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Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and Politics in Contemporary NicaraguaAuthor(s): Carlos M. VilasSource: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1992), pp. 309-341Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/157069 .

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Family Affairs: Class, Lineage andPolitics in Contemporary NicaraguaCARLOS M. VILAS*

As I get older I give more importance to continuities, and try to discover themunder the appearances of change and mutation. And I have reached theconclusion that there is only one great continuity: that of blood.'Class structure never entirely displaces other criteria and forms ofdifferentiation and hierarchy (e.g. ethnicity, gender, lineage) in theconstitution of social identities and in prompting collective action. Classas a concept and as a point of reference is linked to these other criteria;often it is subsumed in them, thus contributing to the definition of thedifferent groups' forms of expression and of their insertion into the socialtotality. But class does not eliminate these other criteria nor the identitiesderiving from them, nor can it preclude the relative autonomy derivedfrom their specificity, as they define loyalties and oppositions whichfrequently cross over class boundaries. The relevance of these criteria inLatin America is even greater since the society's class profile is less sharplydefined because of the lower level of development of market relations andurban industrial capitalism.Several studies have pointed to the importance of ruling families inshaping the socio-economic structure of Latin American countries, theirpolitical institutions and their cultural life.2 Prominent families have been

* I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the many colleagues, friends and other peoplewho aided me, through the years, in the frequently difficult reconstruction of familynetworks in contemporary Nicaragua. Joan Alcasar from Universidad de Valencia, andJohanna von Graffenstein from Instituto Mora (Mexico City) were kind enough tocomment on a previous version of this article. None of them is responsible, however,for the final result. I must also point out that the unavoidable mention of names doesnot carry with it any judgement about either individuals or their involvement in publicaffairs. 1 Felix Luna, Soy Roca (Buenos Aires, 199 ), p. 15.2 See Frances Cancian et al., 'Capitalism, Industrialization and Kinship in Latin America:Major Issues', Journal of Family History, 3 (Winter 1978), pp. 319-38; Alan Wells,'Family Elites in a Boom-and-Bust Economy: The Molinas and Peons of Porfirian

Yucatan', HispanicAmericanHistorical Review,vol. 62, no. 2 (1982), pp. 224-5 3; DavidCarlos M. Vilas is a Full Researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones Inter-disciplinarias en Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico.

J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 24, 309-34I Printed in Great Britain 309


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3 0 Carlos M. Vilasconsidered the axis of Latin America's history from the last part of thecolonial period until the beginnings of the present century - and untileven more recently in some countries. Interestingly enough, thesehistorical studies have contributed to a better understanding of one of thefeatures most frequently discussed in today's sociological studies of LatinAmerica: the weak or inchoate differentiation between public and privatelife and between collective and individual action.3 Though the family is acollective entity, it is the individual who acts. When the family or thekinship group is the central reference point for individuals, their influenceon public affairs can be interpreted as the result of their belonging to a(private) family structure.

Underlining the relevance of family networks and kinship in theeconomic and political matrix of Latin America societies does not obligeus to consider them as the only principle of explanation of socialdevelopment, nor should we give them priority as units for analysis.Economic and political factors condition the effective weight of kinshipgroups and family networks, reinforcing or weakening the content andreaches of their members' actions. The very fact that, when speaking offamilies, we mean above all notable amilies, i.e. those with the most socialprestige, political authority and economic power, is indicative of a cleararticulation between the elite's kinship groups and families and the socio-economic structure and socio-economic criteria of stratification. But bythe same token, the examination of these groups offers the possibility ofa richer analysis and contributes to a more accurate interpretation ofimportant aspects of social and political development.In what follows I discuss the articulation of class and kinship inNicaragua and the way kinship structures introduce specific features intocollective political behaviour and into the access of particular groups tostate power, with relative autonomy to ideological definitions and to theopen features of social conflict, even when social conflict is a revolutionaryone. The article takes the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie during the Sandinistarevolution and immediately afterwards, as a case in point, complementingmy previous works on contemporary Nicaragua where I focused on classconflicts, state policies and interethnic confrontations.4

Walker, Kinship,Businessand Politics: TheMartinet del Rio Family in Mexico, I824-I867(Austin, I986); Enrique Gordillo Castillo et al., 'Grupos de poder econ6mico ypolitico en los Altos a fines del siglo XIX: La familia Sanchez', Cuadernos eInvestigacionde la Universidadde San Carlos, i (1989), pp. 43-56; Diana Balmori et al., Las alian:as defamiliasy laformaciondelpais en America Latina (Mexico, I990); and Samuel Stone, TheHeritage of the ConquistadoresLincoln, i990).3 Alain Touraine, Ame'ricaLatina: Politicay sociedad Madrid, 1989).4 See, for example, Carlos Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution New York, I986).


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 311

Politics and Economy n the Buildingof ClassesThe combination of capitalist and precapitalist production relations andthe mode of insertion into the world market gave the Nicaraguanbourgeoisie a particular physiognomy which it has retained until veryrecently: low entrepreneurial skills, political patronage, patrimonial stylesof domination, and weak organisational development even in comparisonwith the Costa Rican, Guatemalan or Salvadoran bourgeoisies. Since theproductive cycle relied on international commercialisation, over whichthe domestic producers had no control, the development of their businessskills (an appropriate combination of production factors, the implemen-tation of advanced techniques for the various crops, etc.) was limited totheir ability to secure enough land and cheap, abundant labour. Directintervention of state power was fundamental to fulfil these conditions,through destruction of indian villages and the liberation of their labourforce by means of the enactment of vagrancy laws. Immigration ofEuropean and Middle East traders and petty merchants, farmers andadventures (Germans, Italians, Palestinians and Jews) attracted by thecoffee boom, which contributed to the modernisation of the economiesand the ruling groups in Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica by theend of the nineteenth century, and more recently in Honduras, was muchsmaller and had a milder impact in Nicaragua.5The direct control of the state's agencies came to be of strategic valuefor transforming economic groups into a ruling class of national scope.The state was the basis and the launching platform for enrichment andaccumulation, for the configuration of the nation as a political body, andfor the establishment of links with the international market and itsdominant actors. Nicaragua's long periods of political instability afterindependence from Spain are an expression of the competition amongdifferent local groups structured around families of Spanish descent,devoted mainly to commerce, for the control of the state apparatuses.These families became, through that control, intermediaries of theexternal world and, in so doing, they came to be accepted as the nationallydominant group.This role of the state, and the importance for the contending groups ofdirect, exclusive control over it, reveals the fragility of the class systemand the weakness of Nicaraguan political regimes until very recently:

5 Pedro Belli, 'Proleg6meno para una historia econ6mica de Nicaragua, 1905-I966'Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano,I46 (enero-marzo I975) pp. 2-30; JaimeBiderman, 'The Development of Capitalism in Nicaragua: A Political EconomicHistory', Latin American Perspectives,36 (Winter 1983), pp. 7-32.


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3 2 CarlosM. Vilasreflected in the absence or extreme vulnerability of social organisationsand of the institutional representation of their interests, the fragility ofpublic institutions and the everpresent temptation to resort to violenceand direct action in order to maintain control over society.The traditional denomination of' oligarchy' conveniently conceptualisesthis type of bourgeoisie in that it synthesises the broad spectrum of factorsthat gives this class its identity: above all the economic aspect, but alsopolitics, ideology, education and life styles. In particular, the term'oligarchy' clearly expresses the peculiar intertwining of economic andextra-economic factors in defining its behaviour and collective orien-tations: for example, the articulation of class identities with practices ofpatronage and the promotion of clientelism; the combination of the profitmotive with subsidies to primary loyalties; the tension between abstractperceptions of society and the attention paid to private and particularmotivations; and the launching of business ventures based upon affectionand emotional ties.

The coffee boom that started in the last third of the nineteenth centurycontributed to the political and economic consolidation of some liberal-minded exporters. Arrayed behind Jose Santos Zelaya, they promoted asweeping series of reforms commonly interpreted as the first attempt toimplement a bourgeois design in Nicaragua.6 Political and socio-economicmodernisation advanced greatly, although comparatively less than inpost-liberal-reform Guatemala, not to mention Mexico. The liberalagenda was frustrated by conservative resistance, which in I909 broughtabout Zelaya's resignation and, shortly afterwards, United States' armedinvasion.

In the 193os Anastasio Somoza Garcia took over as head of theNational Guard created by a further US intervention, and with littledifficulty gained control over the state, thus beginning a familydictatorship that was to last almost half a century - a process similar tothat headed by Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. TheSomoza regime politically subordinated the conservative factions of thetraditional ruling groups. This reinforced their internal cohesion andstrengthened their condescending, contemptuous attitude towards thislatecomer whom they detested because of his obscure origins, the methodshe had used to climb to the top (it was said that Somoza's appointmentas Chief of the National Guard was mainly due to his close relation to theUS Ambassador's wife), which were totally divorced from accepted

6 B. I. Teplitz, The Politicaland Economic oundationsof Modernizationn Nicaragua:TheAdministrationofJoseSantosZelaya,PhD Diss., Ann Arbor,Michigan, I974; Oscar R.Vargas, Acumulacion,mercado nterno desarrollodel capitalismoen Nicaragua (1893-1906)(Managua, 1983).


