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Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and Politics in Contemporary Nicaragua

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Carlos M. Vilas
Carlos M. Vilas
Affiliation:
Carlos M. Vilas is a Full Researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
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Extract

As I get older I give more importance to continuities, and try to discover them under the appearances of change and mutation. And I have reached the conclusion that there is only one great continuity: that of blood.

Class structure never entirely displaces other criteria and forms of differentiation and hierarchy (e.g. ethnicity, gender, lineage) in the constitution of social identities and in prompting collective action. Class as a concept and as a point of reference is linked to these other criteria; often it is subsumed in them, thus contributing to the definition of the different groups' forms of expression and of their insertion into the social totality. But class does not eliminate these other criteria nor the identities deriving from them, nor can it preclude the relative autonomy derived from their specificity, as they define loyalties and oppositions which frequently cross over class boundaries. The relevance of these criteria in Latin America is even greater since the society's class profile is less sharply defined because of the lower level of development of market relations and urban industrial capitalism.

Several studies have pointed to the importance of ruling families in shaping the socio-economic structure of Latin American countries, their political institutions and their cultural life. Prominent families have been considered the axis of Latin America's history from the last part of the colonial period until the beginnings of the present century – and until even more recently in some countries. Interestingly enough, these historical studies have contributed to a better understanding of one of the features most frequently discussed in today's sociological studies of Latin America: the weak or inchoate differentiation between public and private life and between collective and individual action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , May 1992 , pp. 309 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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7 Race seems to have been an important, although not decisive, question. As a brief illustration I recall a conversation held in late December 1989 with a personal friend, a very articulate leader of an opposition political party. He was, and is, a prominent member of the National Assembly, holding a PhD from a West German university. While lunching in ‘Los Ranchos’ and speaking of traditional opposition to Somoza, he pointed out to me that ‘they hated him because for the first time in Nicaraguan history dark-skinned people, like myself, reached high government positions. It was too much for them.’

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9 It is worth noting that the most important business associations were all created in the 1970s: Asociación de Algodoneros de León (ADAL), Asociación de Algodoneros de Chinandega (ADACH), and Consejo Superior de la Iniciativa Privada (COSIP), the latter's first congress being held as recently as March 1974.

10 See Williams, Robert G., Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America (Chapel Hill, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholarnovel, Sergio RamírezCastigo Divino (Managua, 1988)Google Scholar vividly portrays León's notable families prior to the cotton boom.

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14 At a micro level certain situations arising from this network may look odd to observers with different cultural backgrounds. I remember, e.g., the delight of a colleague from Masaya when she discovered she was ‘a relative’ of her husband; this strengthened her ties with him and his family, some of whose members considered her something like an outsider. But at the same time her sister-in-law (her husband's sister) was up against the dark side of this structure: married to her mother's cousin, when she intended to divorce, it was difficult for her to forbid him access to the home, since he was a family member.

15 Strachan, H. W., Family and Other Business Groups in Economic Development: The Case of Nicaragua (New York, 1976)Google Scholar is a pioneering piece of research into the family networks amongst Nicaragua's business elites at the beginning of the 1970s.

16 By the end of the 1960s Revista Conservadora changed its name to Revista Conservadora del Pensamiento Centroamericano and later to Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano. From 1983 on it moved headquarters to San José, Costa Rica; under the direction of the fervent Catholic businessman Carlos Mántica, the Review adopted a strongly anti-Sandinista stance which brought it close to some fractions of the counterrevolutionary groups acting from Costa Rican territory.

17 Vilas, Carlos M., The Sandinista Revolution (New York, 1986) chapter iv.Google Scholar

18 See Molina, Uriel, ‘El sentido de una experiencia’, Nicaráuac, 5, (April–June 1981), pp. 17–37Google Scholar; Harnecker, Marta, Los cristianos y la revolucíon sandinista. Entrevista al Comandante de la Revolución Luis Carrión Cruz (Managua, 1986).Google Scholar

19 On Sandinista internal divisions, see Gilbert, Dennis, Sandinistas (New York, 1988).Google Scholar

20 A former peasant who had fought in the FSLN's ‘northern front’ in 1978 and 1979 made an ironic remark to me about the composition of the first Sandinista Junta: ‘This is the second Conservative revolution’ (Estelí, 08. 1980).Google Scholar His irony contrasted with academic observers who, on the contrary, claimed to see the building of a classless society as a feature of the Sandinista revolution: see Dietrich, H., Nicaragua: La construccíon de la sociedad sin clases (México, 1986).Google Scholar

21 This is a fact not considered by Stone when linking Sandinista Commanders Carlos Núñez Tellez and Hugo Torres to one of Granada's most traditional families: see Stone, , The Heritage of the Conquistadores, pp. 191 and 194.Google Scholar

22 The question of the ‘class character’ of this alliance is a complex one to the extent that the class identity of traditional groups is much clearer than that of the insurrectional ranks, about which little can be said beyond their predominantly petty bourgeois sociodemographic profile – taking into account the enormous diversity of petty bourgeoisie in Central American agrarian societies. See Vilas, , The Sandinista Revolution, ch. iiiGoogle Scholar, for a discussion on this question on the basis of empirical information.

