The struggle of the people of Nicaragua against the hated Somoza dictatorship, arms in hand and led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), has now reached a decisive stage that will determine the future of the Nicaraguan revolution and of the Central American revolution as a whole.
The brutal dictatorship has been deeply wounded. Defending itself with all its strength, it has resorted to the most barbaric measures. Facing the broadest and best-organized Sandinista offensive to date, Somoza is trying to get out of the deep crisis that has touched the very center of his power, Managua. He is launching indiscriminate, truly genocidal attacks on the civilian population. Innumerable criminal massacres and reprisals, leaving a toll of tens of thousands dead, wounded, and homeless and unlimited destruction and suffering today mark the daily life of this martyred people of Central America. The decades-long, heroic struggle against the Somoza dynasty, which today has reached the stage of revolutionary combat, demands more than ever the support and solidarity of the proletariat of all countries, so that the offensive against the dictator can end in victory.
This international campaign for the Nicaraguan people must focus on exposing the fundamental role of the imperialists, especially the U.S. imperialists, in backing up and keeping alive the Somoza regime. The hypocrisy of President Carter's "human rights" campaign is clear to all. He supports with all the power of the United States the bloodiest tyrannies of the semicolonial world so as to preserve U.S. imperialist domination. This support has reached the point of public threats of military intervention made by representatives of the State Department. What could be seen yesterday with the shah of Iran today is being shown again today with Somoza—U.S. imperialism is the last defender of the most brutal regimes.
But it is not only U.S. imperialism that is guilty of supporting Somoza. European and Japanese imperialism—the latter especially in recent years—are among those who do so in various ways, such as maintaining relations with the dictator. It is also necessary to denounce the role that the racist and reactionary regime of Israel has been playing in recent months as the intermediary of the Yankee imperialists in supplying arms to Somoza's National Guard.
The imperialist forces have an interest in backing Somoza and in fact are the basic support of his regime at a time when even important sections of the national bourgeoisie in Nicaragua have withdrawn their support from him. Somoza and his regime form the cornerstone of imperialist domination in Central America. Through finance, industry, and trade, Somozaism is tied by a thousand threads to imperialist enterprises. This network is crowned by a powerful "lobby" in the U.S. Congress itself, through which the dictator has had a permanent source of all kinds of military aid.
The downfall of Somoza would represent a victory not only for the Nicaraguan people. Its repercussions would be enormous in a region where imperialism is especially entrenched but that is now beginning to find its historic unity in the revolutionary processes that are under way. The 20 million inhabitants of Central America will feel at first hand the hot wind of the Nicaraguan revolution.
The peoples of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras will be greatly inspired in their battles against their own brutal and oppressive dictatorships, which have found in Somozaism one of their essential pillars of support. And just as the peoples of these countries totally identify with the destiny of the Nicaraguan masses, the dictators of these three countries see Somoza's battle as their own and are collaborating with him to the greatest possible degree to prevent his defeat, which would be theirs as well.
For the imperialists, it is vital to defend the counterrevolutionary bastion of Somozaism. The base for launching military campaigns against Cuba and for stepping up repression against other popular movements is in danger. The imperialists' economic plans (renovation of the Central American Common Market), military plans (the Central American Defense Council), and political plans (overall stabilization) are all on the verge of disaster. So with Somozaism in its death agony it is absolutely clear that the most audacious counterrevolutionary maneuvers can be expected from the imperialists.
The bourgeois sectors of Costa Rica and Panama—including their leading groups—hope to prevent the struggle in Nicaragua from having revolutionary consequences for their own countries. The bourgeoisies in other neighboring countries—such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and the Andean Bloc in general—are reacting in the same way. It is quite easy for them to appear "liberal" beside the butcher of Managua. They also are seeking to get in position to intervene later to neutralize the revolutionary process and put a brake on its dynamic of permanent revolution.
It is necessary to solidarize with the combat of the people of Nicaragua and their vanguard, the FSLN, to prevent their isolation.
Revolutionary Dynamics and Strategy
In the fight to bring down Somoza the broadest possible tactical agreements are justified. It is even valid to participate with bourgeois forces in such alliances. But it is extremely dangerous to compromise with these forces in establishing a provisional government. Only the classes that have struggled the hardest against Somoza and his dynasty for decades—the proletariat and the peasantry—can guarantee the true anti-imperialist victory that Somoza's overthrow would represent.
The National Patriotic Front was created recently as a means of revamping the old Broad Opposition Front. Participating in it alongside the FSLN are such anti-Somoza bourgeois forces as those represented by Alfonso Robelo, Sergio Ramirez, Violeta de Chamorro, and other figures even better known in the world of the big bourgeoisie. This cannot be the means through which the Nicaraguan people achieve all their political, economic, and social demands. The bourgeois forces have every interest in halting the struggle for the overthrow of Somoza at a strictly political level without taking up all the social demands of the people.
A process of permanent revolution has begun in Nicaragua. The struggle against the Somoza dictatorship naturally improves the conditions for fighting for the social demands of the people (land, jobs, democratic rights). Only the independent struggle of the workers and poor peasants can guarantee their attainment. Clarity is also necessary for rejecting any direct imperialist intervention or an intervention through imperialism's agents in Guatemala and El Salvador. All this means a fight—by necessity a regional one—against capitalist economic dependence. Finally it means a class break with the bourgeoisie, and the upholding of independence and autonomy for the workers, so as to advance from here on along the road to victory.
In fact, if a bourgeois-type solution is reached after the overthrow of Somoza, it will be impossible for it to bring about a stable bourgeois-democratic regime. The economic power of the dictator Somoza himself, the longstanding difficulty the bourgeois sectors have had in putting together an opposition that could present a credible alternative, and the depth of the economic and social crisis all give the immediate demands of the masses a tendency to go rapidly beyond the bounds imposed by capitalist property in land and industry. To prevent this dynamic, the bourgeois opposition sectors—with the open agreement of the FSLN leadership—are promoting "national unity."
To gain the satisfaction of all their demands, the poor peasants and the workers will have to assert their independence in face of the plans of the so-called national bourgeoisie, reinforce their own organizations, and launch a merciless struggle against the imperialist exploiters and their representatives in Nicaragua. In doing this they will follow the example of the Cuban people.
Great new changes and historic perspectives are possible in the present situation in Nicaragua and Central America. At this crucial time in the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship, the Fourth International is calling for a vast, worldwide campaign of solidarity with the Nicaraguan people, their organizations, and the FSLN—their main fighting spearhead.
All the trade-union and political organizations of the international workers movement should be in the front ranks of this solidarity campaign with the Nicaraguan revolution, condemning and denouncing the enormous crimes that the Somoza dynasty is multiplying to keep itself in power in its death agony. The only support that remains to it is that of imperialism, especially the Americans and their direct agents, the dictators of El Salvador and Guatemala.
The Nicaraguan people will need—and the international proletariat will provide—the broadest internationalist solidarity in order to defeat their powerful imperialist enemies.
Worker militants, democrats, and revolutionists will fight for the organization of broad campaigns and mobilizations:
• To send messages of solidarity to FSLN delegations in various countries.
• To send material aid, such as medications.
• To organize boycotts by port workers of all shipping to Nicaragua, in the tradition of solidarity with Vietnam displayed by the Australian stevedores and with Chile by those in Sweden.
• To demand the immediate breaking of relations with the dictator.
Down with the Somoza dictatorship!
Not one cent, not one weapon for Somoza!
Imperialists out of Nicaragua and Central America!
For a workers and peasants government in Nicaragua!