This interview of a student leader now in exile appeared in an online magazine started by a recently formed organization composed mainly of socialist parties in Europe and Latin America.. The translation of its name is International Anticapitalists Network. It is significant in that he addresses two recent proposals made by the opposition for an alternative Nicaragua, and also the need for any alternative to incorporate people who currently are on the other side.
Nicaragua, Interview of Fidel Narváez: “our struggles cannot be divided by borders”
Translated interview by Tito Castillo in “Anticapitalists en Red Internacional”
Oct 11, 2018
News magazine of group founded this past May composed of Europeans and Latin Americans socialist parties
Fidel used to teach classes on Law and Philosophy in different universities in Managua. During the protests of April he actively jointed the student struggle, principally at the National Poly-technical University (UPOLI). After that he was identified by the regime and saw himself forced to leave the country for security reasons. Currently he is in Europe doing political work based on international community, criticism and social theory.
Anticapitalists en Red (AR): More than five months have gone by since the protests began in Nicaragua, what was the Central American context for this?
Central America is a region with similar characteristics, not just in terms of population, work, wealth, but also in terms of resistance. The resistances have been silenced to be able to maintain the status quo and what the business people call “the business climate.” They want to give the image that Central America is a profitable option for investing, because apart from miserable salaries you have a police force and a State that can regulate these social pressures. So after five months this myth has fallen apart not just in Nicaragua but in all of Central America. We have realized that in Central America the population has enough reasons and motives to go out on the street to demand the resignation of the ruler, to be able to demand respect for human rights. Unfortunately the Central America process has not been a joint struggle. If you look closely, this also is the result of the principal tasks of the oligarchic forces, of corporate forces: decoupling the resistances at the borders. If they internationalize corporate power, inequality, repression, we have to break through those borders. Nevertheless, this movement in Nicaragua has not been able to staunchly connect with other resistances that have been happening historically in Central America. So we have seen how at this moment small foci of resistance and struggle have emerged in different countries of the Central American region, but I go back and repeat: it is a weakness because what we should really do and what also has been espoused by some movements, by some activists, by some universities is that the struggle should unite. In other words, that our struggles cannot be divided by borders, because our problems are not problems of borders, they are regional problems.
AR: Comment on the “Blue and White National Collaboration” and the “Route to democratization” proposed from the Articulation of Social Movements and the CSO [Civil Society Organizations].
This national collaboration should not be around the Civic Alliance, the Social Articulation, nor the Blue and White Unity. I am of the criteria, but maybe it could be that I am mistaken, that the national collaboration cannot just be on the basis of movements, figures or acronyms. But that it has to be on the basis of a program that unites around an attractive pole, that pole is a program with concrete points, which is what the Sandinista Front did in 1979 to attract all the different sectors in the fight; workers, peasants, students, women, laborers. Currently in Nicaragua I do not see a historic program, nor a political program…there is a “Route to democratization”, which is different.
I think the appearance of a political program like what “We are Building Nicaragua” proposed, which is basically a political-social movement whose greatest contribution can be on the political-ideological plane. This program makes it evident that not all of us were aware of the fact that there is a structural problem in Nicaragua. We were aware of the fact that Ortega is a dictator and that we want to get rid of him. But without a political program we are not going to realize, or we are not going to recognize the structural problems that the country has. And one of the principal problems is COSEP, in other words, private enterprise, which is wrestling in Ortega´s favor along with some Central American business sectors to maintain their corporate model.
AR: How can you live with Sandinism after this?
That will depend on the exit scenario that there is in Nicaragua. If there is a scenario of a rupture that can be through a constitutional convention process, the re-founding of the State, the process can be a bit longer, yes, but it can bring structural changes in the long term. In other words, ensuring that the same mistakes are not made that have been carried along simply because of putting patches on our problems. I think that Orteguism and Sandinism are two different things, and once this has a solution – be it through early elections or a constitutional convention process – the big burden or the big problem for the future and for co-existence with that part of the population that has opted for sticking with the dictatorship, will be harmonious relations. Because Sandinism for more than five months has had a sufficient margin, gradually, to be able to be disassociating itself ethically and for revolutionary principles from what currently is the government: which has opted for lying, deceit, corruption, repression and annihilation as a form of doing politics. For a radical democratic process to be viable it is going to have to count on these people. This does not mean that the co-existence is going to be easy, because that democratic process indeed is going to be real and is going to be a product of this new revolution.
AR: What is the exit scenario for the Ortega-Murillo regime?
I think that the constitutional convention process to resolve the big structural problems of Nicaragua is the only one that would achieve a true peace. A peace more sustainable over time, even though in the beginning there may be problems of different types of orders. Nevertheless, real participation, the endorsement of that constitution, and the participation in new elections well could provide an opportunity for a real re-founding of the State. If we only put a patch on it, the big structural situations that we have to resolve as a people are going to persist. We are going to continue having a bicephalous dictatorship, but in that case it will no longer be in the terms of Gemini or Plato´s myth on love, which was one body back to the other and that a thunderbolt divided into two, no, in this sense we are going to one dictatorship with the same body but with two faces looking forward: two faces that can communicate with one another, that can openly negotiate between them without shame because that is what is going to happen if by chance cosmetic reforms are obtained, merely esthetic issues in terms of Nicaraguan politics. We are going to have the bicephalous dictatorship of COSEP and Orteguism talking among themselves about all the issues that concern us as a people. Now, the scenario in any sense of reform or rupture is going to be a difficult scenario because there is an unlearning of the caudillo cultures, vertical cultures, that process of unlearning is going to necessarily lead to clashes, confrontations and crises, but they are not crises that are going to have a negative dialectic.