On a recent trip to Central America, we had the opportunity to spend more than a week in Nicaragua, where we witnessed the consequences of perhaps the greatest crime committed against a country in recent years - a crime for which all American citizens share the blame. Unfortunately, many in this country still do not realize what the United States has done to Nicaragua.
In July 1979, the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, supported for decades by the United States government, was overthrown by a broad coalition headed by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN in Spanish). This revolution represented an incredible triumph for the Nicaraguan people who had engaged in decades of guerrilla warfare, strikes and protests against the oppressive Somoza government.
Even more amazing, the FSLN restructured society to serve the basic needs of the majority of people. They built schools and health-care clinics and established a massive literacy campaign. Somoza's extensive land holdings were distributed to poor farmers who had previously toiled under sharecropper conditions. Workers took over Somoza's factories and ran them cooperatively. Councils were established in every neighborhood to involve the direct participation of the citizens in education, health, crime prevention and national defense issues. The FSLN began to build a true socialist-democratic society that placed the concerns of the majority over the group. In this accomplishment, Nicaragua is joined by few countries in history.
All of this was destroyed when the Reagan administration imposed an economic embargo on Nicaragua in the early 1980s and organized, trained and funded the counterrevolution (Contras) headed by Somoza's National Guard officers. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans lost their lives during the war, which consumed more than 40 percent of the country's budget.
In our travels through Nicaragua, we spoke to people who had each lost several family members in the Contra war. The Contras destroyed schools, health clinics and cooperative farms, and routinely employed murder, mutilation, torture and rape against the populace in an effort to sabotage the revolution.
In 1990, after almost a decade of war and economic blockade that devastated the country, Nicaraguans voted the FSLN out of power in favor of the Unites States-funded conservative, Violetta Chomorro. This vote represented the people's wish to end the war and economic blockade rather than end the revolution. After six years of conservative economic policies, decreases in social spending, and other United States and International Monetary Fund-imposed structural adjustments, the economic situation is worse than ever. The unemployment rate is greater than 60 percent, illiteracy has risen by about 25 percent (primary education is no longer free), 80 percent of the population live in poverty and the country is now the second poorest in the hemisphere.
We were told that the 1996 elections - which brought to power another conservative government - involved widespread fraud and illegal financial contributions from the United States, and that the FSLN were the true winners. Unfortunately, the Nicaraguans will now endure six more years of the same policies that keep them in poverty.
It is disturbing to hear these facts about Nicaraguan history and society. It is even more upsetting to speak to people who have lived this devastating reality or to see the country's poverty in the sprawling shantytowns.
The Nicaraguan people possess tremendous strength and courage in the face of relentless interference from the United States. We found them to have a high level of political sophistication that allowed them to treat us as friends while condemning the actions of the United States government. We urge Americans to educate themselves on the far-reaching, negative consequences of Unites States foreign policy. We must fight to ensure that the tragedy of Nicaragua never be repeated.