production
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increases. But just as there are more proletarians and they
are increasingly concentrated numerically, they are also
increasingly impoverished by the squeezing of wages. Thus
while capital is concentrated and the number of capitalists is
reduced, the proletariat is numerically increased and
physically concentrated, and its wealth decreases.
The dynamics of capitalism have thus set objective
structural conditions for the socialist revolution. Yet the
socialist revolution does not happen without the
transformation of the proletariat into a revolutionary class,
acting for itself as the active agent of historical
transformation. Class-consciousness is thus the inevitable
outcome of the structural developments, and the necessary
condition for revolutionary action. The proletariat must
recognize that it is a class in itself, a coherent entity
opposed to capitalists, and then, through political struggle,
organize itself as a class for itself, as an historical force
capable of revolutionary transformation. The precise process
of this transition is never clearly spelled out by Marx.
In the revolution, the proletariat first seizes political
power, and then sets about the arduous task of social
transformation through the socialization of the means of
production. As Engels described it in Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific:
The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means
of this transforms the socialized means of production,
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slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into
public property. By this act, the proletariat frees
the means of production from the character of capital
they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized
character complete freedom to work itself out.
Socialized production upon a predetermined plan
becomes henceforth possible. The development of
production makes the existence of different classes of
society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as
anarchy in social production vanishes, the political
authority of the state dies out. Man, at last the
master of his own form of social organization, becomes
at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master-
free (1978 [1892]:717).
Thus the socialist revolution produces the structural
conditions for human freedom: by eliminating class struggle
via the abolition of private property, by doing away with the
role of the state as a regulator of competition, and by
alleviating the scarcity of material goods that initially
drives workers into the capitalist factories. By ushering in
substantive democratic political control, political rule by
numerical majority, the need for the state as the political
form of class rule is also diminished; the state no longer has
to guarantee capitalists a safe and regulated arena in which
to accumulate capital nor to enforce the exploitation of the
proletariat.
There are several historical developments that Karl
Marx's theory seems ill-equipped to confront. One of the most
important of these has been the transformation of the role of
the peasantry in the twentieth century into the chief
revolutionary actors in the development of socialist
societies. Marx predicted that the most industrially advanced
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societies would be the most susceptible to revolutions, since
in these the structural contradictions of capitalism would
result in the most highly polarized class struggle between
bourgeoisie and proletariat. But the revolutions of the
twentieth century have all been characterized by a
revolutionary mobilization of the peasantry; in fact it was
the entry of the peasantry that allowed the revolutions to
succeed.
In addition, Marx seriously underestimated the linkages
between classes, and the potential for inter-class
solidarities to offset the structural tendency toward class
polarization. In contemporary industrial society, revolution
has failed to occur, in part, because of the powerful support
of capitalist class rule by the industrial proletariat,
precisely the sector that ought to be the most revolutionary.
Despite his insistence on the inevitability of revolution, the
eruptions he predicted have failed to materialize in the
places where he believed they would occur.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed the same revolutionary
events as Marx, but came up with a decidedly different
theoretical explanation, although there are many points on
which the two agree. Unlike Marx, who championed the cause of
revolution, Tocqueville was profoundly ambivalent about it.
While he understood that revolutions happened when
aristocracies abandoned their traditional function of the
preservation of liberty in the face of state centralization,
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he also believed that revolutions did not eliminate the state,
as Marx had hoped, but cleared the path for further state
centralization even as principles of equality were spread.
This, for Tocqueville, was a mixed blessing.
His ambivalence can be observed in his classic treatment
of the French Revolution of 1789, which Tocqueville
distinguishes from other revolutions both by its objects and
results. Here was a decidedly social revolution, the object
of which was "not merely to change an old form of government
but to abolish the entire social structure of pre
revolutionary France" (Tocqueville 1955:8; Tocqueville
1959:160). However the causes and consequences of the
revolution as seen by Tocqueville were very different from
those theorized by Marx. For one thing, the state was not
simply the object of contention, but rather the centralization
of state power was an important precondition of a
revolutionary situation. And the result of the revolution was
hardly the diminution of political power; if state
centralization was a cause of the revolution, it was also a
consequence. Thus, "the principle of the centralization of
power did not perish in the Revolution and this very
centralization was at once the Revolution's starting-off point
and one of its guiding principles" (Tocqueville 1955:60).
Finally, the various roles played by different classes differ
from the roles assigned to those classes by Marx.
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Tocqueville asserts that the origins of the revolution
lay in the attempts by the state to centralize political
power; " the monarchical government, after abolishing
provincial independence and replacing local authorities by its
nominees in three quarters of the country, had brought under
its direct management all public business, even the most
trivial" (Tocqueville 1955:204). As a consequence of this
effort to centralize political power, the monarchy ran into
conflict with the hereditary nobility, whose chief political
function was to maintain the centrifugal tendencies to
disperse political power to the localities and provinces.
Over the centuries, however, Tocqueville points out, the
monarchy was victorious, leaving no obstacles to state
centralization. Thus, "the nobility, after having lost their
political rights and ceased. . . to act as leaders of the
people... ceasing to be a ruling class and remained a
privileged, closed group" (Tocqueville 1955 :204) . Tocqueville
locates the long-run structural preconditions of revolution
not in the contradictions between two economic classes but in
the political conflict between the state and its ruling class.
Traditionally, the nobility were relentless critics of state
centralization:
they criticized the abuses of royal power; they
censured its extravagance; they demanded an account of
its expenditures; they spoke of the constitutional
laws of the country, of the fundamental principles
limiting the unlimited power of the Crown and,
withoutexactly calling for national participation in
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the government through the Estates-General, they
continually kept suggesting the idea. (Tocqueville
1959:44) .
The function of the nobility is to preserve liberty in
the face of the equalizing tendencies of the state; their
abdication deprived the nation of its chief defenders. The
abdication of the nobility allowed state centralization to
proceed without sustained and successful resistance, but over
the long term, the divisions created in the wake of such
centralization robbed French society of its social coherence.
Thus the loosening of traditional bonds of social solidarity
were precipitant of revolutionary transformation in old regime
France:
once the bourgeois had been completely severed from
the noble, and the peasant from both alike, and when
a similar differentiation had taken place within each
of these three classes, with the result that each was
split up into a number of small groups almost
completely shut off from each other, the inevitable
consequence was that, though the nation cam to seem a
homogenous whole, its parts no longer held together
(Tocqueville 1955:136-7).
France was coming apart at the seams. But the revolution
was not brought on by the increasing impoverishment of the
lower classes; against Marxian ideas of immerseration,
Tocqueville suggests that immediately before the revolution,
economic and social conditions had actually improved. "I do
not share the view that there was a continuous decline in the
prosperity of France during the first half of the eighteenth
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century, " he writes (Tocqueville 1955:170) . Indeed,
Tocqueville points out that "the country did grow richer and
living conditions improved throughout the land" although "this
steadily increasing prosperity, far from tranquilizing the
population, everywhere promoted a spirit of unrest" (1955:174-
175). This observation leads Tocqueville to one of his few
theoretical statements:
it is not always when things are going from bad to
worse that revolutions break out. On the contrary, it
oftened happens that when a people which has put up
with an oppressive rule over a long period without
protest suddenly finds the government relaxing its
pressure, it takes up arms against it. Thus the social
order overthrown by a revolution is almost always
better than the one immediately preceding it, and
experience teaches us that, generally speaking, the
most perilous moment for a bad government is one when
it seeks to mend its ways (1955:176-177).
State centralization and the abdication of their
traditional role by the hereditary were the long-run
preconditions of the revolution; rising prosperity and the
generation of revolutionary ideas were the precipitant.
Unlike Marx, Tocqueville here assigns an important causal role
to ideas, but only ideas in historical context, ideas set in
motion by structural changes in the relationship between state
and class. The hatred of the old regime became the "passion
dominating all others" and was "the fundamental, essential,
primordial characteristic of the Revolution, never abandoned,
whatever the circumstance" (Tocqueville 1959:109). When the
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revolution erupted, it was dominated and inspired by these
ideas.
Although state centralization was a cause of the
revolution, it was surely the most visible consequence of the
revolution as well; the revolution "was essentially a movement
for political and social reform and, as such, did not aim
creating a state of permanent disorder in the conduct of
public affairs or at methodizing anarchy. On the contrary, it
sought to increase the power and jurisdiction of the central
authority" (Tocqueville 1955:19). Tocqueville concludes that
"the last word always rests with centralization, which grows
deeper even when it seems less apparent on the surface, since
the social movement, the atomization and the isolation of
social elements, always continues during such times"
(1959:165). Here Tocqueville echoes his conclusions from his
Democracy in America (1966). Yet he remains clear that the
ideological underpinning of the society had shifted from the
preservation of liberty to the promotion of equality among
citizens.
Thus in a strange way, many of Tocqueville' s conclusions
on the causes and consequences of the French Revolution are
actually consistent with Marxist principles. For one thing,
both theorists acknowledge that different social classes will
promote different sets of ideas, that ideas have a class
basis. Second, Tocqueville understands that although the
immediate victor of the French Revolution was the state, the
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great losers were the aristocracy and the peasantry; the
bourgeoisie gained while these other classes lost.
Like Marx, Tocqueville1 s analysis of revolution is
structural, relying on the shifting relations between the
state and various social classes to establish the
preconditions of revolution. However, unlike Marx,
Tocqueville assigns a secondary role to class struggle, which
he views as more a consequence of revolution than a cause.
For example, Tocqueville writes that "violent and persistent
class hatreds are not merely the products of unjust social
conditions but of the struggles that upset these" (1959:161) .
Revolution does not eliminate class struggle; it causes class
struggle.
Politically, Tocqueville distances himself from Marx as
well; he does not share Marx's enthusiasm for socialism,
which, according to Tocqueville, attacks the very principles
the French Revolution promoted. "Whereas the Revolution,
fought in the name of liberty, broke the shackles of the old
regime and thereby restored individuality, assuming
responsibility for everything, socialism negates individuality
and independence" (Pope 1986:97).
The institutionalization of democracy, suggested by the
French Revolution and most fully expressed by the United
States, Tocqueville argued, dampens revolutionary fervor and
makes revolution increasingly rare. Revolutions, after all,
threaten property and trade, whereas American democracy is
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based upon these principles. As a result, "the majority of
citizens in a democracy do not see clearly what they could
gain by a revolution, but they constantly see a thousand ways
in which they could lose by one" (Tocqueville 1966:636-637).
