The Sandinistas, a revolutionary regime that had toppled the Somoza family dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, held and lost multiparty elections in February, 1990.
The stunning electoral defeat in 1990 of the Sandinistas (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN) by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro’s diverse National Opposition Union
Why did the FSLN dare call for elections? Why did the party lose so convincingly? The answers to these questions do not lie in glib, although not completely false, statements such as “Nicaraguans voted with their pocketbooks” or “Soviet-style command economies do not work.” Instead, the answers rest in Nicaragua’s history and its often near-suicidal wish to test North American resolve in its backyard. The symbols of this political campaign make it evident that Nicaraguans viewed the elections as a referendum on war and peace.
For eleven years, the Sandinistas had cast themselves as the defenders of the fatherland. Their presidential candidate, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, had spent his entire life fighting the Nicaraguan establishment and its patrons in Washington, D.C. Jailed by the dictatorship of Antonio Somoza Debayle
Ortega’s rise to power did not occur overnight. In fact, Ortega at first seemed uncomfortable in the limelight. No dogmatist like his counterpart, the formidable intellectual and fiery orator Interior Minister Tomás Borge Martínez,
Political pluralism had been one of the cornerstones of the FSLN platform, and, true to their promise, the Sandinistas held open multiparty elections in November, 1984. Although the elections were denounced by the U.S. presidential administration of Ronald Reagan,
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra (right) watches as Violeta Barrios de Chamorro succeeds him as Nicaragua’s president after her party defeated the Sandinistas in free elections in early 1990.
The incumbent Sandinistas moved up the date of the elections from November to February, 1990, to give the opposition less time to organize its campaign. The FSLN had the formidable task of convincing voters to look beyond the bad times—the suffering and privation of the war years, the damaging effects of Hurricane Joan, the economic embargo, the shortages of medicines, the reappearance of malnutrition in the countryside, the high prices of no-longer-subsidized foodstuffs, ruinous inflation, and the despised universal military draft. The Sandinistas used rhetoric designed to convince the electorate that a vote for UNO meant a return to Somoza rule and a surrender to the Contras.
Unlike many in the United States who believed that the Contra strategy, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency
Since 1978, real wages had fallen more than 70 percent. The economy was on the verge of collapse, even though the inflation rate had been cut from an astronomical 35,000 percent in 1988 to 1,600 percent in 1989 through austerity measures such as a 50 percent cutback in government spending that would have made the International Monetary Fund proud and made socialist revolutionaries cringe. Gutted in the last years were the pride and joy of the revolution, its health and education programs. In some areas of the countryside, the Nicaraguan government provided precious little support for health services except for minimal neonatal care and vaccinations.
Faced with these kinds of difficulties, Ortega and the FSLN campaigned on the basis of their heroic struggle against the United States. At heart, Nicaraguans were probably the most nationalistic people in the Americas. The FSLN implicitly staked a claim as the rightful heir to a historic tradition of nationalistic Nicaraguan patriots. Nationalism was a strident issue at a time when, by all accounts, Nicaraguans were weary of war. Ortega’s campaign staff, some imported from the French Socialist Party, realized the dilemma. Ortega also had to appear to be a man of peace. He had to convince the electorate that if the FSLN won, peace would be just around the corner, that the FSLN could negotiate successfully with the U.S. presidential administration of George H. W. Bush, and that the economic blockade would be lifted. In the week before the election, Barricada and El Nuevo Diario, the Sandinista newspapers, were filled with stories reporting that President Bush was ready to recognize a Sandinista victory and that the demobilization of the hated Contras was imminent.
The FSLN’s attempt to convince the general public that “Yankee imperialism” was to blame for the economic collapse was only partially successful. Many Nicaraguans believed that Sandinista inefficiency, mismanagement, corruption, and privilege had also contributed to the existing economic malaise. The Sandinista “mixed economy” model tried to be all things to all people. The regime’s inconsistency in the application of government policies befuddled many peasants and workers. Peasants at times found it cheaper to purchase their food at subsidized state-run stores than to produce their own staples.
Corruption and privilege were not invented by the FSLN, but one of the cornerstones of the revolution had been to make sure that Somoza-style cronyism did not reappear in the new society. Although even the FSLN’s biggest critics would not propose that Sandinista largesse was in the same league as that under President Somoza (1967-1979), enough government perks—houses, cars, private clubs, and import tax exemptions—were evident to raise eyebrows and cause Nicaraguans to wonder where the revolutionary spirit had gone.
It is within this context that the FSLN’s electoral promotional campaign must be understood. Tens of thousands of T-shirts, hats, red-and-black scarves, posters, and even condoms were delivered in truckloads to neighborhood campaign headquarters. In rural communities and working-class barrios, Sandinista electoral propaganda was painted on countless homes and buildings. Even conservative estimates of the cost of the campaign put it at more than twenty million dollars. The result was that Nicaraguans viewed the Sandinista campaign as a cruel hoax. For years the FSLN had been preaching austerity. Few could afford meat, and medicines were beyond the reach of the poor, yet now hats and shirts were being given away by the truckload.
