Carlos Fernando Álvarez, 8 de Noviembre 2018
https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:83668-una-nicaragua-qu…
Nicaragua moving ahead in revolution : A common thread links Sandino, Carlos and Daniel
42 years on since Sandino’s heir, Comandante Carlos Fonseca Amador, passed into immortality, his principles, values and historic program live on in teh government's many projects but more importantly in the practice of a government dedicating love and concern to its people, as embodied by Comandante Daniel Ortega Saavedra .
Comandante Lumberto Campbell, remembers getting to know Carlos at the end of 1975 in a safe house on Managua’s Carretera Sur where, along with other revolutionary comrades, he accompanied Carlos until the FSLN leader left for the mountains. He remembers Carlos as serious and studious, always alert to the progress of the revolutionary process,
“Since I worked giving classes in the university, every afternoon after I got back to the house turned into an interview about the university. About the state of the student movement, about how the students in general were doing, how they saw the struggle, about the Revolutionary Student Federation (FER), how things were in the National University Center (CUUN) and he would ask about individual teachers, what their involvement was, what were their opinions….he was a very earnest comrade, very much in earnest.”
Lumberto Campbell also still remembers very well one time when Carlos stayed in his room for three days straight, avidly reading one book after another, barely stopping to eat. Comandante Campbell notes that the studies and ideas of Carlos are represented in the historic program of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). In particular, Campbell recalls that he shared with Comandante Carlos a love and concern for the changes needed on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.
“He told me how the situation of injustice and poverty we were living with in Nicaragua in general, but especially on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, was an unacceptable situation and one that had to change. There’s even a special chapter in the FSLN program, dedicated to Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.”
Comandante Campbell notes that Carlos Fonseca’s thinking continues to motivate and permeate with that same hope and faith concrete government programs currently under way, “I see it in the concrete things we have achieved…Carlos takes up from Sandino and Comandante Daniel takes up from Carlos. There is a common thread there linking Sandino, Carlos and Daniel. I think what is being implemented in practice is gathered together in that historic program. Looking at one place where one can especially see this, as well as in the rest of Nicaragua, one sees in the Caribbean Coast how Comandante Daniel has prioritized programs that never were seen there before...just abandonment. Only thanks to a revolution and a leadership following the vision traced by Carlos have the achievements realized today in Nicaragua been possible, and especially on the Caribbean Coast.”
Loyalty and faith
Comandante Campbell believes loyalty, faith and trust are fundamental values making this success possible, the same values promoted but also very much practiced by Carlos Fonseca. He recalls a moment involving Comandante Tomás Borge, who was the only person who knew the locations of the FSLN safe houses, when Borge was captured, “We thought about relocating people, especially when we’re talking about the FSLN leader, Carlos Fonseca. Obviously, my first instinct was to try and contact the other safe houses we had, so people might know and so as to try and get him out of there. And as an expression of the loyalty and trust Comandante Fonseca had in Comandante Borge, he told me, “No one needs to move. Tomás won’t talk, even if they torture him.”
All his life, those words have remained impressed upon this Comandante from the Caribbean Coast, “The 1970s were very hard years, likewise today, these are hard years and today more important than ever are are that faith, that loyalty, that certainty that we are going to achieve our objectives, with great effort, with hard work and great self-assurance. I think that is clear today more than ever.”
In that regard, Comandante Campbell says this revolutionary process of change is progressing “towards the sun of liberty” despite some people who may hesitate at certain moments, or others who may give in to cowardice or even treachery, as false children of Nicaragua. But the majority of people in the country are ready to give their best to build a more prosperous, worthy Nicaragua, sovereign and independent, “There will always be people like Judas, but even though the world may have its Judas, Christ is there too.”
Lumberto Campbell reminds us that the same enemy confronting Carlos and the martyrs of the Revolution has now again confronted Nicaragua via the months of terror people endured during the failed coup d’etat, “If anyone stayed serene, with certainty and confidence in the Nicaraguan people, it was Comandante Daniel Ortega Saavedra and I say that with complete assurance. When these barbarians attacked the local municipal authority offices, attacking and killing compañeros, a great many Sandinistas throughout the country argued strongly for a reaction to this phenomenon, but our Comandante was always calm, taking the necessary steps to guide the crisis via the least costly route possible and ensuring success.”
Now, for Comandante Capbell, the challenge is to continue building a Nicaragua steadily more inclusive and more equitable in which young people and children can continue to aspire to art, culture and beauty, “We have to generate more jobs because our adversary, our main enemy right now, is unemployment.”
Carlos returning from Russia
Comandante Lenin Cerna recalls his first meeting with Carlos, on his return from Russia, explaining that his father, a Salvadoran shoe maker, was a communist in exile, often visited by Rigoberto López Pérez and other socialist and communist activists. Among the people selling radical newspapers and key activists with advanced political ideas, Carlos, recently returned from the Soviet Union, appeared with his book “A Nicaraguan in Moscow”.
Lenin's father bought three of those books, but the most treasured one carried a dedication , “From the land of Lenin, the Soviet Union, for Lenin of Nicaragua”written by the founder of the FSLN at the request of Lenin Cerna’s father. Lost in recollection, Cerna remarks, “For someone at my time of life, after experiencing so much, winning a great deal, losing a great deal, one of the things I regret most is no longer having that book.”
They only met again at the end of 1967 when Carlos and Tomás returned from Pancasán. By then Carlos was no longer just a person but had come to personify a legend. Lenin Cerna recalls with admiration, how Carlos made fools of the dictatorship’s security “He was already a symbol, an example and had become a legend. People spoke of him as one would of those leaders evading persecution by dressing as rural workers or dressing as street porters. And that was tough for him because he was a man who stood out from the crowd.”
Humility
Lenin Cerna finds it impossible to list all the qualities of this immortal man despite which his humility was total. Among the lessons taught without a word being spoken, Cerna remembers “He set an example with his daily behavior. He never ate before his other comrades had done so, he never sought the best place, he was never concerend about getting the best weapon or doing anything that might set him apart from other people”.
In these complex times, Cerna thinks the ideas of Comandante Carlos have nourished Sandinismo, although it is still necessary to deepen the impact of Carlos Fonseca's thought and this precisely marks the difference between a Sandinista militant and the counter-revolutionary opposition, “We are an enduring tree while they are short lived seedlings that cannot survive above ground. Search for our roots and you’ll see how deep they are. One is what one is, or else one is nothing at all.” Of those people who once enjoyed widspread affection but today have forgotten their origins, Lenin Cerna thinks “People who deny their roots are like people who deny their shadow. If you have no shadow, you don’t exist.”
Depsite all the current difficulties, Lenin Cerna predicts Nicaragua will progress,“They can’t roll back everything we have achieved. They won’t be able to and we will move ahead, with all the difficulties. As another comrade has said, we were born to cope with difficulties. Revolutionaries are born amidst difficulties and learn to defeat them. Nicaragua will move forward despite all those who don’t love Nicaragua as much as we do.”
