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tortillaconsal punto/dot com
Interview with Williams Grigsby Vado by Jorge Capelán
June 10th, 2009
(This version has been translated into English and abridged by Karla Jacobs. The Spanish version can be found here.)
William Grigsby is a Nicaraguan journalist, former editor in chief of El Nuevo Diario and Barricada, Director of Radio La Primerísima and of, among many others, the popular analysis program Sin Fronteras. What is more Grigsby is a dedicated revolutionary: student leader in the 1970s, militant of the FSLN since 1978, founder of the left faction of the FSLN in 1994 and member of its central committee - the Sandinista Assembly.
In the course of a recent visit by Grigsby to Sweden, journalist Jorge Capelán interviewed him in Stockholm. The upcoming celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the Popular Sandinista Revolution, 47 years since the FSLN was founded and 81 years since Augusto C. Sandino took up arms are just a few weeks away. Capelán's interview captures the opinion of one of Nicaragua's sharpest political analysts on why the European left is so critical of the FSLN. It also covers Grigsby's views on the FSLN's recent historical development and perspectives for the future.
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Jorge Capelán: Nicaragua and the FSLN are a complicated issue for the European left, an issue about which little is written, especially in a positive light. What do you believe to be the European left's main difficulties in understanding Nicaragua's political development?
William Grigsby: The left, the European and the northern hemisphere's left in general, have been unable to come to terms with the FSLN defeat in 1990. This left is still trapped in those times and in that decade. Twenty years later they would like everything to go back to how it was then. They would like to imagine that the last twenty years were nothing more than a nightmare.
But the truth is that twenty years have passed and Nicaragua has changed very much - generally those changes have been negative - as has the entire world - also in negative ways. You can't analyze the situation in Nicaragua with the same prism as you did in the 80s. There are qualititive differences.
The first, I believe, and this is probably where the universal left gets most bogged down, is at the subjective level. 60% of Nicaragua's population today wasn't alive during the revolution. 75% of the population wasn't alive during the Somoza dictatorship. For the vast majority of the Nicaraguan population the Sandinista Revolution and the Somoza dictatorship are a reference, and a distant one at that. What is more, the population tends to be ignorant or have a deformed understanding of what happened in the country at that time.
Neo-liberalism has provoked increasing apathy in Nicaraguan society
On top of this, we must remember that neo-liberalism is not just a form of capitalism that pillages the world peoples through concealed neocolonialism. Neo-liberalism is also an ideological system that perverts citizens turning them into nothing more than consumers - and not just consumers of merchandise, but of the messages put out by mass media outlets, absorving like a sponge ideological contents, forms of behaviour and interaction, they chain you to indivuality, to isolation and to heartless competition with your equals. And in some way, theory becomes a practical reality.
Nowadays you'll find the immense majority of the Nicaraguan people, despite being impoverished, subjected to regimes of semi slavery, isn't particularly involved in social organizations that aim to confront the system and fight for their rights. The daily struggle is more about satisfying individuals needs that collective needs, or the needs of the country.
Neo-liberalism has been very successful in taking away citizens' right to political participation within the logic that politics and politicians are corrupt. These ideas have penetrated the new generations in such a way that, for many people, finding a way to leave Nicaragua has become the most important thing - they aim to sort out their basic needs, without the need for greater sacrifices, even though it means enslaving themselves. Thirty years ago almost 100% of Nicaraguan young people took up arms, went out on the street and contributed to the overthrow of the dictatorship.
We have to begin from our reality in order to build a new reality
JC: From outside Nicaragua a number of commentators criticize different aspects including the FSLN's tactics or the limitations of its current program...
WG: I think the European left is wrong in its political analysis, in its analysis of the political moment and the correlation of forces that exist in Nicaragua at the moment. We have to begin from the reality that we have in order to be able to build the new reality. That reality is made up not only of whether or not there are machines, land and resources but also of human beings, the majority of whom have been impoversished, trapped in ignorance, and now have few revolutionary values because they have been individualized. That is the reality that we have to begin working from.
