Historic Program of the FSLN

HISTORIC PROGRAM OF THE FSLN

Presentation

The Historic Program of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), known as Sandino's Programmatic Legacy, was presented to the Nicaraguan people in 1969.

It is a reflection of the interpretation of the social reality of Nicaragua and the exposition of the fundamental postulates that would guide the revolutionary transformations, once the Somoza regime was liquidated and the power of the people became a reality.

The first task the Vanguard had to accomplish was to understand the unjust reality and point the way to transform it. The FSLN's Historical Program represents a break with the old conceptions that persisted regarding the revolutionary path, and an instrument of struggle where the people recognized in each programmatic point the possibility of seeing their historical demands, denied by the oppressive power, realized.

From July 23, 1961, the year the FSLN was founded, to July 1981, twenty years of continuous work passed, during which the limitations of a revolutionary organization were not obstacles to achieving victory. The period in which the Program was drafted represents the most difficult of the struggle; it was a time when, to paraphrase Leonel Rugama, "everyone turned a deaf ear, and the fight where it began to be born went unheard."

It fell to the Revolutionary Student Front (FER)—in those days when the Vanguard was working silently to accumulate the necessary forces to continue the guerrilla struggle—to undertake the task of reissuing the 15 programmatic points in 1972 for mass dissemination. Therefore, we include in this edition of the Historical Program the introduction with which the Revolutionary Student Front presented the Program to our people that year. This introduction reflects the arduousness of the struggle, the historical tenacity of a revolutionary organization determined to triumph despite its limitations, and the will of a people resolved to explore every possible
path to build a Free Nation.

The clandestine environment was the setting for the activities of the Vanguard; however, the deep respect for the people, the need to present to this revolutionary people the content of the victory and the reason for the struggle, demanded that the Vanguard develop this program which is now valid in the fulfillment of each of its points.

Thus, the defense of the program made by the Leader of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, Commander Carlos Fonseca, becomes relevant again, when he stated: We challenge any loudmouth to offer a program with better solutions for the Nicaraguan problem than those contained in the Program of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the Program of the Sandinista Popular Revolution.

The challenge issued by the FSLN could not be met by anyone. The vanguard and the people today reaffirm the historical relevance of Sandino's Programmatic Legacy and are working to build the future that fully belongs to the working people.

Free Nation or Death!

Department of Propaganda and Political Education of the FSLN

Introduction

February 21, 1934, Managua. A group of animals, murderers, and beasts have gathered. They call themselves high-ranking officers of the National Guard. They are going to satisfy their basest instincts by assassinating Augusto C. Sandino, General of Free Men.

For six years, Sandino had set the most praiseworthy example in the Americas, fighting for the liberation of his Nation, Nicaragua. During those years, he wrote, “I wanted to believe that in Nicaragua everything had become shameful and that honor had completely disappeared from the people of that land.”

He added, "If there were 100 men in Nicaragua who loved her as much as I do, our nation would restore its absolute sovereignty, endangered by the Yankee empire itself."

Sandino is determined; he loves his country, despises corruption, and recognizes the danger of Yankee imperialism. He begins one of the most unequal guerrilla struggles in history: “On the front lines, I encountered the political leaders, both Conservatives and Liberals, a bunch of scoundrels, cowards, and traitors, incapable of leading a patriotic and courageous people. We have abandoned these leaders, and among ourselves, the workers and peasants, we have improvised our own chiefs.”

We now have a patriotic, anti-imperialist Sandino, one who witnesses the corruption of politicians and chooses a people's revolution. But his political thought is yet to mature further: “The bond of nationality gives me the right to assume responsibility for my actions in the affairs of Nicaragua and therefore of Central America and the entire continent of our language, regardless of what the pessimists and cowards, in their eunuch-like state, may call me… my ideal reigns in a broad horizon of internationalism, in the right to be free and to demand justice, even if achieving that state requires shedding one's own blood and that of others.”

