My father, step-father, mother, and many aunts and uncles served in World War II, and they undoubtedly joined with their comrades again this year to remember what they'll never forget. Hopefully they remember the good times, as well as the bad, and hopefully they envision a world of peace which makes no such demands on its youth.

Unfortunately, war didn't end with World War II and I believe it is important to consider the causes and implications of some of the less 'popular' wars that have been sponsored by the tax dollars of many peace loving citizens the world around.

In 1979, the year I graduated from high school, a group of agrarian peasants offered their lives in exchange for peace and democracy in Nicaragua. I don't remember hearing much about this coup from my place in rural Alberta. My brother's generation had protested the war in Vietnam and I guess the corporate owned media learned that it's not such a good idea to tell people about such injustices. We didn't have access to the internet, since it didn't exist, and my life focussed around putting in my office hours so I could get home and ride my horse, or plan the weekend journey to the lake.

I've since learned that, during the 1979 Sandinista overthrow of the U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza, all sectors of the Nicaraguan economic structure joined together to rid themselves of forty-five years of brutal dictatorship. The nationalization of industry which resulted so outraged the United States corporate elite that a decade of horror and terrorism was imposed on the Nicaraguan people in hopes of destroying their lives physically and spiritually until they surrendered to foreign investors once again.   

The history of foreign intervention in Nicaragua is immense, and some background information is necessary to understand the nature of the revolution. Representatives from Spain landed there in the 1500's and, discovering that gold and silver were not in abundance, established plantations using the natives for labour, and their products for profit. "Indians were subjugated economically, first by being obliged to pay tribute to Spain, and then by the repartimeiento, a legal requirement stipulating that each week a quarter of the men of a village had to work for the Spaniards" (Berryman, 11). A class of Latin American elites emerged, and the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots commenced. Independence from Spain resulted in the 1800's, and while this "opened new horizons for democratic ideas and social and political change," England recognized immediately the economic opportunities of "establishing commercial relations with the newly independent countries" (Aguilar, 23). Prime Minister George Canning saw England as a workshop, and "Latin America [as] its farm" (Aguilar, 23).

The United States, at the time, was concerned with maintaining its own independence from Britain and "laying down the foundations of United States hegemony on the continent" (Aguilar, 25). The Monroe Doctrine "ensur[ed] that Latin America remain[ed] subordinated to the needs of U.S.-based transnational corporations" (Chomsky-Towards, 92). Native communal lands were re-assigned, and American entrepreneurs, namely the United Fruit Company, tied up huge tracts of land for banana export production (Berryman, 10). A series of accomodating governments, in the form of dictatorships, maintained economic exploitation and coercion while contributing "nothing to the internal development of the country" (Berryman, 12). Consequently, the frustrations of the people whose land and hearts had been enslaved and imprisoned by profit seekers continued to compound and erupt in localized revolutions which were, at the time, easily quelched (Berryman, 12). 

Augusto Cesar Sandino would change all that. He was born in 1898 to Margarita Calderon, an Indian worker, and fathered by Don Gregorio Sandino, the rich landowner she worked for. He was treated as a peasant worker until the age of eleven, in sharp contrast to the treatment of his half-brothers, but he eventually received schooling. He prospered in a business modelled after his father's grain trade, and later worked as a mechanic in Honduras, a United Fruit plantation worker in Guatemala, and a warehouseman in Mexico. Among the working class people of Mexico he discovered anti-American nationalism and the stirrings of a labour movement, and he returned to a U.S. gold mining town in northern Nicaragua in 1926. Sandino earned money as a storekeeper there, and used it to arm a small band of justice warriors (Weber, 12).  

The U.S. Marines first landed in Nicaragua in 1909 to carry Juan J. Estrada to the presidential seat. Estrada was a conservative leader financed and advised by Adolfo Diaz, an employee of a U.S. mining company whose legal adviser happened to be Secretary of State. Estrada was required to sign the Dawson Pacts, "which in effect placed the country under U.S. administration" and brought Adolfo Diaz to power (Weber, 8). This provoked a liberal-led uprising in 1912, and 1700 more Marines were sent to Nicaragua to crush the revolt. The Diaz government was then "'legitimized' through 'elections'", and went on to "deny the United States nothing" (Weber, 8).  

In 1927, Sandino and his men became involved in a guerrilla war against the U.S. Marines (Berryman, 13) and for six years they withstood massive transfers of populations, the torture of huge numbers of peasants, and the bombings of entire urban clusters (Weber, 12). Sandino agreed to a truce on the condition that U.S. troops be withdrawn (Berryman, 13). The State Department, meanwhile, had issued a command to the Marines to train a National Guard (Weber, 12). U.S. procedure was to rely on "indigenous military forces to suppress the domestic population" (Chomsky-Terrorism, 82), and to make easy the installation of further dictators. Anastasio Somoza Garcia became chief of the National Guard, and was determined to destroy Sandino. In February 1934, Sandino and two of his aides were shot down in cold blood by National Guardsmen, and hundreds of Sandino's followers were subsequently murdered (Berryman, 13). Their influence on progressive movements in Nicaragua and throughout the world, however, did not die with them.    