Thus Tocqueville notes that citizens will be increasingly
afraid of a revolution. But if revolutions are increasingly
rare in democracies, there still exists the possibility of
revolution, not in the equality which spreads through
democratic systems, but from the inequality that lingers
within it. Industrialization may lead to the potential for
revolutionary upheaval, especially as the tension between
employer and employee sharpens when contrasted to the general
trend towards equality in democratic societies. This growing
contradiction between spreading equality and persisting
inequality may produce a revolutionary situation and the
concentration of the working class may facilitate collective
action.
Tocqueville's route is more circuitous, departing from
Marx on several key theoretical points - such as the
assignment of weight to causal variables, the temporal
sequencing of events, and the political side of the
barricades that one should morally place oneself - as
well as in their empirical analysis of specific
historical events, he sides with Marx on the decisive
structural features of the sociological analysis of
revolution (Kimmel 1990:53).
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AUGUSTO CESAR SANDINO AND HIS UNIQUE BLEND OF THINKING
For the Sandinistas, Augusto Cesar Sandino's example is
important but so is his political thought. The latter is
crucial to understanding the Nicaraguan revolution not only
because it has influenced the thinking of the past and present
Sandinista leadership, but also because the leadership
believes the revolution began with Sandino rather than the
Sandinista movement reconstituted thirty years after his
death.
Whatever the economic, political and sociological
explanations of the revolution, the intellectual factors
behind it derive from Sandino's unique blend of revolutionary
ideas. Although obsessed with U.S. domination and repeated
political and military intervention in Nicaragua and the rest
of Central America, Sandino did more than wage a war of
liberation against a foreign intruder.
"Whereas he was astute enough to hide his political intentions
from his immediate followers until conditions might be ripe
for revealing them, his long-range goal was an economic,
political, and cultural transformation that would have ended
in revolution - it finally did" (Torres 47) .
Most interpretations of the Nicaraguan Revolution have
been animated by undisguised political passions. From one
perspective, experts claim that Nicaragua was tantamount to a
second Cuba, that the Sandinista Front of National Liberation
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(FSLN) was the political shell of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard,
that the revolutionary elite was to steamroll the country in
the direction of a totalitarian state, that Nicaragua's new
proposed democracy was a sham, and that behind the
government's alleged policy of non-alignment was an actual
alignment with the former Soviet Union.
Yet, from another perspective, experts express that the
Sandinista revolution is kin to the American struggle for
independence, that it was a revolution of, by, and for the
people, that the Marxists in leadership were closer to being
social democrats than Marxists-Leninists, that Christians were
a real power in the government and were shaping both the
country's culture and its educational system, and that
totalitarianism were not a threat because of the FSLN's
commitment to human rights, political pluralism, and a mixed
economy.
Highly respected scholars, including Latin American
specialists, are sharply divided over how to interpret the
revolution. However, many scholars exhibit "...surprising
agreement in their assessment of Sandino" (Bermann 89) Calling
his struggle against the American occupation of Nicaragua a,
"... nationalist and populist and unhampered by doctrinaire
ideological beliefs of any sort" (Bermann 101).
An understanding of the philosophy of the revolution may
be helpful not only in solving intellectual disputes, but also
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in disputing against any miss-fitting consensus. Donald
Hodges writes:
each side is mistaken in its assessment of Sandino and
in its interpretation of the Sandinista leaders. A
careful examination of the intellectual sources
indicates that Sandino was a dedicated revolutionary
on the borderbetween anarchism and communism, and that
the FSLN's leaders are neither Marxists-Leninists nor
social democrats but representatives of a Marxist and
Leninist New Left that incorporates anarchist elements
(1974:169).
Augusto Cesar Sandino was bora in a tiny town of
Niquinohomo, thirty kilometers southeast of Managua, in 1895.
He was the illegitimate son of a small but moderately
prosperous landowner of Spanish descent and an Indian woman
who worked for the Sandino family. He was raised by his
mother, who had become an agricultural day laborer and lived
in a shack on the town's outskirts.
Several experiences in his youth contributed to the
shaping of a future revolutionary. One was his mother's
mistreatment and miscarriage in an unhygienic prison cell.
Attended only by Sandino, he was only ten, she almost died of
a hemorrhage. "Sandino first thought only of revenge. But
aware of his impotence, he soon began raising fundamental
questions concerning God and society" (Walker 1986:21).
I remember vividly my infantile reflections on
philosophy: why is God the way he is?. ..And what is
law? If, as the priest and therefore authority says,
law isthe voice of God aimed at protecting the
people, then why does it favor the lazy instead of
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helping us who are poor? Why does God love Socrates
[Sandino's half-brother] more than me, when I have to
work and he doesn't? God and life are pure crap!
Only we poor get screwed!" (Sandino 1983:15) .
The contrast between his miserable existence and that of
his brother Socrates provided another source of bitterness.
"When I compared my brother's situation with my own, the
injustices of life made me indignant" (Sandino 1983:37).
Selser writes about an encounter Sandino had with his father
in the street one day, Sandino blurted out, "Listen, sir, am
I your son or not?" and when his father replied, "Yes, son, I
am your father, " he retorted, " Sir, if I am your son, why
don't you treat me like you treat Socrates?" (1981 10-11). It
was after this experience that his father invited his son to
move into his family home. Augusto then adopted his father's
name.
Although his father was generous, Sandino suffered over
the disparity between his mother's poverty and his father's
affluence:
My father is a proprietor and I considered him to be
taking advantaged of the people's circumstances.. .He
must have been surprised when I asked him if he did
not consider the way in which he maintained his small
capital unjust. He replied that he did not wish to
exploit people in their situation but that if he did
not, then he would be exploited by the exploiters
(Selser 1981:43).
In the summer of 1923, Sandino arrived at the oil field
of Tampico, the hotspot for the beginnings of the Mexican
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Revolution. There he acquired not only his eclectic political
and spiritual philosophy, but also his first experience and
impressions of the Mexican Revolution and its relevance to the
political struggles in Nicaragua. Tampico was a hotbed of
political agitation among oil workers. From his companions on
the job, Selser tells us, "Sandino assimilated his first
notions of the most generalized struggle being waged at that
time, the struggle by workers to organize their own unions"
(1981:47) . When the dispute over petroleum reached its climax
and the oil firms threatened to close down the wells, the
entire city felt endangered and the workers retaliated with
demands for nationalizing the oil companies. Sandino began to
consider the foreign owners his enemies.
Tampico's oil fields became a recruiting ground for the
followers of Mexico's immensely popular anarchist, Ricardo
Flores Magon. The socialists unreservedly defended Mexico's
new revolutionary government, and by 1925 Tampico also had a
Communist dimension. Unlike the banana republics of Central
America, Mexico was an inferno of competing revolutionary
ideas, and Sandino could not have remained immune to this
social ferment. The doctrines of Flores Magon in particular
made a lasting impression on him.
Sandino assimilated anarchist, socialist, and communist
ideas from these agitators claiming to represent workers like
himself. Mexican anarchists stressed the need for a sustained
struggle against political authority, capital, and the clergy
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in hope of eventually replacing them with self-governing
'communes'- associations owning property in common. Mexican
socialists insisted that the land should be worked
cooperatively, that nationalization of the means of production
would have to be achieved piecemeal through reforms. Mexican
Communists argued that the workers' fundamental enemy was
international capitalism or imperialism, that the Mexican
government and Mexico’s capitalists were incapable of acting
independently of pressures from the major centers of world
power, and that violent actions of the state by a united front
of workers and peasants led by a revolutionary vanguard was a
necessary step toward national and social liberation.
Although they all had a classless society as their ultimate
objective, they clashed over how to get there and over the
form the new society might take. In the last analysis; all
were communists, but only in the loose sense of advocating
property in common.
From the anarchists Sandino absorbed a strong dose of
anti-authoritarianism, anti-clericalism, and anti-capitalism;
from the socialists, his advanced program of social
legislation and strategy of alliances with other progressive
forces; and from the Communists, his commitment to a struggle
to the death against imperialism through a worldwide
proletarian revolution. In Tampico, Sandino also lent a
sympathetic ear to the religious currents that supported the
Mexican Revolution.
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That the Mexican experience was decisive in shaping
Sandino's outlook is evident from his own account:
Around the year 1925. . .1 succeed in surrounding myself
with a group of Spiritualist friends with whom I
discussed daily the submission of our people in Latin
America to either the hypocritical advances or violent
interventions of the Yankee imperial assassins
(Sandino 1983:261).
From these friends Sandino acquired his knowledge of
Mexican Spiritualism, a nineteenth-century countercultural
movement closely tied to political dissidence. Mexican
Spiritualism was an identifiable sect organized into temples
whose manifest purpose was to form the nucleus of the coming
brotherhood of man. The oneness of God and the final
redemption of humanity were doctrines common to this belief.
From Mexican Freemasonry, Sandino acquired a belief in an
impersonal God who supervises human destinies from afar, a
hidden or secret doctrine learned through degrees of
enlightenment, and a strategy of revealing this doctrine
through small doses to a select few. Through Mexican
Spiritualism he came to believe in communication with the
spirits of the dead, in a cycle of birth and rebirth, in
extrasensory perception, in the power of prophecy, and in the
continuing struggle between the good spirits and evil spirits
for control of the universe.
Common to these unique beliefs was the doctrine that all
men are brothers because they are bom of the same holy
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spirit, and that all men should behave as brothers toward one
another. The terms of 'brother' and 'comrade' were used by
anarchists, socialists, and communists because of their
commitment to a fraternal or classless society. Thus there
was a common denominator in Sandino's political and spiritual
beliefs. Such was the ideological baggage, in the form of a
peculiar blend of revolutionary politics and theology, that
Sandino carried back to Nicaragua.
In Sandino's aritsan's approach to philosophical matters,
he believed ideologies may be made to complement one another.
In Sandino's pragmatic approach to belief systems may be found
the basis of his ideological pluralism. The more ideologies
the better, as long as they served the purpose for which they
were intended - mobilizing people toward a specific goal.
Sandino's ideological interests covered a broad spectrum.
Neill Macaulay reports that in Tampico he became a Freemason
while associated with Spiritualist groups and also studied
theosophy, yoga, and Seventh Day Adventism (1976:50-52). Even
then Sandino took an active interest in matters that might
broadly be described as philosophical. These interests became
more pronounced in later years. When Belausteguigoitia asked
him about his studies, he replied, "I am interested in the
study of Nature and of the fundamental relations among things.
That is why I like philosophy!" (1976 [1934] :198) .
As early as his first trip to Mexico he became familiar
with different political, moral, and religious philosophies as
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guides to human behavior, the fundamental concepts on which
he based his political philosophy, such as reason and justice,
were subsequently inflated into universal principles governing
both nature and history. Macaulay writes that:
... as his seeming obsession with his fatherland began
taking second place to his presumed mission of
liberating all of Central America and then the world,
these concepts would be recast in terms of 'Universal
Love' . By then his earlier political philosophy of
universal history in the final version of his
philosophy of liberation (1976:98).
