by Midge Quandt

In Nicaragua, President Enrique Bolaños is taking measures against the corruption of the previous regime of the notorious Arnoldo Aleman. This effort is pivotal to changing a political system based on the venal sharing of power by top political leaders, as Sofia Montenegro notes below in her April 2002 interview with Midge Quandt. Montenegro talks about how various groups are coming together to pressure the government to take action on this front. The groups include the Network of Women Against Violence, which WCCN supports, the National Feminist Committee (CNF), founded by Montenegro, and The Citizen Movement (MC) also organized by her.

She also discusses the Government’s consultation with youth and with the feminist movement. (In the seminars she conducted with the CNF, she distinguishes the feminist movement from the women’s movement because of its commitment to changing the system of patriarchal domination.)

Finally, Montenegro tells us about the growth of the CNF and its inclusion of more individuals from the women’s movement. A major goal here is to repoliticize the women’s NGOs — this after a period when the service orientation was paramount.

An activist and feminist, Montenegro is also a writer and communications specialist. Midge Quandt writes about Nicaraguan politics and feminism. She works with Princeton/Granada Sister Cities and the Nicaragua Network. Quandt thanks Mark Lester for his help with this interview.

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I want to start with the Citizen Movement (MC), because I never heard anything about what happened, Sofia. You didn’t say anything in your e-mails, so I never knew what happened to the forums, to the abstention movement.

Well we were beaten down. There were some things on television on abstention, and they came [down] hard on us in the sense that ... really Briceño on Channel 8, any journalist that had the possibility to speak on television and in La Prensa were calling anybody who called for abstentionism an idiot, because the ones that would abstain would increase the possibility of Daniel Ortega winning.

My argument was that that was not our problem. There was no real competition because people had no real alternatives. It was the artificial polarization of things which obliged people to either vote for one of them or abstain if you were not convinced by any of them. And what basically happened was the punishment of the Frente, it was a huge beating, because everyone at the last minute decided that they would rather take a chance with Bolaños instead of taking a chance with Daniel, given what was going on in the States.

For me it was rational voting, because no one was talking ideology in these elections. It broke records in the world — 90%. In a sense it is damn unpredictable. I wrote an article that said that people expected in a way that the kiss of the people would transform the frog into a democratic prince. There was some popular magic in that.

And the fact that this is perhaps, besides Violeta Chamorro, the President that has gotten the most massive endorsement of people, gives him the possibility of doing something. And this is the reason I think that he got so strong after that vote that he finally found the voice and the balls to face Aleman. Because if he had been a little bit less legitimate, i.e., gotten fewer votes, I don’t think he would have done that. But because he had this massive endorsement, he got his pants and put them on.

So the whole thing has been evolving in the sense that all the efforts that were made prior to such a tight election and closed system are beginning to evolve in the Citizen Movement. It has transformed itself or adapted, because we decided after the election to wait at least the first three months to see what the elections were going to mean. Because you have to give them the benefit of the 100 days, which are due this Saturday. And after the 100 days the honeymoon is finished.

So the MC still exists?

It is alive and rolling. What happened is that finally after all the debates and fights between ourselves over what to do, we decided after the election, let’s wait, but we must continue with the priority that we have, which is opening the political system. But in order to get there, you have to get Aleman out [of the National Assembly].

In Nicaragua, there are four basic scenarios. One is that the rest of the year or next two years you will have this conflict of the two-headed government split between the two branches. Aleman and the National Assembly and Bolaños in the Executive branch, with the Frente in the minority in which it can only see what it can get in the fight between the two.

A second horrible scenario, which is now less probable, is that Aleman would force Bolaños to submit to his dictates from the National Assembly, which would be a de facto coup. Because Bolaños is weak and incapable of confronting Aleman.

The third possibility is the growth of an independent bench that grows out of these five people that are already there, the Bancada Azul y Blanco [Blue and White Bench], which are some Liberals that have split from the Liberal Party controlled by Aleman. This would bring a balance inside the National Assembly, because then none of them would have a majority. So you would need to negotiate in order to do anything collectively. And besides this is a necessity if you are going to get Aleman out. You are going to need the votes of the Frente, the votes of this bench, and the votes of three more Liberals.

