Nicaragua

Emerging From the Shadow of the Eagle

Thomas W. Walker

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429974557
• Édition: 6
• Sujet: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Sous-sujet: Política

Nicaragua: Emerging from the Shadow of the Eagle details the country's unique history, culture, economics, politics, and foreign relations. Its historical coverage considers Nicaragua from pre-Columbian and colonial times as well as during the nationalist liberal era, the U.S. Marine occupation, the Somoza dictatorship, the Sandinista revolution and government, the conservative restoration after 1990, and consolidation of the FSLN's power since the return of Daniel Ortega to the presidency in 2006.

The thoroughly revised and updated sixth edition features new material covering political, economic, and social developments since 2011. This includes expanded discussions on economic diversification, women and gender, and social programs. Students of Latin American politics and history will learn the how the interventions by the United States 'the eagle' to 'the north' have shaped Nicaraguan political, economic, and cultural life, but also the extent to which Nicaragua is increasingly emerging from the eagle's shadow.

1
Early History

The Pre-Columbian Period to the Mid-1930s

The history of Nicaragua is among the most turbulent and interesting in all of the Americas. If, on the one hand, it features incredible elite exploitation, mass suffering, and foreign interference, it also includes a significant element of popular resistance, national pride, and human nobility.

THE PRE-COLUMBIAN PERIOD

Even before the arrival of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, the territory that we now call Nicaragua was not a land of human tranquility. A demographic outpost of various Meso- and South American Indian groups, Nicaragua was an ethnically complex region. The most obvious dissimilarities were between the various indigenous tribes related to South American peoples who lived in the rain forests and savannahs to the east of the Central Cordillera and the Meso-American groups that inhabited the more hospitable western regions. The former, though primarily hunters and gatherers, also engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture, as do some of their descendants today. The more culturally sophisticated inhabitants of the western regions, on the other hand, were sedentary agriculturalists who raised corn, beans, and vegetables and lived in established towns with populations sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands. The western tribes spoke a variety of Meso-American languages reflecting several distinct waves of settlement from what is today Mexico and northern Central America. Though the western Indians rarely had anything to do with their more primitive counterparts across the mountains, contact and conflict among the tribes of the west were common. Warfare, slavery, and involuntary tribute by the weak to the strong were among the basic ingredients of pre-Columbian life in the west. In a sense, then, many of the traits that characterized colonial rule existed long before the first conquistadores set foot in the land.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD: 1522–1822

The Spanish conquest of Nicaragua was an extension of the colonization of Panama, which began in 1508. Plagued by internal conflict, disease, and Panama’s inhospitable natural environment, the Spaniards were not in a position to expand their control to the immediate north for well over a decade. It was only in 1522 that Gil González, commanding a small band of explorers under contract to the Spanish crown, finally set foot in Nicaragua. The purpose of his expedition—like that of other conquistadores—was to convert souls and to obtain gold and other riches from the native population. Considering that he managed to convert close to 30,000 Indians, carry off nearly 90,000 pesos worth of gold, and discover what appeared to be a water link between the Caribbean and the Pacific, González’s venture into Nicaragua was a clear success.

When the Spaniards arrived in western Nicaragua in the early sixteenth century, they found a relatively advanced agrarian society. The approximately 1 million native inhabitants of the region—descendants of colonizers and refugees from the Mayan and Aztec civilizations to the north—lived in villages and cities ranging in population from a few hundred to tens of thousands. This was a feudal society, with chiefs, subchiefs, and commoners, in which tribute flowed from the lowly to the lofty. However, land was held collectively and each inhabitant of the villages and cities had access to a designated plot nearby. The rich soils of the region yielded agricultural products in abundance ranging from corn, cassava, and chili to beans, tobacco, and a variety of vegetables. Each population center had one or more local markets at which agricultural products were sold. Though periodic crop failure and intertribal warfare undoubtedly inflicted occasional acute hardship, the economy in general was relatively self-sufficient and self-contained. The market system, intraregional trade, and general access to rich agricultural lands provided the material wherewithal to satisfy basic human needs.

Though at first submissive, some Indians eventually decided to resist the bearded strangers. One of these was the legendary chief Diriangén, from the region around what is today the city of Granada. Several days after an initial meeting with González, in which he promised to bring his people to the Spaniard for conversion, Diriangén returned to attack the outsiders with several thousand warriors, causing them to retreat overland to the Pacific Ocean. To make matters worse, before they reached the safety of their Pacific fleet, González and his men were also set upon by warriors under the command of another chief, Nicarao. It was 1524 before the Spanish, under Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, returned to Nicaragua and imposed their control over the region.

