For the past year,
I’ve been researching the movement of Americans who supported the Nicaragua’s
socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) during the 1970s and
1980s. While the United States’ relationship with the Sandinistas during this
period is often associated with the brutal Contra War covertly waged against
Nicaragua’s government by the CIA and the Reagan administration, the attitudes
of many Americans regarding the Sandinistas did not fall in line with that of
their elected leaders. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of leftists
and progressives in the United States looked upon the Sandinista’s 1979
revolution and its newly formed government as an opportunity for leftist
political change in the Western Hemisphere while their own government drifted
further to the right under the policies of Neoconservatism. During the 1980s,
solidarity activists travelled to Nicaragua by the thousands to assist in the
preservation of socialism in Central America by building government-run
schools, hospitals, and even painting public art murals depicting heroic images
of the recent revolution. Images such as these often come to mind when the
Sandinista Solidarity Movement is mentioned. Yet, these transnational
expeditions built upon the earlier efforts of primarily Latino activists in the
working-class Mexican and Central American neighborhood of San Francisco’s
Mission District – an area that in the 1970s boasted the largest Nicaraguan community outside Nicaragua itself.
One of those activists
who devoted a portion of his mid-twenties to supporting the Sandinistas’
guerrilla insurrection during the mid-1970s was Alejandro Murguia. Born in Los
Angeles and raised in Mexico City, Murguia moved to San Francisco in the late
1960s where he eventually joined El Comite Civico Pro Liberacion de Nicaragua,
the United States’ first Sandinista Solidarity committee. Founded in 1974, the
group published and distributed the pro-FSLN Spanish language newspaper Gaceta
Sandinista, held frequent protests at the 24th and Mission Bay Area
Rapid Transit (BART) Station, and even occupied the Nicaraguan Consulate in
1978, all in support of the ongoing Nicaraguan guerrilla insurrection. Murguia
even travelled to Nicaragua in 1979 with a group of other San Francisco
solidarity activists to assist in the overthrow of Nicaraguan Dictator
Anastasio Somoza. On top of all that, Murguia and many other 1970s Latino
solidarity activists were also poets whose artistic expression – like many
Latin American writers of the twentieth century – went hand in hand with their
aspirations for a more egalitarian society. He has since published several
books of both poetry and prose that often detail his experiences in the United
States and Latin America. In 2014, he won the prestigious title of San Francisco’s
poet laureate. Murguia’s life story is one that has fascinated me for a few
years now. Stories like his make San Francisco – a city increasingly overrun
with skyscraper luxury condos whose green, plexiglass windows resemble fish-tanks – a place whose past
continues to make it endlessly fascinating and vital to me, despite its current
incarnation. It’s a really good feeling to talk with someone who can evoke that sense
of inspiration within you. So, in an attempt to share these feelings of
exuberance that talking with Murguia and other participants of this movement
has offered me, I thought I’d share this interview. Here Goes:
Okay, so, first off,
maybe just introduce yourself and tell me a little about how you became
interested in the leftist politics, like the ones you supported in Nicaragua.
Alright, so, I’m Alejandro Murguia and we’re here in San
Francisco. Progressive politics have been part of my growing up since I was
about eighteen years old. I was first involved in the Chicano student movement,
and then, later on when I arrived in San Francisco, I had already been to Cuba
in the Venceremos Brigade.[1]
So, I already had a broader political perspective than just the Chicano
Movement or Aztlan. And, of course, being in San Francisco, which had a very
large Nicaraguan community at that time, it was just sort of a natural
collaboration with the Nicaraguan Solidarity Committees that were formed around
1974 or 1975.
And, what was it about
the Sandinista Revolution in particular that interested you and eventually galvanized
you to protest?
Well, growing up with the romanticism of Che, for example,
there was this whole movement in Latin America with guerrilla movements in
places like Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. It seemed sort of
like a natural progression for someone like myself who was interested in change
in Latin America and all the different struggles happening there. This was in
part because my connection to the Nicaraguan community, but also because of the
Frente Sandinista, its program, its leadership. You couldn’t help but be
impressed by their intellectual capacity. Almost all of them were
intellectuals, who read extensively. And, almost all of them were poets of one
type or another, both writing poetry and admiring poetry. And, some of them –
and I use this word carefully – had an almost mystical quality to them that is
very rare to find among radical and progressive groups. In particular, I would cite
Carlos Fonseca, the founder of the FSLN, and Eduardo Contreras, the original
commandante cero, who was a brilliant intellectual and strategist for the
Frente. These personalities, I think, really helped shape my identification
with Nicaragua. I never met either of them personally, as they were both killed
around 1977 or 1976, but their impact was tremendous, especially for the
exterior. It was Eduardo Contreras who conceptualized the idea for solidarity
committees, starting first in Mexico City and then, San Francisco, the first
one outside Mexico City. So, that was an important, intimate link to Nicaragua.