Sandino understands that the forces of the bourgeoisie will not abandon their privileges of their own free will; he knows that it is necessary to "shed one's own blood and that of others"; he knows that the people's war will be what destroys the dominant classes; he also knows that it will be "the oppressed, who are the soul and nerve of the race, those of us who have been postponed," who will ultimately make the revolution.

The assassination of Sandino frustrated the people of Nicaragua. His death led to the establishment of one of the most brutal dictatorships and the postponement of popular demands.

But as we commemorate 38 years since his death, the Nicaraguan people see with greater clarity and enthusiasm that his death was not in vain, that the Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN, has taken up the responsibility of continuing the Sandinista struggle to accompany the people to final victory.

The most cherished demands of the General of Free Men have been taken up by this handful of patriots, who, encouraged by his example, have swelled the ranks of the guerrillas, further enriched by the exemplary conduct of men like Che Guevara and Father Camilo Torres, who also gave their lives for a free Nation for the oppressed of the world.

This is the PROGRAMMATIC LEGACY OF SANDINO, which today those brothers of ours who have decided to achieve a FREE Nation OR DIE are trying to make a reality.

The Student Movement Towards National Liberation Revolutionary Student Front (FER) – 1972

THE HISTORICAL PROGRAM OF THE FSLN 1969

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has emerged from the needs of the Nicaraguan people to have a "Vanguard Organization" capable of achieving, through frontal struggle against its enemies, the seizure of POLITICAL POWER and the establishment of a social system that eliminates the exploitation and misery that our people have suffered in the historical past.

The FSLN is a POLITICAL-MILITARY organization whose strategic objective is the seizure of POLITICAL POWER through the destruction of the military and bureaucratic apparatus of the dictatorship and the establishment of a revolutionary government based on the WORKER-PEASANT alliance and the participation of all the patriotic ANTI-IMPERIALIST AND ANTI-OLIGARCHIC forces of the COUNTRY.

The people of Nicaragua suffer the subjugation of a reactionary and fascist clique, imposed by Yankee imperialism since 1932, the year in which Anastasio Somoza García was appointed Chief Director of the so-called National Guard (GN).

The Somoza clique has reduced Nicaragua to the condition of a neocolony exploited by Yankee monopolies and the country's oligarchic groups.

The current regime is politically unpopular and legally illegitimate. Its recognition and support by the United States constitutes irrefutable proof of foreign interference in Nicaragua's affairs.

The FSLN has analyzed the national reality with seriousness and great responsibility and has decided to confront the dictatorship with weapons in hand, since we have come to the conclusion that the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution and the overthrow of the regime that is the enemy of the people will arise as a consequence of the development of a hard and prolonged people's war.

Whatever maneuvers and means are deployed by Yankee imperialism, the Somoza dictatorship is doomed to total failure in the face of the impetuous advance and development of the popular forces led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Given this historical juncture, the FSLN has outlined this political program with a view to strengthening and developing our organization, encouraging and stimulating the people of Nicaragua to move forward, resolved to fight until the dictatorship is overthrown and to resist the intervention of Yankee imperialism in order to forge a free, prosperous and revolutionary Nation.

I. A Revolutionary Government

The Sandinista People's Revolution will establish a revolutionary government that will liquidate the reactionary structure originating from electoral phases and military coups; popular power will forge a Nicaragua without exploitation, without oppression, without backwardness, a free, progressive, and independent Nation.

The revolutionary government will dictate the following political measures:

• It will give the revolutionary power a structure that allows the full participation of all the people, both at the national level and at the local level (departmental, municipal, regional).

• It will guarantee to all citizens the full exercise of all individual freedoms and respect for human rights.

• It will guarantee freedom of expression of thought, which will primarily lead to the vigorous dissemination of popular and national rights.

• It will guarantee the freedom to organize the workers' and trade union movement in the city and in the countryside, freedom to organize peasant, youth, student, women's, cultural, sports, etc. groups.

• It will guarantee the right of Nicaraguan emigrants and exiles to return to their Nation.

• It will guarantee asylum to citizens of other countries persecuted for participating in the revolutionary struggle.

• It will severely punish executioners guilty of persecuting, denouncing, outrage, torturing, or murdering revolutionaries and the people.

