NICARAGUA – SOME PRESIDENTS ARE MORE EQUAL.

At 19 years old you knew it all. Or so you thought after a world-wide trip on a container ship. You saw oil sheikh kingdoms sitting on their wealth.On the other hand, you saw the industriousness of Japan and it’s famed work ethic.You learned that California isn’t just Hollywood mansions; there were homeless people and food stamps too.
It was all new. But on world inequality you didn’t know much at all. In the UK you understood it better because there were MP’s and social reformers with a social conscience.

People such as Aneurin Bevan who fought hard to establish the NHS, one of his famous quotes being:
‘Those who stand in the middle of the road shouldn’t be surprised when they get run over.’
Or, Liverpudlian Jack Jones whose credentials were boosted when he volunteered for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. In later life he was a successful leader of the TUC as well as campaigning for pensioners’ rights – this when he was himself in his eighties.

Anyway, returning to shipboard life and by now you were sailing with crews who also fought long and hard to win fair pay and conditions from notoriously tight-fisted shipowners.So it was no surprise to discover socialist ideology aboard; you read books in ship libraries by authors such as Charles Dickens, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, etc.
All these drew upon the persuasive logic that inequality is the fault of government. A famous Dickens’ quote being ‘Injustice breeds injustice’. George Orwell took a bleaker view from Down and Out in Paris and London  stating that:
‘The great redeeming feature of poverty is that it annihilates the future’(1)
Steinbeck’s unwavering support for the downtrodden is seen in novels such as The Grapes of Wrath,  a fable of the social injustice of 1930’s American economics.

Certainly on board ship you noticed there was great respect for the Cuban Revolution. The ousting of the corrupt President Batista by the Marxist Fidel Castro was viewed by shipmates as a triumph for justice and fairness.
Castro’s establishment of a universal health service was seen as particularly important as also were his laws regarding fair pay for workers. The US government viewed all this as creeping communism in their own backyard, but it is interesting to note that sixty years later even respected media outlets such as PBS America  reported that 1950’s Cuba was:
‘The brothel of the Western Hemisphere – a place where degraded people waited upon Americans at beaches, casinos and hotels.’  (2) The revolution itself wasn’t a bloodless coup but even today Cuba’s legacy in some respects outshines others as, for example, their government provides more medical personnel to developing countries than all G8 countries combined.

So you saw how some nation-states dealt with problems of inequality.
Especially neighbouring Nicaragua.Blessed with two oceans and some fertile soil it had been mismanaged for decades by the tinpot dictator President Somoza.His right-wing dictatorship was alleged to have been supported by the USA, but at the same time a simmering resentment and sense of being wronged was felt by the electorate.For sure, the agricultural sector – a mainstay of the economy – had deep problems not mitigated by Somoza’ s underinvestment and land grab.
For example, coffee production was hindered by lack of funding, for in the Highlands there was either too much rain or not enough.When it was the former, crop transportation was made by donkeys – the mud slides and swollen rivers could have been long ago been tamed by hydrological engineering.
But alas, the money went elsewhere just as it did with other shady deals.

This corruption intensified when misappropriation of foreign aid to the 1972 earthquake disaster forced 600k refugees to seek government help ( 1972 population: just 2.8 mn.)The Somoza family had no scruples on this.For years, they had promoted landlordism and land grabs; disinvested in education and health care and drove down other key indicators such literacy and infant mortality.

Ortega sought to overthrow the regime which was finally achieved in 1979 with his ruling party Frente Sandiniste de Liberacion (FSLE). Nonetheless, funding for a program of nationalisation, land reform and wealth redistribution was slow.This despite interest-free loans from Cuba and the seizure of money from Somoza’s banks.

The difficulties continued and in 1984 US President Ronald Reagan, spooked by Ortega’s Marxist ideals ordered an invasion by CIA- backed Contra troops.The Contras rampaged their way through Nicaragua’s countryside, killing and looting, and another one of Reagan’s most vindictive acts was to mine the harbour of the Pacific Ocean port of Corinto.
Corinto – incidentally twinned with Liverpool, England – is situated on a turquoise sea studded with small islands.But even though of strategic importance to the US, the dropping of mines by US Navy Seals was considered a failure by the CIA as few ships incurred damage. They later confessed:
‘We never dreamed that Merchant Marine captains would keep sailing in regardless’ (3)
Obviously the CIA didn’t know the Merchant Navy.

Anyway, an eventual truce was reached and in 1985 you sailed in from Panama.The ship carried material for Corinto’s reconstruction as well as containers of humanitarian aid.The CIA had also bombed docks and warehouses – not by F14 fighter jets which would have been too obvious – but by small turbo-prop planes from the direction of Honduras.The worst damage was Corinto’s oil refinery which was essentially flattened; but much-needed food and clothing was donated by the US and NGO’s throughout North America, and fairly soon locals were wearing T-shirts with logos such as Chicago Cubs, Exxon and Shop Walmart USA.