(Pictured Above: Murguia and Roberto Vargas, another solidarity activist and Mission District poet, march down Mission Street in San Francisco.)
What did you imagine a
post-revolutionary Nicaragua to look like? Do you think your experiences in San
Francisco might have informed these conceptions of an idealized society in any
way?
Well, idealism tends to go hand in hand with naiveté. But, again, back to Che, the way he conducted
himself in the guerrilla, which is how I expected the Commandantes around me to
act, but also how he conducted himself after the Cuban Revolution with
volunteer work. You know, the concept of going into the community on your day
off and working towards the benefit of everyone. That was really his
concept. So, I was kind of expecting a
revolution in that sense, in which the leaders of the community - and this also
goes back to pre-Colombian times – are ones who most sacrifice for the
community. So, I expected that every high level of sacrifice on the part of the
leaders, just like during the revolution.
How do your
experiences in San Francisco inform that thinking? I’ve read a lot of articles
that depict community building struggles within the Mission District and
revolutionary Nicaragua as intimately linked.[2]
Well, in San Francisco, we had a very grassroots approach to
the work we were doing, both on the political front and on the cultural front.
Since, it was a lot of it was volunteer work, it was a similar attitude. For
example, no one was in the solidarity committee because they sought to benefit
in any way. It was exactly the opposite. You were in it because you were
willing to sacrifice everything that you had for this particular cause. So, how
that was applied in Nicaragua, I guess I would say the first stages of the
insurrection and perhaps, in the first few years after the revolution with the
implementation of the FSLN’s social programs really communicate that attitude.
So, in your article
“Poetry and Solidarity” featured in the City Lights Book, Ten Years that Shook
the City, you write about how a lot of activists involved in the solidarity
committees in the mid-seventies – and, I guess I’m thinking of Roberto Vargas
in particular - were involved in
previous Left movements within the city during the sixties. Like, the Brown
Berets and the campaign around Los Siete de la Raza, a group of Latino Mission
youth falsely accused of killing two cops. Or, even the SF State Student Strike
in 1968 that culminated in the founding of the first College of Ethnic Studies
in the United States. All these movements really seem connected to this kind
of, third world internationalism that you’re talking about within the
solidarity committees. Did these movements lay any sort of foundations for what
would occur later on in the solidarity movement?
Well, I think, Roberto Vargas is a really good example of
that. Born in Nicaragua, raised in the Mission, but when the Brown Berets, when
the United Farmworkers formed, or even the Chicano Moratorium against the
Vietnam War, all very nationalistic, Chicano movements, but at the same time,
it did not preclude someone like Vargas, a Nicaraguan, from being a part of
these movements. In fact, he has poems about all this stuff. So, in that sense,
it was an easy step, if they show solidarity with us, we show solidarity with
them. It’s part of this larger concept, again, borrowing a little from Che, the
concept of being an internationalist, these struggles were not just confined to
the Mission District, they were ligado, or linked, in Spanish. In Vietnam, in
South Africa, in Chile, so these movements were a part of us developing a
broader international consciousness.
Another thing I’ve
been thinking about lately is how explosive this period of the late seventies
was in this city. Like, in terms of collapsing of idealism, you had the mass
suicides of the Fillmore’s People’s Temple members in Guyana and the murder of
progressive politicians like George Moscone and Harvey Milk. But, also the
continued prominence of left groups like the Panthers, the solidarity
committees you were involved in, queer activists rebelling in response to the
Dan White verdict, and even these more sort of wingnutty groups like the SLA.
How did that environment influence the solidarity movement? Was there any
overlap between these movements?
