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U.S. Imperialist Foreign Policy

Modern Communism continues its examination of U.S. imperialist activities around the world since the Second World War.

Nicaragua

U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua actually dates back almost a century. Shortly after construction began on the Panama Canal, Nicaraguan President Jose Santos Zelaya invited German and Japanese capitalists to Nicaragua to evaluate a similar project - a prospect that infuriated the Americans, who saw the Panama Canal as the lynchpin guaranteeing their control and influence throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. The U.S. sent in the Marines in 1909, Zelaya was overthrown, and a new president was installed. U.S. banks took over the financial administration of the country and a long period of total American control began.

The Americans also began training a national guard for Nicaragua and gathered a group of political and economic leaders who accepted subservience to American interests. Meanwhile, groups of indigenous peoples and peasants were waging a fierce guerilla war against the central government. The largest guerilla group was led by the peasant and revolutionary Augusto Cesar Sandino, who led a force that was defeating the national guard in key areas in the countryside. Under the pretext of negotiating a settlement, Sandino was lured to Managua where he was assassinated on February 21, 1934. The order for his assassination was given by the leader of the national guard, General Antonio Somoza Garcia. Somoza, who had been educated and received military training in the U.S., assumed the presidency in 1936. He and his family remained in power for the next 43 years, with all opposition kept in check by an American-backed military.

Notoriously corrupt, the Somoza family and the families of his close associates enriched themselves by robbing the public treasury. The family even stole tens of millions of dollars in aid that poured into the country following the 1972 earthquake which devastated Managua. Human rights violations under the Somoza dictatorship were rampant, so much so that even many of those in the country's economic elite were active in secret opposition groups.

One of the smallest but most well organized was the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN), founded in 1962 and inspired both by the revolutionary writings of Sandino as well as the triumph of the Cuban Revoloution. After a successful raid on Managua in 1974 by the FSLN, the Somoza dictatorship imposed martial law and cracked down on the small democratic movements that were flourishing amongst some of Nicaragua's political and economic elites. Military aid from the Ford administration in the U.S. doubled during this period. However, Somoza's actions backfired and drove moderate, bourgeois democrats into the camp of the FSLN, which was already winning broad support amongst the Nicaraguan working class and peasantry.

By the summer of 1979, the FSLN, in coalition with other groups, controlled much of the countryside, and arrived in Managua to cheering crowds. A provisional government was established, which included representatives from the FSLN as well as liberal elements in the guerilla movement. Somoza fled to Miami in July, 1979, and was assassinated in Paraguay a year later. He left behind a country decimated by civil war, whose infrastructure had been almost entirely wiped out by the 1972 earthquake and never rebuilt. His national guard forces were also responsible for the murder of between 40,000 and 50,000 Nicaraguans.

The Americans were incensed by the Sandinista victory, and almost immediately began working to subvert the government. When economic embargos failed to bring the fledgling government to its knees, the CIA initiated a series of raids on the country by former national guardsmen based in Honduras. Soon known as the contras, this force received virtually no support from inside Nicaragua. So they got their support from outside - the Reagan administration pumped almost $10 million into training and arms for the group in 1981, and provided another $19 million to the CIA to fund covert operations throughout Nicaragua, including blowing up bridges and fuel depots, and mining of harbours. The Reagan administration consistently portrayed the Sandinistas, who had not held elections since coming to power, chiefly because they had been fighting a civil war against American-backed forces, as undemocratic despots and the contras as freedom fighters. This was despite widespread evidence of gross human rights violations by the contras, including massacres of civilians in pro-Sandinista villages.

In 1984, the Sandinistas held elections for a constituent assembly and the presidency. They won 61 out of 96 seats for the assembly and 67 per cent of the popular vote for the presidency. Despite the presence of international observers who ruled the election was democratic, the Reagan administration insisted it was fixed. However, that same year, following massive public pressure in the U.S., military aid to the contras officially stopped. The world later found out that tens of millions of dollars continued to flow to the contras through the CIA, financed by the illegal sale of arms and drugs. In 1986, the World Court in the Hague ruled that the American mining of Nicaraguan harbours was in violation of international law and ordered reparations. The Americans, to this day, have refused to respect this finding, arguing that the Court had no jurisdiction in the matter.