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Nicaragua: Realizing Sandino's Dream
Interview with Pedro Haslam, President of the IDR and FENIAGRO
Interview and translation by Karla Jacobs
November 3rd 2009
Interview with Pedro Haslam, President of the IDR and FENIAGRO
Interview and translation by Karla Jacobs
November 3rd 2009
Pedro Haslam is the President of the Institute of Rural Development (IDR) and member of the Board of Directors of the recently established Nicaraguan Institute for Promotion of the Cooperative Sector (INFOCOOP). He is also President of the Nicaraguan Federation of Agro Industrial Cooperatives (FENIAGRO) which is one of the biggest organizations of cooperatives in Nicaragua representing over 27,000 small farming families.
In this interview Haslam talks about the highs and lows of the historical process of the cooperative movement in Nicaragua dating back to 1932 when Augusto César Sandino founded the Central of Río Coco cooperative. To read the second part of this interview click here.
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Karla Jacobs: My first question is about the cooperative sector. As we all know hundreds if not thousands of cooperatives were formed in the Nicaraguan countryside during the 80s with support from the first FSLN government. It was a highly successful social and productive experiment which became to be seen as a model in Latin America.
When Violeta Barrios won the presidency, however, government support for the sector was substantially reduced. Perhaps you can talk a bit about the experience of the cooperative sector during the 16 years of neoliberal governments between 1990 and 2006.
Pedro Haslam: One must refer to the country's history because it wasn't just a coincidence that during the revolution led by the FSLN in the 1980s over 3,000 farming cooperatives were formed. And one must remember that that social journey was only made possible as a result of the Sandinista land reform during which over 2,500,000 manzanas of land were given to farmers organized in cooperatives. The Sandinista land reform, I would say, was the most representative land reform project in the world in terms of the percentage of the population benefited and the percentage of the nation's land involved.
So during the 80s the cooperative sector enters the economy, and despite the war of aggression, the cooperatives came to produce an importante percentage not just of overall national food production but also of agricultural exports.
Neoliberalism obliged us to redesign the cooperative model
During the years of neoliberalism in Nicaragua it was really tough. We were confronted by a full-blown offensive from the neoliberal system which started to be installed in 1990 with Doña Violeta's government. This offensive obliged us to rethink and redesign the organizational model in the cooperative sector.
The cooperatives that survived, that resisted neoliberalism, had to convert to an agro-exportation model producing coffee, sesame, dairy products etc, because [simultaneous to the onslaught of neoliberalism] the internal market contracted. The State abandoned all support for the production of basic food for sale within Nicaragua. So it became impossible to produce corn and beans for the internal market.
What the cooperatives that survived did was produce food for the families involved with the cooperative, perhaps sell a little if there was any left over, and then dedicate the rest of our time to the production of exportable products. We couldn't carry on with the organizational model as it was, [because the production of basic grains and other basic foods for the internal market] had become effectively a subsistence economy.
During those 16 years more than 50% of the land given to campesinos by the FSLN in the 80s was taken away, sold or usurped. Different mechanisms were used but the effect was the same - the land did not remain under the ownership of the campesinos to whom it was given during the land reform.
We dedicated ourselves to resisting the offensive of the multinationals
So the government programs of technical assistance, transfer of technology and seed production disappear. At the same time the national bank and the other financial instruments aimed at supporting the rural sector also disappear and the commercial banking sector is established. Simultaneously, the political, juridical and administrative conditions were created to encourage the installation of multinationals in Nicaragua.
So the group of cooperative organizations that were able to convert to a more managerial model, developing technical and market administration capacities, dedicated themselves to resisting the offensive of the multinationals.
Today in the Nicaraguan coffee production sector, for example, there are a number of cooperatives and then there are the multinationals which operate via different mechanisms. Sometimes the multinationals disguise themselves making their Nicaraguan representatives pass as the owners of a national commercial business. This same situation occurs in different sectors of the Nicaraguan economy.
The group of cooperatives that was able to re-establish itself within the neoliberal model acted as the spearhead for the survival of the cooperative sector. A number of cooperatives demobilized completely during that period, while many others abandoned cooperative activity but didn't disappear altogether. You could say they went into hibernation. And that sector of cooperatives is the one which is regaining dynamism today.