So that is the third scenario, and the fourth would be that the resuscitation of Daniel Ortega and the Frente will prompt the Liberal rank and file — Aleman’s group and Bolaños’ group — to stick together in order to face the Sandinista menace, and the whole replay of the polarization of forces would continue. In these two cases, it would mean that Bolaños would have failed in constituting an alliance with civil society.

So these four scenarios are already evolving simultaneously in the political game in Nicaragua. Because it is already the first six months of government, and you have this open fight between the Legislative and the Executive.

Aren’t the Liberals the majority in the National Assembly? Then why are they fighting with the President and the Executive Branch?

Because there was a scandal. I don’t know if you know about the scandal involving Channel 6. This is the first hard thing that involves Aleman’s government. There are some people in the new cabinet of Bolaños who are against corruption and against Aleman. And he appointed one Prosecutor and Attorney General, who was a former Sandinista. Now he turned against the Sandinistas, became a Liberal and was picked up by Bolaños to be the Prosecutor (Fiallos).

So he says, I take Bolaños at this word, he is serious and I believe that he is moving seriously against corruption, so I will do my duty. And he went all the way against corruption. And the first thing that blew up started with the television, because the television was the loudspeaker of Aleman, and they had to close it because it was broke. It just happened that 1.5 million dollars had been lost, and all the people that were around it were people there by direct orders of Aleman.

So the Prosecutor took this and went all the way, and they finally got the proof, and we have the first people in jail. And some people are on the run. Aleman gave the orders himself to be trafficking in all these checks and money. So that is how the contradiction between the two happened.

So everybody was waiting to see if Bolaños was going to fulfill his word that he would prosecute corruption. When people saw that he was, they began to apply pressure, so the rest of us, civil society, began to pressure and to demand punishment, and to take away the impunity and immunity of Aleman, get him out of the National Assembly and bring him to court. And obviously he has robbed us of millions in this country but it is like Capone, they grab him through the taxes.

Could you spell out for me how getting Aleman would then lead to opening the system?

Two things, first he would lose control of the Liberal Bench. The other thing is that it would open the door to prosecute all the rest of his cronies who are inside the National Assembly. That is the reason he put them as representatives with the National Assembly because they needed immunity in order to not be prosecuted. This would make this whole group of Aleman’s begin to break up.

Would it do anything, though, to enable other parties to run? Remember the problem with the Third Way.

The thing is that with Aleman out and the weakening of the majority of the Liberal Party, then it is possible to pass the law to reform the political system. Obviously Aleman is not interested because he wants control.

I thought that the Frente, together with the Liberals, was not interested in reform because they wanted to jointly control.

Yes, but Daniel Ortega and the Frente have paid such a huge price for that pact. Now they know that in order to reconstruct themselves and their credibility they have to break the pact. They have to break with Aleman, and they have to break with being functional to this corruption in Aleman’s group, because they are paying the price.

Also the Front in this last election had to form an alliance, for the first time in their life, with the Convergence, and the people of the Convergence are applying a lot of pressure too. This is where Antonio Lacayo is, Azucena Ferry, and all these people. And the Convergence, which nobody gave five cents for last year, is becoming a belligerent actor inside the Front. And I know because I have been talking a lot with Ferrey, who is Social Christian. And I was telling her that if you don’t make this thing work in the future, the Convergence is dead and the Front is dead. And any possibility of change or just countering the power of Aleman in this country will be practically impossible.

The people in the Convergence are serious, serious in demanding a change in the Front in politics, particularly regarding problems like corruption, democracy, governability, social and political reforms.

Is that a change from the pre-electoral period, because you wrote a paper around November that you sent me saying basically that the Convergence was pretty weak?

It was really weak, but now they are in a better position because the Front is in a weak position. Now the Front needs them, and they have no chance in the future unless they open up a little bit. So they have to make some sort of political concessions.

The other thing is that Bolaños had to earn his credibility by showing and proving that he is a man unto himself, that he is not subordinated to Aleman, so he is very eager to prove that he is not a puppet. Therefore he began to take these steps against corruption. In the beginning he was sort of mild, wishy washy, ambiguous, but the thing has gotten so big now that there is no way to go back. It would be a scandal, he would lose power and the support of everybody if he accepts a negotiated way out for Aleman.