I may or may not have my reserves about the way the FSLN exercized its quotas of power before it came to government. But there is an undisputable fact: whether one likes it or not, the FSLN is in power and has a leadership, personalized in the figure of President Ortega, that during the last 19 years demonstrated consistency with the essence of the Nicaraguan people's struggle.
There have been highs and lows, like with all political leadership, mistakes have been made, sometimes very grave mistakes, but the most important thing is that [the FSLN is in power]. The government's actions during the last two and a half years are not aimed aimed at carrying forward a political project similar that of the 1980s but one aimed at [resolving the problems present in] the reality of Nicaragua today.
Today the priority is not the conquest of democractic rights (which we already have), it is not the construction a new state (which, although warped by neo-liberalism, we already have), it is not the construction of an army or a police force. The priority today is the hunger suffered by the population, hunger in all senses; hunger for food, for healthcare, for knowledge, etc. If this is your priority and you have a precarious correlation of forces on a parliamentary level and on a social level, then you have to start to attend to that priority starting from the established order of things in the country.
It is very easy, when you aren't hungry, to say to the government that it is acting in an assistential manner giving small farmers the food production package. I have made this argument many times. In itself a discourse about rule of law, freedom of speech, citizen participation and awareness is fine. But it's easy to talk about these things when you, your family and your friends have three meals a day guaranteed. So the issue comes down to class difference - those who have their basic needs guaranteed don't feel comfortable about the way President Ortega is sorting out the basic needs of the impoverished people.
Hundreds of thousands of emigrants have been expulsed from Nicaragua by the system. What is more terrible for a human being than the conditions in your country forcing you to leave just in order to survive. I think that for the vast majority of Nicaraguans that left over the last few years it has been a painful process, even though many of them today, have been able to ensure their basic needs are met....
God became the only refuge during 16 long years
Another issue is the religious rhetoric. I didn't understand this religiousity in the FSLN's official discourse until a few years ago. A friend Toni Solo explained it to me. Very simply, he said, "the thing is that during all these years people have felt very alone: poor, hungry and alone. And the only thing they could take refuge in was God. Some religious group comes along and says that you must be calm, patient, that you must resign yourself, that if you behave in a virtuos way then things will get better, that it is by praying and praying and praying that you can overcome disease, because in the hospitals there were no doctors or medicines that could cure you, so perhaps, you think, such and such a saint will bless you with a little miracle..."
For those whose basic needs are met, that attitude is a sign of ignorance, of backwardness, etc. But for those who have been in the situation that the people of Nicaragua have been in, then it is much more complex - you are in a situation where there is no solution, you don't know what to do, you are desperate and so you clutch at the divine figure of God.
Sociological studies done in Nicaragua have found that for 96% of Nicaraguans the most important thing in their lives is God. On occassion one bumps into fellow militants from the struggle of the 70s and 80s who today have turned into religious fanatics. When you start to talk to them about their personal history then you'll be told about the most terrible tragedies.
Europeans may think that is ideological weakness. It may be, but you'd have to put yourself in the shoes of the person. I haven't been in those shoes. I used to be very drastic in my judgement of former militants turned religious fanatics. ...
The ideological dispute over the administration of divine power
But the truth is that in order to be able to communicate with an impoverished people you must, among other things, speak to them about this figure called God. You can't communicate with them if you don't talk their own language. That doesn't justify that sometimes President Ortega and also Rosario Murillo have gone too far. But today, thirty months after coming to power, that rhetorical content has become more moderate and, in my opinion, is used in an appropriate fashion.
In fact at present one of the principal ideological disputes is taking place around the subject of God in Nicaraguan society. The Catholic Church had had full possession of the idea of God, not just as a superior being, but also as a symbol and representative of power, as administrators of that power. So when Ortega and Rosario come along and say "to fulfill the people's need is to fulfill God's mandate" - they are disputing with the Catholic Church on its own turf the issue of who administers divine power? Does the eclesiastical hierarchy administer it, or do we all administer it?