The philosophy of liberation was inspired by Joaquin
Trincado's book The Five Loves. In ascending order these were
love for one's family, one's city, and one’s particular region
or province leading to love for one' s country and to the most
important and least egoistic love of all, universal love or
fraternity. The priority of this fifth love was fundamental
to the school's communist ethic. While the instrumentality of
universal love was an anarchist and communist revolution
ideal, its goal led to "... the complete man: the Communist
Spiritist. This was no tangential matter for Sandino; it was
the crux of his philosophy of liberation" (Jorrin 1979:156) .
The Legacy of His Political Thinking
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Sandino's anarchism had several sources. Some of it
derived from Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, but his principal
debt was to the father of Mexican anarchism, Ricardo Flores
Magon (1873-1922).
Copies of Flores Magon's Semilla Libertaria (Liberation
Seed) were distributed to the workers of Tampico. From the
moment it appeared in 1923 it became a kind of political
bible, the single most important source of ideas for the
Mexican working class. An avid reader, Sandino could not have
escaped its influence.
Liberation Seed consisted of a collection of articles
from Flores Magon's weekly journal Regeneration, which first
appeared in Mexico in 1900 and continued to be published in
the United States with brief interruptions until his final
imprisonment in 1918. The book contained his most important
articles, beginning on the eve of the Mexican Revolution in
September 1910, and ending with his provocative manifesto to
the workers of the world. It described the role of anarchism
in the revolution, the feasibility of a classless outcome of
the revolutionary struggle, and concluded by linking together
the Mexican and Russian revolutions as heralds of a world
recognized by a proletarian conflagration. Its publication
placed Flores Magon among the intellectuals of international
anarchism alongside the Russian Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)
and the Italian Errico Malatesta (1853-1932).
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Flores Magon owed a major intellectual debt to each. From
Kropotkin he derived the idea of a social revolution that
would lead to a new order known as 'communist anarchism' . This
idea advocates common ownership not only of the means of
production, but also of the collective fruits of human labor.
Rather than each worker's being entitled to the proceeds of
his or her own labor, each would be allowed to appropriate
what he or she needed. Malatesta also adopted this program as
his own, but unlike Kropotkin, he came to terms with Marxism
by accepting the materialist interpretation of history and by
relying on the workers to emancipate themselves through their
own revolutionary organizations. So did Flores Magon.
Like his anarchist precursors, Flores Magon tried to
combine the legacies of two different and opposed
revolutionary traditions: the radicalized liberalism and
democratism of Rousseau and the communized socialism of Marx
and his followers. Both legacies, he believed, faced a common
enemy in the alliance of property, state, and church. He
referred to them as the 'three thieves' because they lived off
the fruits of other people's labor.
Against the first thief Flores Magon called for economic
equality; against the second, for political liberty; and
against the third, for universal love. Thus the old order
would be replaced by "the saving revolution that goes to the
bottom of things, that . . . annihilates once and for all the
old system and implants the new one of liberty, equality, and
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fraternity" (Moore 1979:281). These were also Sandino's
principles.
Sandino was not an original political thinker. Most of
his political principles may be found in Flores Magon's
letters, political manifestos, and communiques. In some
instances even the style of expression and choice of words are
similar.
All of the bizarre political ideas Sandino articulated
in terms of 'communism', 'communication',
'fraternization', and the coming 'chaos', 'world
conflagration' and 'proletarian explosion' may be
found in the two volumes of Semilla Libertaria. The
meanings Sandino gave them were meanings given them by
Flores Magon (Liss 1989:117).
Sandino's development of the doctrine of liberalism, his
peculiar concept of patriotism, his advanced social program,
and his revolutionary strategy all have their foundations in
Flores Magon's writings.
Basic to Sandino's radicalized version of liberal
political philosophy was the opposition of the 'force of
right' and the 'right of force', concepts also fundamental to
Flores Magon's liberal theory. Like Flores Magon, he
counterbalanced " the enlightened h:’u:y of 'Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity' to what the other called the hydras with
three heads: 'Authority, Capital, Clergy" (Miguez 1975:203).
Like most anarchists, Flores Magon claimed that the
struggle of labor against capital is a matter not only of
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human justice, but also of class interest. On the one hand,
his moral philosophy based on reason, justice, and universal
love was a development of the eighteenth-century liberal
doctrine of human rights. On the other, his focus on class
struggle was predicated on the Marxist theory of exploitation
in capital and on a strategy of emancipation by the workers
themselves. Sandino also intertwined these two themes, the
moral justification with the economic and historical basis of
the class struggle.
For the philosophical foundation of his anarcho-communism
Sandino turned to the study of occult philosophy. Common to
both was their covert existence and opposition to the social
establishment and intellectual mainstream to which both were
marginal. For Sandino, the chief attraction of occult
philosophy was its subversion of the ideological status quo.
There were several schools of occult philosophy that
interested Sandino in the course of his intellectual
development. Spiritualism was one of them, he was introduced
to its practices during his first stay in Mexico.
Revolutionary Freemasonry was another. But of the more
lasting influence were his theosophical studies, also begun in
Mexico during his first visit there in 1923 . Later that would
help convince him that Communist Spiritism rather than
Spiritualism or Freemasonry was the activating ideology he
needed.
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Mexican Spiritualism may be traced to two principle
sources. Unlike other Latin American countries when
Spiritualism emerged under the influence of the French Society
of Spiritual Studies, in Mexico it was diffused from centers
in the United States. The Spiritualist movement originated in
connection with the alleged discovery by Margaret and Kate Fox
of the art of mediumship or communication with disincarnate
spirits. As a dissident movement within American
Protestantism, convinced that God is not a person but the
radiating force of love, it soon turned into a critique of
American society. Both before and after the Civil War it
became associated with schemes for utopian communities,
women's rights, free love, prison reform, and labor
radicalism. It was in the vanguard with regard to abolishing
slavery and securing social justice for the Native American
Indians. Victoria Woodhull, president of the American
Association of Spiritualists during the early 1870s, was a
notorious socialist who believed that Spiritualism signified
not only a religious enlightenment, but also a cultural,
political, and social revolution. In 1872 she published the
first English translation of the Communist Manifesto.
In addition to this American source, Mexican Spiritualism
had an indigenous origin in the teachings of a recalcitrant
Roman Catholic priest known as Father Elijah. Due to its
extreme nationalism, anti-clericalism, and appeal to Mexico's
downtrodden masses, this indigenous brand of Spiritualism
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easily prevailed over its rival by establishing temples
throughout the interior and also along the United States
border.
Founded in 1861 by the enigmatic Father Elijah, Mexican
Spiritualism began as a countercultural movement against Roman
Catholicism during the period when Mexico suffered from
extreme internal dissension, civil war, foreign invasion, and
the socially disrupting effects of nascent industrialization.
The son of an Indian woman and a mestizo of Spanish-Jewish
descent, Father Elijah claimed to be the incarnation of the
Holy Spirit. He also believed that Mexico had been chosen by
God to become the New Jerusalem. Thus in several respects his
doctrine showed traces of the religious tradition against
which he and his followers had revolted.
Father Elijah believed that human history was divided
into three stages. The first stage of God the Father, or time
of the Old Testament, was followed by the stage of the Son,
referring to the New Testament. The third and final stage is
that of the Holy Spirit, or time of spiritual understanding,
when the prophet Elijah was supposed to return and even
unbelievers would look to God and all creatures would be
redeemed. Mexican Spiritualists believe the present or third
stage to have been ushered in by Father Elijah.
Mexican Spiritualism combined elements of the dominant
Roman Catholic religious ideology with belief in a continuing
revelation based on testimony of psychic mediums. Finkler
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writes that "Mexican Spiritualists believe in the Trinity -
the Father, Jehovah; the Son, Jesus Christ; and Father Elijah,
the Holy Ghost -and in the Virgin Mary. These Spiritualist
deities 'irradiate' messages during church services through
mediums especially gifted to receive them" (Miguez 1975:278) .
Sandino rejected these particular survivals of the
Christianity. Nonetheless, he shared with Mexican
Spiritualists the belief in extrasensory communication with
other spirits and in the dawn of a new era corresponding to
that of the Holy Spirit.
Mexican Spiritualism was an expression of religious
dissent closely tied to political dissidence. The most
prominent example of each during the Mexican Revolution was
Francisco Madero, who replaced Porfirio Diaz as president. He
led the main forces of the revolution that toppled the Diaz
dictatorship in 1911. Under the influence of Spiritualist
ideals proceeding from the United States, he believed that "a
mystical community of prescient beings, living and dead, could
guide humanity toward new heights" (Gutierrez 1975:88) . He and
his fellow Spiritualists testified to a noncorporeal presence
within all persons capable of interacting with the material
world and of transmitting extrasensory messages to persons
properly attuned to receiving them, referred to as Magnetism.
In France during the decade leading up to the Great
Revolution, Mesmerism became transformed into a .political
movement aimed at regenerating humanity and overcoming the
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obstacles to human fraternity. It hoped to do so by
"restoring a natural society in which moral laws of nature
would drown aristocratic privileges and despotic governments
in a sea of mesmeric fluid"(Torres 1979:85). That Mesmerism
made inroads into Mexico having an influence on Sandino.
Sandino believed that he possessed the psychic powers
required to receive and to transmit spiritual messages.
Belausteguigoitia recalled having seen a letter from Sandino's
half-brother, noting that Augusto had an enormous telepathic
receptacle for receiving extrasensory impressions (1976
[1934] : 32-34) . Sandino claimed that his ideas and even his
voice could be heard in distant places: "The magnetism of a
thought is transmitted. . . In battle, with the nervous system
in tension, a voice with magnetic quality has an enormous
resonance" (Belausteguigoitia 1976 [1934] -.70) . Although these
statements were made after he had become an adept of the
Magnetic-Spiritual School, his conviction of belonging to the
spiritual elect and of possessing exceptional spiritual powers
preceded by several years his studies in stern rational
philosophy.
Masonry was another rival for Sandino1s affections.
Although he did not become a Master Mason until 1929, it is
believed that he attended Masonic meetings in Tampico or its
vicinity during his first trip to Mexico in 1923. Freemasonry
was then the vogue but there was more than one kind of Masonry
and not all were revolutionary. Radical and revolutionary
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during the American and French Revolutions, Freemasonry had
become by the late nineteenth century a society of free-
thinking liberals who deliberately shunned political and
religious controversy in favor of cementing the bonds of human
fellowship through social and philanthropic activities. The
Mexican National Rite had become a social club or fraternity
stressing self-improvement, knowledge of natural sciences, and
community services. The contract between this socially
acceptable version of Freemasonry and the conspiratorial
current that captured his imagination and that he "drank
deeply of the revolutionary ideas being proclaimed in those
reunions"(Aguilar 1978:141).
