President Violeta Chamorro’s authority was also wounded. Since taking office April 25, the 60-year-old newspaper publisher has struggled to reconcile a country divided between the poorly organized majority that supported her and the well-organized minority that backs the Sandinistas. Her conciliatory style did help ease 16,000 contra fighters back into civilian life. She has tried to appease the Sandinistas with concessions-most notably her decision to leave Daniel Ortega’s brother Humberto in charge of the Army. But the strikes made it clear the Sandinistas have the muscle to offset her popular mandate and checkmate her government when they want to. Last week the Sandinista-led police and armed forces moved at their own deliberate pace when Chamorro told them to restore order. Partly, they were taking care to avoid hurting civilians on both sides, partly they were showing their tacit sympathy for the strikers. “Now we know whose side they’re on, and it’s not Violeta’s,” said Omar Almanza, a government supporter helping to remove barricades in Managua’s Ciudad Jardin neighborhood. “We feel helpless.”
That left Chamorro with little choice but to cut a deal with the Sandinista leadership. The government gave up two cornerstones of its plan for economic recovery: it halted the rental of state-run farmlands to private growers and promised to consult with the Sandinistas before selling off state-run industries. The Sandinistas ended the walkout, and by the weekend Army bulldozers had cleared the streets. Chamorro insisted that the agreement preserved the heart of her program. “I’m not giving up my popular mandate to anyone,” she said. “I only make pacts with God.” But the accord prompted cries of betrayal from hard-liners within Chamorro’s own badly divided coalition; even neutral observers wondered who gives the orders in Nicaragua. “The Sandinistas aren’t just ruling from below anymore,” says one Latin diplomat in Managua. “They’re co-governing above.”
‘Defeatist elements’: For Sandinista leaders, taking to the streets may have been designed to hold together a party increasingly divided between those who want an ideological rethinking and disgruntled radicals who blame the Ortegas’ relative moderation for the election defeat. The restlessness apparently extends to the Army, too. A week before the violence, Humberto Ortega met with a large contingent of officers, many of whom reportedly began clamoring for a strike at the government. Said hard-line comandante Bayardo Arce: “There may exist certain defeatist elements within the party these days. But this unity of action behind the workers has strengthened the revolutionary forces.”
Turmoil in the capital is bad news for Nicaragua’s battered economy, which needs to project stability to foreign investors. Some Sandinistas may think that’s good news for them. “The Sandinistas knew that, if given the time, Violeta could stabilize the economy and make considerable success with the recovery,” says Luis Guzman, a member of the government delegation in the National Assembly. “The only way they could legitimize themselves again was to keep that from happening. Otherwise, they are politically dead.”
Despite the evocative barricades, for many Nicaraguans the violence only underscored the Sandinistas’ long fall from grace since 1979. This time the revolutionaries were taking on an elected government, not a hated dictator. Said Marcelino Canales, 60: “I helped put these same barricades up in 1979 against the dictatorship. Now I’m going to take them down every time I see them go up.” But it seemed the Sandinistas cared more about power than popularity. If so, Nicaragua may find more burning barricades on its road to recovery.