23 See ‘Comunicado dirigido a quienes eran accionistas del Banco de América al día 31 de diciembre de 1978’, La Prensa (Managua, 18 May 1990)Google Scholar; Barricada (Managua, 25 May 1990).Google Scholar

24 Kautz, Ricardo Coronel, ‘La ganadería en la economía nacional. Situación actual’, Revista Conservadora, 13 (Oct. 1961), pp. 31–33.Google Scholar

25 See Baumeister, Eduardo, ‘Tres condicionantes político-ideológicas en la formulation de las políticas agrarias en Nicaragua’, Boletía Socioeconómico de INIES, 7 (04 1988), pp. 3–11.Google Scholar

26 Fonseca, Ignacio, ‘El fierro de los Chamorro en la era sandinista’, La Prensa (Managua, 17 Oct. 1989), p. 2.Google Scholar Carlos Fonseca was one of the FSLN's founders.

27 See Ortega, Marvin, ‘La participación obrera en las empresas agropecuarias del APP’, in Vilas, Richard Harris y Carlos M. (eds.), La revolución en Nicaragua (México, 1985), pp. 228–238Google Scholar; Vilas, Carlos M., State, Class and Ethnicity in Nicaragua (Boulder and London, 1989). ch. 4.Google Scholar

28 See Rubí, Rafael González, ‘Nicaragua: Transfondos económicos del vuelco político’, Comercio Exterior (Aug. 1990), pp. 745–751Google Scholar; Vilas, Carlos M., Transición desde el subdesarrollo (Caracas, 1989), chs. iii and iv.Google Scholar

29 The Nicaraguan term chapiollo refers to someone who is mestizo, lacks formal culture, and has unrefined, rude manners. Perhaps the closest approximation to chapiollo is ‘plebeian’, although it lacks the benevolent connotation generally associated with the Nicaraguan term.

30 See Barricada (Managua, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27 and 28 July, 1988)Google Scholar; Nuevo Diario (Managua, 14, 15 July 1988)Google Scholar; La Prensa (Managua, 18 May 1990)Google Scholar; Barricada (Managua, 25 May 1990).Google Scholar Initially MIDINRA presented the intervention as a purely technical, administrative decision, aimed at saving the Nicaraguan sugar industry's main factory. See Wheelock, Jaime's statement in Barricada, 14 July 1988.Google Scholar

31 See ‘Juventud Sandinista busca alternativas de empleo a graduados en el exterior’, Barricada, 14 July 1988.Google Scholar In an informal interview, an official at the Nicaraguan Embassy to Sweden told me that because of institutional changes and economic crisis in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as political change in Nicaragua after the February 1990 elections, hundreds of Nicaraguan students in those countries were coming to Sweden asking for the Embassy's help to go back home (Stockholm, 26 Oct. 1990).

32 In a long conversation I had with Daniel Núñez, the President of the Nicaraguan Union of Farmers and Cattlegrowers (UNAG) in May 1985, he named a long list of huge Conservative landowners that had not been affected by the agrarian reform, despite the fact that much smaller landholdings belonging to Liberal ranchers had been expropriated.

33 Testimonies collected by the author in April 1990. Calle Atravesada is the street on which Granada's wealthiest families traditionally have their homes.

34 Edmundo Jarquín, second-in-command of the FSLN's representatives at the National Assembly, is also one of doña Violetás sons-in-law.

35 The appointment of Ernesto Salmerón as Health Minister seems to be due more to the fact that he is doña Violetás grandchildren's paediatrician than to his expertise on health policies. Dr Salmerón is also Daniel Ortega's children's paediatrician: see O'Kane, Trish, ‘The New Old Order’, NACLA Report on the Americas (June 1990), pp. 28–36.Google Scholar Sofonías Salvatierra, the UNO government's first Minister of Education had previously been the president of the Parents’ Association at the Jesuit Central American Elementary and High School in Managua. See footnote 16 for a previous reference to Carlos Mántica.