This is a bitter dispute, and it's existence helps to explain some of the Catholic Church's recent harsh criticisms of the government. I'm not saying that we should all become theologians, it's not that, but we are obliged to begin from the reality that exists in order to find ways of transforming it. I think that the Europeans, and populations from the northern hemisphere in general haven't understood this form of finding solutions to Nicaragua's problems.
The struggle for national liberation: a historical process
JC: For many people the revolution of 1979 was a lost revolution. You mentioned democracy, the non Somocista State and a sovereign army. Were those results of the revolution?
WG: The Popular Sandinista Revolution is just one phase of Nicaragua's process of national liberation that began with Sandino and even before, with Benjamin Zeledon who rebelled when the Yankees invaded the country after having propitiating General Jose Santos Zelaya's resignation. Benjamin Zeledon was killed in combat in 1912. I believe that his death marks the beginning of the struggle for national liberation in Nicaragua. We're talking about nearly a hundred years ago. It's a struggle that has had its highs and lows, following the form of a curve, like all of humanity's history, it moves in waves.
So, we have the struggle of Zeledon, who is defeated, all the indigenous people that supported him were murdered. The Yankees stay a few years, they come and go. Then Augusto Cesar Sandino appears on the scene to retake the cause of national liberation.
There is a very interesting phrase by Sandino that explains why he and Farabundo Martí parted ways. [Martí - the Salvadoran communist leader of an anti imperialist guerilla movement in El Salvador.] His first explanations were very resentful, but later he provided a more measured explanation: "I agreed with everything that Farabundo said," said Sandino, "but now is not the time."
For Sandino, a political animal although he wasn't able to finish secondary school, what inspired him was to rid the country of gringo soldiers, to achieve independence and national sovereignty. "The rest will come later," he said. That ideology corresponded with the conciousness of his own army and with his own empiric analysis of the correlation of forces in the country at the time.
When Sandino arrived in Managua for the first time after the Yankees had left Nicaragua, in February 1933, Sandino was received as a hero by the population in Managua, although that was cleverly concealed by the main media outlets of the time. The way in which Sandino was received demonstrated the extent to which the cause of national independence had moved the Nicaraguan people.
It was the big conservative media outlets that first understood the need to get rid of Sandino. They understood that the enthusiasm the population felt for Sandino's struggle could turn into something else. Secretly, during the conciliatory meetings between conservatives and liberals in the national palace, the conditions were created within which Somoza finally ordered Sandino's execution.
A huge parenthesis is opened after Sandino's assasination that doesn't end until 1956 when Rigoberto López Pérez assasinated Somoza. That period of twenty two years was dominated by a sense of absolute hopelessness. After Luis Somoza García was killed a new phase begins, the highpoint of which is the founding of the FSLN in 1961. That phase ends in 1979 and consisted of highs and lows, because remember there was Pancasán [one of the bloodiest battles during the insurrectional process], there were the divisions of 1970 and 1974.
The triumph of 1979 and the conquest of a nationalist state
At the end of that phase, with the triumph of the revolution on the 19th of July 1979, the FSLN had three big tasks - to conquer democratic and other liberties, to resolve the contradiction of a "sovereign" republic dominated by the United States, and to overcome the poverty affecting the population.
The FSLN undertook those three tasks. But between 1990 and 2007 when Ortega assumed the presidency again, the only one that remained intact was the conquest of liberties, including the founding of the new State with its army and police force, the institutional scaffolding and the feeling of belonging to a nation - which had been constituted to a certain extent in previous decades but which was affirmed in the decade of the 1980s.
That sense of the Nicaraguan nation may seem insignificant in "marxist-leninist" terms, but in a country as politically and culturally backward as Nicaragua its significance was of great magnitude. First you have to have an identity before you know what it is that you have to do.
But the other two achievements [poverty reduction and realization of sovereignty] had been undone. Nicaragua had conquered its independence from the US, but the capitalist governments that governed between 1990 and 2006 renounced it voluntarily. In political and economic terms they handed over the country to US and European interests.
