Ben Linder

Twenty-five years ago this week Ben Linder, Sergio Hernández and Pablo Rosales were killed by Contra soldiers while working on a mini-hydroelectric project for the town of San José de Bocay in northern Nicaragua.  Of course thousands of Nicaraguans -- Sandinistas, Contras and average citizens alike -- were killed during the Contra War, but Ben Linder was an American citizen killed by CIA-trained soldiers. As a result, his death made international news and brought down even more scrutiny down on Ronald Reagan's murky war.

Linder was an engineer who had been inspired by the Sandinista revolution and had come to Nicaragua in 1983 wanting to help.  Not one to stay in Managua attending rallies, he eventually made his way to the dangerous northern border region.  He put his engineering skills to work building mini-hydroelectric plants for the small war-torn villages in that region.

By all accounts, he was a good guy -- idealistic, committed, friendly and hard-working.  He was also apparently a very talented clown -- you know, juggling, unicycle, the whole 9 yards -- and we always see his red-nosed clown face gracing Nicaraguan murals from that era.  His killing came in the midst of the Congressional investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal and was immediately sucked into the vortex.  When Ben's parents traveled to Nicaragua for the funeral his father placed blame for his son's death: "Someone who paid someone who paid someone, and so on down the line to the President of the United States."  Administration officials replied stating that Linder had "put himself in harm's way."

Since the '80s, Linder has been an inspiration for many of the foreigners who come to Nicaragua to work for churches or development groups (um, like us!).  In Managua there is a Casa Ben Linder which organizes weekly talks on development and current events, and just this past week organized a 25 year commemoration.

[Update: Here's a nice two-part write-up from Nicaragua Dispatch about Ben and his legacy: Part 1 and Part 2.]

So Who Won?

Following up on my earlier post, Nicaragua's national elections were held on November 6th. So who won?

The short answer is that Daniel Ortega and the FSLN won a resounding victory with 62% of the vote and 63 seats in the National Assembly.  Opposition candidate Fabio Gadea and the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) won 31% of the vote and 27 seats.  Former president Arnoldo Alemán wasn't really a factor, pulling only 6%.

The long answer very much depends on who you read or talk to.  Gadea has refused to recognize the results, explicitly saying that he won the vote and that Ortega committed a massive fraud.  Gadea's coalition mates, the breakaway Sandinista group MRS, have called Ortega a dictator and the opposition newspapers, such as La Prensa, have loudly denounced him.  However, a planned protest march fizzled.

The opposition points to a number of irregularities to make their case.  In some cases observers from the opposition parties and third-party groups were refused access to the polling places.  The election authorities have also not published precinct-by-precinct election results which would allow for a more comprehensive audit.  There were also accusations that the government was selectively delaying requests for new ID cards, which are required to vote.  (Update: More Ortega criticism here from Envio.)

Such irregularities, along with the experience of past elections, open the door to the idea that the incumbents were cooking the books.  The PLI is claiming that 450,000 to 500,000 votes were stolen although they haven't offered much in the way of proof to back their claims.  The good government group Ética y Transparencia published a statistical analysis claiming Ortega stole 150,000 votes -- a serious charge, but not one that would have reversed Ortega's 800,000 vote margin of victory.

In their defense, the Sandinistas point to a number of independent polls showing Ortega surging in the weeks before the election.  A series of CID-Gallup polls showed steadily increasing support for Ortega and a final poll by Nicaragua's most respected pollster gave Ortega 58%.  Sandinista supporters have also responded to the charges of irregularities in the election process.

I haven't dug deep enough to know how consequential these irregularities are, although my sense from the (unrepresentative sample of) people I've talked to is that, while there may have been some problems they didn't affect the outcome.  Ortega won the election, and he won by implementing popular programs and riding the crest of a growing economy.

Which is not to say that the problems with the electoral process aren't real and troubling.  Of the three official international observing teams (from the EU, the Organization of American States and the Latin American Council of Election Experts) both the EU and OAS reports detailed numerous structural and process problems with the elections.  But the words of the head of the EU observation mission seem to sum up the uncertainty fairly well: "as to whether or not Daniel Ortega won, he won. Beyond that I won’t say."

[PS -- If you're looking for English language reporting on Nicaragua you should check out the new Nicaragua Dispatch (which leans anti-Ortega) or the Nicaragua Network (which leans left).]

Thoughts on the November Elections

Next month, Nicaraguans will go to the polls for their national elections.  I thought I should write a little something about current Nica politics, although be warned that this is just one gringo's opinion and I am nowhere near an expert on this topic.  Like in the U.S., Nicaraguan politics is highly polarized, so I'm going to try to set the scene without prejudicing one side over the other.  And it's pretty complicated no matter how you slice it.  If I screw something up, let me know.