And in the aftermath of any war it is maybe not surprising that people intensify their efforts to return to whatever is ‘normal.’So some shops were open and some taxis were vying for business.Bars had reopened and saw a steady trade from bottled beer cooled by fridges wired up to Honda generators.But you also saw the desperation of the Nicas as they swamped the port, people now reduced to refugee status: ragged, barefooted mothers with hungry toddlers begged by the dock gate, and packs of semi-feral dogs scavenged in the streets.
So as a few individuals hawked tired-looking plantains and mangoes from street corners it was clear the country was near economic collapse.And if there were people from North America skilled in reconstruction, then presumably they were holed up somewhere. For the only gringos we saw were seafarers like ourselves, plus some photo-journalists – these usually accompanied by the military.

At this point and in a moment best described as ‘when two worlds collide’ you reflected back on normality in the UK, to trade unions negotiating for the relevant issue of equal pay and a prices and incomes policy, all sat round a table sipping tea.Instead here in Nicaragua, their government and civil society were negotiating for survival – the economy was in tatters.
But despite traditional exports of coffee, fish, hides, meat and cotton a balance of payments overseas was hard to maintain and unlike neighbouring countries which had viable banana exports, Nicaragua had little, leading one politician to dryly proclaim: ‘we are a banana republic – but without the bananas.’
Nonetheless, Ortegas FSLN government pressed on with its reforms.Fairly soon, literacy rates soared and other key health indicators such as increase in vaccination rates, compulsory education and clean water access earned plaudits.At a later date, the government proceeded with a free school meal program for kids, too.

Although the shifting tides of politics caused Ortega’s government to be voted out by the year 1990.In place was a more moderate socialist leader Violeta Chamorro; in fact voters’ disillusionment with Ortega persisted until 2006 when he was once more re-elected.
By this time, he was becoming more autocratic. He had already invested money in a TV company, ostensibly to consolidate control over the electorate, but soon after a series of violent demonstrations against social security reforms, Ortega’s banning of trade unions, foreign aid workers, some media outlets and certain financial transactions broke the Rule of Law.
Thirty people were killed in these demonstrations leading many to maintain that Ortega was becoming the power he originally fought against, i.e. the corrupt government of Somoza.

So whatever drove Ortega from being the saviour towards being a monster is unclear.But well-regarded news agency Reuters states that the Ortega family now controls more TV channels to spread ‘ regime propaganda’ – the purchase price ‘remaining secret.’ (4)
Opponents to him were routinely jailed, and a former colleague and fellow guerilla soldier was arrested.
From a jail cell, Jimenez Torres proclaimed that:
‘I am 73 and at this time of my life I never thought I would be fighting another dictatorship more brutal, more unscrupulous, more irrational and more autocratic than the Somoza dictatorship…..( en.m.Wikipedia.org (Hugo Torres Jimenez) accessed 19.06.2022.
Anyway, at a later time and a different place you’d just sailed into Fort Lauderdale USA.The shiny high-rise blocks and fancy malls with outlets such as Dior, Rolex and Apple are only a short walk from the dock gate.It was heartening to see most people seemed prosperous and well- fed.But anyway, you walked through Fort Lauderdale’s Harbourdale area and to the local bars where most sailors like a drink or two.
So you called into an Irish pub there without remembering the name( there are four around the same block) and glugged down a pint of Guinness.
The bar keep was quite conversational, having a chat in between serving others and when the song ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ (U2 from the album The Joshua Tree) blasted out, the guy came over.
‘Hey! I know your accents, you are all Irish, right? This song is by one of your guys about my country.’
‘Which is your country?’ we replied.
‘Nicaragua, man!’
Well, I’d heard ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ before – in fact, I think it was about El Salvador as well as Nicaragua. In fact there was another by ex-Eagles Don Henley called All She Wants to Do is Dance’ – Henley’s own sharp critique of US imperialism in those countries.But a good chat ensued in which the barman mentioned that he wasn’t strictly a Nica but instead the son of a immigrant Nicaraguan to the US in 1986.He loved the USA – the  freedoms and job opportunities – but as with many first and even second -generation immigrants the pull to the mother country is still strong.

So I mentioned that I’d sailed into Corinto years earlier although certainly didn’t want to talk politics in a foreign bar.But he broached the subject of Ortega: 
‘That guy is a bandito motherf****r – who sold out his own people’, he said.‘Some of them still over in Managua [capital city] – you know what they call him?They call him “Grand Theft Auto” because that’s all the thieving rat is.’
Anyway, I got a long story about how Ortega actually had ripped-off some of Nicaragua’s assets and amassed a fortune of US$50 mn – a figure which was corroborated by a later news piece on the website http://www.celebritynetworth.com.‘Not bad for a President re-elected on promises of wealth redistribution, huh?’ added the barman.
Well, as mentioned I didn’t really want to talk politics, but just replied by saying something cliched about Orwell’s Animal Farm famous quote.Because after all, Orwell hit the right sardonic note: some animals really are more equal than others.

1) Orwell, G. (1935) p. 19, Down and Out in Paris and London.
2) http://www.pbs.org 2024 (Pre-Castro Cuba) (accessed 19.06.2022)
3) The Washington Post (07.04.1984.) CIA helped mine ports) (accessed 21.06.2022)
4) http://www.Reuters.com (23.11.2020) Ortega media enriches family (accessed 21.06.2022)