Desde nuestro portal informativo, hacemos público el Manifiesto que sigue de la Plataforma de Solidaridad con Nicaragua, de la que el Frente Antiimperialista Internacionalista forma parte y anima a otros internacionalistas a participar:
Foundational Manifest of the Platform of Solidarity with Nicaragua and the Sandinista Front in Madrid
Last Friday, June 29, various organizations met in Madrid and decided to constitute a Platform of Solidarity with Nicaragua and the Sandinista Front. The purpose of this Platform is to confront the imperialist aggression that, as has happened in other Latin American countries, tries to overthrow a legitimate government by breaking the constitutional order through some form of coup d’état.
What is happening in Nicaragua at the moment is part of a regional offensive to roll back the progressive and/or revolutionary processes in the region. It is a new episode of imperialist war in Latin America.
During the eighties, the failure of neoliberal policies throughout Latin America led to a change of sign in the whole area. At the same time that the Latin American elites were defeated electorally, the United States lost influence in the domination and control of the resources and institutions of the whole area. Revolutionary, reformist and anti-imperialist projects were set in motion at the service of the people, and the United States saw what it has always considered its “backyard” endangered.
The attempt to recover the region by placing it back at the service of its imperialist interests is what gave rise to the military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, which has favored the “parliamentary coups” against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil or Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, the judicialization of politics by imprisoning Lula da Silva, In each Latin American country, the United States and its European allies have developed what their counterintelligence manuals call “low-intensity wars,” destabilization projects, soft blows, counter-insurgency, and so on.
In Nicaragua, the violent mobilizations, the actions of paramilitary armed groups and the rejection of dialogue follow the same pattern as the “guarimbas” in Venezuela, which were created and financed with the aim of breaking institutional legality and overthrowing the Bolivarian government. The aggression against Nicaragua is therefore part of a far-reaching regional offensive aimed at restoring docile conservative governments that impose a neoliberal agenda and restore the logic of capitalist accumulation without any obstacle.
From Solidarity and Internationalism we consider that what is happening in Nicaragua has to be analysed in the following way:
- Since April 18, an IMPERIALIST OFFENSIVE has been unleashed, in accordance with the Nicaraguan oligarchy, which implies a POLICY AND POLITICAL DESTABILIZATION OPERATION in Nicaragua, whose objective is to overthrow the legitimate Sandinista government. This street violence, which destroys and sets fire to institutions and assassinates citizens, follows the same matrix as the violence unleashed against the democratic government of Nicolás Maduro in the spring of 2017, and aims to achieve through violence what it has not been able to achieve at the polls.
- In Nicaragua there is a popular and democratic government headed by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) which in the last presidential elections obtained 70% popular support. The Nicaraguan right is divided into 6 political parties, all of them called liberals, which occupied their seats and have exercised the opposition normally. Daniel Ortega is the legitimate and democratic president of Nicaragua, and has been internationally recognized as such since 2007.
Against the propaganda of the media oligopoly, Nicaragua is a normalized democracy, and proof of this is that in the Mesa por la Paz y el Diálogo that has been created to end the violence, the first demand of the right is “the convocation of early elections,” which implies a recognition of institutional and electoral legality.
- Since the democratic recovery of the government, the Sandinista Front has implemented social policies that have been achieved: the reduction of poverty from 42.5% to 24.9%, and with it the reduction of inequality; 98.4% schooling; a 60% decrease in the infant mortality rate; no goods or services have been privatized; the production of renewable energy has started at 53%, electricity coverage is 92.5%, energy and transport have been subsidized; the Zero Hunger Project has been launched; the School Snack Program (1 million children benefited) and the Dignified Housing Program.
Despite the fact that, as in the rest of the area, prejudice, patriarchy, machismo and religious hierarchies are major obstacles to the progress of progressive governments in the field of gender equality; the Sandinista government has achieved high rates of parity and inclusion of women: more than 50% of participation in all directly and indirectly elected public posts have been covered, more than 50% of women ministers and deputy ministers in the country are women, as are women mayors, deputy mayors, councillors, etc., as well as women mayors, deputy mayors, councilors, etc. In the same way, the multiple projects for the restitution of rights, such as the ZERO HUNGER, TITULATION OF EARTH project, have had their effectiveness thanks to the fact that the government placed women as the main axis and beneficiary with a priority and political and economic protagonist role.
- Until April 18, Nicaragua was the safest country in the region and the second least violent country in Latin America. The police in Nicaragua are among the countries with the lowest levels of corruption in the world, and enjoy excellent articulation with their community, which has allowed them to be a retaining wall for drug trafficking, which hits other countries in the Central American region. The government of the Sandinista Front barracks the police forces for more than a month in order to avoid confrontation. In this sense, most of the attacks have been self-inflicted, in order to blame and create the hoax of the existence of “parapolice” groups; and only in extreme cases was forced, as any government in the world would have been forced before the spread of terrorist violence, to a legitimate use of force in the face of terrorist violence. One example is the kidnapping of two tankers full of fuel in Jinotepe by a terrorist group, which tried to explode next to the barracks of the barracks police.
It is precisely President Daniel Ortega who has said he is willing for international commissions to investigate and evaluate the use of force by the State, and if there have been police excesses they will recognize and assume responsibility. It was this proposal that has caused on multiple occasions the escalation of violence on the part of the opposition and the uprising of its delegates at the dialogue table.
- When the Nicaraguan government implemented the Social Security Reform, legitimate mobilizations against this measure appeared. But immediately, along with these mobilizations, there appeared groups of hooded people carrying long weapons, mortars and pistols, who erected barricades (‘trankes’) in the main cities of the country with the objective of achieving social chaos. All evidence points to an organized paramilitary force.
These groups burned city halls, schools, buses, hospitals, headquarters of the Sandinista Front, and even people. The images of these violent groups fill the social networks, but the big media have hidden them, intentionally accusing the Sandinista government of the murders and destruction committed by street violence. An important effect of this violence fed from the internal and external oligarchies is the irreparable damage to the Nicaraguan economy. From solidarity and internationalism we put in context and in history the events that are currently shaking Nicaragua and we denounce:
- The manipulation of the great MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION, functional to imperialism and the Nicaraguan oligarchy, THAT ENJOY TERRORIST VIOLENCE and EXTERNAL INJERENCE, of State repression to justify the promotion of the overthrow of the Sandinista government.
- We denounce that this latest imperialist attack has much to do with the announcement four years ago by the Sandinista government of the project of an INTEROCEAN CHANNEL in Nicaragua. This project, which was to be developed with several foreign companies, among them a Chinese one, clearly threatens the commercial and geostrategic interests of the U.S. in the region, and is at the base of the new imperialist offensive against Nicaragua.
WE SUPPORT that the solution to the social and political crisis created in Nicaragua is PEACE, and in this sense we consider the best way to achieve it to be the PEACE AND DIALOGUE COMMISSION proposed by the government, and in which businessmen and unions, political opposition, students, and the Church participate. This commission has been created with the objective of achieving peace and normality through national dialogue between the main political, social, economic and religious forces of the country.
For all these reasons, and in coherence with our anti-imperialist, revolutionary and internationalist principles, we constituted ourselves in Madrid as a PLATFORM IN SOLIDARITY WITH NICARAGUA AND THE SANDINIST FRONT.
Our task will be to articulate an Action Plan that includes activities to denounce imperialist interference in Nicaragua and to support the legitimate government of the Sandinista Front in defense of its Sovereignty and Independence. We will also try to counter the media campaign that criminalizes progressive governments in the region in order to isolate them and allow an armed intervention, a coup d’état or the overthrow of legitimate governments.
