The Role of the Martyr in Central America, Research Paper Example

The objective is to present two martyr: Sandino in Nicaragua and Martin in El Salvador and to pose and answer the quetion: what is it about these men’s legacies that invokes social unrest, or at least what compels revolutionaries like the FSLN, and the FMLN to take up arms in their names. Use a Sociological frame work: 1 part lite, Gurr: people can perceive—>part 2 heavy: Durkheim’s collective conscious: the martyr symbolizes al indignation? at least Gurr.

Abstract

Sandino in Nicaragua and Martin in El Salvador are both legacies in the struggle for Independence against Imperialism. Both fought a revolution in terms of violence and physical combat and made it clear that power and freedom can be achieved through armed struggle. They followed the strategy of guerrilla wars and anti intervention mass movements to coerce the existing governments to relent to their demands; and finally win the decisions and the people in their favour or ideology. These martyr’s have set an example that ‘might is right’…violence is the word of the day; and their path is being blindly followed and used as an alibi by the FSLN and The FMLN to invoke social unrest in the name of revolution. Our focus of study would be to understand that one of the main reasons of aggression, apart from the pure human instinct is ‘learned’ aggression. It is the strong interrelation between the current trend of violence and the previous historical aggressive instances or manifestations. Then our argument will finally address the fact of collective consciousness…an uprising for justice and the revolutions of the martyr symbolize moral indignation.

Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino born in 1895, in Niquinomo was one of the greatest revolutionary leaders in Nicaragua, during 1927 to 1933. He rose up against the U.S military presence in Nicaragua and was often referred as a bandit by the U.S, because of his violent methods of revolt. His heroism has been much of a precedence of heroism in Latin America, as well as the most effective resistance to American imperialism. In the account of The Sandino Affair (1967) by Dr.Neill Macaulay warned that “more than the International Communist conspiracy, the ghost of Sandino confronts the United States in Latin America”. Today the world knows about Sandinista regime but fails to remember that Sandino was the originator of the Sandinista movement of Nicaragua. Sandino believed that a military solution was wise to fight for justice and deprivation – the ideologies of Sandino based on the following: He fought for the deprived, for the poor against the elite; His fight was for freedom from imperialism; he did not sell his philosophy or ideals in exchange of money or power; He was a brave man and a good soldier who fought difficult wars; He organised the masses in grounds of benevolence and shared grief; His philosophy were not artificial to gain political power or position and he died struggling for his cause. More over his honest intentions for the better social conditions of the people are an example of the group founded after his name FSLN. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. (www.wiki.org ). Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and

Spanish and are imbibed with corrupt hierarchy with established notion to fight, use violence and anarchy for usurping their own personal interest in the name of poor. Thus he was the Robin Hood of Latin America and its political framework against the oppression of the elite. (http://flordepochote.com/english/surroundings/sandino.asp)

Augustín Farabundo Martí Rodríguez was born in 1932 and was a renowned social activist and leader of El Salvador. He was a revolutionary leader and a rebel, who followed the path of continuous struggle against the rich to help the poor peasants from the oppression. It is his attempt to fight for the poor and the oppressed that he was known as the Salvadoran revolutionary and a martyr. However his activities were a bit different from Sandino. He believed that Sandino was in a blind rage of liberation and national independence while ignoring the social revolution. Marti` is a martyr figure for the El Salvador Left and his legacy has been imprinted by his followers by labelling the leftist Salvadoran political party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional), which fought a bloody guerrilla war against the Salvadoran military government (backed by the U.S.) in the 1980s. This war is characterized by the most horrific incidents of brutality and human right violations on both sides.(http://www.answers.com/topic/farabundo-mart).

