15. Postscript¶
Core Argument¶
This postscript analyses the 2018 Nicaraguan uprising as the explosive consequence of the Ortega-Murillo government’s thoroughgoing betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution’s traditions. The chapter’s core argument is that the April 2018 protests, triggered by pension reforms that increased contributions while cutting benefits, revealed a profound popular opposition to a regime that had, since returning to power in 2006, abandoned any pretence of socialism in favour of a pact with the capitalist class and subservience to US imperialism. The scale of the rebellion, which cost over 300 lives, is attributed not to the pension issue alone but to the accumulated effects of sixteen years of pro-business policies, the lowest living standards in Latin America, and the suppression of democratic rights.
The chapter details how Ortega secured power through a cynical alliance with the Catholic hierarchy and right-wing leader Alemán, trading abortion rights and electoral thresholds for political advantage. Once in office, the regime guaranteed social stability for employers, particularly in Free Trade Zones, in exchange for profits and political quiescence. The government maintained good relations with Washington, collaborating on migration, the war on drugs, and allowing US agencies free rein, while simultaneously using left-wing rhetoric and an alliance with Venezuela as a smokescreen. The US, however, is presented as seeking a more compliant regime, with Ambassador Trujillo calling for early elections to deactivate the movement and protect business interests.
The chapter’s polemical thrust is directed against three targets. First, the Ortega-Murillo government itself, which is denounced as a repressive bourgeois administration that has betrayed the revolutionary heritage of Carlos Fonseca Amador. Second, the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, represented by COSEP and AMCHAM, which initially collaborated with Ortega but then moved to co-opt the protests, steering them towards negotiations and away from any challenge to capitalism. Third, the student movement and the Movement for Sandinista Renewal (MRS) are criticised for lacking an independent class perspective. Student leaders are shown travelling to meet the US Republican right and the reactionary ARENA party in El Salvador, appealing to bosses’ organisations for a ‘civic strike’ and accepting a “necessary” alliance with capitalists. This, the chapter argues, handed the government the propaganda weapon of presenting the movement as a “US imperialist plot”, enabling its violent suppression.
The great absentee throughout is the organised working class, whose unions have been co-opted by the Ortega government as a brake on class struggle. The chapter concludes by drawing lessons from the 1979 Revolution, which it argues could have destroyed capitalism but was betrayed by FSLN leaders who accepted a class-collaborationist ‘mixed economy’. The immediate task for Nicaraguan revolutionaries is to elaborate transitional demands—for decent wages, union rights, safe working conditions, an end to repression, punishment of those responsible for killings, land rights for campesinos and indigenous peoples, and the defence of women’s and children’s rights—as the basis for building an independent class leadership and a genuine socialist programme rooted in workers’ democracy.