Editorial from Nicaragua's 'La Prensa' on Reagan (not what you would expec

[Zuni]

The reactions caused in Nicaragua by the death of the ex- President of the United States, Ronald W. Reagan, demonstrate in an unequivocal way, that the wounds of the pro-communist revolution and the civil war of the Eighties, are still open and still bleed.

In fact, as we have said in previous occasions, in spite of the well-meaning thing that is the expression of forgetting the past and to look only ahead, it is only a rhetorical phrase. The truth is that as long as the personal protagonists, active and passive, oppressors and victims, of those ill-fated events who were glorious and horrendous, according to the side in which every one was placed or fought, it is impossible to erase them of the individual and collective memory of the Nicaraguans. The crimes that were committed in both sides can have prescribed legally because the memory of the facts does not end with death, because they are enrolled in history, forever.

Now, seeing the death of ex- president Reagan, one has to remember that if had not been for his vision and by its energetic international policy of containment of Communism, in Nicaragua there would be at this point a communist State, the Nicaraguans would not have individual liberties, in the country would not be democracy and the great majority of the population would be put under the espionage of the CDS (block committees), the repression of the Mint (interior ministry) and the DGSE(similar to kgb), and the rigid rationing of basic products, while the communist nomenclature would have everything, like in Cuba.

Inclusively, the PRESS (name of the newspaper) would no longer exits, or in the best of case, it would be communist unionist or government spokesman, of the Sandinista Party or the Popular Sandinista Army (EPS).

Certainly, the strategy of Reagan prevented that Communism, mortal and sworn enemy of freedom, democracy and human rights would settle in Nicaragua and be expanded to other countries. He was convinced that Communism was nonviable as an economic and social system and that would not last forever, contrary to what leaders of the USSR and communists all over the world believed and wanted. But he (Reagan) was a great strategist, who also knew that no despotic regime falls by itself, however rotten it may be. It is necessary to help it fall.

For that reason, to cause the USSR to fall on its own weight, Reagan challenged it to a super expensive armament race - the "War of the Galaxies" (star wars) - that the Soviets could not resist and chose to want to reform Communism by means of the doctrine of Gorbachov: Perestroika (reconstruction) and Glasnost (transparency) Something impossible to obtain, because Communism is nonviable, and therefore, impossible to reform.

And just as ex- president Reagan did not think that it was necessary to defeat the Soviet Union militarily, he did not think that it was necessary to overthrow the pro-communist Sandinista regime by means of war(invasion). So Reagan never planned to invade Sandinista Nicaragua, he did not even think that the contras (freedom fighters) had to prevail militarily. The war of Nicaragua was handled like a "conflict of low or average intensity", because the intention was to force the Sandinistas to celebrate free elections, competitive and internationally supervised.

After Mijaíl Gorbachov rose to power in the broken Soviet Union, in 1985, Reagan decided with him that the conflict of Nicaragua had to be solved in a pacific and political way. And the 7 of August of 1987, the presidents of Central America approved the Agreements of Esquipulas II, in which Daniel Ortega committed himself to gamble the power with the opposition, something that the FSLN(Sandinistas) always had rejected since the democratic revolution prevailed and it turned aside towards totalitarianism.

That one would be the sentence of death of the Sandinista regime that in spite of the pressures and repressions against the democratic opposition, was defeated by most of the Nicaraguans in the elections that took place the 25 of February of 1990.

And thus it was that, from the 25 of April of that same year, it began in Nicaragua the transition to freedom and democracy , thanks to the struggle fight of all the democratic Nicaraguans, and to the decisive aid of the ex- President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

[cspiguy]

1. This sounds so wrong.

it makes all of my professors at Wayne State throughout the 80's seem like idiots.

[Zuni]

2. The problem

is that no one looks at Nicaragua objectively. They were probably lefties rooting for Ortega and blind to anything but anti-communist misdeeds

[Union Thug]

3. Until I know more about the author..

.. I'll consider it just more pap from the bourgeois benefactors of the Contra-thugs.