So he is pressed on all sides, it is a lot of pressure. So there have been several meetings between the different groups: our movement, together with the MUN, [The National Unity Movement] and also the group of Eden Pastora [former Sandinista comandante and contra leader — ed.]. You know that Eden Pastora came back to the fore, and some people who were originally from the Front reunited with him to start a mobilization against corruption. The other thing is that these different groups have been getting together, along with Civil Coordinator [CCER.]

Now the MUN was Joaquin Cuadra’s group?

Cuadra’s group, Eden Pastora’s group, Monica Baltondano’s group (basically she is out of the Frente); the Citizen Movement; the CCER. These together with the National Feminist Committee (CNF) and the Women Against Violence had a talk to more or less start a common mobilization. First, each one of these groups is moving, each will have initiatives against corruption, but the idea is that over time this will build until all these different groups come into a more or less a single current of mobilization against corruption. This is civil society.

So last week Daniel Ortega finally went out and said that as part of their struggle against corruption, they will also begin mobilizations of their militants against corruption. So they will have today the second march against corruption in the street demanding Aleman’s head. So they do it on Tuesday, we do it on Thursday, and the others do it on Sunday.

The other thing is that since the Liberal Party said that Bolaños is attacking him, well they say that anyone who is attacking Aleman is attacking the party. They want to declare themselves an opposition party, which is absurd. And they have also threatened that they will put people on the street to defend Aleman.

Who is this now, the Liberals?

The Liberal party. So the talk in the last three days has been that if they put people in the streets trying to protect Aleman and all these deputies who are supposed to be paying off the judges, Bolaños must go on television and call the people to support him in the sense of beginning huge demonstrations to put pressure on Aleman to resign or to go and face the charges.

So that is basically where we are now. Everybody is expecting Bolaños’ report to the nation of his 100 days, because obviously what he must say is that he found the whole damn treasury of the State completely empty. There is an enormous internal debt, and it is all due to the former administration of Aleman. And I guess he must put the blame on Aleman’s government and on everything that they stole.

Let’s turn now to the National Feminist Committee (CNF). I want you to tell me what has happened since I saw you last, when you were beginning to organize on the local level with these chapters.

We tried to work together with the Citizen Movement (MC). We did a lot of mobilization in terms of saying what the implications of the elections were and for the women to understand what was at stake in the elections and the possibility to abstain.

So on the 26th and 27th of this month we have a session of evaluation and elections. We want to make the structure more fluid. Although it will basically remain the same, we are trying to be more efficient in our day to day operations. From five we will reduce our Executive Commission to three, and one of the candidates will run the committee for this period. We will increase the term of this group for two years, because one year is too little. You can do very little in one year.

We need a strong leadership in the Committee for this year.

What are your aims for this year?

The idea is to go back to public politics. We have done a lot of the work of clarifying the situation regarding the NGO-ization of the movement, the demobilization of the movement, and analyzing why, in whose interests, this has happened. Not only in the women’s movement, but in the whole social networking of Nicaraguan society.

On the 8th of March the CNF opened up with the first manifesto that we have done in years. With 10 points of what for us is important as the priorities. We persuaded the rest of the movement to sign the manifesto. And we published it in the papers and requested a meeting on March 8th with President Bolaños. We went there and he was out of town, but we were received by some of this staff and presented the 10 points.

Can you just give me an idea of what a few of the points were?

The first point was the commitment of the government to democracy and against corruption, but at the same time to return the State to its lay character. Nicaragua is not a religious state, and the government should abide by the Constitution, as the first sign of the President to society, and particularly the women’s movement, that it is possible to develop a politics of the State in which the hands of the Church are out.

And then the priorities in health, education and economy. That is basically it. And they received us very seriously, I must say. There was a bunch of us, like 25. We spent about two hours with them. We also requested a seat for the CNF — they only gave one seat to the women in the CONPES [National Economic and Social Planning Council]. And they only gave it to the Network of Women Against Violence, but we said that the movement was wider than that. And the other collective representation of the women’s movement was the CNF, and we requested our own seat. We brought the letter and we are still waiting for the answer.

The candidates to be representatives on the Council are Maria Teresa [Blandon] and me.

Why would they choose the Network of Women Against Violence over you?

Because it is more well known by the government, and the other thing is that they appear less threatening, because they just deal with violence. And they know that if we go, we will speak about everything. Some in the government told me that people are afraid to be seated with you, because you will make waves.

What roles does this council [CONPES] have?