The revolution of Sandino The ideology of Sandino and Martin were populist and reformist, and much of their effort was to give a better standard of life to the underprivileged…much contrary to the self centric and power frenzy violent activities of the FSLN and FMLN. They have enlisted the ways of the revolution, including acts of disruption in the institutional governance, confiscating riches and affluence from the elite, deceiving the mass about the true ideal of their organization. MY question is what is it about these men’s legacies that invoke social unrest, or at least what compels revolutionaries like the FSLN, and the FMLN to take up arms in their names.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional–FSLN) had formally come into existence in Nicaragua in 1961. It was founded by José Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge Martínez, and Silvio Mayorga the FSLN began in the late 1950s as a group of student activists at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua–UNAN) in Managua. Many of the early members were imprisoned. Borge spent several years in jail, and Fonseca spent several years in exile in Mexico, Cuba, and Costa Rica. Beginning with approximately twenty members in the early 1960s, the FSLN continued to struggle and grow in numbers. By the early 1970s, the group had gained enough support from peasants and students groups to launch limited military initiatives. (http://countrystudies.us/nicaragua/12.htm). The FLSN had been born in the womb of rapid revolution and as an instinct to meet the military and physical protest of the time. It never really got a fair chance to develop as a political party; and the transition from the political-military movement which relied on the guerrilla power and armed struggle to a government that would require to administer a country by means of democratic and non violent terms was too much of a jump for them. They did not get the opportunity to develop the constituents in the party, to actively form a leadership and involve the adequate participation of the people. Moreover, FSLN was too much dependent on the Heritage of Sandino…they thought that since their party represented the ethos of the legacy, people would even substantiate their illegitimate coercion in the politics of today. Much of their leadership was corrupted much unlike that of Sandino. During 1980 there was a confusion between the state and the party due to which many of the donations went directly to the state. Thus following the defeat in election, it was decided that FSLN’s holdings were required for meeting the expenses of the party. It implied the distribution of certain state-party assets to individuals who were the backbone of the party. This led to the concentration of party holdings in the possession of individuals. This led to corrupt practices, malice and heinous activities within the FSLN leadership. Thus it became a complete nuisance and a complete diversion of what Sandino had imagined I guess. But FSLN continued force and violence terming words as revolution and false affixes in terms of the following of their predecessors.

According to Gurr, “Men are quick to aspire beyond their social means and quick to anger when those means prove inadequate, but slow to accept their limitations (58)…RD = relative deprivation is the tension between your actual state, and what you feel you should be able to achieve; perceived discrepancy between value expectations and value capabilities” (37). The intensity and scope of RD strongly determine the potential for collective violence. Gurr gives a long review of psychological research on aggression, and concludes that frustration-aggression is the “primary source of the human capacity for violence” (pg 36), although aggression is neither necessary nor sufficient [indeed, he concedes that sometimes greed drives violence, but that frustration is a much stronger motivating force]. The more intense and prolonged a feeling of frustration, the greater the probability of aggression. What Sandino of Nicaragua and Marti` of El Salvador has done, was much in context to the rural deprivation…the followed aggression.The question is why Sandino fought Guerilla wars and employed a physical combat with enemies? Why did he use force as a means of revolution? Sandino portrays the category which Durr points out as the important factor of aggression. Sandino was aggressive because he did not want the poor peasantry and the rural people to be deprived and hungry? He did not want American imperialism to dominate the fate of his people and thought violence was the only resort to compel the arbitrators to comply with his demands. Marti` was also eloquent about violence to bring about social order and decree to his country. He wanted to use violence and aggression to reform and bring prosperity to the poor and the oppressed. However, the FSLN and the FMLN uses the same ideas of Durr in their ideology of taking up arms. They use ‘aggression’ to typify the sociological context of deprivation. They were supposed to be fighting for the poor; and according to the ideologies of their predecessors they were not fighting for frustration aggression. They are selfish and corrupt leaders who have no social connection with the grassroots of the people and nor do they propound the theory of being messiah to the oppressed and fragile Nicaragua and El Salvador. Much to dismay they hurt the ideology, practice of the martyr and break the myth of their predisposed courage and zeal for freedom of their country.  But they do not refrain to use the name and the circumstance of their legacies to take up arms and create the fear factor to paralyze the development and progress of their country. They use threat to get extra ballots and votes from the people only to be far off and alien to the real cause of their struggle.

According to Durkheim, “Society is not at all the illogical or logical, incoherent and fantastic being which has too often been considered. Quite on the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of psychic life, since it is the consciousness of consciousness. Being placed outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in
their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it sees farther; at every moment of time it embraces all known reality; that is why it alone can furnish the minds with the moulds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them.” This sustains the faith of the Sandino and Marti` leadership and their ploy for a collective movement; including the peasants, the middle class, the students and laborers. These martyrs’s represented the collective faith and belief of a large number of people. They wanted to work for a consolidated form of political authority that would represent the general consciousness of people. Like Sandino who was categorically involved in mass struggles and participated in various radical movements including the Seventh –Day Adventists, anti imperialist and communist revolutions…fought in rough terrains with a poor arm for the general upliftment and cause of the people. He knew about his

limitations but he survived all the battle because he was not fighting for him alone but for represented a collective conscience. The young Robin hood got applaud and support from the Latin America people for being so much in link with the cause of the people. The success of Sandino grew, and his achievement as a pertinent leader of Nicaraguan freedom struggle, he received symbolic gestures as a sign of support from the enemies of America. But Sandino in no way confiscated the extra benefits from the relationship nor did he trade with them on grounds of consolidating his position in the political scene of the country.