[Zuni]

4. La Prensa was a pro-democrat newspaper run by Violetta Chamorro

and shut down by the Sandanistas in their crackdown on freedoms.

Many of the Contras were farmers, Indians and genuine democrats. The vast majority were not Somoza people.

[struggle4progress]

5. Does La Prensa still get CIA money?

[struggle4progress]

6. Fr. Miguel D’Escoto : "Reagan Was The Butcher of My People"

Editors Note: Fr. Miguel D'Escoto is a Catholic priest in Managua, Nicaragua. He was Nicaragua's Foreign Minister under the Sandinista government of the 1980s, when the US was arming and supporting the Contra death squads....

<snip>
More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but, in fact, the greatest enemy of the right of self- determination of peoples. Reagan was known as the "great communicator" and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non- existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.

Of course, as I say this, I'm quite aware that to the people of the Project for a New American Century, that is counted as a big loss. Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the world today is far less safe and secure than it has ever been. Reagan in fact was an international outlaw. He came to the Presidency of the United States shortly after Somoza, a Dictator that the U.S. had imposed over Nicaragua for practically half a century; had been deposed by Nicaraguan Nationalists under the leadership of the Sandinista Liberation Front. To Reagan, Nicaragua had to be re-conquered. He blamed Carter for having lost Nicaragua, as if Nicaragua ever belonged to anyone else other than the Nicaraguan people. That was then the beginning of this war that Reagan invented, and mounted and financed and directed: the Contra War. About which he continually lied to the People, helping the United States people to be the most ignorant people around the world. I said ignorant, I don't say not intelligent. But the most ignorant people around the world about what the United States does abroad.

People don't even begin to see -- if they did, they would rebel. And so, he lied to the people, as Bush lies to the people today and as they push on, thinking that the United States is above every law, human or divine. And we took the United States, Reagan's United States, his government to court, the World Court. I was Foreign Minister at that time here in Nicaragua. I was responsible for that. And the United States government received the harshest sentence, the harshest condemnation ever in the history of world justice. In spite of the fact that the United States since the early 1920's has been proclaiming to the world that one of the proofs of its moral superiority as compared to other countries around the world is the fact that it abides by the international law and was obedient to the world court when the United States was brought to the world court in Nicaragua and received the condemnation that the United States failed to heed the sentence and they till owe Nicaragua by now must be between 20,000 and $30,000 million at the time when we left government that the damages caused by that Reagan war was over $17 billion, and this, according to very moderate estimators of damage, people from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, people from Howard University and from Oxford and from the University of Paris basically this is the team that was pulled together to estimate the damage. The United States was ordered to pay for the damage. Bush never even wanted to talk to me about it. I said, "Well, let's have a meeting so that you comply with your sentence of the court." He said to me in two different letters that there was nothing to talk about.
<snip>

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=1305

[struggle4progress]

7. Bin Laden fue Contra (Nuevo Diario)

http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/archivo/2001/septiembre/13-septiembre-2001/nacional/nacional14.html

A cheery little peek at Osama bin Laden's contra connection.

[struggle4progress]

8. <snip> In Nicaragua, La Prensa .. reported ..

that a spokesman for the Catholic Church said Reagan's support for the contra war in the 1980s had done "irreparable damage" to the country.

"All men have light and shadows," said vicar Eddy Montenegro according to the report.

The paper chose to downplay those who spoke well of Reagan. The very last paragraph of the La Prensa story noted that Nicaraguan president Enrique Bolaños had sent his condolences to the Reagan family saying, "the ex-president will always be remembered for having contributed to the establishment of democracy and liberty in Nicaragua and the world."

The coverage was all the more remarkable because La Prensa and the Catholic Church had been the leading adversaries of the Sandinista government during Reagan's time.
<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24245-2004Jun8.html


Sounds like there's some schizophrenia at La Prensa!