It is clear that the neoliberal model and the cooperative model are the antithesis of each other. The cooperative model is a social model based on solidarity which aims to create an economy beneficial to the community in terms of production and services - you might call it a socialist economy. The neoliberal model on the other hand, is an individualistic model that concentrates wealth and excludes the majority of the community.
Statistics about the cooperative sector
KJ: You said at the beginning of your answer that in the 1980s more that 3,000 cooperatives were formed. Is there a statistic that tells us how many survived during those 16 years?
PH: In the 80s the majority of cooperatives that were formed were rural cooperatives. Then in the 90s a number of cooperatives were formed within the transport sector. Today the transport cooperatives represent an important part of the cooperative sector.
The FSLN government composed a list of existing cooperatives [when it came to power in 2007]. This list calculates just over 1,000 cooperatives including certain other expressions of integration like unions, centrals and federation.
KJ: Are you talking about all cooperatives or just agricultural cooperative there?
PH: All cooperatives. But the register we have shows us that roughly 70% of existing cooperatives are rural, agricultural cooperatives.
And today, after nearly three years of the Sandinista government there are just over 3,000 active cooperatives in Nicaragua thanks to the process promoted by the government to form new cooperatives and reactivate hibernating cooperatives. Luckily these cooperatives' documents and files from the 80s and 90s still exist, there were not preserved as well as they should have been, but at least they still exist.
Sandino and his certainty that the cooperative model provides solutions
KJ: Tell me about the process you mention that the FSLN government is promoting to reactivate and incentivate the cooperative sector.
PH: Like I said before, one has to take Nicaraguan history into account. We shouldn't forget that Sandino considered cooperative organization to be "the appropriate social response to the country's economy [in the quest] for the well-being of Nicaraguan families."
In 1934, when Sandino disarmed, or when the peace agreements were signed because he never disarmed, he organized the first great cooperative [in Nicaragua] called the Central of Río Coco.
It is no coincidence that a month after Sandino was murdered Somoza's guard attacked and disarticulated the Río Coco cooperative.
In a declaration issued in the 1960s the Sandinista Front also proclaims cooperative organization as a social model to be aspired to by farmers and workers.
So it's not a coincidence that the FSLN government today acknowledges the importance the cooperative sector has within a social economy.
The government has prioritized the cooperative sector
If you revise this government's National Plan of Human Development, its National Production Plans, its social and economic policies, you will find that the government consistently prioritizes the cooperative sector.
When President Daniel returned from the Conference of ALBA presidents in Cochabamba last week as part of the report he presented to the nation he called on the population to organize themselves in cooperatives because, he said, it is a model that is very relevant to the construction of a socialist model in Nicaragua.
How precisely has the government promoted the cooperative sector? On August 7th 2007, the cooperative movement accompanied by labour organizations like the UNAG hosted a National Assembly of the Cooperative Movement in Sébaco. As part of the Assembly we presented the movement's agenda to the Nation, to President Daniel and to the Ministers. One of the points of the agenda urged the government to proceed to institutionalize the cooperative sector.
On December 2nd of the same year Labour Minister Janet Chávez swore in and installed the Board of Directors of INFOCOOP (Nicaraguan Institute of Promotion of the Cooperative Sector) made up of four ministers and five representatives of the cooperative sector.
From then we started to work to facilitate the sector's juridical and administrative needs and to develop the process of institutionalization of the sector. Now, two years later, we have seed production and other production programs, programs that the government promotes and that are carried out mainly through cooperative organizations.
For example in the Rural Credit Fund priority is given to cooperative organizations. So it is no longer the conventional and non-conventional financial intermediary organizations, as they are called, that administrate government funds, but cooperatives.
ALBA has created a great space for cooperatives
As part of the ALBA-CARUNA program over 400 rural cooperatives are assisted. In the last register we did we listed nearly 1,500 cooperatives assisted as part of government programs, and that doesn't include the transport cooperatives through which the government subsidy of public transport is channelled.
