Now I'm not going to idealize them, they were still a single-party government in most ways until the 1990 election which saw their defeat, but with the assistance of Cuba and other South American countries they managed to increase the literacy rate to 50% from single figures, and eliminate polio and other diseases that plague the poor.
Part of the reason for their inability to hold elections was the Reagan administration's creation and funding of the armed terrorists called the Contras, which placed the country on permanent war footing for most of the 1980s. When the United States Congress refused to fund the Contras, Oliver North, an American Marine officer serving with the National Security Council, supposedly set up an arrangement to sell arms illegally to the Iranian government in order to raise money to fund the Contras without anyone else in the Reagan administration having knowing about it. (Talking to a Reagan staff member about it in 1987 he laughingly said, "Yeah, everybody knew about it from the secretary pool up – how the hell are you not going to know about an arms deal worth that much money – where do you think he got the weapons from – a pawn shop? But of course none of us knew a thing officially.")
From bases in bordering countries with American-friendly leadership, the Contras would stage attacks against unprotected villages using helicopter gunships piloted by "retired" C.I.A. agents and mortar rounds to kill people working in the fields and blow up housing, hospitals, and schools.
Friends who were there helping to build schoolhouses in the late '80s tell of coming under fire on an almost daily basis from small arms and mortar rounds. Whether on purpose of accidentally, it seemed that any work they had accomplished the previous day would be destroyed during the attacks. Once a good mortar crew finds the range they can hit the same area day after day without too much trouble, and there just wasn't anywhere else that the school could have been built.
The village was so isolated and near to the border that it took two weeks before a platoon of soldiers from the Nicaraguan army could get there to chase the Contras away. One friend said they were finally able to finish the schoolhouse while the platoon was there, but he has no idea if it survived after the volunteers and the platoon left.
Article comments
1 - Howard Dratch
Nicaragua suffered under the Contra violence that we (Reagan/Bush-Republican "we") supported so hard.
The decisions to be made by Latin America and Latin Americans are not easy ones and the present US government has made itself again unable to provide a model of freedom and self-determination that could have led the region out of poverty and the horrors that accompany the kind of distribution of wealth that America supported for so long.
The future of the whole region is certainly in doubt and, it would seem, the Bush Administration has pushed hard to make our southern neighbors more unstable, more anti-American, more prone to accept any solution that is not "American".
Perhaps today's US elections will rob the Bush forces of some of their power to destabilize the hemisphere as they have been trying so hard to do.
2 - RedTard
Another hate america circle jerk. Run of the mill bullshit from the left these days. How quickly they forget the scores of millions of people they slaughtered for their failed ideology. Perhaps we didn't want Nicaragua to end up like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
3 - Zedd
RedTard, are you joking???? You must be...
It’s also come out that Ortega has actually had a religious conversion which has tampered his politics. His former friends on the left have expressed a great deal of disappointment in him because he is espousing some ideals that they think are a departure from their original goals.
4 - Bliffle
Ortega is back?! Oh hell, there goes my beachfront resort condo in Nicaragua!
5 - Angela Chen Shui
Thank you, Richard.
One of my best friends from way back helped to build those schools you spoke of and helped to teach new agricultural methods.
He was also there when Nicaraguan villages came under attack.
The entire Central and Latin American region will move forward... with or without enlightened US backing. There are many forces worldwide that would love to wreak havoc in this US backyard...
I pray, fervently, it doesn't come to that.
Thanks again. Your piece brings back fond memories...
Angela.