It is a constitutional mandate that existed, but Aleman never put it into practice. Only after pressure by international donors after Mitch did they officially establish this space, because it is a space to consult with civil society. Bolaños said that he would revive the Commission and make it more pluralistic and more open, and that he would consult with the representatives of civil society through this mechanism. Well it has been installed. Carolos Fernando [Chamorro] has been invited to be one of the 10 notable citizens chosen by Bolaños. Because there are 10 people that are invited by the President, and the rest are put there as candidates that all the groups propose.

Another thing is that they opened a council for the Women’s Human Rights and an advisory committee for the Ombudsperson in charge of Human Rights for Women. Basically the CNF is there.

What I am trying to explain is that the government is trying to get backing from civil society by opening advisory committees on the main issues. One of these is in social and economic planning. The other is in human rights.

And that is where the CNF has a strong voice?

Yes, because we helped the people in the Ombudsperson’s office re-engineer the institution. And we want to fight there because the Church wanted to put half of the women there, and we said no. You put the Church there, and we don’t go. So it must be a representation of the women’s movement, not of the Church. And in the end the representation is quite strong. I am the Coordinator of this committee. And I told the Ombudsperson that we were fed up with being consulted about a lot of stuff and in the end they did whatever they wanted. And we said that the moment we thought that they were not paying attention, or that they were just entertaining us — because we are not paid by the State, we give our opinion and our knowledge and our time and our work — if they didn’t pay attention to what we were advising or didn’t discuss with us seriously, we would just walk out and denounce the whole thing just like that.

And they are opening another committee on youth. So we have been invited to be part of that.

How successful was the Citizens Movement’s efforts to influence youth. You were going around with the forums to recruit youth.

We are still doing that because there are some delegations of the Movement talking to the authorities, visiting them one by one, the authorities of the universities that is, to get space for the movement to organize within the universities.

So this committee is another effort of Bolaños to open up?

They opened a secretariat officially, a government institution — which is the Secretariat for Youth. They also will have an advisory committee from civil society involving people who know about youth or are connected with youth movements, etc.

So you are working with this secretariat?

We have been invited, yeah.

The movement?

No, CINCO [Center for Research on Communication]. In the ombudsman’s office I am from CNF, and in the other thing I am from CINCO.

The thing is that the secretariat is run by youth. You won’t believe it but this old man put young people — the oldest one is 26 years old — to run the show. There are some young people from the party of Bolaños, the Liberal Party, but there are also some youth that are not necessarily from the Sandinista Front, but are people from the Sandinista Movement. Since Bolaños has no base, they have been looking to invite people that have had a Sandinista past, as militants of the Front, but are no longer inside the party. And so this is the reason that the state of public opinion regarding Bolaños is beginning to look favorable. I mean, he is becoming credible, yeah? And he has earned some of this credibility probably as a man who is trying to do the right thing.

Maybe you have already said this but why is he making this effort to get feedback, to get input from civil society?

First, because he is a man without a party. He was originally from the Conservative Party. Secondly to reverse the authoritarian tendency that Aleman established and to make himself strong requires that he must lead or get the backing of civil society.

It’s not enough to get a group of businessmen as backers?

COSEP [the big business group] is not enough. It has to be wider than that. So his idea is to use the Planning Council, CONPES as a counterbalance to the National Assembly.

Now, am I right — you have asked that the CMF be represented on the Planning Council. In the rights group you are the leader. With the youth group, CINCO is being consulted. So it looks like the consultations are leading directly to you and your people. That’s good.

Well, we are pushing everywhere, you know.

Do you have competition or is everyone else quiet?

I don’t think we have much competition. There isn’t much choice. The other thing is that as committees, we want to repoliticize the movement. We want to emerge again with a strong political voice, which is our purpose this year. To go back to politics and to basics, you know. And our main banner is democracy, the opening of the system.

I remember you said last year, and in some of the writings that you sent me, that there is no point in talking about social and economic issues until we get more democratic structures.

Yes, and the first thing is that on the 8th of March we opened up a space, we finally had a dialogue with one of the remaining networks of the women’s movement, which is the Network of Women Against Violence. We opened a debate, which took a whole day, on the political balance of the movement in the last decade, and what was the perspective for the next year, and the main challenges and choices that we had. So I guess we were able to unite the political will and say, let’s go and rebuild the women’s movement of Nicaragua.