The early years of the colonial period had a profound and lasting impact on the nature of Nicaraguan society and politics. The most important and tragic result of the conquest was demographic—the near total destruction of the large Indian population of the region. Incredible as it seems, it appears that Spanish chroniclers and early historians may have been fairly accurate when they reported that an original native population of around a million was reduced to tens of thousands within a few decades of the arrival of Gil González.¹ This incredible depopulation was the result of several factors. The outright killing of natives in battle, probably accounting for the demise of a few thousand, was the least significant factor. Death by exposure to diseases brought to the New World by the Spaniards was much more important. The fact that Indians had little natural immunity to such common ailments as measles and influenza resulted in an immediate and dramatic reduction in their numbers throughout the Americas. It is likely that hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguan Indians perished of disease within a few decades.

Slavery was a third important factor that reduced Nicaragua’s native population. Claims by writers of those times that 400,000 to 500,000 natives were gathered and exported into bondage during the first two decades of the colonial period seem to stand up to close scholarly investigation. The archives of the times show that there were enough slave ships of sufficient capacity making frequent enough trips to have accomplished this exportation.² The demand for slaves throughout the Spanish colonies—and especially in Peru in the 1530s—was very high. Though the Spanish themselves captured some slaves, many more were turned over to them by “friendly” Indian chiefs as a form of obligatory tribute. The life expectancy of these unfortunate souls was short. Many—sometimes 50 percent or more—died during the sea journey from Nicaragua to their intended destination. Most of the rest perished in slavery within a few years. As a result, supply never caught up with demand and, although the Spanish crown tried unsuccessfully to stop this lucrative trafficking in human life, the slave boom came to an end only when the resource was all but depleted.

By the 1540s the Indian population of western Nicaragua appears to have plummeted to between 30,000 and 40,000—and it declined gradually for several decades thereafter. The result of this demographic holocaust is that Nicaragua today, instead of being a predominantly Indian country, is essentially mestizo in racial type and almost exclusively Spanish in language and other aspects of culture. Though most of the cities and towns of the country bear Indian names reflecting the culture of their founders, few of the people who walk their streets today are aware of what the names mean or who the original inhabitants were.

Additionally, the near total destruction of the native population through death by contact with European diseases and the export of slaves created a severe manpower shortage that all but destroyed the labor-intensive agricultural base of the region’s economy. To be sure, some lands remained under intensive cultivation throughout the colonial period, providing some export products such as corn and cacao, as well as food to meet the region’s much reduced internal demand. But for the most part, the rich lands of Nicaragua reverted to jungle or were exploited for the raising of cattle to produce hides, tallow, and salted meat for sale to other colonies.

Another legacy of the colonial period—this one primarily political—was the rivalry between the principal cities of León, to the northwest of Lake Managua, and Granada, on the northern shore of Lake Nicaragua. Though both were founded by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1524, they differed from each other in important cultural, social, and economic characteristics. As it was originally felt that Granada would be the political capital of the colony, the more “aristocratic” conquistadores chose to settle there. Spanish soldiers of lower rank and social status were packed off to León to defend the colony against incursions and claims by other Spanish adventurers from the north. As it turned out, however, León, not Granada, became the administrative center of the country, and Granada found itself forced to submit to the rule of a series of corrupt administrators based in what it considered a culturally inferior city. The Catholic Church hierarchy, though stationed in the administrative center in León, sympathized with the aristocrats in Granada. There were significant differences in the economic interests of the two cities. The wealth of the self-styled aristocrats in Granada was based largely on cattle and on trade with the Caribbean via Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. Though cattle also were important in the region around León, many of the Leonese were also involved in such middle-class occupations as shipbuilding, the procurement and sale of pine products, and government service. International trade in León was oriented almost entirely toward the Pacific. Mutual jealousy and suspicion between the Leonese and Granadinos festered in a controlled form until independence allowed it to boil over into open warfare.

Curiously, the most flamboyant and prosperous years of the colonial period in Nicaragua were the first few decades, the time of the conquest and the slave trade. Once the Indian population had been depleted, the colony became an underpopulated backwater. Indeed, the severe manpower shortage forced some gold mines to close and caused landowners increasingly to switch from labor-intensive crop production to cattle raising. The economic foundation of this now underdeveloped colony was adequate to support the lifestyle of the landowning aristocrats in Granada and the merchants of León, but insufficient to provide for general prosperity.

To make matters worse, from the mid-seventeenth century on, the debilitated colony was frequently plagued by pirate attacks. The underpopulation of the colony and the concentration of wealth in the hands of the privileged classes of León and Granada made Nicaragua a prime target for attacks by pirates from England and elsewhere in Europe. As a result, trade via both the Caribbean and the Pacific was restricted and at times interrupted. By the mid-eighteenth century, the British, who were openly supportive of the pirates, became so bold as to occupy and fortify parts of the Caribbean coast. They maintained some claim over that region for well over a century.