JC: But they couldn't control the army and the police ...
WG: ... among other things, thanks to the resistence in that period: Those who really defended FSLN interests in the first half of the 1990s were the labour unions. The party structure of the FSLN was still disorientated at that time. The FSLN's pyramidal structure, similar to that of traditional left wing party structure, was overwhelmed.
Industrial and rural workers and farmers, Sandinistas or not, came out and defended the FSLN. In those hard years, Daniel was the member of the historical leadership that was seen at the front of that movement. It was there that Daniel gained authority within sandinismo, which in part explains his leadership. It was then, and not in the 80s that Daniel earned his authority. It is that correlation of forces, so bitterly fought over in the 1990s, that pacifies the right and makes them think twice about taking on the army.
Without the 2006 FSLN victory our public security forces would have become capitalist forces of repression
They did try though, they carried out important counter-reforms. The easiest way to destroy an institution is by corrupting it, with special individual benefits - scholarships, courses. Or, for example, by not providing the police force with resources so that the institution is forced to look to the private sector for necessary resources. Until 2006 the so-called "Association of Friends of the Police" existed in all the different departments of the country with that aim. The Nicaraguan police had been semi-privatized. The right wing didn't do it juridically, or politically. They found another way to do it.
If the FSLN hadn't won the elections in 2006 that privatization process would have ended with the creation of a completely corrupt police force, because by then there were grave problems [within the institution.] I think there still are, although the problem is not as bad as two or three years ago. If the FSLN hadn't won we would be in a terrible situation, with a police force increasingly hostile to the people, and increasingly similar to police forces in other parts of the continent - capitalist police forces.
Exactly the same thing would have happened with the army, although the army is less visible, there is less day to day contact with the population - the soldiers are enclosed in their quartels. But there was significant penetration of the US intelligence services and the South Commandment in the different levels of army's structure, in the military training, in terms of contents and prebends.
And, unfortunately, there are still remnants of that today. For example, the agreement signed with the South Commandment by which the Nicaraguan Army sends a number of soldiers for training to the School of the Americas each year - that agreement is still in force.
So, you are talking about a process of national liberation of which only the political liberties that I have spoken about survived, of which the capitalist governments handed over sovereignty to the US and the European governments, and in which people's living conditions were not just bad, but worse than ever. So the FSLN government finds itself with two basic tasks; to restore national independence and sovereignty and to drastically improve people's living conditions.
The European left forgets that socialism can't be decreed
JC: In other words that the tasks of "socializing" the economy, etc, are tasks that have to be taken up in the future ...
WG: The thing is that our European friends often forget that socialism can't be imposed by decree, it takes more than just political will. Among other things, the development of productive forces must be taken into account. On top of that the level of consciousness, capacity for organization, the model, the aims, etc. In many ways Nicaragua still has precapitalist productive relations. In the Caribbean for example, in the cattle farming areas. in some agricultural areas, there are still people that rent land within the terms of what is practically a feudal system.
Nicaragua isn't Venezuela, and the Venezuelan reality is complicated anyway. My point is that socialism can't be decreed, is has to be built, and that is where the weakness of the FSLN lies. Because in the construction of socialism - one of the aims of the FSLN - it is not enough to resolve material problems if you aren't simultaneously creating political consciousness, class consciousness.
Since the FSLN stopped being a functionally organized political party, with all that implies for a revolutionary party, what you have now is a government carrying out its program without a political instrument that accompanies that resolution of problems in a way that develops people's political consciousness.
Sandinismo; a multi-class force
JC: Another interesting aspect is that within the FSLN itself there are different social classes, which gives a special dynamic to the organization ...
WG: That is an interesting subject. The European left forgets that in order to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship, first the FSLN had to make a multi-class alliance - a "wide front" in marxist terminology. That alliance had substantial differences. First of all, the FSLN wasn't a party, but a political-millitary organization.
We were always taught that "from the FSLN a revolutionary party and a revolutionary army would emerge." Ever since we were children we were taught that in the FSLN. And, effectively, that is what happened. Those who said that from the very beginning, since the founding of the FSLN, they were right. That is what happened.