How will we do this? Well, we will open a new space for political discussion, just for political discussion, and to think together about a common political strategy for the political sphere. Also we will move out of the trap of the coalition approach and the Anglo-Saxon model of organizing.

Which is?

Which is to abandon the way of doing politics through coalitions and use the organic model. [As Sofia explained to me last year, there is more unity and ideological coherence with the organic model.]

What do you mean by the Anglo-Saxon model of organizing?

That is the model that has been installed as the new way of doing politics, the American way of forming interest groups and lobbying with deputies, etc.

Aren’t these Nicaraguan interest groups those that are represented on these consulting bodies?

Yes, but the idea is not to go and exert pressure inside the National Assembly unless the National Assembly is liberated. The advocacy strategy is supposed to work inside the State. And on the other hand it implies that you spend a lot of time talking to public servants in government institutions.

So what is your vision for these groups that is different?

With the advocacy strategy, people usually work on issues. The issues are very tiny, little issues, and you can spend five years in order to get, I don’t know what, a little thing. The difference is that advocacy presupposes that the democracy that you are doing the advocacy in is functioning. Which is not the case of Nicaragua. It may work in the States, but it doesn’t work here. So what you need to do is build organizations that can pressure, that can mobilize for the big issues and pressure for social change, not to get peanuts from the government. And you can do that only if you are strong in numbers and can persist in time and space.

Advocacy tends to unite just for a given moment, and in a brief coalition for just one single thing. And that makes you weak, or you get co-opted by the government institution.

It doesn’t always work very well in our country either. The classic example is with Clinton and the gay rights organizations. They thought that they could go to him and talk and actually get something. But of course they didn’t get anything. The presumption is that OK, they are going to listen to us. We are insiders now, we have access.

Yes, but the idea is that we preserve our outsider vision. Because the feminist movement goes basically against the whole power system and against culture. You cannot be part of the game, you know. You have to be just building up pressure.

I want you to sit back for a moment and put on your political theory hat or your Nicaraguan politics hat. It seems to me that there are very few opportunities in political systems where the elites or establishments invite in — as they are doing here — the social movements. Usually the social movements are outside, in the street or having their teach-ins, or meetings, etc. Is this unusual?

Yes but the social movements are weak. Civil society in Nicaragua has been expanding, but it is still weak. Because it suffers from some degree of depolitization. It has lost itself in some forms of organization. It has replaced social movements with NGOs, and the organization of people — as I told you last time, people do not organize in NGOs, they organize in social movements.

So what is the relationship between the relative weakness of civil society and the fact that the social movements are being invited into the government circle?

Well, because we are being consulted as a representative of civil society, you have the possibility to discuss and advance ideas and proposals. But if it doesn’t work, then you can walk out. And then you need to get organized and denounce the State, and put pressure on it. So it is a two-way strategy. I will go and sit, but if you don’t pay any damn attention, then I am going to create a tornado outside. Or I will cry wolf.

And the reason you are invited in is because of what you said earlier. Bolaños is weak, I mean he doesn’t have a party.

Because they want to have legitimacy. So when you sit on these things, these advisory committees, you are legitimizing the government. But they don’t have you in their pocket. They can have you in their pocket if you are confused. You can be easily co-opted, and you can end up working for the government and forgetting that you were representing some other interests. And therefore you need to re-politicize the movement, because the experience from before is that this advocacy stance has prompted the organizations to become more easily co-opted by the government.

The parallel in the debt cancellation movement, which Alejandro [Bendana] told me about last year, is the US people in the Jubilee movement getting so caught up in lobbying, lobbying for these little changes, little debt reductions that mean virtually nothing. Wouldn’t you say that is an analogy?

It is a general tendency, but it doesn’t happen out of the blue. There is a willingness on the part of the World Bank and whatever to demobilize the society and so, as I was saying yesterday, there are two basic approaches to building civil society. There is the approach of AID, for example, which will give cooperation [or permission — ed.], finally, for the people in civil society to organize. But pluralism means creating segmentations, this is the diversity issue: consulting in fragments, so that civil society will never have enough strength to destabilize the system.

Couldn’t Bolaños have gone that route, and not worry about getting legitimacy? Couldn’t he have just brought people in from lots of movements?

Obviously, that is a danger, that is a risk. And you need to be clear about when they are trying to use you, and when they are moving seriously. And if not, you get out, and you leave them empty chairs.