Today, as for the last 32 years, the central figure in Nicaraguan politics is President Daniel Ortega.  The former guerrilla leader led Nicaragua during the 1980s, along with a number of other Sandinista comandantes, before losing the 1990 elections to Violeta Chamorro.  After 16 years of neoliberal administrations, Ortega was again elected president in 2006.  His party, the FSLN or the Sandinista National Liberation Front, remains the largest single party in Nicaragua although they no longer have majority support.  Ortega was elected in 2006 with 38% of the vote, with the remainder split between a number of opposition candidates.  That victory resulted from a controversial pact with the opposition PLC (Constitutional Liberal Party), which lowered the threshold for avoiding a run-off from 45% to 35%.

My guess is that most Americans' views of Ortega anti-correlate with their views of his 1980s nemesis, Ronald Reagan. I'm going to leave discussion of the 1979 revolution, the Contra War and U.S. intervention for another post, but the Ortega of today is not really the same guy as he was back then.  The FSLN platform is still nominally socialist but it seems to have made its peace with private enterprise and has turned its focus to poverty reduction programs instead.  (For example, this article on Nicaragua's free trade zones.)  The FSLN has hopped on the micro-credit bandwagon, (a big about-face from their disastrous agriculture programs of the '80s) and even manages to play well with the U.S. on anti-drug trafficking initiatives.

Ortega has also made a show of reaching out to former enemies, including former Contra leaders.  His fiercest internal critic from the 1980s, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, is now a supporter.  (This may have something to do with Ortega's much publicized return to the Catholic Church.)  He's also changed his personal style.  No longer the mini-Fidel in army fatigues and giant glasses, he now appears clean-shaven and pink-shirted in all the re-election propaganda.  The campaign is relentlessly cheerful, talking about "love", "people power" and "the common good."  The main slogan is "Christian, Socialist, in Solidarity."  Their most popular bumper sticker is a play on Messi's iconic Barcelona jersey which can be seen plastered on the back of virtually every taxi and bus in Managua.  They also have a really catchy theme song and video.

The opposition case against Ortega is that he's corrupt and dragging the country into a dictatorship.  Ortega maintains close relationships with Castro, Qaddafi (until quite recently, I guess) and most especially Hugo Chavez, from whom Nicaragua receives millions in foreign aid.  For a defender of the poor, Ortega lives pretty high on the hog, a fact that has led to harsh criticism from former Sandinistas, many of whom bolted the party to form the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS).

What's more, the current constitution explicitly forbids the re-election of a sitting president, although the Ortega-appointed Supreme Court invalidated that section, clearing the way for his candidacy.  The 2008 municipal elections were also widely seen to have been stolen by the FSLN, leading to fears that this election will be as well.  This shows that even the fear of potential corruption can be corrupting, as Sandinista supporters will turn out to vote, but opposition supporters may not bother. The main daily newspaper, La Prensa, presses these arguments against Ortega daily.

Right now it seems likely that Ortega will win, perhaps with as much as 45% of the vote.  Part of this is that the numerous opposition parties were unable to coalesce around a single candidate.  One of those candidates is Arnoldo Alemán (PLC) -- himself a former president who was jailed for corruption and embezzlement and later freed (some estimate that he stole as much as $100 million from the government coffers).  Alemán retains some support but is seen as unelectable, which has led many to rally around Fabio Gadea (PLI) as the best option for beating Ortega.  But Alemán has refused calls to drop out and may end up taking enough of the liberal vote to sink Gadea's chances.

In a lot of ways, Ortega seems to have the wind at his back.  Nicaragua has avoided the drugs and violence that have plagued other Central American countries and has weathered the global recession better than most (although it is still a poor country, everything is relative).  And I've heard more than one die-hard opposition supporter actually praise his anti-poverty programs. But we shall see in November how it all plays out.

Óscar Romero, 31 Years On

Today marks the 31st anniversary of the assassination of Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, who was murdered while saying mass.  The man who allegedly ordered his killing -- Roberto D'Aubuisson -- went on to found El Salvador's primary right-wing party and commanded many of the death squads who caused so much bloodshed during El Salvador's long, sad civil war.  If you want an introduction to Romero and his words, this article by Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ is a good place to start. (There's also a pretty good movie starring Raul Julia.)

On 24 March 2011, people all over the world will be celebrating the 31st anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador. He was shot, by orders of the government, while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the hospital for incurables where, as Archbishop, he lived. The previous day he had preached what was to be his last Sunday sermon in the cathedral. In it he made an appeal to the ordinary soldiers in the army and low-ranking policeman, calling on them not to obey immoral orders from their officers.

 Read the whole thing here.