The activities of FSLN and FMNL are detrimental and plagued. They are mostly involved in Bombings, assassinations, economic sabotage, arson, among other rural and urban operations. Since 1988 the FMLN increased urban terrorism in the capital. The organization has however now understood that its potential failure lacks in the fact of not recognizing the true feelings of democracy and to fight for the ordeal of oppression. Due to their unpopularity as a coercive, and violent force, they have recently shifted their focus from terrorist activity. (http://fas.org/irp/world/para/fmln.htm). The FSLN are indifferent about objectives for reformation of constitution or government, and their stand in the elections in 2011. Nor are they interested to plan or formulate reform policies, despite not having a majority in the National assembly. The Vice President of the Supreme Court of Justice and one of the eminent leaders of FSLN, Rafael Soli`s says, “  the constitutional reforms the FSLN is proposing are based on the idea that the law should not stand in the way of the population’s right to elect, reelect and dismiss public officials as they choose. Originally the FSLN was talking about promoting a much more radical change from a presidential system to a parliamentary system with an Executive branch of government responsible only for foreign policy, defense and certain economic matters.” Due to the current difficulty to gather enough support from the opposition and within other parties, FSLN has started to formulate certain reforms. According to the new formulation it will eliminate legislative norms that limit the ability of the population to elect or dismiss public officials. It thus calls in for a recall referendum.

According to Karla Jacobs, “As well as overturning the constitution’s prohibition of reelection, the proposed reforms would introduce the figure of a recall referendum whereby, should the population demand it, such a referendum could be held to remove any public official from a post at any time during their term.” Statistics and performance review of FSLN over the past few years have revealed that time and gain that in spite of not gaining an overall majority in the National Assembly, it always have an upper hand in terms of horsetrading (a systematic and inevitable mechanism in most representative democracies) and have managed to wiggle its way out by plying and manipulating with different factions and bribing out opponents to gain them in their favor. Thus President Saratoga and his FSLN is different from what Sandino had ever dreamt of for the liberation and freedom struggle of his country. No theory or legacy could match the totally corrupt and malice contained within the political party. There is few prodigal planning for development, reform, upliftment of people, employment, education …they are more concentrated in the political ballgame of votes and opposition and reconciliation. Their struggle is far away from the grassroots and the common people. As for FMLN and El Salvador, the situation and circumstances are grim and violent. According to a report in Los Angeles Times, “The young men ran across the street, their faces covered with bandannas. One fired an automatic weapon, imitating the guerrilla warfare of an earlier generation. The actions of the men, photographed at a demonstration here last month that left two police officers dead, have reverberated deeply in Salvadoran society, leading many to wonder whether the bad old days of civil war might return.” Thus it seems that the era of Marti` and his revolutionary concepts have highly influenced the FLMN and other parties in the country. According to Beatrice Alamanni de Carrillo, El Salvador’s ombudswoman for human rights, “It’s an open secret, and we have to admit that a new revolutionary fringe is forming,” There had been a peace treaty in 1992 between the leftist FMLN and the El Salvador’s right wing government, to bring an end to the guerilla warfare and the massacres of government sanctioned killings. Though FMLN has become legitimate and have now received the status of a political party, its activities are still naïve and hostile. Their violence is often attributed to the Gurr ideology of frustration that leads to aggression. “This is a very patient country where the people have not yet seen any solution to their social and economic problems,” said Leonel Gomez, a political analyst here who has worked as an investigator on several U.S. congressional inquiries. “If there are no solutions, people start to yell. If you don’t answer them, they yell more. If even then you don’t listen to them, they will start to shoot at you.” It is the frustration of the lingering poverty of the country. It was seen that the group responsible FMLN activists known as the Limon Brigade from the San Salvador suburb of Mejicanos was responsible for the attack. History shows that their parents had fought and died in the civil war. “They come from a culture of social consciousness,” said one source who asked not to be named. “They live in poverty and in a community which has been packed with weapons” since a 1989 guerrilla offensive. According to conservative President Tony Saca, “If we look at the burning of buses, the blockade of streets … the takeovers of the [National] Cathedral, we can see that in all of these incidents the same people are present, and that they belong to groups linked to the FMLN.  It’s necessary, for the health of our democracy, that the FMLN disassociate itself completely from these groups”. (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/aug/09/world/fg-salvador9)

Reference

Ted Robert Gurr, 1971, Why Men Rebel

Emile Durkheim, (1893) The Division of Labor in the Society Patrick Arguello, a Sandinista involved with the Dawson’s Field hijackings

Rigoberto Cruz (aka Pablo Ubeda), early FSLN member

Yvon Grenier,(1999) The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador

New York Times, 2009 “Leftist Party Wins Salvadoran Vote”