'Trotskyist' brigade trom Nicaragua
Socialist Press1979 1979-08-29Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 2 →
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Brigade'.
The Brigade, said to number some 500 people, was organised under the leadership of the Colombian PST (Workers Socialist Party-a member of the USFI) and had within its ranks people of several nationalities and even more political affiliations.
The PST itself made good deal of this fact.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the Brigade posed a challenge to the Junta and that it was able to mobilise appreciable popular support.
When FSLN leaders criticised the 'Brigade for "lack of discipline' it organised a march outside the FSLN HQ in Managua which drew 3,000 workers demanding payment of wages and carrying banners saying The Revolution is in the hands of the bourgeoisie' and 'Power to the Proletariat"
The march was followed by a hundred members of the Popular Militia who shouted for weapons and asserted that they were the true vanguard of the proletariat.
Within 24 hours of the demonstration the regime expelled the 60 Brigade members, labelling them "toreign provocateurs' and claiming that they had only arrived after the fighting had ended.
It is abundantly clear that just as the 'Bill of Rights' mirrors all the pristine clauses of the bourgeois constitutional heritage Sandinista guerrillas so the expulsion reflects the ease with which these can be cast aside when required.
The formal democracy "introduced' by the FSLNbacked regime would without doubt be a great step forward if it was implemented but the conditions for this remain extremely slight without a major struggle on the part of the workers and peasants.
Elements of such struggle were evident in the demonstration organised by the Brigade and that is why it was summarily suppressed.
The fact that the following day the US Ambassador could declare that relations with the Junta were "as cordial and easy as I've ever witnessed with any government ... We converse easily, we meet easily and have a lot of mutual business going on" demonstrates the degree to which this struggle will have to be fought against imperialism which now operates through the Junta's popular front