In Mexico, Freemasonry became a significant political
force when, under the influence of Benito Juarez and his
Liberal Reform, it became a politically subversive and
anticlerical side-current based on French revolutionary
notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Later revived
in the heat of the Mexican Revolution, these ideas made an
indelible impression on Sandino.
The origins of this revolutionary brand of Masonry go
back to the Masonic lodges during the French Revolution. They
had become dens of anarchism for the general overturning of
government and established religion.
Sandino's philosophy of liberation is sometimes referred
to as theosophy. From the Greek THEOS, god, and SOPHIA,
wisdom, theosophy tries to establish direct contact with the
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source of all life through acts of contemplation and
meditation. In its reliance on an inner light, it is distinct
from theology, whose knowledge of God is derived from external
sources. Only when capitalized does the word theosophy denote
the doctrines of a special sect, Madame Blavatsky's
theosophical Society, which incorporates elements of oriental
religious worship.
Most theosophists trace their doctrine not to Madame
Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society founded by her and
Henry Olcott in 1875, but to the succession of masters of
wisdom who supposedly guide the evolution of humanity by
sharing with ordinary mortals their superior knowledge.
Madame Blavatsky described a master of wisdom as "a personage
who, by special training and education, has evolved those
higher faculties and has attained that spiritual knowledge
which ordinary humanity will acquire after passing through
numberless series of incarnations during the process of cosmic
evolution" (Webb 1979:249). This description fits the so-
called missionary spirits Sandino described.
Webb believes that it was very likely that Sandino was
already a theosophist before joining the Magnetic-Spiritual
School. From the accounts given to Isirdo Fabela, it was
there [in Tampico] where, taking advantage of the free time
from his work, Sandino dedicated himself to reading about
social questions and steeping himself in theosophical ideas
(1979: 167-169). Years later Sandino would identify Zoroaster
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as the founder of theosophy, and indicate a knowledge of the
Zoroastrain texts, acquired independently of the Magnetic-
Spiritual School. It is unclear when and where he obtained
this knowledge, but there is a strong possibility that he
acquired it in Tampico.
Sandino's assimilation of Zoroastrian doctrines may be
traced to three different but related sources: the Zoroastrain
scriptures, the Jewish Gnosticism of the Kabbalah, and
Trincado's stern rational philosophy. Published around the
turn of the century was a Barcelona edition of Zoroaster's
oracles, possibly the source referred to in Sandino's letter
to Dr. Barahona(May 27, 1933)(Sandino 1979:130-132). As for
the Kabbalah, there are Sandino's direct references to it in
his letter to General Pedro A11amirano(February 3 1931) :
Sincerely, brother, ... I tell you in private that even
I did not know that you and brother general Carlos
Salgado are among the missionary spirits who are with
me, and that on many other occasions we have been
together, I did not learn this until I arrived in
Mexico...1 still cannot tell you who were because the
Kabbalah does not allow it (Sandino 1979:92).
On returning to Mexico in 1929, Sandino resumed his
studies of occult philosophy. But they began to take a
different turn. In Mexico most Spiritualists still believed
in some of the core doctrines of Christianity. Sofonias
Salvatierra writes that Sandino became impatient with this
religious heritage. Later, he would insist that religions
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were a matter of the past, that he had rejected all religious
beliefs, and that he relied entirely on reason. Sandino refers
to reason as "not only the power of logical reasoning from
premises to conclusions, but also an independent source of
knowledge superior to sense perception. Thus a constant in
Sandino credo was the belief that 'Justice, Right, and Reason'
were not just moral principles; they were divine powers that
ruled the world..."(Woodcock 1972:257).
For Zoroastrians, the human self is essentially
threefold. Man is a composite of body, an internal soul or
mind encased within the body but freed from it at death, and
a pre-existent external spirit independent of both. In its
unredeemed state, this pre-existent spirit is unconscious or
asleep by the nonspiritual soul. The awakening or liberation
from this state of ignorance depends on 'knowing your
trinity', Sandino wrote in a letter to Dr. Enoc Aguado(
October 26, 1930) , to which he added that the spirit cannot be
redeemed without the 'spark of love and justice'. This
trinity is the composite self and its redeeming spark is an
emanation of the universal spirit (Sandino 1983:165-166). To
know one's trinity in the deepest sense is thus to know God.
Among the later doctrinal accretions consistent with
Zoroaster's monotheism was the belief that matter is
essentially good, because it was created by God acting through
the Holy Spirit. Due to spirits being created out a primal
matter, they, too, have a material component. Soul health
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implies the health of the body and its release from death;
soul sickness implies physical ailments and the morality of
the flesh. In which souls would be reincarnated and that the
Earth would become a paradise after the Final Judgement were
also doctrines dear to Sandino.
Fundamental to Sandino's theosophy was the struggle
between the forces of light and darkness, between good and
evil - all traceable to Zoroaster. The mission of humanity on
Earth is to escape the limitations of the flesh not by fleeing
from the material world, Sandino believed, but actively
working to change it.
Among the attractions of the Magnetic-Spiritual School
was a fully articulated social and political philosophy, which
was lacking in Mexican Spiritualism and the other schools of
occult philosophy. When Sandino began his studies at the
school in Yucatan, he was already a dedicated anarchist
committed to making a social revolution. What attracted to
stern rational philosophy was its project of a universal
commune based on the same general principles as his anarcho-
communism. Trincado's anarchism had the distinct advantage of
having a spiritual dimension derived from the legacy of
Spanish anarchism.
Sandino came under the influence not only of a variety of
interpretations of the spiritual world, but also of more than
one form of anarchism. Next in importance to Mexican
Anarchism in the formation of his political thought was
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Spanish anarchism. His red and black flag had an anarcho-
syndicalist origin, having been introduced into Mexico by
Spanish immigrants.
Spanish anarchism may be distinguished from the other
expressions of European anarchism by its charismatic and
peculiarly religious qualities. It developed in response to
systematic persecution and a climate or repression and
martyrology unmatched in any other European country. Spanish
anarchists interpreted their struggle against the bourgeoisie
as a means not only of political and moral regeneration, but
also of spiritual redemption.
According to Trincado, Christianity founded by St. Paul
not only distorted Jesus's teachings, but also became their
mortal enemy. The Roman Catholic Church, he believed, had
entered into an unholy alliance with the Roman Empire. In
return for becoming recognized as the state religion, the
church had consecrated the empire. Ecclesiastical authority
was thus buttressed by imperial power and vice-versa.Trincado
charged Pope Gregory VII with endangering humanity by imposing
on the Catholic clergy the unnatural and perverse vow of
celibacy.
Trincado looked for biblical support for his anti
clerical ism in the Epistle of James and the Book of
Revelation. James's Epistle was important to him because it
"summarized all the moral principles of all ages taught by all
the prophets, messiahs, and missionaries [missionary spirits] "
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(Steif 1982:37) The fundamental moral principle of the
Epistle is to "pay no servile regard to people"[Chapter
2:1](cited in Ramirez 1983:23). Trincado interpreted it as
meaning that everyone is equal before the Father and Creator,
and no one should submit to another. This principle applied
not only to priests, but also to the wielders of power and the
owners of capital. Neither they nor their gods, for Trincado,
were worthy of being worshipped. Another blow at established
religion was the following epigram: "for as the body without
the spirit is dead, so faith is dead without deeds" [Chapter
2:26] (cited in Ramirez 1983:24) . In effect, there is no
redeeming faith other than good works, which makes both the
papacy and the Catholic Church obsolete.
The Apocalypse was crucial to Trincado's argument because
it not only predicts the end of injustice in this world, but
also identifies the material and spiritual causes of
injustice. These were identified with the two beasts of the
Revelation [Chapter 13:1-18], the first beast interpreted as
Christianity in defiance of the original apostles, and the
second as its official state embodiment, the Roman Catholic
Church.
The figure of Jesus had special significance for
Trincado, who considered him to be the original founder of
socialism. By the word socialism he meant not only the tepid
and reformist principles of the social democratic parties in
Europe, but also the revolutionary overthrow of the existing
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order. "In its doctrines socialism has belatedly recognized
that the first socialist was Jesus the revolutionary and
martyr of the priests(Hart 1978:346).
Trincado distinguished two main branches of communism.
Extremist communism, which he identified with bolshevism, came
in response to the violence of religion, to the violence of
aristocracy, and to the violence of exploitation. But this was
not the way to establish a true commune based on love, nor did
the Russian people really want to meet violence with violence.
Although the Russian people annihilated their oppressors,
Trincado believed that those driven to extreme measures
usually end by repudiating them. Social peace is the
fundamental objective of communists, he observed, but there
can be no peace under conditions of civil strife and hatred.
In meeting violence with violence, he concluded, Bolshevism is
ultimately self-defeating.
For Trincado, the contemporary alternative to Bolshevism
was his own project of a universal commune. What
distinguishes the universal commune from its bolshevik
competitor is, among other things, the role it assigns to the
individual- the human soul under communism. One objection to
bolshevism is that it relies on laws and institutions to make
people equal; that it sacrifices individual interests to those
of society. The natural commune would invert this dependence
by discovering the law in each person, thus making society
dependent on individuals.
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"True communism, according to Trincado, is predicated on
the true commune, which is also the natural commune" (Nunez
1982:7). Despite the ownership of everything in common,
individuals rather than society would be the final authority.
This advanced form of communism would "leave the individual
sovereign in the bosom of society" and "each individual the
sovereign proprietor of all" (Nunez 1982:11).
The idea of a natural commune shows the influence of
Rousseau rather than Marx. The fundamental social question
for Trincado, echoing Rousseau, was to find a form of
association that would defend with the public power the person
and goods of each associate while each obeyed only himself or
herself and remained as free as before. Rousseau attempt to
answer this question has had a traditional appeal for
anarchists because it combines freedom with equality.
Like Flores Magon and other anarchists, Trincado depicted
communism as a moneyless economy in which there is no buying
and selling. Where "the only money is man, tyranny can no
longer exist because there is no place for inequality,"
(Marini 1984:64) .which refers to the non-existence of an
economic base. Thus Trincado railed against plutocracy, which
he associated with parasitism. Unfamiliar as he was with
writings of Karl Marx, he used the term plutocracy for what
Marxists call capitalism. The three fundamental parasites
preying on the working class, according to Trincado, are
"religion, militarism, and moneylenders or financiers."(Nunez
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1982:17). These correspond to Flores Magon's three-headed
hydra: the clergy, authority, and capital.