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 313channels of social ascent - particularly commerce, and his dark skin.7Nevertheless they also depended on his ability to maintain the state'scohesion and political stability - conditions needed for the normalfunctioning of economic life - and for that service they did him publichomage. Until the Second World War, none of this involved economicsubordination by the traditional conservative families nor economiccompetition with Somoza and the small groups that began to form aroundhim.

Things began to change in the 1 5 os with the cotton boom and later onwith the industrial growth linked to the Central American CommonMarket. Economic bonanza was closely intertwined with the wielding ofpolitical instruments and with close relations to international developmentagencies, with which the state acted as an intermediary. For that reason,Somoza and his followers found themselves in better conditions thanothers to participate in the accelerated economic growth that characterisedthe 1950s and i96os. In some cases they did this directly in the newproductive fields of industry, farming and animal husbandry. In othercases they became involved in commerce or finance. According to JaimeWheelock, the Somozas became known as 'the loaded dice group',8 sincetheir economic progress was based above all on the manipulation of thestate apparatus and political decisions. This situation generated conflictsbetween the groups and factions which accumulated capital on the basisof the market and those that, headed by Somoza, accumulated capitalabove all on the basis of the state - conflicts that were to explode in the1970s.Economic growth and the increased differentiation of society set forththe conditions for the growing gap between the new segments of theNicaraguan bourgeoisie linked to capitalist modernisation, with up-to-date entrepreneurial styles, that experienced competition from theSomoza-run state and the dictator's clique, and the inertia and tone oftraditional politics. In the late I940s several members of the Liberal Party,which was under the iron-clad control of Somoza, decided to leave it andfounded a new one, the Independent Liberal Party (Partido LiberalIndependiente,LI), but this implied no effective opposition from the point

7 Race seems to have been an important, although not decisive, question. As a briefillustrationI recall a conversationheld in late December I989 with a personalfriend,a very articulate leader of an opposition political party. He was, and is, a prominentmember of the National Assembly, holding a PhD from a West Germanuniversity.While lunchingin 'Los Ranchos' and speakingof traditionalopposition to Somoza,he pointed out to me that 'they hated him because for the first time in Nicaraguanhistorydark-skinnedpeople, like myself, reachedhigh governmentpositions. It wastoo much for them.'8 JaimeWheelock,ImperialismodictaduraMexico, I976).


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314 Carlos M. Vilasof view of the emergent social groups of the I96os and 1970S. PL'spoliticians were concerned about government while the brand-newbusinessmen had their eyes on the market. On the other hand, theConservative Party insisted on its traditional tactic of carrying tensionswith Somoza nearly to the breaking point on the eve of elections, onlyfinally to bargain with him for some congressional seats and a fewpositions in the foreign service.The relationship of the emerging sectors of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisiewith the state and the traditional political system became more tense afterthe December 1972 earthquake that almost entirely destroyed Managua.Reconstruction was manipulated by Anastasio Somoza Jr and hisassociates to make inroads into the economy through real estatespeculation and the construction industry, activities which had previouslybeen the exclusive terrain of the 'market-based' groups. Shortly after,Somoza Jr used the suspension of constitutional guaranties decreed fromDecember 1974 to September I977 (as a response to the FSLN's seizureof the Minister of Foreign Affairs home) to carry out bloody repressivemeasures which in some cases touched the traditional elite groups whosechildren were FSLN members or collaborators.

The new forces emerging or regrouping in society and in the economyhad no political organisation or expression of their own. The creation inthe early 1970Sof the first Nicaraguan businessmen's association is closelylinked to two political factors: (i) the conflictive but subordinaterelationship of the entrepreneurial class to the Somocista state, which thebusinessmen criticised because of what they called 'unloyal competition'for credit, in prices, investments and access to foreign funds; (2) later, theSandinista revolutionary upsurge and the increasing intervention of theUnited States government to negotiate Somoza's withdrawal. Both factorspointed to the need for modern businessmen to have their ownorganisations differentiating themselves from the traditional actors andgiving them their own political identity vis-a-vis the state, the UnitedStates government, and the Sandinistas.9RegionsandfamiliesThe traditional factors of regionalism and lineage played a role in thisprocess of politicisation, providing internal cohesion to the participatingactors, contributing to their reciprocal differentiation and introducingspecific features into their social and political identities.9 It is worth noting that the most importantbusinessassociationswereall created n the1970S: Asociaci6n de Algodoneros de Le6n (ADAL), Asociaci6n de Algodoneros deChinandega ADACH), and Consejo Superiorde la IniciativaPrivada(COSIP),thelatter's first congress being held as recently as March 1974.


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 3I5The weight of regionalism as an objective and not merely symbolic oremotional factor derives from the slow development of the nationalmarket due to territorial disintegration, deficient communications and

transport infrastructures and the difficulties faced in the process of capitalaccumulation. The road from Managua to the Rama river was built in1946; the Pan-American Highway which bisects Nicaragua's western halffrom north to south dates from the 95os; while the highway connectingthe Pacific, the mining district and the Northern Atlantic Coast throughManagua and Matagalpa was only finished during the Sandinistagovernment. Weak territorial integration hinders the national circulationof capital, goods and labour and makes the effective establishment of anational authority difficult. The formation and reproduction of regionally-based socio-economic and political groups loosely linked to a centralpower is based on this slow, unequal territorial development of the marketand is an essential ingredient of Nicragua's history, albeit with decliningheuristic potential.The animosity between Granada and Le6n is as old as Nicaragua itself.The traditional confrontation of Conservatives and Liberals is closelylinked to it and translates geography into politics. The boom caused byColonel Vanderbilt's Transit Company in the mid-nineteenth centuryturned Granada into Nicaragua's centre of commercial capital, whichwould eventually subordinate agricultural exports and the nation's wholeeconomy until the mid-twentieth century. Granada was also home-basefor the fortunes, social prestige and political power of Nicaragua's mostprominent families: Cuadra, Chamorro, Cardenal, Lacayo, Guzman,Pellas, Zavala.... As in the rest of Central America, the origin of thiscommercial capital is to be found in unscrupulous dealings and smuggling:the local version of primitive accumulation.Its geographical location on Lake Nicaragua made Granada into astrategic point, first for the colonial and later for the independentgovernments, in their attempts to oppose British designs on the Atlanticport of San Juan del Norte (also known as Greytown) and the Mosquitia.Granada's and its leading families' early importance in both legal andillegal trade derives from this privileged position between East and Westin a country that was searching for geographic and political integration.The Transit Company boom (1848-69) definitively consolidated thisgroup, tightly knit together by a solid and complex kinship network.Rivas, more closely linked to extensive cattle raising, also received adynamic stimulus from Transit business, although to a lesser extent.Le6n, on the other hand, derived its prominence from eminently extra-economic factors: it was the site of the colonial administration, theuniversity and the ecclesiastic authority, and exercised jurisdiction over


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316 Carlos M. Vilasthe port of Realejo: insufficient factors to compete with the commercialdrive from the South.

The national war against William Walker consolidated the power andprestige of Granada and its satellite Rivas. Le6n's Liberals supported thebrigand, who razed Granada. After Walker's defeat and execution inHonduras, the conservatives - i.e. Granada - governed for thirty yearsuntil I893. In 1909 they forced the resignation of Zelaya - who in regionalterms was a representative of the coffee growers of Matagalpa and thehighlands surrounding Managua - and applauded the United Statesinvasion in 91o0. It was Emiliano Chamorro, by then the undisputed headof the Conservative party, who co-signed with the United Statesgovernment representative the document doomed to become the verysymbol of the abdication of national sovereignty: the so-called Chamorro-Bryan treaty.The economic upsurge from 1950 to the I970S and particularly theexpansion of cotton profoundly changed both the traditional economyand society. It took place mainly in the western departments of Le6n andChinandega. The big family names in cotton and related activities(Gurdian, Icaza, Vijil, Teran, to name just a few) had no meaningfulrelationship with Granada families. The notoriety of their social rise wasdue without doubt not only to the growth of their economic position, butalso to the very fast pace of the boom itself. Land devoted to cotton cropswent from 23,900 manzanas in I950-5 I to 123,600 in 1953-4, 164,700 tenyears later, and 259,300 in 1973-4 (i manzana = 1.7 acres).The involvement of Leon's bourgeoisie in capitalist modernisation wasmore significant than that of their counterparts in Granada. Le6n's late-comers were able to take better advantage of the opportunities broughtabout by new times. This was made possible by the ecological conditionsof their region and in some cases because of their preferential insertioninto Somocista institutions which gave them a certain weight in theformulation of sectoral policies or made them the first to benefit fromthem. The small world of lawyers and notary publics linked to LeonUniversity's Law School and to the area's businessmen enjoyed frequentopportunities to manipulate legislation and benefit from the land transferswhich abounded at the start of the cotton boom: the liquidation ofcommunal lands, the transition from rent in kind to rent in cash, theeviction of indebted peasants, and the like.'?This does not mean that the Granada group was weakened. With theexpansion in sugar cane cultivation following the United States embargo10 See Robert G. Williams,Export Agriculturend the Crisis n CentralAmerica ChapelHill, 1986). Sergio Ramirez's novel Castigo Divino (Managua, 1988) vividly portraysLe6n's notable familiesprior to the cotton boom.