• It will deprive of their political rights individuals who hold high public office as a result of electoral farces and military coups.

The revolutionary government will dictate the following economic measures:

• It will expropriate the large estates, factories, companies, buildings, means of transport and other assets usurped by the Somoza family and accumulated through embezzlement and plunder of the nation's wealth.

• It will expropriate the large estates, factories, companies, means of transport and other assets usurped by politicians and military personnel and all kinds of accomplices who have taken advantage of the administrative corruption of the current regime.

• It will nationalize the assets of all foreign companies engaged in the exploitation of mineral, forestry, maritime and other resources.

• It will establish workers' control in the administrative management of companies and other expropriated and nationalized assets.

• It will centralize the public transport service.

• It will nationalize the banking system, which will be at the exclusive service of the country's development.

• It will establish an independent currency.

• It will not recognize the loans imposed on the country by Yankee monopolies or any other power.

• It will establish trade relations with all countries, regardless of the system that governs them, for the benefit of the country's economic development.

• It will establish an appropriate tax policy, which will be applied with strict fairness.

• It will prohibit usury; this prohibition will include both nationals and foreigners.

• It will protect small and medium-sized owners (producers, traders) by restricting the excesses caused by the exploitation of workers.

• It will establish state control over foreign trade with a view to diversifying and making it independent.

• It will severely restrict the import of luxury goods.

• It will plan the national economy, putting an end to the anarchy characteristic of the capitalist system of production. A significant part of this planning will be dedicated to the industrialization and electrification of the country.

II. Agrarian Revolution

The Sandinista People's Revolution will outline an agrarian policy that will carry out an Authentic Agrarian Reform that will immediately achieve the massive redistribution of land, eliminating the latifundist usurpation for the benefit of the workers (small producers) who work the land.

• It will expropriate and liquidate the capitalist and feudal estates.

• He will give the land to the peasants free of charge, in accordance with the principle that the land should belong to those who work it.

• It will implement an agricultural development plan aimed at diversifying and increasing the productivity of that sector.

• It will guarantee the following rights to farmers:

  • Timely and adequate agricultural credit.

  • Marketing (securing a market for your products).

  • Technical assistance.

• It will protect patriotic landowners who collaborate with the guerrillas, by paying them for their lands that exceed what is established by the revolutionary government.

• It will encourage and promote farmers to organize themselves into cooperatives, so that they can take their own destiny into their own hands and participate directly in the development of the country.

• It will abolish the debts contracted by the peasantry with the landowner and all types of usurers.

• It will eliminate forced unemployment, which exists for most of the year in the countryside, and will ensure the creation of jobs for the rural population.

III. Revolution in culture and education

The Sandinista People's Revolution will lay the foundations for the development of national culture, popular education, and university reform.

• He will launch a massive campaign to immediately eradicate “illiteracy”.

• It will develop the national culture and eradicate the neo-colonial penetration in our culture.

• It will rescue from oblivion, in which they have been kept by unpopular regimes, the progressive intellectuals and their works that have emerged throughout our history.

• It will address the development and progress of education at different levels (primary, intermediate, technical, university, etc.), education will be free at all levels and compulsory at some.

• It will award scholarships to students at various levels with limited financial resources. The scholarships will cover: housing, food, clothing, books, and transportation.

• It will forge more and better teachers, with the scientific knowledge demanded by the current era, who can satisfy the entirety of our student population.

• He will nationalize private educational centers that have been immorally turned into industries by merchants who hypocritically invoke religious principles.

• It will adapt the teaching programs to the needs of the country, applying experimental and scientific teaching methods to the country's needs.

• He will carry out a university reform that will include, among others, the following demands:

  • To rescue the University from the control of the exploiting classes, so that it may serve the true creator and shaper of our culture: the People. University education must be oriented toward humanity, toward the people. The University must cease to be a breeding ground for selfish bureaucrats.

  • To eliminate the discrimination suffered by young people from the working and peasant classes in accessing university classrooms.

  • Increase the state budget for the University so that it can financially solve the various problems it faces.