Within a few decades the economy essentially had become externally oriented. The tiny Spanish elite accrued wealth through the sale of corn, cacao, and cattle products, the exploitation of forest products, shipbuilding, and intermittent gold mining—all to meet external rather than internal demands. Frequent pirate attacks further contributed to the region’s status as a colonial backwater. The process of underdevelopment had begun.

INDEPENDENCE

Nicaragua won its independence in stages: first as a part of the Mexican empire of Agustín de Iturbide in 1822, then as a member of the Central American Federation in 1823, and finally as an individual sovereign state in 1838. Throughout this period, the Leonese, who eventually came to call themselves Liberals, and the Granadinos, who championed the Conservative cause, squabbled and fought with each other over the control of their country. Mutual resentment between the two cities had flared up in 1811, a decade before the expulsion of the Spanish. When León, after first leading Granada into an insurrection against the crown, reversed its position and supported the royal authorities, it left the Granadinos in miserable isolation to receive the brunt of Spanish revenge. The end of colonial rule in Central America simply added to the woes of the common Nicaraguan, for it meant the removal of the one external force that had kept the elites of León and Granada from sending their people into open warfare against each other. After 1838, the chaos and interregional warfare intensified. Presidents came and went as one group or the other imposed temporary control.

The partial interruption of foreign dominance resulting from the disintegration and eventual collapse of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century was reflected in important changes in the Nicaraguan economic system. It is true that British traders were quick to provide the landed elite with an outlet for their traditional export products, but the relative political anarchy and international isolation of the first half century of independence also encouraged the growth of a number of other types of economic activity. There was a rapid growth in the number of self-sufficient peasant farms or huertas. A fragile indigenous marketing system was reestablished. And in the villages and cities, various types of cottage industries began to develop. For most of the Nicaraguan people this economic system, though certainly not highly developed, was fairly benign. Although he may have been exaggerating slightly, one observer writing in the early 1870s noted that “peonage such as is seen in Mexico and various parts of Spanish America does not exist in Nicaragua. . . . Any citizen whatever can set himself up on a piece of open land . . . to cultivate plantain and corn.”³

This break in foreign dominance would not last long. With Spain out of the way, other foreign powers began to interfere in Nicaraguan affairs, with the objective of dominating the interoceanic transit potential of the infant country. The British had long maintained a presence on the east coast. In the eighteenth century they had actually set up a form of protectorate over the Miskito Indians in that region. In the 1840s U.S. expansion to the Pacific coast of North America and the discovery of gold in California stimulated intense U.S. interest in Nicaragua as the site for an interoceanic transit route. Therefore, when the British moved to consolidate their control over the Miskito Coast by seizing the mouth of the San Juan River, the United States became alarmed and protested vigorously to the British. In 1850 the two countries attempted to diffuse the potential for conflict by signing the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, in which both sides forswore any unilateral attempt to colonize Central America or to dominate any transisthmian transit route.

THE WALKER AFFAIR

The treaty, however, failed to bring peace to Nicaragua. By the mid-1850s the two emerging themes of Nicaraguan political life—foreign interference and interregional warfare—converged to produce an important turning point and one of the most bizarre episodes in Central American history: the Walker affair. In spite of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the clearly conflicting interests of Britain and the United States in the area had kept tension between the two countries at a high level. Both countries frequently took sides in Nicaraguan domestic politics—the British tending to support the Conservatives, and the Americans, the Liberals. Finally, in 1854, the Liberals, who were at the time losing in a struggle to unseat the Conservatives, turned for help to a San Francisco–based soldier of fortune named William Walker.⁴

Though often depicted as a simple villain, Walker was an extremely interesting and complex individual. The son of a pioneer family from Tennessee, he graduated from college and earned a medical degree while still in his teens. He then pursued a law degree, practiced that profession for a short while, turned to journalism, and finally became a soldier of fortune—all before he had reached his mid-thirties. In some senses he was an idealist. As a journalist he championed the cause of abolition, and like many people of that era, he was a firm believer in manifest destiny—the imperialist expansion of Yankee ideals, by force if necessary, beyond the boundaries of the United States.

In accordance with his pact with the Liberals, Walker sailed in June 1855 from California to Nicaragua with a small band of armed Californians. After some initial military setbacks, he and his Liberal allies took Granada in October and set up a coalition government under a Conservative, Patricio Rivas. Almost from the start, the real power in the governm...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Map of Nicaragua
• Introduction
• 1 Early History: The Pre-Columbian Period to the Mid-1930s
• 2 The Somoza Era and the Sandinista Revolution
• 3 The Sandinistas in Power
• 4 A Revolution at War
• 5 The Conservative Restoration
• 6 A Revolution Returns
• Annotated Sources in English
• Index