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 3 7against Cuba in the early I96os, the Pellas family consolidated its interestsin that field. As the owners of what was until recently the largest sugarfactory in Central America, the Pellas became very prominent inNicaraguan and Central American banking. However, there was a sharpcontrast between the Le6n group's enormous ability to make the most ofopportunities for accumulation and the more modest possibilities open totheir Granada and Rivas competitors. These differences were even moreevident in that they contrasted with what had historically been theprominence of the latter group, and because of the sustained dynamism ofthe Nicaraguan economy over those years.The relatively closed nature of the economic regions and of their socialactors until four decades ago reinforced the existing social and kinshipstructures there, in as much as kinship structures contributed to theconsolidation of economic power and political influence. In an incipientcapitalist economy with a weak and only very recently developed financialsector, with no stock companies or equity markets and with a poorlydeveloped legal system, economic operations and relations are notimpersonal and abstract, but specific and concrete, permeated by socialrituals - such as parties, social receptions, huge meals, and the like.Marriage and inheritance are the most important means for transferringassets and for the circulation of capital, and belonging to a family structureis perhaps the best recommendation for commercial and banking credit.Social class exists above all as a network of families in a particular regionand as interrelated lineage structures: an extended but exclusive kinshipweb in which everyone is, in one way or another, cousin to everyone else.This phenomenon is not peculiar to Nicaragua. Stone identified a 'dynastyof the conquistadores' to refer to the lineage structures that have comedown through the whole history of Costa Rica,11and for many years theruling elite of El Salvador was known as 'the fourteen families'.12According to several studies, the history of Guatemala since the mid-eighteenth century has been heavily influenced by the 'Aycinena clan',among other family groups.13The extended family, with its far-reaching system of loyalties andinterests, is a typical actor in stages prior to urban, industrial capitalism,and one of the foundations of Nicaragua's social structure and politicalsystem until today. This is particularly notorious in milieus and regions

1l SamuelZ. Stone, La dinastia elosconquistadoresSan Jose, 1975).12 Eduardo Colindres, Fundamentosconomicose la burguesiaalvadorenaSan Salvador,I977).13 Balmoriet al., Las alianZas e amilias..., pp. 85-97. See also Gustavo PalmaMurga,'Niicleos de poder local y relacionesfamiliaresen la ciudadde Guatemalaa fines delsiglo XVIII', Mesoame'rica,2 (Dec. I986), pp. 24I-308.


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318 Carlos M. Vilaswhich were violently, openly exposed to capitalist modernisation andsocio-political changes during the last four decades. The interrelation offamilies through the marriage of the younger generations permitted thereproduction of a structure of power and prestige which Somoza could notdestroy and with which the Sandinistas had to build political alliances.Close daily contact among relatives who play, grow and are raisedtogether, attend the same schools, receive first communion together andmarryeach other, reinforces their feeling of a common origin and a sharedfuture, consolidates the differentiation between them and the rest ofsociety and endows the class with certain attributes of a caste. TheNicaraguan expression serfamilia (to be a relative), that is, to have bloodor marriage ties to others, points to the social and political relevance ofthis network of interactions. Acknowledged by both insiders and outsidersalike, this network generates intense loyalties and reciprocities andsynthesises a plethora of determining elements: birth, patrimony,education, ethnicity, the region, power, past generation, a future.14The prominence of regional and lineage structures around Granada andLe6n should not obscure the existence of equivalent kinship structures inother regions: the Picado in Matagalpa, the Guevara in Rfo San Juan,Talavera in Rivas, Baltodano in Managua's highlands.... However, theirlesser economic importance or their dependence on the impetus ofGranada and Leon prevented them from attaining similar relevance andnational projection, confining them to the role of a subordinate peripheryof the dominant groups. By the same token these factors contributed toa laxer internal cohesion of these subordinated family networks, whoseouter limits became weaker and more diffuse.

It should also be pointed out that in Nicaragua, as in the rest of CentralAmerica, the extended family is above all a feature of the well-to-dosegments of society, a question that points to the connection betweenfamily networks and economic structures. The maintenance of extended,complex kinship structures requires permanently carrying out economicfunctions like assistance and rewards - both real and symbolic - for largenumbers of people; the effectiveness and scope of these operationsdepending on access to usually huge economic and human resources, and

14 At a micro level certainsituationsarisingfrom thisnetworkmaylook odd to observerswith differentculturalbackgrounds.I remember,e.g., the delightof a colleaguefromMasayawhen she discoveredshe was 'a relative'of herhusband; his strengthenedherties with him and his family,some of whose membersconsideredher somethinglikeanoutsider.But at the sametime her sister-in-law herhusband'ssister)wasup againstthe dark side of this structure:married o her mother'scousin, when she intended todivorce, it was difficult or her to forbidhim access to the home, since he was a familymember.


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 3 9to political influence. In the medium and lower strata of society there are,in contrast, domestic communities, without the economic and politicalprojections of the notable families networks and without their heavy doseof symbolism and social recognition.Financial links were developed from kinship networks to build the twolargest and most powerful Nicaraguan economic groups at the beginningof the I95os. The BANIC group, named after Banco Nicaragiiense(BANIC), contained the biggest cotton-growers and business from Le6nand Chinandega and industrialists from Managua: Ramiro and AlfredoSacasaGuerrero, Xavier and Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, EduardoMontealegre Callejas, Alfonso Callejas Deshon, J. Ignacio Gonzalez,Alfonso Lovo Cordero and Alfonso Robelo Callejas were the mostprominent names. The Bank of America group, on the other hand, alsoknown as the Pellas group, had a clear conservative profile: in addition tothe Pellas family, traditional names from conservative politics were foundat its leading levels: Manuel Ignacio Lacayo, Adolfo Benard, DuilioBaltodano, Carlos Hollman and Eduardo Fernandez Hollman, amongothers. Some names from the first group were also found on companyrosters of the second group, as much as marriage of members of onegroup with members of the other (e.g. BANIC's Chamorros and the Pellasgroup's Hollmans) consolidated relationships and the reciprocalcirculation of capital.15The relationship between family networks and financial connectionsintroduced particulardynamism into lineage structures. Finance capitalismarising from agro-export modernisation hastened the breakdown ofbloodline, affinity and regional frontiers which had characterised thetraditional ruling groups. It did not eliminate these frontiers, norimmediately reduce the reciprocal stratification of the various groups,but it did generate room for approximation, understanding and associationabove and beyond their political identities - though these continued to bea factor for differentiation. Conversely, kinship networks underlying thefinancial relationships would prove to be of invaluable aid when, yearslater, the class had to confront revolutionary turmoil.Class, lineages and revolutionCrisis of SomocismoFrom the 195os on, the youth of some distinguished conservative familiesbegan to be involved in active opposition to the Somoza dictatorship,15 H. W. Strachan, Family and Other BusinessGroupsin EconomicDevelopment:The Case ofNicaragua(New York, 1976) is a pioneering piece of research into the family networks

amongst Nicaragua's business elites at the beginning of the I970s.