If the FSLN had to run on its past as well as on Washington’s war, UNO had the same vexing problem. The coalition, which was cobbled together in Washington, included eleven (sometimes fourteen) political “parties”—in the colorful Nicaraguan vernacular, “couch parties,” because all the members of a party could sit together on one sofa. Many of the politicians that composed this splintered coalition had pasts that linked them directly to the counterrevolution and the U.S. government. Within the inner circle of Violeta de Chamorro were Alfredo César
Faced with Chamorro’s obvious limitations, including lack of political experience (she had participated briefly in the junta but withdrew for health reasons), her political handlers built their campaign around her strengths. At the final UNO rally in Managua a week before the election, sixty thousand supporters cheered Chamorro’s call for reconciliation. Her message was simple and direct: She alone could heal Nicaragua’s extended familial body politic. In addition, she assured the crowd that upon her election the Contras would be disbanded, relations with Washington would be renewed, the despised military conscription law would be abolished, the bloated army and bureaucracy would be pared down, and the country would be opened to foreign investment and economic recovery. Strikingly attractive, the silver-haired, sixty-year-old candidate wore a white lace dress and was escorted to and from the rally in a white wagon with a matching canopy. Six Nicaraguan cowboys rode beside her on horseback, and as she passed by the throng in her cart, she extended her hands toward the crowd and upward, as if reaching for the sky. The message was obvious to religious Nicaraguans.
If Ortega was the nationalistic warrior, then Chamorro was the holy redeemer. Her message was peace. Economic recovery was important, but many of Nicaragua’s economic problems were the results of war. The electorate essentially believed that Ortega’s confrontational style would not suffice. In retrospect, it is easy to see that the compulsory military draft was a key issue. Chamorro repudiated it, but Ortega said only that the military could be cut. Ironically, the draft was one of the few revolutionary laws the pragmatic Sandinistas had ever passed. The notion that everyone in Nicaragua had to serve in the military, not just the poor, was something truly egalitarian. Nicaraguans knew that UNO had been created and funded by the U.S. government, so they believed that when Chamorro promised peace with the yanquis, she could deliver.
With some exceptions, the electoral process on February 25, 1990, was orderly and quiet. More than three thousand election observers blanketed Nicaragua, including teams from the United Nations and the Organization of American States. A prestigious international delegation had been assembled by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.
The Sandinistas lost the 1990 election because their nationalistic message was set aside. Nicaraguans quietly stated through their vote that essentials may be delayed for a brief period as a result of war and patriotic fervor, but no society can be expected to sacrifice indefinitely. In the election’s aftermath, the Chamorro administration, which received more than 53 percent of the vote, faced several daunting tasks: It had to bring peace and reconciliation to a society that had been at war with itself for almost two decades, bolster a moribund economy, and continue the process of political pluralism initiated by the Sandinistas. The FSLN, which received about 40 percent of the vote, represented a formidable opposition to UNO in the National Assembly. Chamorro and her advisers found the hard-fought electoral campaign much simpler than the thorny political and economic problems that faced their administration.
Although Chamorro’s personal popularity faded, support for Ortega did not revive to any substantial degree in the decade after his 1990 election defeat. Subsequent elections in 1996 and 2001 saw the centrist Liberal Alliance,
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Booth, John A. The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution. 2d ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985. Solid academic survey of the Sandinista victory in 1979 explains the forces that led to the ouster of Somoza and the first few years of FSLN rule. -
Christian, Shirley. Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family. New York: Random House, 1985. A journalist’s account of the first years of the revolution, written from a decidedly anti-Sandinista perspective. -
Dodson, Michael, and Laura Nuzzi O’Shaughnessy. Nicaragua’s Other Revolution: Religious Faith and Political Struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Examines the role of one of the most powerful influences on the revolutionary process in Nicaragua: religion. Presents solid analysis of the impact of liberation theology and the split in the Catholic Church. -
Enriquez, Laura J. Agrarian Reform and Class Consciousness in Nicaragua. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997. Provides a thorough, if sympathetic, analysis of the Sandinista agrarian reform efforts. -
Gilbert, Dennis. Sandinistas: The Party and the Revolution. New York: B. B. Blackwell, 1988. A political scientist’s astute analysis of the FSLN leadership and its conflictive role prior to and after 1979. -
Preston, Julia. “The Defeat of the Sandinistas.” New York Review of Books 37 (April 12, 1990): 25-29. Presents a detailed journalistic account of the stunning Chamorro victory. -
Vilas, Carlos M. State, Class, and Ethnicity in Nicaragua: Capitalist Modernization and Revolutionary Change on the Atlantic Coast. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1989. Presents perceptive analysis of revolutionary Nicaragua, with a focus on one of the key problems the Sandinistas faced: the integration of Miskito, Suma, and Rama Indian groups on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. -
Walker, Thomas W. Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle. 4th ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003. History of Nicaragua covers the nation’s culture, economics, foreign relations, and politics. Includes thorough discussion of the Sandinista revolution and the 1990 elections.
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