Well, all of these movements – for better or for worse -
were linked to this particular angst, this malaise within our society. Young people,
kind of like today, were trying to create a society that was more inclusive,
more egalitarian. Don’t forget – we had civil rights issues, voting issues,
incredible police violence – even worse than what’s going on now. The
government, the FBI, breaking into peoples’ offices, stealing papers, and
setting people like Geronimo Pratt up for prison time. And, so, there was this
incredible oppressive regime within this country. So, it seemed like these movements
were linked, but they weren’t officially linked in the sense that like, ‘Oh, we
had contact with the Panthers or something like that.’ No, they were more
serendipitous and spontaneous. But, overall, I think all these people involved
in these movements did want to see some sort of change in our society. And,
unfortunately, kind of like what’s going on now, there’s talk of change, but I
don’t see any real change happening. A classic example is Hillary Clinton. She
seems to have not been aware of all the struggles of Central America. Why do I
say that? Well, even though she’s of my generation, her own involvement in the
coup in Honduras a few years ago – which, nobody questions her about – or the
death of Berta Caceres. Or, even today, her endorsement today by John
Negropointe – the ambassador to Honduras during the Contra War! He put out the
CIA hit manual against students, teachers, and labor leaders in Nicaragua. He
is the creator of the death squads and the first ambassador to Iraq after the
Iraq War. And, what happens in Iraq? Well, the death squads follow him! And,
the fact that Ms. Clinton doesn’t seem aware of this history kind of tells me
that nothing has changed in the
policies of the United States.
Right – It definitely
seems like no matter who wins the Presidency this year, poor, people of color,
especially those of the Global South, will suffer the most. When you consider
places like Central America, the Neoliberalism of Clinton is hardly an
alternative to the spectre of a Trump Presidency. So, let’s talk about poetry
for a bit. Can you talk about the role that poetry and artistic expression in
the solidarity movement?
Well, one of the unique things about the Sandinista movement
was that the leadership were all intellectuals, they all read books! And, not
just history and political science, but often literature. One of the heroes of
Nicaragua, Ruben Dario, is a poet. He’s probably one of the best-known figures
of Nicaragua, and he’s a poet. Not too many countries can say that. And, then
of course, there was a whole slew of great poets emerging from Nicaragua during
this time, of course of which Ernesto Cardenal is the most well-known. He was a
staunch supporter of the Sandinistas, putting all his energy into solidarity
with the movement. This was a huge advantage to Nicaragua and the revolutionary
movement. And, we can compare that to El Salvador, with the tragic
assassination of Roque Dalton in 1974. So, in El Salvador, they didn’t have
that international voice, that international presence that could go anywhere in
the world and draw huge audiences in support of the revolution. And, now, the
leaders of Salvadorean movements that assassinated Roque say it was a mistake.
But, politicians don’t make mistakes when they assassinate poets.
You were involved in
distributing Gaceta Sandinista in the mid-seventies, the first solidarity
newspaper in the United States. What was the community reception to the
information embodied within this pro-FSLN newspaper in the Mission District?
What was the reception like to the news of the revolution generally?
You have to realize, at this time, censorship in Nicaragua
was pretty extensive. There had been a period of about thirty or forty years
where the name of Augusto Sandino had pretty much been erased. Nobody had seen
photos of Sandino. You didn’t even see news footage of Sandino until after the
triumph of the revolution. For the first time, people are actually seeing him
move. So, to break that blockade of censorship was one of the goals of the
Gaceta and to bring the sort of, counter-news of what was going on in
Nicaragua. You know, communiqués from the Frente, who had been arrested, we
highlighted the arrest of Tomas Borges, probably saved his life. So, the
Nicaraguan community responded extremely positively. We’d print 5000 copies,
distribute all of them free, and they’d go like, pie caliente. So, it was very
important propaganda work for the movement. And, later on, when the movement
expanded into the North American community, around ’78 or ’79, we started
putting out bilingual editions. The last two or three issues were bilingual.
(Pictured Above: Some pictures of Pro-Sandinista protests at the 24th and Mission BART Station featured in Gaceta Sandinista)
Could you shed any
light onto that expansion of the movement into the North American community? It
seems like during the 1980s, the solidarity movement was mostly made up of
white, middle class activists. But, earlier on, the movement you were a part of
is primarily made up of Central American immigrants and embedded within the
working-class neighborhoods of the Mission. Why this change?
