3. Founding, Development and Differences within the FSLN¶
Core Argument¶
In 1957, Carlos Fonseca Amador established the first all-student branch of the Partido Socialista Nicaragüense (PSN) in León. His subsequent visit to Cuba and meeting with Che Guevara precipitated a break with the PSN over its accommodation of the Somoza regime, leading to the founding of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in 1961. Fonseca’s 1969 Historic Programme was radically reformist, promising agrarian revolution, nationalisation of Somoza family assets and foreign companies, workers’ control, and a mixed economy, yet it stopped short of controlling foreign trade or planning the economy. The FSLN adopted the Stalinist two-stage revolution theory, postponing socialism to an indeterminate future. The organisation remained clandestine, small, and hierarchical, with no democratic decision-making. After defeats at Río Coco (1963) and Pancasán (1967), the FSLN splintered into three tendencies: the Prolonged People’s War (GPP), advocating rural guerrilla warfare; the Proletarian Tendency (TP), calling for a Marxist-Leninist party; and a third. Women were integrated into combat roles—unprecedented in Latin America—comprising thirty per cent of guerrilla forces by 1979. The FSLN’s Stalinist framework and foco strategy meant it initially dismissed urban workers’ struggles as ‘Economism’.
The Terceristas (Insurrectionary Tendency), led by Humberto and Daniel Ortega and Victor Tirado Lopez, argued that growing alienation of the bourgeoisie and the ‘floating’ nature of the middle classes indicated imminent insurrection requiring a broad multi-class alliance. They cultivated links with international social-democracy and Christian Democratic parties, gaining respectability among bourgeois sectors. By 1973, Tercerista internal documents argued for looser recruitment restrictions and strategic alliances with Conservatives and Liberals. The 1972 Managua earthquake killed up to 20,000, left 50,000 homeless, and destroyed 37% of industry; Somoza personally pocketed relief funds and profited from redevelopment, alienating the national bourgeoisie. The Terceristas grew rapidly, overtaking the other tendencies numerically. In May 1977, they issued their own General Political-Military Platform, which dropped ‘Revolutionary’ from the proposed government description, limited nationalisation to Somoza family property, omitted mention of US imperialism, accepted elements of the National Guard into a new army, and weakened commitments on women’s emancipation and indigenous rights. The FSLN launched AMPRONAC in 1977, a women’s organisation with 8,000 members by summer 1978. The Terceristas’ approach is characterised as a class collaborationist People’s Front, not a Leninist united front.