Nonetheless, there are some fundamental differences
distinguishing Trincado’s anarchism from Flores Magon's.
Trincado identified the fundamental enemy as the clergy, whose
religious domination has been buttressed historically by the
political and military power of the state. Economic
exploitation by the rich classes was depicted as dependent on
this wicked alliance. Unlike most of his fellow anarchists,
Flores Magon came to believe that capital was the fundamental
enemy, in turn supported by political and military authority,
whose spiritual ally was organized religion. Whereas the
workers' economic struggle against exploitation became Flores
Magon's central preoccupation, anti-clericalism was the focus
of Trincado's anarchism.
Sandino's writings do not reflect Trincado's all-
consuming hatred of religion. The fundamental enemies for
Sandino were the " 'Yankee pirates' , the 'Wall Street Bankers' ,
and 'Nicaragua's corrupt political leaders'" (Cluster
1983 :32) .
Sandino's anarchism differed from that of his Spanish
mentor in focusing on the political-military struggle as "the
necessary prelude to establishing a society of workers' and
peasants' cooperatives in Nicaragua."(Black 1982:21).
Authority was the immediate enemy, whereas the international
capitalist system was the fundamental one. Although he
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subscribed to Trincado's philosophy of universal history, his
main concern was the struggle against imperialism interpreted
as the highest stage of capitalism. "There was both a Marxist
and a Leninist component in his anarchism that was missing in
the anarchism of the Magnetic-Spiritual School"(Ratliff
1976:319).
For Sandino the superiority of Trincado' s philosophy lay
in it fusion of Spiritism and anarchism. This was unbeatable
combination because it gave a spiritual justification to
anarchism and an anarchist dimension to traditional theosophy:
Having discovered in the austere world of spirits an
explanation of humanity's material existence, Sandino
also discovered there a rationale for an anarchist and
communist revolution that would destroy privilege and
make austerity binding on all. In effect, his
philosophy of austere rationality was a philosophy of
rationa lausterity (Nomad 1961:285) .
Sandino did not explain his peculiar juxtaposition of
rational and communist. However, we know that his belief in a
world communist revolution was based on his theosophy, which
proclaimed itself rational rather than dogmatic. "A 1 rational
communist1 to Sandino was a communist guided by divine
reason"(Massing 1988:57).
Arguing that theosophy is not religion, Sandino declared,
"We are guided by reason" (Massing 1988 :57) . He believed that
reason and religion were opposed, that religion rested on
faith rather than knowledge, and that theosophy was a rational
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substitute for faith. Critical of all religion, he claimed
that the purpose of his theosophy was to enlighten and
instruct the ignorant. His theosophy effectively backed up his
earlier appeals to the principles of Reason, Justice, and
Right. Reason, his criterion of the Right and the Just, stands
out as Sandino's basic principle. It had a theosophical
foundation in what he called the 'Spirit of Light and Truth.'
The first public statement of Sandino's theosophy was his
Light and Truth Manifesto. In this document he identified the
communist forecast of world revolution with the Final
Judgement of the Bible. "By the Final Judgement of the World
should be understood the destruction of injustice on earth and
the reign of the Spirit of Light and Truth, i.e., Love"
(Azicri 1985:349-350) . He predicted that by the year 2000 the
holocaust would have occurred:
The oppressed peoples will break the chains of
humiliation with which the imperialists of the earth
have tried to keep us subjugated. The trumpets that
will be heard will be the bugles of war intoning the
hymns of liberty of the oppressed peoples against the
injustice of the oppressors. The only thing that will
be submerged forever is injustice; what will remain is
the kingdom of perfection or Love with Divine Justice,
her favorite daughter (Azicri 1985:370).
Justice, Sandino believed, was on the side of his heroic
soldiers. He assured his men that it was not necessary to
wait for some divine signal before launching the final battle.
Nor was there anything to fear from the coming confrontation
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with evil. Neither the earth nor all its inhabitants would be
destroyed during the final holocaust, Sandino assured them,
because victory over the enemy was guaranteed.
Sandino's doctrine of Divine Justice culminated in the
prophecy of a final judgement that would reinforce the
communist expectation of a world revolution. This final
episode in divine and human history would be preceded by a
world war involving angelic hosts and legions of the Devil as
well as incarnate spirits on earth. In a letter to another of
his supporters in April 1931, Sandino indicated that the
prophesied battle would be unleashed by the Wall Street
bankers in an effort to complete the construction of an
interoceanic canal through Nicaragua, an effort doomed to
defeat because Divine Justice impelled Nicaraguans to stop
them.
Although Sandino rejected faith in a personal god and
denied the divinity of Christ, he acknowledged a predetermined
destiny chosen for each person. The human spirit not only
survives the physical body, he believed, but also has the
power to receive messages from other spirits directly in the
form of visions.
Sandino thought that his theosophical beliefs supported
revolutionary actions because they dissipated the fear of
death and encouraged the struggle for justice. Injustice is
self-defeating, he believed, because it comes from ignorance
of God, who is Eternal Love. He believed that injustice first
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appeared during the early stages of humanity and is destined
to disappear with knowledge of our spiritual origin and
nature. It has no reason for being because it is against the
law of love, the only law that governs people who see the
light.
But to overcome injustice one must attack it. That, he
believed, was our mission on earth. Sandino noted in an
interview with General Moncada, who had ridiculed him for his
patriotic sentiments, that it was not "prudence but vileness
to try to live well on the tears and sacrifices of others"
(Marcus 1985:19) . For countless centuries everything enjoyable
in life had been monopolized by a few parasites, according to
his account, while the masses had to grovel and sweat without
receiving even what was necessary for survival. Injustice had
prevailed because of humanity's egoism based on
ignorance.However the rule of oppressors, Sandino predicted,
would soon be overcome by the war of liberators. From that
time on, there would be peace and justice on earth.
To Jesus we owe the notion of Liberty, Sandino believed.
Thus the modem representatives of his teachings are referred
to as liberals. At the opposite pole are the conservatives,
the group opposed to liberty and freedom of thought. "Liberals
are called heretics because they propose to discover the
reality of things through the exercise of free thought"
(Aldaraca 1980:78) . Liberty is a ban to conservatives because
they want to keep the masses of humble people ignorant and in
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a condition of servitude. In this perspective, Jesus was a
champion of the poor and oppressed against the conservatives
of his time.
The focus on exploitation and the struggle against
capitalism help to distinguish communists from other social
reformers. But Sandino was no ordinary communist. For him
communism was a way of life, not just a social movement or
novel mode of production and distribution. Because he
crouched his ideology in religious phraseology, he presented
a more attractive figure to Nicaraguan peasants, workers, and
university students than did the agents of the international
communist community, with their harsh materialism and appeals
to scientific knowledge. It would not be the only instance of
an indigenous communist movement - the FSLN is the most
notorious example - proving to be more viable than an
established Marxist-Leninist party in Central America.
From Sandino to Sandinismo
So far to this point we have been considering the thought
of one man, the original philosopher of the Nicaraguan
Revolution and founder of its Defending Army. The shift of
focus will be on the collective leadership of the movement he
helped spawn, the FSLN. Although Sandino's movement was so
persecuted and decimated that it was eventually wiped out, it
reemerged more than a quarter century later with the founding
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of the FSLN. This new organization was conceived and nurtured
by a political-military collective consisting of members from
its National Directorate.
The FSLN owes a debt to Sandino for his political
assessments of Nicaraguan reality, revolutionary strategy, and
ideology of liberation. At the same time it is indebted to
the new Marxism that emerged from the Cuban Revolution in the
words of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Unlike the original
Sandinismo, contemporary Sandinismo has shed Sandino's
anarchism and rational communism for a Third World variant of
Marxi sm-Lenini sm.
To help diffuse Sandino's ideas, Carlos Fonseca Amador
founded a review called Nueva Nicaragua and a modest
publishing outfit with the same name. Launched in 1957, both
provided ideological support for the New Nicaragua movement he
organized in 1960 - the first youth movement inspired and
guided by Sandino's ideas. The Cuban Revolution was one of
its major sources of inspiration.
As a vehicle for diffusing and applying Sandino's ideas,
Fonseca's New Nicaragua movement became the impulse behind two
other youth organizations. In 1959 the Nicaraguan Patriotic
Youth (JPN) had been organized secretly and independently of
Fonseca's former group, but the following year he convinced
its leaders to adopt Sandino's philosophy as a guide. Silvio
Mayorga became its new general secretary. And in 1960 Tomas
Borge founded another youth movement, the Nicaraguan
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Revolutionary Youth (JRN) , among Nicaraguan exiles in Costa
Rica. The presence of a large number of young exiles not only
in Costa Rica but also in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela
convinced him of the need for a second secret youth group to
carry on revolutionary propaganda outside the country.
A year later, in July 1961, the leaders of these youth
movements met at Tegucigalpa, where they fused their
respective organizations into a single unitary front. Yet it
was not until 1963, according to Borge, that "Fonseca
succeeded in imposing Sandino's intellectual legacy and the
name 'Sandinista' on the newly formed front"(Walker 1980:59).
The fourth founder of the FSLN, Noel Guerrero, who had
participated in the planned invasion of Nicaragua from Cuba
via Honduras in 1959, resisted the imposition of Sandino's
philosophical thought. Several years later, he broke off with
Fonseca in the Honduran jungles.
Fonseca insisted on linking the contemporary struggle of
Marxist-Leninists, who had come under the influence of the
Cuban Revolution, with Sandino's earlier struggle against
imperialism and dictatorship. He was the first communist in
Nicaragua to steep himself in his country's national history
and Sandino's struggle in particular, which he took as a model
for a new generation of Nicaraguan revolutionaries. He wanted
the people to understand that the new struggle being launched
in Nicaragua was "the continuation of a still unfinished was
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started by patriots and revolutionaries of former times under
conditions peculiar to their epoch” (Camejo 1979:108) .
The rescue of Sandino's political legacy took two forms.
The first and most urgent was Fonseca's compilation of a basic
anthology of Sandino's political ideas, his Ideario Politico
del General Augusto Cesar Sandino. The principal document for
instructing FSLN cadres in Sandino's thought, it began to
circulate when the parent organization was founded in 1961.
Fonseca organized Sandino's thought under six basic headings
pertaining to people's war, social program, revolutionary
politics, internationalism, imperialism, and moral integrity.
There is considerable overlapping and the reason for this
ordering, although there is an apparent progression from
Sandino's discussion of Nicaragua's immediate problems to more
abstract concerns. Patriotism emerges as the thread tying all
these ideas together.