Well, it’s an accurate observation that the solidarity
contingents changed. Two reasons, perhaps. One, a lot of the Nicaraguan
community, the leaders of the solidarity groups and newspapers, went back to
Nicaragua. Some of them even went back before the triumph of ’79 to integrate
themselves into the FSLN. So, there was a big shift in the community. Then,
what also happened after the triumph was that a different wave of solidarity
starts happening with people all over the world, the United States, Europe, and
Latin America. People started traveling to Nicaragua in support of the
revolution, building schools, all the sort of things that happen when the
revolution takes control. So, the dynamics shift. Before ’79, North Americans
would not be going down on solidarity brigades to Nicaragua. I mean, there
wasn’t a solidarity base in Nicaragua unless you were in the FSLN. And, then,
the Somocistas, the reactionaries in Nicaragua, fled Nicaragua and wound up in
the United States. So, that also changed the dynamic because now, the
Nicaraguan community also had a large contingent that were anti-revolution, and
perhaps wound up supporting the Contras, or just didn’t want to part of all the
changes going on in Nicaragua. So, the whole thing changed tremendously.
(Pictured Above: SF for Nicaragua protests, circa 1977)
In your book Southern
Front, a semi-autobiographical account of the FSLN’s overthrow of Somoza, you
write about how international the makeup of those fighting to overthrow Somoza
was. There were Venezuelans, North Americans, Europeans. Was that how it was?
Well, I was in the Southern Front. It was a very open front,
in the sense that it was very easy to cross the border of Nicaragua and get
into Costa Rica, so that’s why you this whole slew of internationalists.
Whereas, the other fronts, they were much more difficult to get into. So, part
of it was just location, and of course, you know, if you wanted to show
solidarity with Nicaragua, that was the easiest thing to do. Go to Costa Rica
and get hooked up with some sort of solidarity committee down there, and
participate in whichever you way you felt capable.
And, how did actually
being in Nicaragua during this time change your perspective on the revolution
and what was going on in Central America?
Well, I don’t know that it changed my perspective. Don’t forget
that the triumph was somewhat short lived, because, almost immediately, Reagan
gets elected and starts the whole Contra War, of which John Negropointe was a
big part of, and then, of course, all the violence that was perpetuated against
El Salvador. So, the dynamics of change in Central America was halted by the
United States, which is typical of the United States. I mean, politicians
forget why there are so many Central Americans in this country now. That wasn’t
the case prior to the Contra War and the U.S. involvement in the violence in El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, places that the United States has
destabilized for over fifty years. And, the U.S. wonders, ‘why are all these
refugees coming?’ Well, you just burned their house down. That’s the best
answer. And, both Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton who were involved in the torching
of the house of Honduras insist that the refugees fleeing that fire go back
into the house that the United States set on fire. So, the U.S. involvement
kept Nicaragua and El Salvador from being the countries that they wanted to be,
same thing with Guatemala and Honduras. But, it also changed the United States
forever because you now have these huge populations of Central America in the
United States, changing the texture and the template of the United States.
That’s the trade off of empire, right? As Malcolm said, ‘chickens come home to
roost.’ The refugees have come to roost. Just like with Europe, right? Nobody
in France was worried about Libya when France was bombing the heck out of
Libya, or bombing the heck out of Syria, or Afghanistan, or Iraq. Everybody was
cheering those bombings! So, the outcome: thousands of refugees are pouring
into Europe. But, the Europeans are hugely responsible for that crisis. Just
like the United States is hugely responsible for our own crisis. And, that’s
why we don’t call them refugees, we say ‘undocumented,’ ‘illegal,’ because if
classified under that status, they would be protected under the law.
I read that there
aren’t actually that many refugees coming from Nicaragua and, people attributed
that in part to the Sandinistas’ social policies. You know, that they were
providing for their people in ways that other governments in the area weren’t.
Is there anything to that?
Well, for sure, Nicaragua has not permitted the cartels to
establish a base there, which I guess, we can attribute to a more stable
government. In the other countries, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, the
cartels and gangs run rampant, but those are the countries most supported by
the United States, military aid in particular. So, what can I tell you about
that? All the facts are there for people to see, all the military aid that
flows into those countries. But, no different than the military aid that poured
into El Salvador during their wars, most of which was siphoned off into
corruption. You see the same trend with the Middle East, the military aid that
the U.S. sends over there gets siphoned off into the other groups, right? And,
that’s a classic way that other groups get their weapons.
So, let’s rewind to
the 1990s. What was your reaction to the electoral overthrow of the Sandinistas
in 1990?
Well, you know, I find kind of ironic that people are people
are up in arms about Russia’s potential involvement in the DNC email leaks.
