Sandinista Communism and Rural Nicaragua

A fuller picture of Sandinista policies toward the peasant and ethnic minority populations emerges when examining the intermittent contra war in the Nicaraguan countryside. Managua has portrayed the Sandinista-contra conflict not as an internal civil war but as essentially a struggle between "U.S. imperialism" and the Nicaraguan people over national independence, state sovereignty, and economic development. Contra leaders, troops, supporters, and sympathizers have therefore been depicted in FSLN propaganda as traitors and mercenaries, while Managua's armed forces and militia units are presented as national heroes defending society from foreign aggression. In reality, numerous antiSandinista groups have surfaced in the country since 1979, and several have turned to armed insurgency because of growing government repression and receding prospects for democratization.¹ For the most part, contra recruits are neither paid mercenaries nor former National Guardsmen. They are often ordinary campesinos and other farmers who joined the guerrilla forces voluntarily because of their opposition to FSLN policies.² Many have grown resentful of Sandinista agricultural reforms, human rights abuses, political

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