Then, later, from about 1969 - 70, members of the middle classes whose ideologies had been influenced by liberation theology, began entering the FSLN. That took place gradually at first and then much faster - the process accelerated after the assault on the house of Chema Castillo in 1974, because a lot of people's romantic imagination was awoken by the images of victorious guerrilleros with their red and black neck scarves and their rifles. Those people were also inspired by a genuine desire to help to liberate Nicaragua from the dictatorship, but they lacked political consciousness.
Of course, the FSLN needed to constantly increase its popular support and its access to resources, and this was a way of doing that. So the FSLN was made up of much of the radicalized middle classes as well as the rural and industrial workers sectors. The combination of these sectors was what made the final offensive against the dictatorship possible.
Secondly, and very importantly, middle upper class sectors and members of the anti somocista bourgeosie made an alliance with the FSLN - that is the Group of Twelve, which included Sergio Ramírez, Ernesto Cardenal, Miguel D'Escoto and others. This sector, which was an alliance, ends up merging with the FSLN.
So from the point of view of class, we are talking about an organization with a very heterogenous make up. And all the different sectors end up merging, but not at a grass roots levels, at the level of the different sectors' leaders - because different leaders of all those different sectors are involved in the government, in the state, in the party. So we had ministers, ambassadors, etc, with a relatively weak political formation. The only one to develop as an important progressive ideological force is Miguel D'Escoto.
It was the middle class and bourgeosie sectors that end up separating from the FSLN during the first half of the 1990s together with a handful of former guerrilleros from the traditional ranks of the FSLN. So among the founders of the MRS you have former ministers, ambassadors and other leaders.
The FSLN today is still a multi class organization
However, within the FSLN today, you still have other multi-class sectors. There are certain members of Sandinismo, people who occupied importants positions within the first government, who found the capitalist formula in the 1990s allowed them to become businessmen and accumulate personal fortunes. They still called themselves Sandinistas, but speak from the position of big businessmen. They were never excluded from the FSLN. What guaranteed their ongoing membership of the FSLN was their loyalty to the figure of Daniel as leader rather than their loyalty to the FSLN's historical program, or the working classes. That is a problem for the FSLN.
So you find yourself with phenomenons like Herty Lewites and others, some who are still loyal to the FSLN, other who aren't, for example Alejandro Martínez Cuenca. These individuals belong to a sector that has accumulated capital - they are the so called businessmen of the FSLN. They work on the professional sector to capture their imagination and convert them into a lobby group within the FSLN lobbying for their own interests. They are not interested in party positions but in remaining close to the General Secretariat and the possibility of an eventual public position. This group has gained important spaces within the FSLN.
Also within the FSLN you find impoverished sectors, people who used to work with the Armed Forces, very radically minded people, mainly ex millitary or former members of the millitary service. There is another sector of professionals from impoverished backgrounds, who had the possibility to study - engineers, lawyers. And then you have a huge number of former public employees from the 1980s, who were made redundant in the 1990s - talented people who were completely marginalized in the 90s. So the FSLN is very diverse in terms of the class origin of its members and in terms of their political and ideological positions.
The successes and failures of the FSLN's grass roots political work
A significant sector of FSLN support, located mainly in the Segovias, has maintained the mistique of revolutionary political work. It is no coincidence that the best electoral work during the 90s was carried out in the Segovias. In northern pacific regions of Leon and Chinandega this type of political work has been recovered to a certain extent. Although there is a different reality in those regions with agricultural workers and many immigrant families. The local and regional leadership in Leon has recovered in part the marxist political formation. The results are plain to see.
In the southern pacific regions of Carazo, Masaya, Granada (which have a different class make up with the prevalence of small producers and small businessmen who go to Managua to sell goods) there is a different social reality because those regions didn't suffer a crisis of unemployment like the northern pacific regions did. Here there was an initial weakness, but the political work has been recovered to a certain extent as the FSLN has increased its electoral success in the area.