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320 Carlos M. Vilaslooking for ways of going beyond traditional liberal-conservativebipartisanship. During the I96os Revista Conservadora osted the ideo-logical debate of young conservatives enthused by the reformism of theAlliance for Progress and Eduardo Frei's Christian Democratic govern-ment in Chile.16 Young people like Pedro Joaqufn Chamorro Cardenal,who participated in armed actions against the Somoza government,Reynaldo Antonio Teffel, at that time president of the ConservativeYouth, or Ricardo Coronel Kautz, were linked to these efforts tomodernise conservatism and the country. Later on Teffel and Coronelwould join the FSLN, in whose regime both would hold ministrypositions. In I974 Chamorro Cardenalprovided the impetus for foundingUni6n Democratica Electoral (UDEL), which gathered together severalpolitical groups regardless of traditional bipartisan barriers. UDEL wasnot very successful, basically due to Conservative Party distrust of analliance with Liberal groups and of Chamorro's leadership and reformistprogramme, and because of the indifference of the large industrialists andlandowners who thought that such an effort would not gain the supportof the United States government and would therefore be condemned tofailure. 17

The integration of young members from traditional families into theranks of Sandinismo during the late sixties and early seventies was less aproduct of their spontaneous ideological evolution than the successfulculmination of a Sandinista strategy.18 FSLN activism in the JesuitCentral American University in Managua played a key role in this processand by the same token laid the ground for an approach by therevolutionary leadership to the parents of some of these young people.Several members of the Grupode los 12 - a group of twelve professionals,intellectuals and businessmen whom the FSLN's Tendencia Terceristabrought together in I977 as a part of its strategy of broad antidictatorialalliances - were the fathers of children integrated into the Sandinista-ledstruggle, or were themselves FSLN collaborators.The religious and university environments in which these youngsterswere approached by Sandinismo helps to explain their recruitment intotwo of the fractions that divided the FSLN by that time: the terceristaor16 By the end of the 196os Revista Conservadorachanged its name to Revista Conservadoradel PensamientoCentroamericanond later to Revista del PensamientoCentroamericano.rom

I983 on it moved headquarters to San Jose, Costa Rica; under the direction of thefervent Catholic businessman Carlos Mantica, the Review adopted a strongly anti-Sandinista stance which brought it close to some fractions of the counterrevolutionarygroups acting from Costa Rican territory.17 Carlos M. Vilas, The SandinistaRevolution(New York, 1986) chapter iv.18 See Uriel Molina, 'El sentido de una experiencia', Nicarduac, 5 (April-June 1981), pp.17-37; Marta Harnecker, Los cristianosyla revolucion andinista.Entrevista al Comandantede la RevolucionLuis CarrionCruz (Managua, I986).


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Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua 321insurreccional (insurrectionist) and the 'proletarian' 'tendencies'.19 The'protracted people's war' (guerra opularprolongada,GPP) tendency did notparticipate in this process due to its emphasis on a Vietnamese-likestrategy of peasant guerrilla warfare, even though GPP activism in thestate-run University of Le6n favoured the incorporation into its ranks ofyouth from the western liberal petty bourgeoisie as well as fromMatagalpa.When focusing on the initial stages of Sandinismo in the early sixties,special attention must be given to the Ventana group, named after theliterary magazine published in Leon under the joint direction of SergioRamirez and Fernando Gordillo, at the time both university students.Ventana was published from I960 to 1964 and enjoyed institutionalprotection from the University's president Mariano Fiallos Gil. Themagazine brought together a large group of students, young professionalsand literary figures. In addition to those of Ramirez and Gordillo, Ventanapublished frequent contributions by Mariano Fiallos Oyanguren (FiallosGil's son), Alejandro Serrano Caldera, Carlos Tiinnerman Bernheim,Gustavo Tablada, Luis Rocha, Michele Najlis, Napoleon Chow, amongmany others. Lacking any explicit political identity beyond a shareddislike for Somoza and Somocismo, many of them had been active a fewyearsearlier in the student movement which culminated in the governmentrecognition of university autonomy, and experienced a more than literarydevotion to the poet Manolo Cuadra.With few exceptions the more activemembers of the Ventanagroup were of a middle class or petty bourgeoisorientation with a liberal approach to society and politics. A decade anda half later many of them would hold key positions in the Sandinistagovernment.The establishment at this relatively early stage of solidarities andfriendships upon which this intellectually restless group was formed,socially subordinated to the ruling groups and to a certain extent shelteredby the institutional umbrella of a university presided over by a well-known conservative, anti-Somoza intellectual, proved to be a decisivepolitical step for the group's later political evolution. Rejection of theSomoza regime would involve them, with uneven intensity, in theopposition to the dictatorship, both within and outside the FSLN; theirintellectual and personal links would consolidate their articulation to thetraditional groups that supported the revolutionary process.

Lineage factors are present in the final acceptance of the revolutionaryappeal by traditional conservative elites. Somocista repression against theyouth of conservative families due to their Sandinista involvementboosted the likelihood of conflict between their parents and a government19 On Sandinista nternaldivisions, see Dennis Gilbert,SandinistasNew York, 1988).


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322 Carlos M. Vilaswhich not only excluded them from economic bonanza, but victimisedtheir children as well. The foundations for an alliance of conservatives andSandinistas were set. It was a tighter relationship than that which wasbeing forged with the other anti-Somocista groups and fractions: thelatter was based on external relations with civic, political and labourorganisations, while the former took place above all through the personal,direct integration of members of the traditional elites to the FSLN. Theywere part and parcel of Sandinismo, not just an external ally.The Sandinista governmentRevolutionary triumph opened up a new era in Nicaragua's contemporaryhistory. A massive popular outpouring, mostly headed by the FSLN, attimes spontaneous and at others led by smaller revolutionary groups,made possible the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and thebeginning of profound socio-economic and political transformations. Theattention of both observers and participants focused on this fundamentalaspect of the revolution: its popular character which expressed an entirepeople's deeply-felt aspirations for social justice, national sovereignty anddignity - the hope, or fantasy, of a better life. The revolution was all ofthis; but it was something more as well.

The strategy of broad political alliances and, above all, the family linksof several FSLN leaders and cadres to Granada's and Rivas' conservativeelites, permitted a large number of members and representatives oftraditional anti-Somoza and emerging business groups access to govern-ment: the so-called strategy of national unity. As the revolution made itsfirst steps confronting the remnants of Somocismo and responding tourgent popular demands, the business groups integrated into thegovernment and to the new state apparatuses were involved in an intenseinternal fight whose victor would be Granada's (and Rivas') traditionalelites.It was a process developing at a dizzying speed. By the end of 1980 fewrepresentatives of the more recently formed Liberal business groupsremained in government positions. The infighting manifested itself indifferent opinions over the reaches and objectives of business national-isation and of the agrarian reform - particularly over the extent and roleof state property and government regulations. From a certain perspectivethese differences might be interpreted as expressions of tensions andconflicts between the revolution on one side, and the bourgeoisie on theother. But they also marked the conflicts between the more traditional,conservative southern business and family groups, with their strongerintegration into the revolutionary state apparatuses, and their nascent,modernising competitors whom they stigmatised with the label of


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 323'Somocismo' and whom they hoped to deprive of political and economicpower.The FSLN's rupture in late 1979 with industrialist Alfonso RobeloCallejas- then a member of the revolutionary government Junta - andthe successive confrontations culminating in Robelo's departure fromNicaragua in I98 and the confiscation of his properties, may be seen asa part of this chain of quarrels and competition. One of the mostimportant of Nicaragua's modern businessmen, Alfonso Robelo built hiscapital on the cotton boom in Le6n and Chinandega and in the dynamicstimulus to the Nicaraguan economy from the Central American CommonMarket. He supported the business community's complaints overSomocista 'unloyal competition' and in 1978 joined forces with a groupof technicians, professionals and businessmen to form the first modernbourgeois political party in Nicaragua: Movimiento DemocraticoNicaragiiense (MDN). Robelo served in the first government Junta and assuch he was the most important non-Sandinista, non-Conservative figurein this initial stage of the revolutionary regime. His fall marked the earlybreak of the nucleus of modernising industrialists and businessmen fromChinandega, Le6n and Managua with Sandinismo, following theirfrustrated efforts to redirect the revolutionary design in a particulardirection which at the time was contemptuously referred to as 'socialdemocratic'. In concrete terms their criticism was above all related to thespeed and orientation of specific policies such as nationalisations, therelations between the state and the private sector and the call for legalguarantees for businessmen who had not been tied to the Somoza regime,but did not identify themselves with the Sandinistas either.Robelo's departure from the Junta coincided with that of Violeta deChamorro. The vacancies were filled by two well known figures of theConservative party: economist and banker Arturo Cruz Porras, andlawyer and landowner Rafael C6rdoba Rivas. Cruz Porras had been up tothen chairman of the Central Bank; his brother-in-law, businessman LuisCarri6n Montoya, a descendant of one of the oldest families in Nicaragua- the first Carri6n arrived in the sixteenth century - was one of the mostprominent capitalists in Nicaragua, a driving force in the alreadymentioned BANIC group. Luis Carri6n Cruz, the elder son of Carri6nMontoya and Arturo Cruz Porras' nephew, was one of the nine membersof the FSLN's National Directorate. Rafael C6rdoba Rivas, a biglandowner and cattle grower in Chontales and Boaco, had joined PedroJoaquin Chamorro Cardenal in UDEL and participated as an attorney inthe legal defence of several Sandinista leaders imprisoned by thedictatorship - Tomas Borge being one of them. More than just personalstories, these cases illustrate the consolidation of a close alliance between


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324 Carlos M. Vilasthe Sandinista and the traditional elite groups who had opposed theSomoza regime perhaps less for its dictatorial features than for its impacton business competition and family affairs.At the time, popular Nicaraguan humour summed up the contrastbetween on the one hand the masses, the student movement and pettybourgeois fractions, who had struggled against Somoza and his NationalGuard and on the barricades of the revolutionary insurrection, and on theother, the dominant social profile in the upper ranks of the Sandinistagovernment in the comment: 'Le6n put up the dead; Granada put up theMinisters '.20