  • Majority representation of students in Faculty Boards, bearing in mind that the student constitutes the main sector of the university population.

  • Eliminate neo-colonial penetration in the university, particularly that exercised by North American monopolies through the alms donated by pseudo-philanthropic foundations.

  • Promotion of free, experimental, scientific research that should contribute to unraveling national and universal problems.

  • To strengthen the unity of students, professors and researchers with the entire people, perpetuating the generous example of those who have offered their lives for the sake of the patriotic ideal.

IV. Labor legislation and social security

The Sandinista People's Revolution will eliminate the injustices of the living and working conditions suffered by the working class under brutal exploitation in favor of labor legislation and social welfare.

• It will enact a Labor Code that will regulate, among others, the following rights:

• It will enact the adoption of the principle of "whoever does not work does not eat", logically excepting those who, due to age (children, the elderly), medical prescription or other force majeure reason, are unable to participate in the production process.

  • Strict adherence to the eight-hour workday.

  • The worker's income (wages and other benefits) must be sufficient to meet their daily needs.

  • Respect for the dignity of the worker by prohibiting and punishing unfair treatment of the worker in the performance of his work.

  • Abolish unfair dismissals.

  • Obligation to pay salaries within the legal timeframe.

  • Right of all workers to periodic holidays.

• It will eliminate the scourge of unemployment.

• It will extend social security coverage to all workers and public employees in the country. This coverage will include cases of illness, disability, and retirement.

• It will provide free medical assistance to the entire population. It will establish clinics and hospitals throughout the country.

• It will undertake massive campaigns to eradicate endemic diseases and prevent epidemic ones.

• It will carry out the Urban Reform, which will provide each family with adequate housing, putting an end to the usurious speculation of urban space (land division, urbanization, rental houses, etc.) that exploits the need of working families in the city to have adequate housing.

• It will initiate and develop the construction of suitable housing for the rural population.

• It will reduce rates for water, electricity, sewage, and beautification; it will implement programs to extend all these services to the entire urban and
  rural population.

• It will promote the practice of sports in all classes and categories.

• It will eliminate humiliating begging by putting into practice the measures mentioned above.

V. Administrative Honesty

• The Sandinista People's Revolution will eradicate governmental administrative corruption and establish strict administrative honesty.

• It will abolish the criminal vice industry (prostitution, gambling, drug dealing, etc.) exploited by the privileged sector of the National Guard and foreign parasites.

• It will establish strict control over tax collection to prevent government officials from profiting, which will put an end to the usual practice of official departments under the current regime.

• It will put an end to the arbitrary business of the National Guard members who exploit the population by collecting local taxes.

• It will put an end to the business that the appropriation of the budget intended for the care of common prisoners represents for military commanders, and will carry out the installation of suitable centers for the rehabilitation of such criminals.

• It will abolish the large-scale smuggling practiced by the gang of politicians, military personnel and foreigners complicit with the regime.

• It will severely punish people who commit crimes against administrative honesty (embezzlement, smuggling, exploitation of vultures, etc.), a severity that will be greater when it comes to elements that are part of the revolutionary movement.

VI. Reincorporation of the Atlantic Coast

The Sandinista People's Revolution will implement a special plan in favor of the Atlantic Coast, which has been plunged into extreme neglect, to incorporate it into the life of the nation.

• It will end the unjust exploitation that the Atlantic Coast has suffered throughout its history at the hands of foreign monopolies, particularly Yankee imperialism.

• It will prepare suitable lands in the area for the development of agriculture and livestock farming.

• It will take advantage of the favorable conditions to boost the development of the fishing and forestry industries.

• It will stimulate the flourishing of local cultural values ​​in that region, stemming from the original aspects of its historical tradition.

• It will annihilate the odious discrimination that the Miskito, Sumo, Zambo and Black indigenous people of that region have been subjected to.

VII. Emancipation of Women

The Sandinista People's Revolution will abolish the odious discrimination that women have suffered in relation to men; it will establish economic, political, and cultural equality between women and men.

• It will extend special attention to the mother and child.

• It will eliminate prostitution and other social ills, thereby raising the dignity of women.