The original Sandinist movement broke into pieces within months, and in 1936 Anastasio Somoza "seized the reins of power [and] established, for nearly half a century, one of the most corrupt dictatorships in the history of the continent" (Weber, 16). Within eight years he was the foremost coffee producer and biggest landowner in Nicaragua. Every year he pocketed $400,000 from U.S. companies he had exempted from taxes and social contributions. After the capitalist expansion of the 1950's, Somoza holdings broadened to cover all agri-export sectors, including extensive cultivable land holdings in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. His family controlled the food processing industry, textiles, sea and air transport, cardboard, gramophone records, tobacco, and cement (Weber, 17). The Central American Common Market was set up in 1960, but rather than promoting the interests of the majority "who lived at near-subsistence levels," foreign (mostly U.S.) corporations profited from the sale of Tang, Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Log Cabin syrup to the small middle class (Berryman, 17). After the devastating earthquake of 1972, the Somozas created their own bank with the $600 million in emergency aid sent from abroad (Weber, 17). By the late seventies, there was "no branch of economic activity in which the Somoza group [did] not own major assets" (Weber, 17).

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN- Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional) was formed in the late 50's and was largely influenced by Carlos Fonseca (Weber, 20). By the 1970's "popular organizations" (Berryman, 21) had arisen: labour unions had evolved, teachers had gone on strike, and others had occupied the church to show their support for political prisoners. Some of those prisoners engaged in a hunger strike in 1972, and the movement became so powerful that it evoked death squads and the murder of Jesuit Priests for promoting liberation theology (Berryman, 29). Liberation theology was depicted as a "criminal conspiracy" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 22), and a threat to U.S. foreign policy because it promoted ideas of heaven on earth, and "refus[ed] to be silent about death or about the possibilities for new life" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 23). 

Somoza was assassinated by a poet in 1956, and his son, Luis Somoza Debayle, replaced him. Luis' brother Anastasio II became head of the National Guard, and later president when Luis died in 1967. Within five years much of the business community and Catholic hierarchy had been alienated from the government, and the Somoza regime had lost legitimacy among the middle and upper classes (Berryman, 29). In December 1974, the Sandinistas forced Somoza to release some political prisoners and pay a ransom, and his vulnerability was momentarily exposed. He turned the National Guard on a group of peasants in a "counterinsurgency" campaign, killing several hundred (Berryman, 29). The January 1978 murder of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa, sparked a sudden mass movement of people into the streets. As well, President "Carter's message of support to Somoza in the midst of the massacre . . . may have been a factor precipitating the revolt..." (Chomsky-Towards, 16). Entire towns rose in rebellion, standing against Somoza's helicopters, tanks, and bazookas with homemade weapons. In August the Sandinistas took 2000 government employees hostage, and people from five provincial cities rose up. Somoza's bomb dropping and National Guard brutality led more people, especially young people, over to the Sandinistas.

By this time the United States saw the writing on the wall, and sought to remove Somoza before the Sandinistas were able to take power. "Only when it was evident that Somoza could not hold out against a virtually unified population, including even the business groups that are the natural allies of the United States, did Carter move to "mediate," too late to prevent a Sandinista victory" (Chomsky-Towards, 16). The Sandinistas launched their final offensive in June 1979 as FSLN guerrillas aided people in taking over their towns and cities. Somoza stepped down, the National Guard fell apart, and the Sandinistas entered Managua. President Carter's administration, within days of the overthrow of Somoza, attempted to influence the Sandinistas with ten million dollars in emergency aid which was sent primarily to the private sector. The Sandinistas also received several hundred million dollars from international lending agencies and some other governments, mostly European, during their first year and a half in power (Berryman, 35).

The Sandinista philosophy was committed to political pluralism, a mixed economy, and popular participation. Its constitution guaranteed a role for economic cooperatives, joint state and private enterprises, small, medium, and large private farms and businesses, indigenous communal ownership, and a state sector. Agrarian reform programs redistributed wealth and wealth-producing resources from elites to the poor, and banks and the export/import industry were nationalized. Close ties to other 'third world' nations, Western Europe, Canada, and socialist bloc countries were sought. Within a few years, illiteracy went from 50% to 12%, and the World Health Organization selected Nicaragua as one of five model countries for primary health care (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 25).

The Sandinistas believed that the United States would eventually attack them, so they requested aid from Cuban advisors to help transform guerrilla groups into an efficient army and police force, and to monitor counterrevolutionary activities (Berryman, 34). They recognized that "a mixed economy is an attack against corporate capitalism" because it "redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 25). The U.S. would perceive them as a threat because, "despite their meager resources and the horrifying conditions left by the final phase of the U.S.-backed Somoza terror, they might be able to introduce the kinds of reforms that would have appeal both in neighbouring countries, and in regions of Nicaragua where the Somoza regime maintained a degree of popular support" (Chomsky-Terror, 48). 