Sandinismo established alliances with this structure of traditionalpower: not through marriage, since traditional families always behaved asalmost endogamous groups, but rather by opening up possibilities fortheir return to government positions in the stage that was being built afterSomoza's downfall. It was not the traditional families that took theinitiative in favouring marriages with new figures from the revolutionarymovement - as in the paradigmatic case of Giovanni de Lampedusa'sastute Gattopardo.On the contrary, it was revolutionary politics to take theinitiative and call representatives of the traditional families to join the newgovernment and state apparatuses, appealing to the leverage provided bythe incorporation of the heirs of several of these families into the FSLN.The very few cases in which sons or daughters of traditional familiesmarried Sandinista leaders or cadres ended up in divorces shortly after therevolutionary triumph.21 Nevertheless these divorces did not implypolitical ruptures, a situation which hints at a class, more than personal,character in the political alliance.22Notable family names of Granada quickly multiplied within the highestlevels of the revolutionary government, particularly within the army andthe implementation of agrarian reform. By the mid-eighties the20 A formerpeasantwho had fought in the FSLN's 'northern front' in 1978 and I979made an ironic remark o me aboutthe compositionof the first Sandinista unta:'Thisis the second Conservativerevolution' (Esteli, Aug. I980). His irony contrastedwithacademicobserverswho, on the contrary,claimedto see the building of a classlesssociety as a feature of the Sandinista revolution: see H. Dietrich, Nicaragua:Laconstruccidn e la sociedad in clases(Mexico, I986).21 This is a fact not consideredby Stone when linking SandinistaCommandersCarlosNuniezTellez and Hugo Torres to one of Granada'smost traditional families: seeStone, The Heritage of the Conquistadores, p. i9i and I94.22 The questionof the 'class character'of this alliance s a complexone to the extent thatthe class identityof traditionalgroups is much clearerthan that of the insurrectionalranks, about which little can be said beyond their predominantly petty bourgeois socio-

demographic profile - taking into account the enormous diversity of petty bourgeoisiein Central American agrarian societies. See Vilas, The SandinistaRevolution,ch. iii, fora discussion on this question on the basis of empirical information.


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 325sociological profile of the Sandinista government reflected the existence ofa broad and dense matrix of family interconnections.Chairman of the Central Bank of Nicaragua was don Joaquin CuadraChamorro, a descendant of one of the most traditional Granada families,whose origins go back to sixteenth-century migration from Spain. Hisfirst cousins include Alfredo Pellas Chamorro, the head of the alreadymentioned Banco de America financial group as well as the owner of theSan Antonio sugar mill and the well-known Flor de Cafa rum factory, andPedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal- founder of UDEL, a member of theBANIC group and the editor of La Prensa, who was assassinated bySomocismo in January 1978. Cuadra Chamorro, who moved to theCentral Bank from his previous position of Finance Minister, is the fatherof General Joaquin Cuadra Lacayo, Chief of Staff of the Sandinista Army(Ejercito Popular Sandinista,EPS) and one of the leaders of the 'internalfront' during the Sandinista insurrection in Managua, June 1979. GeneralCuadra Lacayo is both a direct cousin and a brother-in-law of EPS'Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel Osvaldo Lacayo Gabuardi, whose othersister Marta Patricia married the already mentioned Comandante LuisCarri6n Cruz. As legal adviser to his cousin's Banco de America, donJoaquin Cuadra Chamorro was the author of the strategy of capital flightwith which the bank's stockholders and big customers managed to movetheir liquid assets out of the country during the Sandinista insurrectionand the Somoza government debacle.23

Through his wife Maruca Lacayo Hurtado, don Joaquin and hischildren are related to another two of the most traditional Nicaraguanfamilies, as well to the Argiiello family, coffee growers from the highlandsaround Managua. Several members of the Argiiello family served inimportant positions in the Sandinista regime: lawyer Roberto ArgiielloHurtado was a member of the Supreme Court and was later appointed asNicaragua's ambassador to France, while his brother Alvaro, a Jesuitpriest, was the representative of the Nicaraguan Clerical Association(Asociacidn del Clero Nicaragiense, ACLEN) at the Council of State(I980-82) -where he also headed the Council's Commission forInternational Affairs - and the director of the well-known CentralAmerican Historical Institute (IHCA) at Managua's Central AmericanUniversity. William Hiipper Argiiello took over from Cuadra Chamorroat the Ministry of Finance - of which he had been Deputy Minister up tothat moment - and William's mother, Sra Lenor Argiiello de Hiipper wasNicaragua's consul in the United States and afterwards ambassador to23 See 'Comunicadodirigidoa quieneseranaccionistasdel Banco de Americaal dia 3I dediciembre de 1978', La Prensa (Managua, I8 May I990); Barricada(Managua, 25 MayI990).


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326 Carlos M. VilasCosta Rica.Another sisterof Roberto and Alvaro was the Nicaraguan consulto Mexico City until I990.A sister of don Joaqufn Cuadra's mother, Sra Berta Chamorro Benard,married the above mentioned Alfredo Pellas Chamorro, don Joaquin'scousin. Comandante Guerrillero y de Brigada Rene Vivas Benard, whofor many years was Deputy Minister of the Interior and later served asChief of the Sandinista Police (PoliciaSandinista,PS), is a relative of both.Comandante de la Revoluci6n Luis Carri6n Cruz, a member of theSandinista National Directorate, is the son of Luis Carri6n Montoya, oneof the heads of the BANIC finance group during Somoza's regime.During the initial months of the revolutionary regime Carri6n Montoyamoved from BANIC's board to the Sandinista government, where he wasappointed Chairman of the newly created National Finance System - thegovernment body holding together the recently nationalised bankingsystem, including the former BANIC and Banco de America groups.Commander Carrion Cruz is also a nephew of the previously mentionedArturo Cruz Porras, the conservative politician and banker who presidedover the central Bank of Nicaragua from the time of the Sandinistatriumph until he joined the Sandinista Junta early in I980. Arturo Cruzacted afterwards as Nicaragua's ambassador to the United States until heresigned in I982. For a while he was tied to Alianza RevolucionariaDemocratica (ARDE), the counterrevolutionary group headed by EdenPastora (former 'Comandante Cero') from Costa Rica. Arturo Cruz ran asthe presidential candidate for Coordinadora Democratica Nicaragiiense(CDN) in the electoral campaign in 1984, from which CDN eventuallywithdrew. Later on Cruz became a member of the counterrevolutionaryleadership up to 1987. Through his marriage to Marta Patricia Lacayo,Commander Carri6n Cruz is also related to the extended family networkof don Joaqufn Cuadra Chamorro's wife.

Trappist monk and poet Ernesto Cardenal Martfnez, who served asMinister of Culture, and his Jesuit brother Fernando, who was theMinister of Education from I985 to I990 after leading the LiteracyCampaign and FSLN party activism amongst the Sandinista Youth, areboth direct cousins of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal and of ErnestoCastillo Martfnez, who acted as Chairman of the Higher EducationNational Council (Consejo Nacional de Educaci6n Superior, CNES),subsequently as Minister of Justice and even later as the ambassador to theSoviet Union. In addition, Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal are directcousins of Alejandro Martinez Urtecho, who is the father of AlejandroMartfnez Cuenca, Minister of Foreign Trade between 1980 and 1988, andSecretary (Minister) of Budget and Planning from 1988 to I990. VanessaCastro Cardenal, a niece of Ernesto and Fernando, is the wife of


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 329of these family names were present on the boards of directors of both theBANIC and Banco de America financial groups.The status of the three daily newspapers published in Nicaragua by themid-eighties gives a good picture of the tight family connections workingabove and beyond political allegiances or oppositions. Barricada,by thenthe FSLN's official newspaper, El NuevoDiario, an open, strong supporterof Sandinismo, and La Prensa,the expression of recalcitrant opposition toSandinismo, were under the respective editorship of Carlos FernandoChamorro Barrios (a son of Pedro Joaqufn Chamorro Cardenal andVioleta Barrios), Xavier Chamorro Cardenal (a brother of Pedro Joaquinand his partner in BANIC group) and Pedro Chamorro Barrios (a brotherof Carlos Fernando and Xavier's nephew) and later by CristianaChamorroBarrios, a sister of Pedro and Carlos Fernando.The list of family interconnections would go even farther should weinclude the almost one hundred deputy Ministers, Director Generals andmanagers of state-owned firms, but what has been said up to this pointsupports the hypothesis of a very close family network relating traditionalfamilies to the Sandinista government. In October 1989, on the eve of theelectoral campaign, La Prensa published a long list of Sandinistagovernment officials named Chamorro. The author concluded his piececommenting with irony on the fact that he had been unable to find asimilar number of Sandinos or Fonsecas in the Sandinista government.26A similar contrast occurs with regard to the very few family names fromLe6n.