As a friend on the directorate board of ALBA in Nicaragua said, the public transport tariff in Managua should be C$5. However, through the cooperatives the government is subsidizing C$2.5. In other words half of the real cost of the tariff is subsidized for over a million Nicaraguans who use the service.
In Nicaragua there is great will and a comprehensive process in place to ensure that all these programs are channelled through local cooperative organizations. For example in the case of exports to ALBA countries, the government has opened a great space for cooperative organizations.
And now we have a new mechanism to help make these programs as relevant to local demands as possible - the Departmental Production Councils. These councils are made up of public institutions linked to production plus local organizations that represent the producers in each department.
Credit programs, ENABAS' [the State Basic Food Company] purchases, purchases for ALBA programs, etc will all be channelled through these Production Councils.
Commandant Daniel has always said that the cooperatives must progress, that they must establish their own direct relationships in order to benefit from the concept and the practice of fair trade which is the other great element of this process.
The institutionalization of Fair Trade
Many of the cooperatives in Nicaragua are involved in an international process called "fair trade" which is based on solidarity between groups of consumers in countries that consume our products and cooperatives in our countries.
And now that Nicaragua is a member of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) the practice of fair trade is no longer an isolated event in Nicaragua. Today thanks to ALBA the concept and practise of ALBA has been institutionalized. This means that there are better opportunities for the producer with better prices and simultaneously non speculative prices for consumers. Seen from a strategic perspective, this is very important.
KJ: I am interested in hearing about the experience the FSLN has had during the promotion of this process of support for and promotion of the cooperative sector and specifically the formation of new cooperatives, because during the last two decades an individualistic culture corresponding to the logic of global capitalism has been imposed on Nicaragua.
Have you found that there are sectors of society that are unenthusiastic about becoming involved with a cooperative organization, or that resist a philosophy based on concepts like solidarity and collectivism?
PH: In general, at this time, we do not come up against that sort of resistance. There were moments in the past when our struggle was difficult in that sense, mainly in the late nineties as a result of the media war [against the FSLN]. This media war is not just an offensive against the FSLN and Commandant Daniel today, this offensive has been a constant since the 80s.
During the neoliberal governments the media offensive acted as a base which allowed the installation of that capitalism, that individualism, that neoliberalism in our society. And I can't deny it, those years were tough.
Our traditional culture helps us to maintain collective values
But there is a very important aspect and that is that our traditional culture has always been based on a great sense of community. I would say that that culture, those traditional values held by the Nicaraguan people are the greatest capital that the Sandinista Revolution has. And it is something that neoliberalism was not able to destroy.
Nicaraguans naturally feel great solidarity with other people because that is how our ancestors, our grandparents taught us to be. If you visit the home of a Nicaraguan the least you will be offered is a cup of coffee or a glass of water. Our culture is based on sharing the little we have with others. It's not about sharing what is left over because in an ordinary Nicaraguan home there aren't left overs. So our culture has been a very important base for associativity.
There was a moment in which the attack we were subjected to by neoliberalism, by the oligarchy and the media was debilitating. They said that people who got involved in cooperatives were lazy, that they didn't want to work, that they wanted hand outs. So we had to make a great effort to be seen and perceived in a different way. And we have been successful in that. Today the Nicaraguan population acknowledges the importance of the cooperative sector's collaboration.
Just the fact that we didn't allow 100% of our land to be taken away from us speaks volumes. The aggression against us was brutal. Many farmers died. Nicaraguan farming families continued losing loved ones as a result of the offensive of the counter-land reform process.
We just have to remember the coffee worker's struggle when hundreds of people were obliged to take to the highway, for example. That was an extremely difficult struggle. People died on the roads. And representatives of the cooperatives accompanied the coffee workers in a gesture of solidarity.
That type of situation is an important expression of the fact that in Nicaragua there is an organizational culture. We organize ourselves for many different things. In the majority of communities there is a water committee, a women's committee, a youth group, a church committee, etc.
So our's is an organizational culture that has its origins in our ancestors but that was stimulated and developed during the revolutionary process of the 80s. And this culture, I repeat, is one of the revolution's greatest capitals.