|
Nicaragua Relations with Other Countries
The Chamorro government maintained relations with the
Soviet
Union and Cuba, despite their identification with the
Sandinista
party and cause. Even before the 1990 election results
were
officially announced, the Soviet Union pledged to
recognize
whoever won, as long as the elections were fair, and
quickly
acknowledged Chamorro as the winner. Cuba's government
kept more
than a diplomatic presence in Nicaragua after Chammoro's
inauguration, and Cuban medical personnel remained in some
areas
to continue assisting with Nicaraguan health programs.
Many countries provided economic assistance of various
types,
either through bilateral or Central American regional
initiatives, although the amount of aid that the Chamorro
government received was criticized as falling far short of
its
needs. In June 1990, at a two-day Conference of Donors
meeting in
Rome, the Chamorro government was successful in securing
pledges
toward the US$350 million it had requested in emergency
aid. this
amount was in addition to what friendly countries had
already
pledged. Nicaragua said that it needed US$220 million for
social
programs, infrastructure repair, and support for the
producer
sector, including small and medium producers, and US$130
million
to finance the import of fuel and inputs for economic
recovery.
Pledges were made by nearly all of the thirty-four donors
attending the conference, which included twelve European
Community countries, the
World Bank (see Glossary),
and the
International Monetary Fund
(IMF--see Glossary).
Most of the
funds reportedly were contributed by Venezuela and West
Germany.
Subsequently, in July 1990, Venezuela announced that it
would
resume oil exports to Nicaragua, which it had suspended in
1985.
After the renegotiation of Nicaragua's US$150 million debt
incurred during the Sandinista years for oil supplied
under
Mexico and Venezuela's concessionary San José oil supply
agreement.
In September 1991, the Chamorro government rectified
relations with multilateral institutions. It paid off
US$270
million in arrearages to the World Bank and US$90 million
to the
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through donations
and
credits from the United States and other countries,
including a
bridge loan from Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain.
The same
month, the IMF announced that it had approved an
eighteen-month,
US$55.7 million loan to support the Chamorro government's
economic reform program.
A mid-March 1992 meeting of the "consultative group" of
donor
nations organized by the World Bank seemed promising as a
source
of substantial funds for 1992 and 1993. The government
planned to
use the funding for infrastructure, agricultural
production,
social programs, and balance-of-payments support.
Asian countries also expressed interest in new
relations with
Nicaragua. Japan and South Korea principally investigated
investment possibilities, although Japan also looked into
the
prospect of building a new transisthmian canal across
Nicaragua.
Taiwan, which in 1990 had a political interest in
reestablishing
the diplomatic relations that the Sandinistas had broken
in
reaching out to China, offered not only substantial
investments
but also low-interest loans. However, Taiwanese plans to
construct a sawmill and to manufacture plywood and veneers
in the
northeast to ship to United States and European markets
ran afoul
of Nicaraguan environmentalists.
* * *
Post-Sandinista Nicaragua may fall into the same
academic
literature void as pre-Sandinista Nicaragua, with little
reliable
English-language public source material analyzing the
political
science. Academic work in print on Nicaragua's internal
politics
in the postelectoral period was limited as of December
1993. All
suffer from lack of study of the UNO parties, which were
disregarded by academe during the Sandinista years much as
the
opposition was ignored during the Somoza years. Until that
deficit is corrected, analysis of the politics of the
Chamorro
years is likely to remain superficial and/or susceptible
to
political bias. A worthwhile general overview of Nicaragua
in the
early postelectoral period is contained in the chapter on
Nicaragua in Tom Barry's Central America Inside Out:
The
Essential Guide to Its Societies, Politics, and
Economies. An
informed discussion of the politics of the Chamorro
government's
first eight months is "Nicaragua in Transition," an
article in
Current History, by Jennifer McCoy, who served as the
Carter
Center's representative in Nicaragua during the
preelectoral and
postelectoral period.
Other studies that bear on the political situation are
more
specifically focused. Studies of the election itself are
included
in Philip J. Williams's "Elections and Democratization in
Nicaragua: The 1990 Elections in Perspective," in the
Journal
of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs. Family
relations
in Nicaraguan politics from the 1800s through the early
Chamorro
years are treated in "Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and
Politics
in Contemporary Nicaragua," by Carlos Maria Vilas, in the
Journal of Latin American Studies.
The Sandinistas continue to be a focus of study. An
entire
postelectoral volume of Latin American
Perspectives, a
publication of the pro-Sandinista North American Congress
on
Latin America, is dedicated to the Sandinistas. It is
enlited,
The Sandinista Legacy: The Construction of
Democracy.
New York Times reporter Mark Uhlig, who covered
Nicaragua
during the Sandinista years, has written an extensive
postelectoral analysis of the FSLN in "Nicaragua's
Permanent
Crisis: Ruling from Above and Below," in Survival.
A
forthcoming book by Rose J. Spalding will deal with the
politics
of the Sandinista years of the Chamorro government:
Capitalists and Revolution in Nicaragua. (For
further
information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1993
|