Not surprisingly, United States government policy soon concerned itself with the overthrow of the Sandinista revolution (Berryman, 80). Right wing Central Americans preferred to deal directly with 'subversives', killing them whenever necessary, and were encouraged by the tone of the 1980 Reagan campaign which "emphasized threats to U.S. security and a necessary military solution to 'free' Nicaraguans" (Berryman, 44,47). The new administration suspended Carter's aid packages and instead authorized $19.5 million for the preparation of anti-Sandinista counter-revolutionaries (contras). Several thousand former Somoza National Guardsman were camped in Honduras, guerrilla training had been going on in camps in Florida and elsewhere, and by April 1981 a 600 man "freedom force" was created (Berryman, 47). By the fall of 1982 the force had become 4000, and it eventually grew to over 10,000 (Berryman, 63).  

Low intensity conflict was the strategy undertaken to overthrow the Sandinistas and replace it with a government subservient to U.S. corporate interests (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 38). To accomplish this the contras were to encourage suffering among the mass population in order to discredit the revolution. Terrorism was intended to "erode popular support from a revolution whose commitment to improving the living standards of the poor was unacceptable to the empire" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 35). As is indicated in the CIA-produced manual entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, once the mind of a person "has been reached, the 'political animal' has been defeated, without necessarily receiving bullets... Our target, then, is the minds of the population, all the population: our troops, the enemy troops, and the civilian population" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 30). An Executive Summary Report of a U.S. Medical Task Force investigation of contra attacks against civilians from Jan 1988 reports: "Contra attacks are not mere accidents of war, but are part of a strategy which focuses on disrupting development work, rather than on achieving military victories." (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 36).  

The contras succeeded in "terrorizing civilians by ambushing trucks with many civilian casualties, killing many doctors, health workers and teachers, forcing the government to close newly opened schools and clinics, and repeatedly burning down houses, educational facilities, cooperative stores, community kitchens" (Chomsky-Terror, 48). Edgar Chamorro was a high level contra leader who left because he could no longer stomach the atrocities committed against civilians. Before the International Court of Justice, he said: "We were told that the only way to defeat the Sandinistas was to ...kill, kidnap, rob and torture" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 34). Former CIA official John Stockwell stated that "encouraging techniques of raping women and executing men and children [was] a coordinated policy of the destabilization program" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 35). The goal in Nicaragua was to discourage people from promoting or participating in literacy campaigns, health programs, vaccinations, forestry projects and land reforms (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 35).

By mid 1984 thousands of Nicaraguans had been killed by the contras, and several thousand more were wounded or abducted. "Damage done in that year was estimated at $254.9 million, or 70 percent of Nicaragua's export revenues" (Berryman, 92). The Sandinista government had no choice but to spend 40 percent of its 1985 budget on defense, making this money unavailable for development (Berryman, 92). 

The American program also succeeded in legitimizing low intensity conflict to the tax paying citizens of the United States. Direct military intervention was avoided at all costs because "clearly, [it] would in all probability fuel a militant anti-war movement running through the entire society" (Berryman, 90). A massive disinformation program was carefully undertaken, and low intensity warfare became "yuppie warfare - [allowing] privileged Americans to go on buying condominiums, wearing chic designer clothes, eating expensive meals at posh restaurants, and generally living in style without risking their own lives, without facing conscription, without paying higher taxes, and most important, without being overly distracted by grisly scenes on the television set" (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 32). 

According to John Stockwell, disinformation became more important than ever because the low intensity conflict strategy, a strategy far more compatible with fascism than democracy, was now being implemented by the U.S. on a global scale (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 41, 49). Aggression and state terror in the Third World was translated into a "defense of democracy and human rights" (Chomsky-Necessary, 106). This was necessary because "in the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. Rather, they must be instilled in the public mind by more subtle means. . . . In a democratic political order, there is always the danger that independent thought might be translated into political action, so it is important to eliminate the threat at its root" (Chomsky-Necessary, 48). 

Paulo Friere, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, calls the action of dividing the oppressed an "antidialogical theory of action." Social leaders who are motivated to distribute wealth and construct an egalitarian society find themselves struggling endlessly on two fronts: they busy themselves with social reforms while endlessly attempting to encourage unity among all the people. It's important to remember, this remembrance day, that all humans are ultimately concerned about achieving similar goals. I don't know anyone who doesn't want a warm place to sleep, nutritious food in her or his stomach, and an opportunity to feel and know love. Opinions about how to achieve these ends may differ, and discussions are certainly never boring. There are those, for some reason, who are easily lost in the pro-war propaganda that attempts to use the twisted logic of economics to explain why life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is simply not possible on a global scale, but I believe that the lessons of the past can teach us about the endless possibilities available to those who promote progressive change, peacefully.

Works Cited

Aguilar, Alonso.  Pan-Americanism From Monroe to the Present. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968

Berryman, Phillip.  Inside Central America. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 1985. 

Chomsky, Noam.  Necessary Illusions. Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1989. 

Chomsky, Noam.  The Culture of Terrorism. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1988. 

Chomsky, Noam.  Towards a New Cold War. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 1982. 

Friere, Paulo.  Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 1968.

Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack.  War Against the Poor. New York: Orbis Books, 1989. 

Weber, Henri. Nicaragua:  The Sandinist Revolution. London: Verso Editions and NLB, 1981.