In addition to this anthology, Fonseca wrote a brief
biography of his hero entitled Sandino, Guerrillero
Proletario. completed shortly before the FSLN launched its
second armed operation in 1966. It was the first biography to
stress the combined proletarian and revolutionary character of
Sandino's war of national liberation. "Fonseca believed that
the original proletarian component continued to shape
Sandino's social program. Here were have the intellectual
thrust of the pamphlet and his own justification for reviving
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Sandino's struggle for national and social liberation" (Bell
1974:193).
Another noteworthy feature of Fonseca1s biography is its
stress on the revolutionary content of Sandino's struggle from
the moment he returned to Nicaragua in 1926. "Throughout the
years of his struggle, from the very beginning until the end
of the resistance, one becomes aware of the program of social
transformation that Sandino championed" (Greene 1974:252) . His
only criticism of Sandino is that the objective conditions of
the anti-imperialist struggle in the Third World "did not
permit him to complement his correct military strategy with a
correct political strategy that would guarantee the continuity
of the revolutionary process" (English 1985:22-23). Fonseca
believed that the proletarian thrust of Sandino's struggle
lacked a scientific basis in a Marxist-Leninist understanding
of contemporary society.
Fonseca and the FSLN recovered only those aspects of
Sandino's thought they considered useful in activating
ideologically the movement of national liberation bearing
Sandino’s name. The anarcho-communist foundations of his
political philosophy were passed over along with his bizarre
theosophical ideas. The FSLN has disseminated a distorted
image of the real Sandino, complains the Magnetic-Spiritual
School in Buenos Aires.
Fonseca assimilated not only Sandino's thought but also
the legacy of Marxism-Leninism. He preferred the Cuban
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development of Marxist-Leninism to the doctrinaire version of
the Nicaraguan party, because the Cubans had also assimilated
and transmitted Sandino's example. This new strategy was also
a new style of Leninism.
Contemporary Sandinismo represents the fusion of Marxist
revolutionary thought and Sandino's intellectual heritage. But
what precisely were the elements of Marxism that Fonseca
combined with his country's revolutionary legacy?
Fonseca identified the Marxist component of Sandinismo
with Marx's and Lenin's guidelines to revolution. In a
proclamation broadcast on a Nicaraguan radio station in 1970,
he declared that the Sandinista popular revolution had a
twofold objective: whereas one its task was to overthrow the
Somoza dictatorship, the other was to establish socialism.
Socialism became a science, according to Engels, with Marx's
two major intellectual contributions: the materialist or
economic interpretation of history; and the discovery of the
secret of capitalist accumulation through surplus value, or
how the capitalist exploitation of the worker takes place.
The task of the socialist was no longer to criticize
capitalism as unjust or irrational, but to explain the
historical economic succession of events, in particular class
struggles, and to discover in economic conditions the means by
which the proletariat might achieve mastery over society and
thereby end the conflict.
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But was Marx's theory and Lenin's reformulation of it
Marxism's only contribution to Sandinismo? In his Havana
interview, Fonseca acknowledged another major component in the
thought of Che Guevara: "In planning to continue the
revolutionary struggle we are guided by the most advanced
principles, by Marxist ideology, by Comandante Che Guevara,
and by Augusto Cesar Sandino" (FSLN 1971:67). Guevara was
important because he represented the new Marxism diffused by
the Cuban Revolution. Thus to the theoretical component of
Sandinismo derived from Marx's and Engel's science of
socialism, Fonseca added an ideological or activating
component derived from Cuban Marxism and the writings of
Guevara in particular.
Fidel Castro equated Marxism with revolutionary thought
and practice. But there are two kinds of revolutionary
thought: scientific and ideological. Political action is
characterized by being one or the other. If one uses the term
praxis for the unity of thought and action, then there is both
a scientific praxis and ideological one. In scientifically
based praxis, theory comes first and then action. This is how
the established communist parties interpret Marxism in the
course of giving priority to scientific socialism, but their
interpretation is not the only one. Actually, most of the
militants in the FSLN were ideologically motivated, having
arrived at Marxist theory by way of revolutionary struggle.
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In this point of view a pro attitude toward revolution is
as necessary as theory in guiding a revolutionary movement.
As Castro points out in the same context, Marxism is not a
science or a theory of revolution only: "Those who do not
possess a truly revolutionary spirit cannot be called
communists" (Ramirez 1983:24). As revolutionary action,
Marxism includes a set of attitudes. "What defines a
communist is his attitude toward the oligarchies, his attitude
toward exploitation, his attitude toward imperialism; and on
this continent, his attitude toward the armed revolutionary
movements."(Petras 1981:84).
Nicaraguans felt attracted to the figure of Sandino but
considered communism to be something alien. Many of them
denied that Sandino had any affiliation to Marxism. Towards
the end of the revolution most people rightly believed that,
unlike Cuba, Nicaragua was not a communist country - although
it might be on the road to becoming one.
Although Sandinismo has been favorably received in Cuba,
it has been openly criticized by Soviet Marxists. They would
like to see it displaced by the more orthodox Marxism of the
Nicaraguan Socialist party (PSN). Ironically, the former
Soviet Union recognized both the FSLN and PSN as legitimate
representatives of the Nicaraguan Revolution, whereas Cuba
only recognized the FSLN.
In Nicaragua there were Sandinistas who were not Marxist-
Leninist and Marxist-Leninist who were not Sandinistas. But
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the leaders of the Nicaraguan Revolution claimed to have been
both Marxists and Sandinistas. They are the ones who said
that "Sandinismo is Marxism-Leninism applied in
Nicaragua"(Weber 1984:217). They added that "Sandinismo is
Christianity applied in Nicaragua" (Weber 1984:220) . What was
meant was that Sandinismo was a composite of several
revolutionary ideologies.
There were and still are Sandinistas who subscribe to new
Marxism and there are Sandinistas who do not. Actually,
Sandinismo developed in two quite different ways, both under
the FSLN sponsorship. One was popular and folkloric, the
other intellectual and systematic. The first consisted of
Sandino's political legacy as recovered and transmitted by the
FSLN, the "projects, attitudes and beliefs, mode of behavior
and concrete actions of Sandino"(Weber 1984:310). The result
was a collective memory and heroic image of Sandino as a man
of the people. Originally, his objectives and the reasons
behind them were "transmitted from father to son among the
peasant families that had become involved directly or
indirectly in the Sandinista campaign" (Black 1982:16).
Later, the FSLN disseminated these stories among other
Nicaraguan families, stories transmitting a desire for social
change and opposition to imperialism and dictatorship.
Commitment to this popular version of Sandinismo required
neither an acceptance of communism nor a knowledge of Marxism-
Leninism.
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The second form of Sandinismo reinterpreted and
reformulated its popular content in light of the new Marxism.
In legitimizing Sandino's thought, Fonseca transformed it into
the ideological vehicle for adapting Marxism-Leninism to
Nicaragua. Consequently, a commitment to this advanced form
of Sandinismo also signified an acceptance of communism.
There is general agreement that the revival of Sandino's
movement dates from the efforts by Nicaraguan Marxists to
rescue his political legacy from oblivion and to infuse it
with a Marxist understanding of Nicaraguan reality. The three
principal founders of the FSLN - Fonseca, Borge, and Mayorga -
each learned his Marxism from the Nicaraguan Socialist party.
They turned to Sandino's writings in an effort to root their
Marxism in a nationally based tradition.
But that is not the whole story. In speeches and writings
by members of the National Directorate, Sandinismo is
presented in more than one light. Sometimes the Marxist
components are stressed; on other occasions Sandino's
contribution stands out.
Two approaches are necessary because initially the
revolutionary vanguard was motivated to act by one set of
considerations and the masses by another. For the vanguard
there could be no revolutionary movement and no intelligent
strategy without a revolutionary theory; but neither could
there be a revolutionary movement without Sandino’s patriotic
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values and example. Thus concessions were made to the popular
current within Sandinismo.
In a 1972 interview with Ricardo Morales Aviles, a member
of the National Directorate who died in combat a year later,
published as a pamphlet by the FSLN, the interview concluded
with a series of questions and answers concerning political
and strategical issues. Asked whether the unity of the
revolutionary forces requires a single ideology, Morales
replied that ideological contradictions exist not only between
but also within revolutionary organizations, the differences
can be eradicated only at the cost of internal disruption.
There are fundamental philosophical differences between
Marxist and Christians; but that does not prevent them from
studying national problems with the aim of establishing
socialism in Nicaragua, from working together and agreeing on
the same strategical objectives and tactics. Although a
Marxist approach to politics is fundamental to Sandinismo,
Morales concluded, a Marxist worldview is not (Chavarria
1985:27-30).
The latter is essential to Marxism, but is it a necessary
prerequisite for revolution? In a major address in December
1979, Humberto Ortega indicated that it was desirable.
Essential to the Nicaraguan Revolution were national values
and the patriotic example of Sandino: "We found political,
military, doctrinal, and moral elements in our people and in
our history, not in foreign texts or theories of any kind."
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Even the FSLN's theory was said to be Sandino's creation:
"Sandinismo survived because it was the product of the
concrete conditions of our country, because Sandino
. . .made the people's needs his own, interpreted them, and with
his struggle and actions created the theory we have
recovered! " (Massing 1988:47) . These such statements reinforced
the popular tendency in Sandinismo, which was alien to
classical Marxism, while simultaneously deterring this current
from becoming hostile to the FSLN's Marxist leadership.
Victor Tirado also urged concessions to national values
and traditions. He assimilated Marxist theory from the
Communist party of his native country but learned to adapt it
to the conditions of struggle in Nicaragua. In an April 1979
interview, he declared, "Some forces classify us as a Marxist
tendency, as communist. We have never affirmed that we are
Marxists. We are a revolutionary front. Although among us are
Marxists, there are also Christians. We take positions that
are revolutionary and Sandinista" (Greene 1974:77). Asked to
clarify what was meant by Sandinista, he replied, "This is
equivalent to nationalist. For to be able to give the anti-
Somoza process a popular content we have to adopt national
values. We shall not fail, since we raise the flag of
Augusto Cesar Sandino; we shall complete the work he was
unable to consummate.. .with national values. That is why
Sandinismo has popular appeal" (Greene 1974:79). What
concerned the FSLN, Tirado contended, was not whether its
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militants came from a Marxist party or had assimilated Marxist
theory: "What interests us is that they are fully aware of
national values, of Sandinista values" (Walker 1980:51).