36 See RN leader Israel Galeano's (‘Comandante Franklin’) interview in Pensamiento Propio, 70 (05 1990), p. 29.Google Scholar

37 Author's interview with Boanerges Matus (‘Comandante Pepe’), Managua, 30 Nov. 1990.

38 See Vilas, Carlos M., ‘El debate interno sandinista’, Nueva Sociedad, 113 (May–June 1991), pp. 28–36.Google Scholar

39 Matus’ interview (see footnote 37). Several high-ranking officials of UNO's government have previously been either Sandinistas or members of the Sandinista government. In addition to the well-known cases of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, Virgilio Godoy and Alfredo César, it is also true of Labour Minister Francisco Rosales, a former deputy member of the FSLN's directorate in the 1970s. Carlos Hurtado, now Minister of Government (Interior) joined the FSLN in 1974 and was a middle-ranking MIDINRA official up to 1982 when he moved into opposition and to Costa Rica. Francisco Mayorga, briefly Chairman of the Central Bank at the beginning of UNO's government, had been an advisor to the Sandinista Ministry of Planning from 1979 to 1982; Danilo Lacayo, Minister of Information, was a member of the Sandinista Tribunales Populares Antisomocistas.

40 Núñez, Orlando, ‘Pactos, acuerdos y alianzas’, Barricada, 14 June 1990.Google Scholar

41 See Cuenza, Alejandro Martínez, ‘Alianzas y convivencia básica’, Barricada, 16 06 1990Google Scholar; Jarquín, Edmundo, ‘Nicaragua para todos, o para algunos?’, Barricada, 23 Nov. 1990.Google Scholar

42 Cuenca, Alejandro Martínez, ‘Los nuevos retos del sandinismo’, La Avispa, 1 (Oct.–Nov. 1990), pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

43 See Vilas, Carlos M., ‘Nicaragua after the Elections: The First 100 Days’, Z Magazine (Nov. 1990), pp. 91–97Google Scholar; The Sandinista Revolution, ch. iv.

44 Shortly after the Sandinista victory in July 1979, the husband of N.C. – one of my collaborators in the Atlantic Coast Northern area – left Nicaragua to join one of the first armed groups to form the contra. He had been a member of Somoza's National Guard and climbed quickly in what was initially named Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN). Over the following eleven years his wife and three children lost any contact with him. There was no news, no letters, no messages; they knew nothing of his whereabouts nor whether he were alive or dead. After the February 1990 elections she received news from him: he was one of ‘Comandante’ Franklin's field ‘commanders’. The family reunion took place up in the mountains of Jinotega, in a camp of contras who had laid down arms. During the years of separation N. C. moved from one job to another, including an appointment in Sandinista state security. It was moving to watch the emotional impact on her, on him and on the children – now, youngsters – as they tried to rebuild family life. This case contrasts with that of R.L., a son of a Sandinista Guerrilla Commander related to one of the most traditional families from southern Nicaragua. The young man was kidnapped in mid-1987 by a contra patrol while serving the draft, then carried to Honduras where he was a prisoner for some weeks in one of Resistencia Nicaragüense's camps there. His family rapidly asked for help from one of his father's direct cousins, who immediately interceded on R.L.'s behalf. This cousin was a former Sandinista minister, who went into exile in Costa Rica in the early 1980s, where he became a political adviser to Alianza Revolucionaria Democra'tica (ARDE), Eden Pastora's counterrevolutionary group. R. L. was sent by plane to San José where he stayed in his relative's home before going back safely to Managua a few weeks later.

45 Stone fails in his attempt to establish an ‘aristocratic social background’ for Daniel and Humberto Ortega; his data are not convincing and his prose is plagued by vague statements, which contrast with his accuracy when dealing with other not-so-controversial Nicaraguan officials. His only source is a secondary one, authored by a former adviser to Lt Colonel Oliver North. See Stone, , The Heritage of the Conquistadorcs, p. 40.Google Scholar The most Stone is able to establish is that the Ortega brothers were socially connected neither to a poor peasantry nor to the rural proletariat, but to what I might call a relatively well-to-do chapiollo yeomanry. A reading of Eric Wolf's Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century might have saved him time and effort.

46 Literature on ‘notable’ family networks in Latin American politics (a) focuses much more on the predominantly agrarian past than on the mostly urbanised and industrialised present, and (b) dedicates much more attention to subordinate or marginal economic areas than to the dynamic centres of economic and political modernisation. See the extensive bibliography listed in Balmori, et al. , Las alianzas de familias y la formation del país….Google Scholar