The Sandinistas.

[ComradeGrant]

How did they run Nicaragua? What happened with the Miskito people? What is there status today?

[Ismail]

The FSLN was a progressive rebel movement which took power from the discredited Somoza regime in 1979 with the backing of various liberal and conservative bourgeois parties. Once in power, however, the FSLN did things like outlaw strikes in an effort to appease its openly capitalist allies. Unsurprisingly, most of the said allies quickly left the coalition government, but the FSLN continued regardless on its course of a so-called "mixed economy." Left-wing opposition to the FSLN came from the MAP-ML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAP-ML). In 1984 a bourgeois-democratic election was held in which the FSLN, with various advantages, won a comfortable victory, but the repeated presence of the Contras and the stagnation of the economy in the late 1980's made most vote for "peace" (that is, reconciliation between the reactionary Contras and the government) in 1990, which meant the ousting of the FSLN.

In foreign policy the FSLN followed a basic pro-Soviet line, including denouncing China because the Soviets disliked China. Even though Nicaragua claimed "non-alignment," it was on close terms with the Cubans and the Soviets, and dependence on the Soviets grew as the 1980's progressed and as attempts to appease the West faltered due to US objections towards rapprochement with "communist" Nicaragua.

As for the Miskito people, they were not treated very nicely by the government which tried to integrate them into Nicaraguan society at large, but an autonomy accord was reached in the later years of FSLN rule which pleased the vast majority of the Miskito.

Domestically, Nicaragua was a bit more "advanced" than modern-day Venezuela in terms of state-owned enterprises and such. It was still a capitalist state.

Today the FSLN is a right-wing social-democratic party which has little in common with the FSLN of the 1970's and 80's outside of the phraseology used.

[RED DAVE]

The FSLN was a progressive rebel movementYou need to define your terms here a lot more precisely.

RED DAVE

[ellipsis]

on google video there is a movie called "A nation's right to survive", it is a contemporary british documentary on sandinista nicaragua. Apparently their prisons were labor farms without guards or fences.

[Ismail]

on google video there is a movie called "A nation's right to survive", it is a contemporary british documentary on sandinista nicaragua. Apparently their prisons were labor farms without guards or fences.This was mostly FSLN propaganda. There were areas like that, but at the same time there were your normal stereotypical "get beaten up and abused" sort of prisons à la the USSR and such. The British documentary had the filmmakers being on a guided tour, much like how in the 1930's USSR no one would be going to Siberia, they'd be going to various "reform-over-punishment" type prisons with a fairly lax atmosphere and hear about how humane and awesome the Soviet prison system was.

@RED DAVE, the FSLN were progressive. They (or, well, their leadership) did not seek to construct socialism, but I'm pretty sure just about anyone who isn't a hardline conservative will agree that the FSLN was at least a step up from the Somoza regime.

[RED DAVE]

@RED DAVE, the FSLN were progressive. They (or, well, their leadership) did not seek to construct socialism, but I'm pretty sure just about anyone who isn't a hardline conservative will agree that the FSLN was at least a step up from the Somoza regime.You still are not defining your terms: which class did they represent? What was their program, especially their economic program? To say that they were "at least a step up from the Somoza regime," does not answer the kind of questions that Marxists should be asking. The situation with them was very similar to that of Spain in the 1930s. One could said that the bourgeois republic was "at least a step up from the [previous] regime," but, in practice, support for this regime by the Left was disastrous.

I view the Sandanistas as, basically, Maoists without Maoism. They engaged in the same block of classes (petit-bourgeoisie, "national" bourgeoisie, workers and peasants), with the same result as in China, Vietnam, and now Nepal: capitalism.

RED DAVE

[Ismail]

Well evidently they came from the petty-bourgeoisie and they did not replace capitalism nor even really sought to make it Soviet-style state capitalism. It's generally agreed that someone who is progressive is still a capitalist.