The program and objectives of the FSLN were certainly not
Marxist, Tirado continued, nor was the struggle in Nicaragua
over the question of capitalism versus communism. The issue
was whether the people wanted a dictatorship or democracy:
overthrow of the tyrant; installation of a provisional
government representative of all social classes;
creation of a people's army in place of the elitist
National Guard; formulation of an independent and
nonaligned foreign policy; support for popular causes
in Central America and the Caribbean; expropriation of
the properties of Somoza and his inner circle; and
application of program of economic reconstruction
(Chavarria 1985:40).
Fonseca's reformulation of Sandino's thought provided
Marxism with a popular vehicle, which the PSN lacked, for
making its influence felt on a national scale. The FSLN took
to heart the maxim that there can be no leaders without
followers, no revolutionary vanguard without significant
concessions to the masses. Since Marxism-Leninism in
Nicaragua had to retreat before a violent and widespread
anticommunism, an ideology that contradicted the premises of
scientific socialism was required to mobilize the people. In
rejecting the PSN's supervision; Fonseca saved the FSLN from
becoming a dogmatic sect alien to the history and experience
of the Nicaraguan people, thought Tirado.
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Another and fundamentally different image of Sandinismo
was widespread among supporters of the Nicaraguan Revolution
in the United States. Several eminent scholars, including
specialist on Central America, have stressed the peculiar
national characteristics of the Nicaraguan Revolution that it
appeared to offer a third path promising the best of both the
capitalist and socialist worlds. Conservative ideologies are
mistaken, they claim, in believing that the presence of
Marxists in the FSLN's leadership indicated that the
revolutionary government will follow the pattern set by the
Cuban Revolution. On the contrary, "although they logically
felt a bond of friendship and found much in common with the
only real revolutionary government in Latin America, the
Nicaraguan revolutionaries, above all, were [and are]
nationalists"(Wickham-Crowley 1991:189). A similar portrait
could of been painted for Sandino.
The FSLN's Sandinismo was associated with a "cluster of
highly nationalistic and political-economic reformist symbols
with deep roots in the Nicaraguan psyche" (Wickham-Crowley
1991:210). Thus the impression created was that the
Sandinista ideology had a purely populist origin and
framework. Such statements mistake the FSLN's appearance for
reality.
Although the Sandinista leaders no longer disclaimed
their Marxism, as they once did, they presented to the public
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an innocent version of what they meant by it. Humberto Ortega
said in an address on September 1, 1980:
In Nicaragua the revolution triumphed with a clearly
Marxist leadership, but not with a Marxistoid and
bookish one that advertised itself as being 'Marxist-
Leninist' and that understood by Marxism-Leninism
something completely deformed and rigid. We did not
understand Marxism in that way but as something else,
as simply an instrument of analysis. . .One has to study
history and to find in history. . . the elements of
this revolution (Dunkerley 1988:576).
In characterizing Marxism as a mere instrument of
analysis, Ortega sought to emphasize its scientific
contribution. Thus in short , the FSLN stands for an
ideological revision of Marxism-Leninism fortified by
Sandino's revolutionary legacy.
Therefore, Sandinismo is a mixture of Marxist theory and
Sandino's revolutionary legacy under the auspices of the new
Marxism. Like new Marxism, Sandinismo has three principal
dimensions: it offers an explanation of historical events; it
arouses people to act with emotional appeals; and serves as a
guide to action. Marx's principles of scientific socialism
hold sway in the area of historical explanation. Sandino's
patriotic ideas and example prevail in matters of ideology.
Sandinista practice is shaped by both of these components. In
effect, Sandinismo is Sandino's revolutionary legacy
intertwined with the new Marxism.
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THE FSLN TENDENCY EXPERIENCE
"With its leading cadre predominantly from the middle
class, the Frente found itself in the wake of the defeated
FOQUISTA operations particularly weak in the traditional
sphere for building a socialist movement" (Dunkerley
1988:595) . As a result, despite the fact that the 1974 raid [a
raid on the house of Agriculture Minister 'Chema1 Castillo in
December 1974, Somoza paid $2 million ransom] raised the
profile of Sandinismo amongst the working class.
As a result of this and differences over military
strategy, the FSLN split into factions at the end of 1975.
The Tendencia Proletaria (TP; headed by Jaime Wheelock, Luis
Carrion, and Carlos Nunez) argued for the establishment of an
orthodox Marxist-Leninist party and greater concentration on
organizational work amongst the urban masses while the Guerra
Popular Prolongada tendency (GPP; led by Tomas Borge, Henry
Ruiz, and Bayardo Arce) insisted upon the continuation of a
rural campaign of attrition against the National Guard on a
Vietnam based model. Carlos Fonseca was killed by Somoza'a
troops in November 1976 when he returned to Nicaragua in order
to settle the dispute, "his death impeded any speedy
rapprochement and, in the context of a fierce sectarian
struggle, encouraged those at odds with both strategic
conceptions not only to seek mediation but also to defend a
further alternative"(Walker 1986:320). The Tendencia
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Tercerista or Insurrecional, led by Daniel and Humberto Ortega
and Victor Tirado, shared with its competitors both an element
of traditional Sandinismo -in this instance, the emphasis upon
broad, multi-class alliances over which they opposed the TP-
and a deviation from it -insistence upon the potential for
insurrectional politics, over which they were in disagreement
with the GPP.
This division continued in theory until the autumn of
1978, in practice until March 1979, and in spirit for some
time after the final insurrection. It not only reinforced the
sociological tendency and the narrow-mindedness in small
political groups and broke apart the open and semi-clandestine
support structure, but also critically debilitated the
possibilities of the FSLN. No less importantly, the dispute
raised questions as to the real political character of
Sandinismo, within which the "varying politico-military
projects of Leninists, Castroists, and Social Democrats were
identified by commentators and occasionally employed
internally to characterize opposing lines" (Booth 1983:371).
The resulting consequence was the organization’s remarkable
success in moving from a state of isolation and military
retreat in 1976,"to a full offensive in the vanguard of the
mass movement two years later was frequently perceived as a
predominately logistical development with major political
questions still pending and liable to engender further
internal disputes" (Booth 1983:3 77). The fact that these did
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not occur to the degree expected from the heated exchanges
from 1975-77, may be explained by the demands of waging
campaigns both against the military and within the opposition.
In the public arena, broad populist language and slogans quite
naturally predominated in a fierce anti-dictatorial [anti-
Somoza] struggle.
The retrieval of Sandinista unity cannot be attributed
solely to the accumulating logic of the political conjuncture;
it also corresponded to a pattern of historical development
and an objective social structure for which none of the three
factions had a adequate programmatic response. Their
recombination was both a
tactical necessity for the purpose of winning the
military campaign and the product of recognition that
the success of the revolution could not be assured on
the basis of support from a single social class or
simply by means of tactical alliances and military
adventurism. The result was that the discourse and
policy of the FSLN became more distinctly populist or,
in the words of Sergio Ramirez, based upon a
'conception of the people as a class'(Dunkerley
1988:601-602) .
It appeared as if Sandinismo had completely disregarded
a class-based strategy in favor of a purely political and
democratic revolution in which the social project of the
Proletario and GPP factions had been subordinated by the
Terceristas. In fact, Sandinismo was properly recreated
during 1977-79 on the basis of a much wider political exchange
in which the policies of each of the tendencies was
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rearticulated without any of them being subjected to any major
defeat. For this reason, while the insurrectional period
appeared to favor Tercerista hegemony, subsequent developments
confirmed that the strategic concerns of its former opponents
remained at the core of FSLN policy.
For about a decade, the concept of GPP was synonymous
with Sandinismo. Although it was eventually replaced by the
urban guerilla strategy, the ideology of the GPP remained at
the heart of much of the movements fundamental doctrine and
mystique.
After the collapse of the rural and urban resistance,
many of the FSLN's members assembled in Costa Rica trying to
reassess their ideological and strategic situation. The result
was a major reorganization of the FSLN and an adoption of the
GPP as a strategic plan. The GPP reflected the FSLN's Marxist-
Leninist roots, the program's focus was strongly anti-
capitalistic, anti-United States, internationalist, and
moralistic. It stressed freedom of expression and religion,
the politicalization of education, and the rejection of the
bourgeois politics of electoral competition; reflecting a
fundamental antipathy towards pluralism.
Fonseca sought to systematize the relatively undefined
ideology of the FSLN's early years. The earlier efforts to
attract non-Marxists to the revolution were abandoned. He
warned that the overthrow of Somoza was not really the primary
goal of the revolutionary struggle: "There exists the danger
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that armed insurrection will not necessarily signify a
revolution, a transformation of the social system that
prevails in the country. Therefore, we have the obligation to
imprint on the Nicaraguan insurrection a deep revolutionary
content of radical social change" (Wheelock 1985:272).
In the writings of his 1967-1975 exile, Fonseca
continuously insisted that the FSLN embodied the "Marxism of
Lenin, Fidel, el Che, Ho Chi Minh. . ."(Weber 1984:180) and that
it must not compromise its ideological purity. When he
returned in 1975, Fonseca warned against allowing the enemy to
infiltrate the organization with democratic Sandinistas who
lacked Marxist political commitment.
The FSLN of the GPP period had a rather narrow-minded
outlook that seemed to rule out cooperation with most of the
other parts of society that might have wished to oppose the
Somoza dictatorship.
During the internal debate of the late 1960s, which
produced the new GPP strategy of revolution, the Sandinistas
studied the Chinese, Vietnamese and Algerian insurgencies.
Under the influence of Mao's 1938 On Protracted War, the
Sandinistas moved away from the Cuban model of guerrilla
movement generating the conditions for revolution through
their own actions, and began to copy the Vietnamese people's
war by reincorporating mass organization into the process.
The immediate enemy, according to the GPP, was United
States imperialism, rather than the Somoza dictatorship. The
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dictatorship was just one of the many possible puppets. Due
to imperialist domination, nothing could be accomplished
through civil institutions or elections. Consequently, the
FSLN had to prepare for a decades-long protracted was to wear
down any non-socialist regime that should come to power.
Since imperialism had penetrated the whole region, the FSLN
was committed to aid in revolutionary movements in all of
Central America. In order to successfully prosecute the was,
they "needed to develop a struggle that incorporated all the
people, because only the whole people could be capable later
of defending the completed conquests"(Christian 1985:492).
The GPP continued the traditional Sandinista rejection of
urban-based revolution. The Sandinistas felt that the cities
were too insecure for serious military actions. Negative
experiences with intensified urban guerilla activity supported
the theory. In addition to the practical problems, the
Sandinistas had serious doubts about the ideological soundness
of basing a revolution in the cities. Although the GPP
fulfilled the minimum Marxist requirement of agreeing that
"the working class is destined by history to lead the
victorious revolution, that class simply had not proved
capable of providing a base for the necessary level of
revolutionary violence" (Christian 1985:478). Borge justified
this deviation from orthodox Marxism on the basis that
"Reality often demands that the political cadres road to the
center of production pass through a rural area" (Petras
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1981:94). The GPP theorists were consequently pessimistic
about the prospects for building a revolutionary popular base
in the stronghold of the bourgeois mentality. In order to
challenge the bourgeois order, the revolutionaries had to
remove themselves physically from its source.