• It will put an end to the regime of servitude suffered by women and reflected in the drama of the abandoned working mother.

• It will establish the right to equal protection from revolutionary institutions for children born out of wedlock.

• It will establish childcare centers for the care and attention of the children of female workers.

• It will establish two months of maternity leave before and after childbirth for working women.

• It will raise the political, cultural, and vocational level of women through their participation in the revolutionary process.

VIII. Respect for religious beliefs

• The Sandinista People's Revolution will guarantee the believing population the freedom to profess any religion.

• It will respect the right of citizens to profess and practice any religious belief.

• He will support the work of priests and other religious preachers who defend the working people.

IX. Independent foreign policy

The Sandinista People's Revolution will eliminate the foreign policy of submission to the Yankee empire and establish a patriotic foreign policy of absolute national independence and for genuine universal peace.

• It will put an end to Yankee interference in Nicaragua's internal problems and will practice a policy of mutual respect and fraternal collaboration among peoples towards other countries.

• It will expel the Yankee military mission, the so-called peacekeeping corps (spies disguised as technicians), and similar military and political elements, which constitute a blatant intervention in the country.

• It will accept economic and technical assistance from any country, as long as it does not involve political commitments.

• Together with other peoples of the world, it will promote a campaign in favor of genuine universal peace.

• It will disregard any treaty signed with any foreign power that infringes upon national sovereignty.

X. Central American Popular Unity

The Sandinista People's Revolution for the true union of the Central American peoples in a single Nation:

• It will support genuine unity with our sister nations in Central America. This unity will be geared towards coordinating efforts to achieve national liberation and establish a new social system free from imperialist domination and national betrayal.

• It will liquidate the so-called integration that aims to increase the subjugation of Central America to North American monopolies and local reactionary forces.

XI. Solidarity among peoples

The Sandinista People's Revolution will put an end to the use of national territory as a base for Yankee aggression against other brother peoples and will put into practice militant solidarity with the brother peoples fighting for their liberation.

• It will actively support the struggle of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America against new and old colonialism and against the common enemy: Yankee imperialism.

• He will support the struggle of the black people and all the people of the United States for genuine democracy and equal rights.

• It will support the struggle of all peoples against the installation of Yankee military bases in foreign countries.

XII. People's Patriotic Army

The Sandinista People's Revolution will abolish the armed force that is the enemy of the people, called the National Guard (GN), and will create a People's, Revolutionary, and Patriotic Army.

• It will abolish the National Guard (GN), an enemy force of the people created by the American occupation forces in 1927 in order to persecute, torture and murder Sandinista patriots.

• The new People's Army may include professional soldiers from the former army who have demonstrated the following conduct:

  • That they have supported the guerrilla struggle

  • That they have not participated in murders, plunder, torture and persecution of the people and revolutionary militants.

  • That they rebelled against the despotic and dynastic regime of the Somoza family.

• It will strengthen the new people's army by raising its combat capacity and its tactical and technical level.

• It will instill in the conscience of the members of the People's Army the principle of relying on their own strength in the performance of their duties and developing all their creative activity.

• It will deepen the revolutionary ideals in the members of the People's Army with a view to strengthening the patriotic spirit and the firm conviction to fight until victory is achieved, overcoming obstacles and rectifying errors.

• It will forge a conscious discipline within the ranks of the People's Army and foster the close ties that must exist between the fighters and the people.

• It will establish mandatory military service and arm students, workers, and peasants who, organized in popular militias, will defend the rights won against the inevitable onslaught of the country's reactionary forces and Yankee imperialism.

XIII. Veneration of our martyrs

The Sandinista People's Revolution will hold eternal gratitude and veneration for the martyrs of our Nation and will continue the shining example of heroism and generosity bequeathed by them.

• It will educate new generations in gratitude and eternal veneration towards those who fell in the struggle for Nicaragua to be a Free Nation.

• He will found a higher school to educate the children of the martyrs of our people.

• He will instill in all the people the enduring example of our martyrs, defending the revolutionary ideal, UNTIL VICTORY ALWAYS!!!

Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)