Sandinistas celebrate 30th anniversary of revolution

According to "Sandinistas celebrate 30th anniversary of revolution," a July 18, 2009 article in Earth Times:

Managua - With the promise of filling the largest square in Managua, the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is getting ready to celebrate Sunday the 30th anniversary of the fall of General Anastasio Somoza, which marked the triumph of the Sandinista revolution. Supporters of Ortega and the Sandinista Front will gather at Plaza de la Fe, by the boardwalk on Xolotlan lake in Managua, where the late pope John Paul II said mass in 1996. Organizers expect tens of thousands of people, and more than 3,000 police officers were to be deployed to maintain order.

Ironically, the celebrations come as the opposition accuses Sandinista leader Ortega - who lost power in 1990 but returned 17 years later - of promoting "a new family dictatorship" in Nicaragua, currently the second-poorest country in Latin America.

The Sandinistas gained strength in the 1970s to become a force to reckon with and a major grouping in the effort to bring down Somoza's openly corrupt regime. On July 17, 1979, the dictator finally acknowledged his defeat and went into exile.

Two days later the Marxist Sandinistas took power but divisions with their allies soon emerged.

At the same time, former Somoza supporters started organizing themselves with US assistance into what were to become the Contras. Their guerrilla effort to overthrow the Sandinista regime became a full-scale civil war that left some 50,000 dead and further impoverished and weakened an already poor and war-ravaged country.

The two sides were eventually to negotiate and elections in 1990 saw the Sandinistas lose power to Violeta Chamorro, the candidate of an opposition coalition. Ortega was defeated twice in his effort to return to the presidency, but finally managed in 2007.

As the Sandinistas prepare to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their rise to power, former commanders of the guerrilla group it once was are debating whether the Sandinista revolution is still alive, or whether it ended when Chamorro's win launched 17 years of right-wing governments in Nicaragua.

For writer Sergio Ramirez, former vice president in the 1985-1990 Sandinista government, Ortega is only one of many failed leaders in Nicaraguan history.

"He wasted the opportunity that history put in his hands, to use his leadership to transform Nicaragua socially and to provide it with better democratic institutions," he said in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

"What there is now is a populist government with a conduct that is confusing in many aspects, that has a demagogic left-wing discourse and a right-wing behaviour in economic policy," Ramirez said.

His opinion is shared by Victor Tirado, one of the nine Sandinista commanders of the 1980s and a dissident since 1994.
"The revolution ended in 1990 because the election dealt us a fatal blow, and the things we managed to do collapsed with the government of Mrs Violeta," Tirado told a Nicaraguan daily.

Former Sandinista commander Tomas Borge, currently Nicaragua's ambassador to Peru, noted that the revolution "gave back dignity to the people" and "showed the world that a small country could defend itself."

Although he remains an unconditional friend of Ortega's, Borge admitted that the Sandinistas reached power "with an aura of sanctity" and were too far-removed from the people who suffered a severe economic crisis and a war that left thousands dead.

"There was a degree of arrogance in us leading members of the (Sandinista) Front, who had so much power. People looked at us as if we were kings, and we behaved like kings. We were not always consistent with the historic responsibility we had with the revolution," Borge said.