In 2000 the FSLN only governed three municipalities of Carazo. Today we govern them all. In this area electoral results were achieved, but not as a result of the work of local party structures, which was not impressive. What helped us here is the electorate, which is very strong minded.
In the center of the country, in Chontales and Boaco, the FSLN has always been weak and still is. The government has attended these regions with numerous programs and benefits, but the FSLN has not achieved better electoral results. In the Caribbean the FSLN has an alliance with a Miskito organization.
What has been achieved, in terms of electoral success, in Matagalpa and Jinotega, is as a result of successful government programs in those areas. In Jinotega historically the FSLN has had little support. In Matagalpa our support has grown thanks to government programs that have helped to improve the party's relationship with rural workers and small farmers there.
Idiosyncracies of the FSLN's party structure
Today, the government programs are the impetus encouraging people to overcome their fear of and apprehension about Sandinismo. But what is missing is someone going around behind the scenes, taking advantage of these positive results to renew the ranks of the FSLN, incorporating all these people and providing them with an entity, helping them to evolve politically. That is what is missing.
I believe that this power group or lobby that I mentioned, made up of the Sandinistas that had accumulated material and financial resources, remains a very influential force within the FSLN.
The FSLN is still a multi-class organization. That is part of the FSLN reality, and I don't think that, from a historical point of view, it would be appropriate for the party to become exclusively an organization for the impoverished classes - that wouldn't fit into the Nicaraguan way of thinking about society. To a certain extent, Sandinismo transcends class issues.
So yes, you can accurately talk about Sandinismo as having revolutionary and socialist positions, and you can also talk about a certain sector of Sandinismo having reformist positions, of members of the FSLN that today have social democratic positions.
Without doubt, the most significant contingent within the FSLN is of the workers. This contingent is represented by what today is called the National Workers Front - that is the contingent with greatest force, the one that is able to mobilize, the one that pushes for positive changes for workers.
There is another Sandinista workers union - the Sandinista Workers Central (CST) -, but it is more opportunistic, and it hasn't been capable of defending workers interests with authenticity. In the Free Trade Zones the CST, which represents a minority, has followed a policy of class conciliation facilitating the Korean, Taiwanese and US companies to continue implementing a labour regime that is equivalent to semi slavery.
This multi class composition is reflected in the make up of the cabinet and generally in the FSLN's policies. It is not possible to analyze the FSLN within the classic political party norms. It has never been possible to do that during the FSLN's history. And I think that that idiosyncracy is not something that the European and North American left is able to visualize. And it is very difficult to understand what is happening in Nicaragua without taking into account that perspective.
The origins of Ortega's unipersonal hold on the FSLN
Now, I also believe that the unipersonal leadership that exercizes Daniel Ortega within the FSLN, while on the one hand is his main strength, also becomes a factor that stiffles the organization's qualititive internal debate towards a collectively devised direction for the party's work. This is a result of what happened previously in the FSLN.
In 1997, the FSLN takes one of two paths; it decides to reform the state and occupy positions within the state in order to create the conditions, from these state positions, to win political power in electoral processes, as opposed to the option of popular resistance, of organization and accumulation of electoral social, political and economic support based on a class struggle against the restoration of capitalism.
By taking this decision to pact with the PLC in order to win institutional positions, the FSLN sacrifices its nature as a party of debate, of analysis, of collective decision making. And there was much discontent about what was happening among sandinista supporters at a grass roots level. Effectively what the FSLN direction did as a result was, first of all, close down the spaces created within the local party structures leaving an organizational skeleton made up of only the most loyal militants, and, secondly, discourage Sandinistas to continue embracing militant life.
JC: Was there another solution at that time?
WG: I think there was, but to talk about that today is like talking about the prehistoric period. There is a consummate fact and that is that the FSLN is in power. Personally I would have liked the party to get into power in a different way, but that is in the past. I fought for the alternative option but I lost. They chose the other path, and, by transitting that path, they achieved their goal, which was to get into power.