Like, ‘oh, a foreign country is interfering with our elections.’ (laughs) That
sounds sort of naïve when the United States has interfered with elections
around the world my entire lifetime, right? And, Nicaragua was a case in point.
You wage a low-intensive war on a tiny, defenseless country. They put all this
pressure on the country, bombing harbors, killing students, until it votes the
way the United States wants it to, and that’s what the United States calls
sovereignty. After ten years of war, people were tired of that pressure and
they gave the United States the president that the United States wanted. So,
what were the benefits to Nicaragua after that? Did it prosper as a wealthy
nation? No, and then the United States left Nicaragua to fix the problems of
war that they had inflicted upon them. So, the United States left this wave of
destruction throughout Central America, and then, sanctimoniously left the
region to its own devices, and then, the Cartels step in, the gangs step in.
And, then the United States just sits over the border shaking its head at all
those burning houses that they set aflame.
Did you see that as a
defeat of things that you had fought for?
Well, you know, Violetta Chamorro is not exactly a
progressive person. So, it has probably led in some way to the dystopia that
Nicaragua is today.
You’d call it a
dystopia?
Well, yeah, along with the rest of Central America. And, if
you look at the history of the region, going back to Guatemala in 1954, once
the United States has destabilized those countries, they’ve never really
regained their stability. Look at Honduras now, after the United States
involved themselves in that coup a couple years ago. It’s one of the most
violent countries in the world. And, so, there you have it: a region that
could’ve been prosperous - perhaps not wealthy, but better off than it is now –
as a total mess.
How did the urban
environment of San Francisco contribute to your ability to publicly support the
Sandinistas? I’m thinking about like, protests down Mission Street, your
occupation of the Nicaraguan Consulate. Did being in an urban environment help
the publicity of the movement?
Well, San Francisco, since it’s such a small, urban
metropolis in terms of distances, it made it very easy to organize, to have
these rallies, to have these marches. The Mission District itself is super
tiny, you can go from 24th and Mission to the Consulate in ten to
fifteen minutes, right? Whereas, while there were other committees in Los
Angeles and Washington, DC, organizing there is just different. It takes hours
to get somewhere in L.A. I think that proximity helped. And, then, some of the
first people that went to Nicaragua in ’76 and ’77, their first work was in the
urban centers, like Masaya or Managua. So, perhaps their experience in another
urban center helped their work to translate more easily once in Nicaragua.
And, how do you think
the Sandinista Revolution is remembered in San Francisco, in the Mission today?
Well, I guess you’d have to ask them. I’m not Nicaraguan, so
my perspective is somewhat limited to my own. And, so it may not be a fair
question for me to answer. But, I think, those that are still there from that
time remember very well the rallies at 24th and Mission, the Mission
Cultural Center as a base of support. I think those memories are still vibrant,
and they’re still good memories. It was a unique moment, both for Nicaragua and
for San Francisco, in the Mission District. It brought a lot of people
together. When you go through an experience like that, you always remember it
and you always have a connection with the people that shared those experiences
with. Actually, in February of this year, when I was at the poetry festival in
Grenada, Nicaragua, I had a chance to unite with some of those colleagues from
those years that I hadn’t seen in twenty, thirty years, and we all still felt
the same. It was a unique moment in our lives, and it changed the people that
we would later become. It was certainly a historical moment, and we felt very
lucky to be involved in it and to have colleagues like each other.
Is there anything else
you’d like to say before we end?
Just that I think, as time moves forward, the history of
that period will be uncovered, and I think it should. Keep in mind, for better
or for worse, 1979 and the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution and the
Nicaraguan people was the last time a progressive movement has launched a
successful insurrection that set the basis for a revolution.
Thank you so much!
Alright, Keith! Well, good luck to you!
(Pictured Above: Alejandro Murguia in his office at San Francisco State University in August 2016)
[1]
The Venceremos Brigade was an international organization that brought American
activists to Cuba during the late 1960s and 1970s to work on agricultural and
construction projects designed to support the island’s Communist government.
These groups would later serve as inspiration for similarly minded brigade
groups that travelled to Nicaragua in the 1980s.
[2]
Check out Cary Cordova’s article “The Mission in Nicaragua: San Francisco Poets
Go To War” in the 2010 Beyond El Barrio:
Everyday Life in Latino/a America anthology for more on this. Erick Lyle’s article in the now defunct San Francisco Bay Guardian “The Mission
and the Revolution, as lived and told by Roberto Vargas is also equally killer.