The GPP was based on the assumption that Nicaragua was
still a predominantly peasant agrarian society in which the
major objective problem available for revolutionary
exploitation was land hunger on part of the peasantry. In
order for the GPP to establish itself, the cadres of the FSLN
had to make a permanent move to the rural areas. By living
the life of the campesino, they could begin to overcome the
peasant's psychology of shyness, mistrust, and inscrutability,
and "make him see that the causes of his oppression were also
the causes of our oppression" (Petras 1981:91).
The ideology of the TP was something of a paradox. It
harshly called for Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, yet had a high
concentration of professing Christians. It was perceived as
the radical ultraleft wing of Sandinismo, yet was the most
reluctant faction when it came to fighting. It was labelled
narrow-minded for its rhetoric about working class supremacy.
The theoretical attack on the GPP was led by Jaime
Wheelock. He was the son of a wealthy land owning family from
the city of Jinotepe. Wheelock's writings were the first
serious attempt by a Sandinista at academic socioeconomic
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analysis. In contrast to Fonseca's political tracts,
Wheelock's works were sophisticated explanations of history
according to the classical social class models of Marx and
Engels. In Indigenous Roots of the Anti-colonialist Struggle
in Nicaragua, he applied the class theory to the Nicaraguan
indigenous population, concluding that the native resistance
to Hispanic rule had been a manifestation of inevitable class
struggle over the means of production.
According to Wheelock's interpretation of Nicaragua's
socioeconomic history, the GPP's paradigm of a traditional
economic system of feudal politics and self-sufficient peasant
agriculture had long cease to exist. He states that the
process of change begun in the nineteenth century with the
demise of Spanish mercantilism and the incorporation of
Nicaragua into the "international capitalist market, dominated
by Great Britain and later by the United States" (Wheelock
1985:125) .
The TP criticized the GPP for failing for failing to lay
out an intellectual definition of the way the revolutionary
process was supposed to unfold. The only social base the GPP
had was the peasantry and that was only because peasants
happened to live in that area favorable to the guerrillas. By
confusing the revolution with their strategy, "the adherents
of the GPP had lapsed into guerrilla adventurism and petit
bourgeois populism" (Wheelock 1985:136).
85
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Following Wheelock's analysis of Nicaragua's economic
development, the TP rejected the GPP's peasant revolution on
the basis that the peasantry was an anachronism. The TP
argued that it was foolish to stake the future of the
revolution on the ability of a few "more-or-less radicalized
university students to mobilize a peasantry that was rapidly
being replaced by wage-labor farm workers" (Wheelock 1985 :138) .
The TP, proposed something that was quite similar to the line
of the traditional Left. They argued that the FSLN should
build a vanguard party within the working class by identifying
with the workers problems and by bringing ideological content
to their economic struggles. Sandinismo had to be made
relevant to modern Nicaragua.
Breaking with the GPP's fixation on imperialism as the
primary enemy, the TP identified the Somoza dictatorship as
the institution which protected capitalism and enforced
dependency in Nicaragua. Until the forces of repression were
overthrown, nothing could be accomplished. Consequently, the
TP argued that organizational efforts should be directed
toward the overthrow of Somoza's reign.
The process of defeating the Somoza dictatorship was
still believed to be a prolonged struggle. In theory, the TP
continued to subscribe to the FSLN's traditional commitment to
armed violence; favoring more of organizational self-defense
and sabotage actions by armed union members, instead of by a
rural guerrilla vanguard.
86
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A vanguard party (FSLN-TP) would help create the
conditions by organizing these actions. In practice, the TP
abandoned "both the mountain and voluntarist military action
-the traditional foundation principles of the FSLN.
The roots of the Sandinista's 1979 victory can traced to
the innovations in strategic theory formulated by Humberto
Ortega in the mid-1970's. Around 1975 Humberto Ortega came to
the conclusion that the protracted war ideal was not going to
be successful. In attempting to straddle the GPP-TP debate
over the guerrilla versus mass struggle, Humberto tried to
integrate both into a new strategic concept of Insurrecional.
This faction was not dissenting from the FSLN's traditional
adherence to Marxist-Leninist ideology, instead the difference
laid in the field of strategy. In particular, they were
trying to find new answers to the old questions of when the
seizure of power should take place, where it should occur, and
who should provide the social base.
In Sandinista terms, the Insurrecional tendency can be
also used to describe Humberto's conception of the FSLN as
"the political-military expression of the 'third era' of the
Sandinista national liberation struggle (the first two being
Sandino's was against the U.S. Marines and the period of
resistance to Somoza's rule)" (Christian 1985:499). Within
this third era, the FSLN had already gone through the
formative stages of rural and urban experimentation and the
silent accumulation of forces. The Insurrecionales were the
87
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ones who maintained that conditions were ready to move on to
the third stage, that of revolutionary war. In their social
theory, they rejected both the peasants and the proletarians
as useful forces for the war against the dictatorship,
counting instead on a third social force made up of the petite
bourgeoisie and other urban middle sectors which would provide
the necessary levels of popular support. The insurrecionales
called for immediate urban insurrection. Due to their
dominant position on the National Directorate in the 1977-79
period, the Insurrecionales were commonly described as the
majority tendency.
The most noticeable difference between the tendencies was
in their conception of the revolution's velocity. Both the TP
and the GPP agreed that the low level of revolutionary
consciousness among the people and the threat of U.S.
intervention dictated a cautious long-term approach, one in
which the extended struggle would complete much of the social
and spiritual revolution prior to seizure of power, which
would allow a rapid transition to socialism after victory.
The Insurrecionales argued that the time for decisive action
was rapidly approaching. According to Humberto's analysis,
"Nicaraguan society in the mid-1970s was rapidly polarizing
over the issue of the continuation of the dictatorship"
(Walker 1982:283) . In this situation it was becoming possible
for the FSLN to transform increasingly widespread anti-Somoza
88
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sentiments into an anti-bourgeois class consciousness and a
true anti-imperialism.
Military example happened to be the means which the FSLN
had at its disposal to bring about this transformation. The
same polarization of society that was creating the conditions
for revolutionary civil war was also increasing the danger of
a New United States intervention. Humberto noted, however,
that "a favorable world correlation of forces was developing,
in which the Sandinistas would be able to count on help from
the rest of Latin America, from other continents, and from
sectors within the United States"(Dunkerley 1988:525).
Like many practicing Marxist revolutionaries, the
Insurrecionales differed with classical Marxism on several
points of social theory and strategy:
(1) The objective conditions of capitalist economic
development would not create a proletariat in an
imperialized Third World country. (2) The subjective
conditions for revolution, in the form of
consciousness class struggle, would not always develop
together withobjective conditions. (3) The class
content of the revolutionary project did not have to
reflect the empirical social background of those
making the revolution. (4) Finally, the way in which
power was won did no determine the nature and extent
of the socioeconomic transformation that would follow
(Nolan 1984:121).
As an underdeveloped country, Nicaragua lacked a strong
industrial and agricultural proletariat on which to base
classic Marxism. Under the imperialist world order,
peripheral countries like Nicaragua were forced to participate
in the world market allowing foreign capital to stifle the
89
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growth of local capitalism via economic competition and
political domination. The bourgeoisie was therefore unable to
carry out the economic transformation that Marx had supposed
were necessary for a proletariat revolution. The Nicaraguan
working class simply did not have any class collective
consciousness to carry out a worker's revolution.
The lack of a suitable working class and the shortcomings
of the peasantry, the Insurrecionales were forced to search
for a new social group which to base the revolution. This led
them to the cities. The people who made up this sector
neither owned nor operated the basic means of production.
This urbanized third social force of alienated middle-class
people, professionals, small self-employed entrepreneurs,
students and rebellious youths represented to the
Insurrecionales "what the proletariat had represented to Marx
and what the worker-peasant alliance had represented to
Lenin: a concrete social basis for the war against the
established order" (Nolan 1984:157). By engaging in an
ideological redefinition of subjective reality, the
Insurrecionales broadened the social base of the revolution to
include "all those who have personally suffered the results of
capitalist exploitation and oppression, even if they are not
directly connected with economic production" (Nolan 1984:164) , -
in other words, anybody, regardless of class, who had become
dissatisfied with the Somoza dictatorship.
90
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CONCLUSION
Unquestionably, the Nicaraguan Revolution represents an
original revolutionary experience. The FSLN's experience
differs from any other revolutionary movement in Latin
America. The intellectual factors behind the revolution
derive from Augusto Cesar Sandino's unique intertwined blend
of revolutionary ideas, despite any of the economic,
political, and sociological explanations linked to the
revolution. For the FSLN, Sandino's example was important but
so was his political thought. His political philosophy is
important in comprehending the Nicaraguan revolution not only
because it influenced the thinking of the Sandinista
leadership, but also because that leadership believed the
revolution started with Sandino instead of the Sandinista
movement reconstituted thirty years after his death.
To recapitulate, there are two main currents within
contemporary Sandinismo: a popular and folkloric current, and
an intellectual and systematic one. The enemies of the
revolution claim that the popular current, which they identify
with Sandino, was incompatible with the intellectual current
backed by the Sandinista leadership. For them, the revolution
rested with the popular current rather than with the new
Marxism of the FSLN.
For Sandino, the fundamental question was ideological,
concerned primarily with ideals and program. Later came the
91
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strategical decisions that were modified according to his
assessments of reality. His approach was rooted in moral
conviction and supported by faith. In contrast, the
Sandinista1s gave first place to theory, to assess the balance
of social forces at a particular political conjuncture. The
Sandinistas's strategy was mainly a function of theory and
beliefs rooted in sentiment and faith. Their1s was an
instrumental approach stressing the conditions of victory and
the means of achieving it.
92
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Asset Metadata

Creator Saborio, Raymond Ivor (author)

Core Title Augusto Cesar Sandino's political thought and its impact on the Sandinista National Liberation Front

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Political Science

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag History, Latin American,OAI-PMH Harvest,political science, international law and relations

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Dekmejian, Richard (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Renteln, Alison Dundes (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-19815

Unique identifier UC11337239

Identifier 1389998.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-19815 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1389998.pdf

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Document Type Thesis

Rights Saborio, Raymond Ivor

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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