Policy-making in the revolutionary regime, particularly with regard toagrarian reform and investment plans, reveals the strong influence oftechnicians and professionals coming from the ranks of the conservativebourgeoisie. Agrarian reform, with its strong emphasis on state farms,capitalist farms and cooperatives, on technology-intensive investmentsand a relatively small generation of labour employment, and on a heavyagro-export bias, with a slow distribution of land to peasants andrestricted grass-roots participation, owes a great deal to the decisivepresence of these technicians and professionals in the policy-makingprocess. They expressed an ideology of entrepreneurial efficiency thatcombined a conventional Marxian focus on the development of materialproductive forces, with the traditional Marxian distrust of peasants assynonymous with backwardness, and an explicit support for 'greenrevolution' approaches. In addition, these enthusiastic young technocratscontributed to the reproduction of traditional criteria of authority andcommand within the state enterprises and the agrarian reform, thereby26 IgnacioFonseca,'El fierrode los Chamorro n la erasandinista',La Prensa(Managua,17 Oct. 1989), p. 2. Carlos Fonseca was one of the FSLN's founders.


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Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua 31could be held up to the international community as proof of a broad-basedcollaboration and as additional evidence that Sandinista Nicaragua wouldnot turn out to be a 'second Cuba'. But there was also a great deal ofpolitical inertia, since collaboration with the incumbent government hadbeen a constant feature in the political style of Nicaraguan conservadores.For the purposes of the present discussion, sociological and culturaldifferences are relevant to the extent that they project their effects onto thepolitical arena. Family links contributed to the building of bridges ofstable contact among people and groups of even the most diverse politicalaffiliations, thereby setting the basis for a differentiated dealing of issuesand actors. Once again the San Antonio sugar factory is an illustrative casein point. In July 1988 President Daniel Ortega announced the interventionof the state in San Antonio, based on its owners' and managers'involvement in capital-flight manoeuvres and in non-fulfilment ofproduction schedules. Afterwards an additional argument was added: theevidence that funds were channelled to Resistencia Nicaragiiense (thecontras) hrough the US-based Wells Fargo bank, in whose stock capitalthe Pellas family participated. According to the Sandinista governmentstatement, the intervention was decided upon after the San Antonioowners and managers elected to ignore repeated government requests toend these activities.30 Engineer Dionisio Marenco was initially appointedas San Antonio's comptroller, because of his previous, already mentioned,relation to the firm. After a while Marenco was replaced by MiguelBarrios, a MIDINRA high-rank official and a nephew of Violeta Barriosde Chamorro. Later on, the intervention was transformed into ex-propriation, with compensation payments to the Pellas family made insugar produced by the factory, at a time when international sugar priceswere on the rise.

The prudence, advance warnings and early notices characterising theintervention in San Antonio, as well as the lucrative final result of thetransaction, stand in stark contrast to the way in which the confiscation ofhouses, lands, cattle and equipment was expedited with regard to smalland middle peasants who were found collaborating with the contras. Inmany cases 'collaborating with the contras'meant no more than sneakingfood to a son that was hiding out in the nearby hills or bushes, or helpinghim to escape the draft.Another case in which clear differences arose concerned students30 See Barricada(Managua, 14, i6, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27 and 28 July, 1988); NuevoDiario (Managua, 14, 15 July 1988); La Prensa (Managua, 18 May I990); Barricada(Managua, 25 May I990). Initially MIDINRA presented the intervention as a purelytechnical, administrative decision, aimed at saving the Nicaraguan sugar industry'smain factory. See Jaime Wheelock's statement in Barricada,14 July 1988.


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332 Carlos M. Vilastravelling abroad to study. With the revolution's coming to power, therewas a big jump in the number of young Nicaraguans receiving overseasscholarships. But whereas children of elite families continued to pursuetheir studies in well-known United States and Western Europeanuniversities (now, with the revolutionary government's sponsorship),middle class and poorer students, as well as children from well-to-dofamilies lacking integration to the traditional elite, were sent to the USSRor Eastern Europe, usually for long periods of no less than five years.Upon their return, the former were often offered high-ranking appoint-ments in government institutions in Managua, while the latter were eithersent to remote rural areas, failed to find a job or had no choice but asecond class, poorly paid position. When economic crisis deepened, theywere simply advised to stay abroad.31Additional illustrations of this discriminatory treatment might beadded, and they all point to an uneven but consistent allocation ofpenalties and rewards. The dividing line was drawn not only betweenpropertied groups (for whom economic incentives were never lacking)and the officially designated 'fundamental forces of the revolution' - i.e.workers, peasants, small businesspeople, technicians and professionals -but also, within the former group, between the lofty traditional elite andthose of a more recent prosperity.32However, the existence and survival of these ingredients of traditionalsociety within the political nucleus of the revolutionary regime should notbe exaggerated, for a number of reasons. First, this situation was closelylinked to a major change in government personnel which, though nottotal or systematic (assuming this is something that can be achieved), wasthe most far-reaching ever experienced in modern Nicaragua. Secondly,other social networks, in addition to families, had a stake in this. Severalmembers of the Ventanagroup achieved significant government positionsin the Sandinista regime: Sergio Ramirez Mercado was a member of theJunta de Reconstrucci6n Nacional (1979-84) and then Vice-President(1985-90); Alejandro Serrano Caldera served successively as Nicaragua's31 See 'Juventud Sandinista busca alternativas de empleo a graduados en el exterior',Barricada,14 July I988. In an informal interview, an official at the Nicaraguan Embassyto Sweden told me that because of institutional changes and economic crisis in theSoviet Union and EasternEurope, as well as politicalchange in Nicaraguaafter theFebruaryI990 elections, hundreds of Nicaraguanstudents in those countries werecomingto Swedenaskingfor the Embassy'shelpto go back home (Stockholm,26Oct.

I990).32 In along conversation had with DanielNnfiez,the Presidentof theNicaraguanUnionof Farmersand Cattlegrowers UNAG) in May I985, he named a long list of hugeConservative andownersthat had not been affectedby the agrarianreform, despitethe fact that much smaller landholdings belonging to Liberal ranchershad beenexpropriated.


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 333Ambassador to the United Nations' organisations in Geneva, as a memberof Nicaragua's Supreme Court, as Ambassador to the United Nations andas the National University's president; Carlos Tiinnermann was a memberof the 'group of 12', Minister of Education (1979-84) and NicaraguanAmbassador to the United States.UNO (Union Nacional Opositora) governmentThe 25 February I990 elections turned Nicaragua's government into acoalition of heterogeneous parties united by the common denominator ofanti-Sandinismo; it is, literally, a union for opposition. With regard to themain point being discussed in this article, the relevant factor is themaintenance of the pattern of family ties despite explicit politicalantagonisms between the new government and the new Sandinistaopposition.A case in point is that of industrialist Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren,Minister of the Presidency. Lacayo is the president's son-in-law; a nephewof don Joaquin Cuadra Chamorro; a direct cousin of EPS' Chief of StaffGeneral Joaquin CuadraLacayo; a direct cousin of EPS' Deputy Chief ofStaff, Colonel Osvaldo Lacayo Gabuardi; a direct cousin of ComandanteLuis Carrion Cruz's wife; and a direct cousin of Mariano FiallosOyanguren, Chairman of the Supreme Electoral Council. Alfredo Cesar,initially one of dofia Violeta's closest advisers and currently Chairman ofthe National Assembly, is married to one of Antonio Lacayo's sisters whofor some months served in dofia Violeta's government as the TreasurerGeneral. Minister of the Interior (Gobierno)Carlos Hurtado, a member ofthe already mentioned Argiiello Hurtado family, is married to a cousin ofAntonio Lacayo, while another of Lacayo's sisters is married to a brotherof Carlos Hurtado.

