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Rural Labor and the State in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Forrest D. Colburn
Forrest D. Colburn*
Affiliation:
Florida International University
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Barring the outbreak of internecine conflict in Central America, the greatest challenge to the Nicaraguan Revolution lies in rural Nicaragua. As in most developing countries, the severest poverty in Nicaragua has always been found in the rural areas. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the rural areas of the country are also the source of the nation's wealth: 90 percent of the foreign exchange, so necessary to a small state like Nicaragua, is derived from agriculture. Moreover, around 70 percent of the population earn their living from the land. Consequently, meeting the promises of the revolution depends crucially on the performance of the agricultural sector.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 1984 , pp. 103 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

Field research was made possible by a fellowship from the Doherty Foundation at Princeton University. Milton J. Esman and Norman T. Uphoff at Cornell University's Center for International Studies provided useful comments and suggestions, as did the anonymous reviewers of LARR.

References

Notes

1. For accounts of the FSLN's struggle, see Humberto Ortega Saavedra, Cinquenta años de lucha sandinista (Mexico: Editorial Diógenes, 1979); and Nicaragua: la estrategia de la victoria, edited by Fernando Carmona (Mexico: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1980).

2. See Carmen Diana Deere and Peter Marchetti, “The Worker-Peasant Alliance in the First Year of the Nicaraguan Agrarian Reform,” Latin American Perspectives 8 (Spring 1981).

3. David Morawetz, “Economic Lessons from Some Small Socialist Developing Countries,” World Development 8 (May/June 1980): 337–69; Walter Gómez, “Bolivia: Problems of a Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Export Economy,” The Journal of Developing Areas 10 (July 1976): 461–83; Carmelo Mesa-Lago, The Economy of Socialist Cuba: A Two-Decade Appraisal (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), pp. 175–79; Arturo Valenzuela, Chile (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), pp. 61–64.

4. The article was revised for publication during a three-month stay in Nicaragua, from June through August of 1983.

5. Published information utilized included books, newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines. Reports and pamphlets of nongovernment organizations were also used. Some of these were published and others were mimeographed.

6. For analyses of this region, see Philip A. Dennis, “The Costeños and the Revolution in Nicaragua,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 23 (August 1981): 271–96; Centro de Investigación y Estudios de la Reforma Agraria (CIERA), La Mosquita en la Revolución (Managua: CIERA, 1981).

7. Figures are from Deere and Marchetti, “The Worker-Peasant Alliance,” p. 42.

8. Rural subsistence strategies in Central America are outlined by J. Douglas Uzzell, “Mixed Strategies and the Informal Sector: Three Faces of Reserve Labor,” Human Organization 39 (Spring 1980): 40–49.

9. In Nicaragua, finca (here translated simply as farm) is used to refer to a wide range of agricultural estates that range from small farms to large plantations.

10. The agrarian reform is discussed in the following works: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de la Reforma Agraria, El hambre en los países del tercer mundo (Managua: CIERA, 1983), pp. 37–46; Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de la Reforma Agraria, Distribución y consumo popular de alimentos en Managua (Managua: CIERA, 1983). For a compilation of decrees and laws surrounding the agrarian reform, see Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario y Reforma Agraria (MIDINRA), Marco jurídico de la reforma agraria nicaragüense (Managua: MIDINRA, 1982).

11. This dilemma is discussed in Joseph Collins, What Difference Could a Revolution Make? (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1982), pp. 69–78.

12. This account comes from Jorge G. Castañeda, Contradicciones en la Revolución de Nicaragua (Mexico: Tiempo Extra Editores, 1980), pp. 49–50.

13. La Prensa, 9 July 1981.

14. La Prensa, 27 July 1981.

15. La Prensa, 29 July 1981.

16. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Informe de la Misión Especial de Programación a Nicaragua (Rome: IFAD, 1980), p. 92.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., p. 88.

19. Ibid.

20. Decretos-Leyes para gobierno de un país a través de una junta de gobierno de reconstrucción nacional, Vols. 1–5, edited by Rolando D. Lacayo and Martha Lacayo de Arauz (Managua: Editorial Unión, 1979–82).

21. A decline in the real incomes of rural low-income groups is likewise reported by Solon Barraclough, A Preliminary Analysis of the Nicaraguan Food System (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1982), p. 58.

22. CIERA, La Mosquita en la Revolución, p. 204.

23. This trend is also noted by Collins, What Difference Could a Revolution Make?, pp. 74–76.