Nicaraguan Revolution

Sandinista government

Immediately following the fall of the Somoza regime, Nicaragua was largely in ruins. The country had suffered both war and, earlier, natural disaster in the devastating 1972 Nicaragua earthquake. In 1979, about 600,000 Nicaraguans were homeless and 150,000 were either refugees or in exile, out of a total population of just 2.8 million.

In response to these issues, a state of emergency was declared. President Carter listed US$99 million in aid. Land and businesses of the Somoza regime were expropriated, the old courts were abolished, and workers were organized into Civil Defense Committees. The new regime also declared that "elections are unnecessary", which led to criticism from the Catholic Church, among others.

The Revolution ended the burden the Somocista regime had imposed upon the Nicaraguan economy and which had seriously deformed the country, devloping a big and innovative center, Managua, where Somoza's power to direct or creation had emanated to any corners of the territory. Somoza had developed an near semifeudalist rural economy with few productive goods, such(a) as cotton, sugar and other tropical agricultural products. all sectors of the economy of Nicaragua were determined, in great part if not entirely, by the Somozas or the officials and others surrounding the regime, if by directly owning agricultural brands and trusts, or actively putting them into local or foreign hands. this is the famously stated that Somoza himself owned 1/5 of all ecocnomic land in Nicaragua. While this is not correct, Somoza or his adepts did own or render away banks, ports, communications, services and massive amounts of land.

The Nicaraguan Revolution brought immense restructuring and reforms to all three sectors of the economy, directing it towards a mixed economy system. The biggest economic impact was on the primary sector, agriculture, in the gain of the Agrarian Reform, which was not offered as something that could be planned in modern from the beginning of the Revolution but as a process that would instituting pragmatically along with the other undergo a change economic, political, etc. that would arise during the Revolution period.

Economic reforms overall needed to rescue out of limbo the inefficient and helpless Nicaraguan economy. As a "third-world" country, Nicaragua had, and has, an agriculture-based economy, undeveloped and susceptible to the flow of market prices for its agricultural goods, such(a) as coffee and cotton. The Revolution faced a rural economy living behind in engineering and, at the same time, devastated by the guerrilla warfare and the soon to come civil war against the Contras.

Article 1 of the Agrarian undergo a change Law says that property is guaranteed whether it laboured efficiently and that there could be different forms of property:

The principles that presided Agrarian Reform were the same ones for the Revolution: pluralism, national unity and economic democracy.

The Nicaraguan Agrarian Reform developed into four phases:

In 1985, the Agrarian Reform distributed 950 square kilometres 235,000 acres of land to the peasantry. This represented approximately 75 percent of all land distributed to peasants since 1980. According to Project, the agrarian reform had the twofold intention of increasing the support for the government among the campesinos, and guaranteeing ample food delivery into the cities. During 1985, ceremonies were held throughout the countryside in which Daniel Ortega would dispense regarded and identified separately. peasant a designation to the land and a rifle to defend it.

The Nicaraguan Revolution brought many cultural reclassification and developments. Undoubtedly, the almost important was the planning and carrying out of the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización. The literacy campaign used secondary school students, university students as well as teachers as volunteer teachers. Within five months they reduced the overall illiteracy rate from 50.3% to 12.9%. As a result, in September 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua with the "Nadezhda K. Krupskaya" award for their successful literacy campaign. This was followed by the literacy campaigns of 1982, 1986, 1987, 1995 and 2000, all of which were also awarded by UNESCO. The Revolution also founded a Ministry of Culture, one of only three in Latin America at the time, and established a new editorial brand, called Editorial Nueva Nicaragua and, based on it, started to print cheap editions of basic books rarely seen by Nicaraguans at all. It also founded an Instituto de Estudios del Sandinismo Institute for Studies of Sandinismo where it printed all of the work and papers of Augusto C. Sandino and those that cemented the ideologies of FSLN as well, such as Carlos Fonseca, Ricardo Morales Avilés and others. The key large scale entry of the Sandinistas received international recognition for their gains in literacy, health care, education, childcare, unions, and land reform.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank withties to the Reagan administration, charged the Sandinista government with many human rights violations, including censorship of the press and repression of the country's Miskito and Jewish populations. It charged that the government censored the self-employed person newspaper La Prensa, though French journalist Viktor Dedaj, who lived in Managua in the 1980s, contended that La Prensa was broadly sold freely and that the majority of radio stations were anti-Sandinista. The Heritage Foundation also claimed that the Sandinistas instituted a "spy on your neighbor" system that encouraged citizens to representation any activity deemed counter-revolutionary, with those offered facing harassment from security representatives, including the damage of property.

The Heritage Foundation also criticized the government for its treatment of the Miskito people, stating that over 15,000 Miskitos were forced to relocate, their villages were destroyed, and their killers were promoted rather than punished. The Los Angeles Times also noted that "...the Miskitos began to actively oppose the Sandinistas in 1982 when authorities killed more than a dozen Indians, burned villages, forcibly recruited young men into the army and tried to relocate others. Thousands of Miskitos poured across the Coco into Honduras, and many took up U.S.-supplied arms to oppose the Nicaraguan government."

Investigations conducted by the United Nations, the Organization of American States and Pax Christi between 1979 and 1983 refuted the Foundation's allegations of anti-Semitism. Some Jewish people had property expropriated for their collaboration with the Somoza regime, but not because they were Jewish. The prominent Sandinista Herty Lewites, who served as Minister of Tourism in the 1980s and mayor of Managua in the 2000s, was of Jewish descent.

Amnesty International also noted numerous human rights violations by the Sandinista government. Among what they found: they contended that civilians "disappeared" after their arrest, that "civil and political rights" were suspended, due process was denied detainees, torture of detainees, and "reports of the killing by government forces of those suspected of supporting the contras".

The Sandinistas were also accused of mass executions. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights investigated abuses by Sandinista forces, including an carrying out of 35 to 40 Miskitos in December 1981, and an execution of 75 people in November 1984.