Minister of Agriculture Roberto Rond6n Sacasa, a powerful landownerunaffected by the agrarian reform and Chairman of the Nicaraguan CattleRanchers Association, is a direct cousin of former Sandinista DeputyMinister of Agrarian Reform Salvador Mayorga Sacasa, as well as abrother-in-law of Comandante Victor Tirado Lopez, a member of theFSLN's National Directorate. UNO's Minister of Telecommunications,Pablo Vijil, is a brother-in-law of Minister Carlos Hurtado, and a brotherof Sandinista Minister of Housing Miguel Ernesto Vijil, who later servedas Chairman of the National Cotton Commission. Pablo Vijil is also abrother-in-law of Pedro Antonio Bland6n, the Sandinista government'sDeputy Minister for Foreign Cooperation. Alvaro Chamorro Mora, thenew Minister of Tourism, is a brother of Javier Chamorro Mora, formerSandinista Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Deputy Minister for thePresidency, Antonio Ibarra Rojas, is a brother-in-law of Commander

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334 CarlosM. VilasBayardo Arce, a member of the FSLN's directorate, and Dr DuilioBaltodano, the Attorney General, is the father-in-law of SandinistaSubcomandante Rafael Solis Cerda, the National Assembly's formerSecretary General from 1985 to 1990.This close intertwining supports a comment made by a colleague notrelated to these notable families, during the tense transition from FSLNto UNO government: 'It is ironic to watch relatives exchanging poweramongst themselves'. Or, as a Sandinista militant belonging to the worldof chapiollos probably overstated: 'The government crossed CalleAtravesada from one sidewalk to the other'.33 Despite the scepticism orirony these comments may reflect, it should be pointed out thatparticipation of family networks in UNO's government is generallyweaker than that registered in the FSLN government. At present there isa more pronounced participation of cabinet members coming from groupsor factions with no ties to those traditional networks: a situationsuggesting that the relation between the sociological profile of agovernment and its political and ideological orientations is more complexthan is usually assumed.The split between the group closest to President Violeta Barrios deChamorro and the hard-line faction led by Vice-President Virgilio Godoyreproduces within UNO's government Nicaragua's recurrent socialconflict, which is, at one and the same time, more and less than a classconflict. It is less than a class conflict because, in the final analysis, it is aconfrontation between two factions pertaining to the same class, with oneof the factions expressing itself as a complex kinship structure. And it ismore than a class conflict, since it reflects the world of culturalmanifestations, the structure of ethnic hierarchies, the symbolic universeof society, and moves with a notorious independence over political andideological frontiers.The first of these two groups emerges coalesced around dofa Violeta,supported by the previously mentioned family network. Dofia Violeta isthe President and also the matron and the mother, with all that this impliesin the context of a traditional society with a strong male chauvinist cultureof veneration of the mother.34 In addition to this shared social origin,several of the President's men belong to CORDENIC, Comisi6n para laRecuperaci6n y Desarrollo de Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan counterpart ofthe International Commission for Central American Reactivation andDevelopment headed by US Senator Terry Sanford. CORDENIC was33 Testimonies collected by the author in April I990. Calle Atravesada s the street onwhich Granada's wealthiest families traditionally have their homes.34 Edmundo Jarquin, second-in-command of the FSLN's representatives at the NationalAssembly, is also one of dofia Violeta's sons-in-law.


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 335founded in April 1988 by Enrique Dreyfus, a prosperous businessmanwho in the early i98os chaired Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada(COSEP), whose opposition to the Sandinista government put him ingaol for some months in I98I. Afterwards Dreyfus served as a financialadviser to the international financial firm Lazar Freres and was a memberof both the International Commission headed by Senator Sanford and theInteramerican Dialogue. CORDENIC brings together a small group ofbusinessmen and professionals, some of whom are members of dofiaVioleta's presidential cabinet: Dreyfus, who has been appointed asMinister of Foreign Affairs; Antonio Lacayo, Minister of the Presidency;Francisco Rosales, Minister of Labour; Silvo de Franco, Minister ofEconomic Affairs; Roberto Rond6n Sacasa, Minister of Agriculture; andFrancisco Mayorga, the first Chairman of the Central Bank. SofoniasCisneros, who was the first Minister of Education in UNO's government,and Humberto Belli, initially the Deputy Minister and now Minister,belong to the 'City of God', a traditionalist Catholic lay group muchfavoured by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. Other members of 'Cityof God' include Health Minister Ernesto Salmer6n and deputy MinisterPetronio Delgado, dofia Violeta's brother-in-law Jaime ChamorroCardenal, and prominent businessman Carlos Mantica, the owner of oneof the two largest supermarket chains in Nicaragua (partially expropriatedby the Sandinista government in 1979), and now the President's adviseron religious affairs.35Without minimising its opposition to many Sandinista policies thisfaction of UNO's government - the so-called 'grupo de Las Palmas',named after the neighbourhood where dofa Violeta's home and office is- displays a strong propensity to maintain a dialogue with the FSLN,which is eased by the already mentioned family links.The second UNO faction, headed by Vice-President Virgilio Godoyand by Managua's mayor Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo, stands in starkcontrast to dofia Violeta's. It includes representatives of several Liberalpolitical factions, emerging businessmen with no ties to the traditionalgroups and those whose properties were seized by the Sandinista agrarianreform or nationalised because of their relations to the Somoza regime, asmall group of union leaders gathered around the Congreso Permanente35 The appointment of Ernesto Salmer6n as Health Minister seems to be due more to thefact that he is dofia Violeta's grandchildren'spaediatrician han to his expertise onhealth policies. Dr Salmer6n is also Daniel Ortega's children's paediatrician: see TrishO'Kane, 'The New Old Order', NACLA Report on the Americas (June I990), pp.28-36. Sofonias Salvatierra,he UNO government'sfirst Ministerof Education hadpreviouslybeenthepresidentof the Parents'AssociationattheJesuitCentralAmericanElementaryand High School in Managua.See footnote i6 for a previousreference oCarlosMantica.

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336 Carlos M. Vilasdel Trabajo, minor political parties including the Communist Party, anda large number of mayors of rural towns from the V (departments ofBoaco and Chontales) and VI (departments of Matagalpa and Jinotega)regions. It is a very heterogeneous coalition held together by its sharedextreme confrontation with Sandinismo and by the absence of personal orfamily links to the traditional elites. Due to its comparative economicweakness, and having been heavily affected by FSLN nationalisations andreforms, this faction fans the flames of anti-Sandinismo as a way ofachieving United States government favours in order to compensate forthe economic power and links to the (former) Sandinista army and policeof the 'Las Palmas group'.

With no organic ties to UNO's hardliners, but closer to them than to'Las Palmas' because of the former's confrontation with the traditionalfamily elites, the ex-contrasof Resistencia Nicaraguense (RN) claim to havebeen abandoned by the US government and accuse dofia Violeta ofheading a 'bourgeois government' and not living up to her electoralcampaign promises.36 RN leaders have made public their intention toform their own political party, even hoping to attract former members ofthe Sandinista Army and disenchanted Sandinistas, based on the commonpeasant identity of those who over the years fought the contrawar on bothsides of the trenches versus those who conducted the war either fromManagua or from Miami.37A political appeal is made to basic cultural andclass identities with a potential strong impact on Nicaragua's subordinatedmasses now that the FSLN is seen by many as being more interested informal institutions than in social and economic change.38 The idea is ofsomething akin to a party of the poor, the plebeian masses, the mestizos,the peasants, the chapiollos, hose who risked and gave their lives, healthand fortunes independently of the banners imposed by the rich, white,cultured urbanite gentlemen from either side, who are familia to oneanother and who hold control of government institutions both then andnow.3936 See RN leader Israel Galeano's ('Comandante Franklin') interview in Pensamiento

Propio, 70 (May i990), p. 29.37 Author's interview with Boanerges Matus ('Comandante Pepe'), Managua, 3o Nov.I990.38 See Carlos M. Vilas, 'El debate interno sandinista', Nueva Sociedad, 13 (May-June

1991), pp. 28-36.39 Matus' interview (see footnote 37). Several high-ranking officials of UNO's governmenthave previously been either Sandinistas or members of the Sandinista government. Inaddition to the well-known cases of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, Virgilio Godoy andAlfredo Cesar, it is also true of Labour Minister Francisco Rosales, a former deputymember of the FSLN's directorate in the I970S. Carlos Hurtado, now Minister ofGovernment (Interior) joined the FSLN in I974 and was a middle-ranking MIDINRAofficial up to I982 when he moved into opposition and to Costa Rica. FranciscoMayorga, briefly Chairman of the Central Bank at the beginning of UNO's government,


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 337This is an option that has also been raised from within Sandinismo: analliance between the social rank-and-file of both FSLN and RN, 'based on

people's interests with particular attention given to the demands oforganised workers in both the cities and the countryside, as well as thebulk of the peasantry, irrespective of whether they maintain traditionalalliances to either the Sandinistas or the RN'.40 The participation of bothSandinista and non-Sandinista workers in the May and July I990 strikesand rallies, a certain cooperation amongst Sandinista peasants and contrarural supporters in defence of their lands, the joint defence of wages andworking conditions by followers of both tendencies in the countryside,and the equally shared resistance to the reconstitution of latifundia byboth FSLN and RN peasants, are some of the cases used to illustrate thefeasibility of such an alliance - a class alliance in the strictest sense of theterm. On the contrary, this proposal is rejected by Sandinistas from thetraditional families who brand it as demagoguery, calling instead for anFSLN open to all.41These well-to-do Sandinistas prefer, on the contrary,a FSLN diluting its class connotations in order to promote the'development of the productive forces, including those owned bySandinista militants and cadres' and 'to defend the meek ones'.42 This isa proposal that, in an apparent effort to bring to an end a traumaticpolitical cycle, recalls the strategy of 'Somocismo without Somoza'championed a decade earlier with no success by the most lucid elementsof traditional society.43Families, classesandpolitics: final considerationsThe preceding presentation had very modest goals: to illustrate, on thebasis of a particular case, the way lineage structures condition and qualifythe dynamics of social classes and political power in the developing world,and the impact of this conditioning upon the nation-wide political arena.Insofar as Nicaragua resembles many Latin American societies, we mayassume that the Nicaraguan example is also relevant for other countries.

had been an advisor to the Sandinista Ministry of Planning from I979 to 1982; DaniloLacayo,Ministerof Information,was a memberof the SandinistaTribunalesPopularesAntisomocistas.40 Orlando Nifiez, 'Pactos, acuerdos y alianzas', Barricada, 14 June I990.41 See Alejandro Martinez Cuenza, 'Alianzas y convivencia basica', Barricada, 16 JuneI990; EdmundoJarquin, Nicaraguaparatodos, o paraalgunos?', Barricada,3 Nov.1990.42 Alejandro Martinez Cuenca, 'Los nuevos retos del sandinismo', La Avispa, I(Oct.-Nov. I990), pp. 7-9.43 See Carlos M. Vilas, 'Nicaragua after the Elections: The First ioo Days', Z Magazine(Nov. 1990), pp. 91-7; The SandinistaRevolution,ch. iv.