I may not feel great about the method they chose, but the fact of the matter is that they got into power and now, from the government, they are doing the right things. I don't like what they did, the pact with Aleman, the fact that there are corrupt people in the FSLN, that's all true.
The government's actions so far have been impeccable
But the government sworn into power on January 10th 2007 is basically a government made up of new cadres of sandinismo, many of whom are connected to popular struggles, and who are doing what is possible taking into account the critical social and political conditions in the country and fact that the correlation of forces in the National Assembly is not favourable for the government.
The thing is that there is this part of the European left that is trapped in what, from their perspective, or mine, should be the reality, and therefore is unable to see what the reality really is. I accept that this left had their reserves before the FSLN came to power, or during the first six months of the government, while they were waiting to see how they were going to act. OK, fine - but the government's actions in general have been impeccable.
Of course there have been errors. a grave strategic error in my point of view is the therapeutic abortion policy. The government still has the opportunity to rectify that mistake and I think they are waiting for the political moment to do so. But the concrete fact is that the policies put into play by this government are aimed at benefitting the impoverished majority, at improving people's living conditions.
Because sometimes we forget, Jorge, we forget why we want to take power. We want to take power so that the impoverished majority have a better life, so they have the opportunity to be happy, so they can have a house, a fridge, a TV, so their children can be well dressed, so they can have access to healthcare and education, so they can go to Uni, so they can have holidays, so they have the right to leisure activities - something the poor don't have the right to.
Now - how do you reach that goal? You can do with social justice and balance, or you can do it with social injustice and imbalance for everyone else as long as you live well - which is what capitalism does, especially European capitalism. Switzerland, France and Sweden, for example, are all OK in material terms because there are others in the third world that are not OK - because they exploit us.
So the method varies, as do the values with which you put your method into practise, but at the end of the day, what the FSLN wants, from a leftist perspective, is for people's lives to be improved. Evo says that, he has a little phrase - "to live better, to live well."
We want to do things that allow people's lives to improve. That is our objective, but it is not something that you can do by decree, nor by pulling money out of a bank account you haven't got. There's no generous millionaire who is going to give you everything you need. You have to do it on the basis of your own efforts and the help of your friends. And I believe that this government is doing that well.
If this government fails the FSLN would be ruined.
I interpret this period of government as one of transition which lays the social basis making possible a more political consciousness and assuming we are successful in this, making a qualitative leap either in this period of government or the next.So in this five year period of government, the main task of the Frente Sandinista is to carry out its programme.
If we are successful during this period of government it will be much easier to make progress in terms of political awareness, popular organization and society in general. If we aren't successful, the FSLN would be ruined, in historical terms. It's not just that the alternative would be the right wing, but that another kind of left from within the FSLN with another way of doing things altogether would probably be in a position to take over the party's leadership.
The way I look at it, first of all, the FSLN had to get into government, and then we had to govern without causing a rupture with the US that leads the country to war, without causing a rupture with the financial-oligarchal capital that leads the country to war, to isolation, without causing a rupture with powers that be like the Catholic Church of the Evangelical churches that would provoke a rupture with society.
In other words the FSLN had to govern in such a way as to avoid serious conflicts, that doesn't mean that the sectors mentioned previously should be appeased. But trying to do that in practise, is a very complex operation.
Without ALBA the government would permanently be in checkmate
JC: If the political developments in Venezuela, in Bolivia and in other Latin American countries had not taken place, things would have been very different for the FSLN government ...
WG: It's like when we triumphed in 1979. Without Cuba the Sandinista Revolution would never have triumphed. Today, although we probably would have won the 2006 elections, we would not have been able to govern with such success without Venezuela, without ALBA. Without the strength that ALBA provides, this government would probably be in a permanent position of check mate.
Not only capital can be globalized, so can struggle and resistence, perhaps even solutions can be globalized. We wouldn't have been able to overcome the critical energy shortage if it wasn't for Venezuela. We wouldn't have been able to drastically improve education and health care if it wasn't for Cuba.