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338 Carlos M. VilasThe relationship of class and kinship we have dealt with receives its

specificity from the particular moment in the process of development andmodernisation of Nicaraguan society to which we have directed ourattention. According to the prevailing approaches in Latin Americansociology on processes of revolutionary change, people should alignthemselves in social conflict and in the definition of political allegiancesand confrontations, according to political banners responding to classidentities. We have seen that things are not exactly shaped in this way, andthat the burden of traditional family networks is still heavy within theNicaraguan bourgeoisie despite the profound political and ideologicalcleavages that have fractured the country in the recent past.

The common assumption that revolutions shape immediately andsimultaneously every ingredient in the social matrix can also bequestioned. Many of the issues we have dealt with in our presentation -basic identities and loyalties, the importance of regional and kin factors- survive for a long time after revolutionary political change andcontribute to the moulding of its development. The old system reproducesitself within the new one and frequently appeals to the new one to survive.

Family networks and lineage structures are particularly efficacious intimes of political and economic instability. Family intertwinings permittedsome elements of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie to resist, or to adapt to theshocks of political change and economic transformations, to preserve thebasic features of their social identity and to maintain their social prestige,as other segments lacking those links, or with weaker family networks,succumbed to the pressure of the market and politics, or were swallowedby them, re-emerging, at best, after dramatic changes. Family networkssubsequently permitted some elements in the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie toresist Somoza's competenciaesleal,to transfer capital abroad, to ingratiatethemselves in the Sandinista regime and participate there in high levelpolicy-making positions, as well as to join the anti-Sandinista UNOgovernment. Meanwhile, actors with weaker family roots and links weremarginalised by market changes, were expropriated by the revolutionaryregime, had to leave Nicaragua, experienced the burden of economiccrisis, or are suffering the impact of anti-Sandinista revenge.

Nicaragua's relative marginality with regard to the transformation ofthe Western economies during the nineteenth century and the beginningof the present one, and her late attempt at capitalist modernisation,contribute to an explanation of the preservation of kinship structures andthe strong influence of family networks. It may be assumed that furthereconomic development and, in particular, advancements in urbanisation,industrialisation and market relations, will introduce modifications in thissituation. Similarly, the economic and political improvements for many


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Class, Lineageand Politics in Nicaragua 339Sandinista and former contraeaders and cadres will undoubtedly introducechanges and tensions in the traditional social fabrics.The presence of notable families on both sides of the profound politicalfractures in contemporary Nicaragua may also be understood as amoderating buffer against foreign political pressures, particularly thevirulent anti-Sandinismo expressed by agencies and high-ranking officialsof the US government. Family interconnections have woven a defensiveweb over dofia Violeta's government to confront pressures from UShardliners to remove from the state, and above all from the army, everyremnant of Sandinismo, and to protect Sandinista cousins in theirpositions. Accordingly, what some observers interpret as the FSLN'scooperation in the stabilisation of dofia Violeta's government is madeeasier by those family links, or at least these links contribute to a reductionin the intensity of confrontations.The strength and permanence of extended family structures within theoligarchic fractions of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, with its relativeindependence from political conflicts, stands in stark contrast with whatis to be found at the lower levels of social stratification: familyfragmentation due to political confrontations and economic crisis. Forcedmigrations, unwanted direct involvement in the political and militaryconflict, having to leave the country in search of job opportunitieselsewhere, have inflicted profound wounds on the social texture ofsubordinate classes. In this social environment, those who joinedcounterrevolutionary forces lost every contact with those who remainedloyal to Sandinismo; the ones who stayed in Nicaragua loosened linkswith those who migrated to Honduras or to Costa Rica. In the oligarchicgroups of traditional society family networks acted to prevent, or toreduce, the ruptures emerging from political conflict, and helped to backthe winner on every occasion. On the contrary, socioeconomicvulnerability at the lower levels of society determined that politicalconfrontation and economic collapse did indeed separate members of thesame family.4444 Shortlyafter the Sandinistavictory in July 1979, the husband of N. C. - one of mycollaborators n the Atlantic Coast Northern area left Nicaraguato join one of thefirst armedgroups to form the contra.He had been a member of Somoza's NationalGuard and climbed quickly in what was initially named Fuerza DemocraticaNicaragiiense FDN). Over the following eleven yearshis wife andthree children ostanycontact with him. There was no news, no letters,no messages;they knewnothing

of his whereabouts nor whether he were alive or dead. After the February I990elections she received news from him: he was one of 'Comandante' Franklin's ield'commanders'.The family reuniontook place up in the mountains of Jinotega, in acampof contraswho had laid down arms.During the yearsof separationN. C. movedfrom one job to another, ncludingan appointment n Sandinista tatesecurity.It wasmoving to watch the emotional impact on her, on him and on the children now,


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340 Carlos M. VilasUnder these circumstances, the reunification of families, presented asone of UNO's central electoral campaign goals, gathered broad support

amongst popular sectors affected by war and crisis. This was a goal thatcould be presented as an entirely non-political issue - i.e. not affected bythe confrontations that shocked Nicaraguan society for more than adecade, to be easily linked to a religious discourse of forgiveness andpardon for offences, and by the same token handled as a critical pointagainst the FSLN, since the FSLN's militarism was presented as the mainfactor responsible for divisions within families. Emphasis on this point bydofia Violeta Barrios de Chamorros increased its appeal. From the distantperspective of a different cultural background, the Chamorro Barrios area particularly illustrative case of Sandinista and anti-Sandinista co-habitation within one and the same family. But, in many people's eyes,whose homes had been ripped apart by war, they were a living testimonyof family divisions because of politics - i.e. because of Sandinismo.It is worth stressing that, despite the strong influence notable familiesmanaged to keep throughout the Sandinista decade, the two mostpowerful officials in the regime - brothers Daniel and Humberto Ortega- were outside these networks, as was Comandante Tomas Borge, theonly survivor of the FSLN's formation in the early i 96os. It is also a well-known fact that the Ortegas' road to political power owed nothing tothose networks; on the contrary, traditional family advancement withinthe Sandinista regime was to an important extent built upon proximity tothe political and institutional areas where the direct authority of theOrtega brothers was particularly strong.45

youngsters as they tried to rebuildfamilylife. This casecontrastswith thatof R.L.,a son of a SandinistaGuerrillaCommanderrelated to one of the most traditionalfamiliesfrom southernNicaragua.The young man was kidnapped n mid-I987 by acontrapatrolwhile servingthe draft,then carried o Honduraswherehe was a prisonerfor some weeks in one of ResistenciaNicaragiiense'scampsthere. His familyrapidlyasked for help from one of his father'sdirectcousins,who immediately ntercededonR.L.'s behalf. This cousin was a former Sandinistaminister,who went into exile inCosta Rica in the early I98os, where he became a political adviser to AlianzaRevolucionaria Democratica(ARDE), Eden Pastora'scounterrevolutionarygroup.R.L. was sent by planeto SanJose where he stayed n his relative'shome beforegoingback safelyto Managuaa few weeks later.45 Stonefailsin his attempt o establishan 'aristocratic ocialbackground'for DanielandHumberto Ortega; his data are not convincing and his prose is plagued by vaguestatements, which contrast with his accuracy when dealing with other not-so-controversialNicaraguanofficials. His only source is a secondaryone, authoredby aformeradviser o Lt ColonelOliver North. See Stone, TheHeritageftheConquistadores,p. 40. The most Stone is able to establish is that the Ortega brothers were sociallyconnected neitherto a poor peasantrynor to the ruralproletariat,but to what I mightcall a relativelywell-to-do chapiolloeomanry.A readingof Eric Wolfs PeasantWarsof the Twentieth enturymight have saved him time and effort.


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vilas article

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