I think you have a better chance of not being co-opted than we do in the US. Because, as I said, there is the myth in the States that somehow the government is open to various interest groups and will listen. For instance the women’s movement historically has put so much faith in the Democratic Party even though it betrays them over and over again. They are still saying, please do this for us. Because that is the style, and that is not the style here.

Yes, but on the other hand in the minds of the average American, they live in the best world possible. There is nothing wrong with the American political system. But our reality is that we have to change the whole state, the damn system. It is an authoritarian system. We live in the worst possible world. So the attitude must be different because the problems are different. Advocacy in a system like ours only legitimizes a corrupt and authoritarian system.

And the other thing is that the liberal democracy of the United States has established the mechanisms in which the citizen can in one way or another fight the State, though it might take a lot of lawyers.

Not always every effectively though.

But there are established mechanisms. We don’t have these mechanisms. And then you have to open all these concertacion [agreement reaching] spaces, because the State ignores the laws that give you the possibility as a citizen to go through the channels.

I have two questions here. Marcos Membreño had an article in ENVIO that was based on a questionnaire on political culture. One of the results was that Nicaraguans like a strong executive, and really don’t want a more democratic, decentralized system. How does that square with what you are saying, that no one believes in the system here?

It is the same thing that appeared in our research on youth. The bottom line is that what exists is the perception of uncertainty, the feeling of insecurity. People want clear rules, and that is what they mean when they say we want norms, we want rules, we want laws. But that doesn’t necessarily mean endorsing an authoritarian regime. You need order. It is a need they have for ontological security, what [Anthony] Giddens talked about. The sense of insecurity in the country is so great that there is a demand for a certain sense of order, which means that power is not so damn personalized. Because the laws have been lost in the process. The laws exist on paper but not in reality. It is the demand of making the rules of the game very clear, and applying them to everyone. And that is what people mean by a strong regime.

To go back to civil society, there seems to be at the moment this tendency of the powers that be to give lip service to civil society in an effort to regain some legitimacy. Alejandro said in his interview that we don’t need civil society so much as we need civil disobedience. He was talking about the anti-globalization movement.

I don’t think it is so much lip service but a conception and a strategy. Our [CNF] courses show the radical way or left way of building civil society. And then there is the neoliberal concept of civil society. We are both talking about civil society, but we are not talking about the same one. The way they wanted to develop, which has been hegemonic in Nicaragua since the 90s, is that civil society becomes wide and strong enough to monitor corruption, to make government more efficient. But civil society is always too weak to destabilize the system. That is the whole idea.

While the idea that we feminists or radical sociologists have is that there is a necessity to rebuild and reconstruct and develop civil society in Nicaragua, but with the purpose of doing social change; making a strong organized citizenry in order to counterbalance the powers that be in the country, but at the same time to push social change.

Now to go back to the government’s conception of civil society. What do you mean when you say that their idea is to use civil society to make the government more efficient?

I would give you the example of Nicaragua and civil society. You have more people organized in Nicaragua than in the decade of the 80s, in the sense that you have more civilian institutions, more associations, and more NGOs. So we have double the number of organizations. How do you explain the fact that though more people are organized, they are weaker politically speaking. That is one point. And this has to do with the model of organizing, and the ones who are organizing.

Because the strategic universe which moved this society, which are the peasants, are decimated. And the unions have practically disappeared. So who are the ones who grew in associations and organizations? The NGOs — to the detriment of the historical actors in this society. And on top of that we have reproduced a model of doing politics which is a model which is functional for bland democracies. The State is getting smaller, passing all of its responsibilities to a more efficient form of distribution — the NGOs. The NGOs produce beneficiaries of service, but not subjects, because subjects are conscious of their own situation, and fight to change it.

I understand. You talked a lot about this when I interviewed you the year after Hurricane Mitch, about what the role of the NGOs is — to pick up the mess left behind by the State, basically.

Yes, and they are functional for democracy, for structural adjustment, for neoliberal policies.

There is a lot written on the role of the NGOs as a safety net for a weakened State.

Yes, but at the same time they tend to become a buffer net against possible social explosion. That is the function that has been given to NGOs, and to push some sort of aid and cooperation for the poor. So obviously they promote the organization of people enough to incorporate them in the running of the State, but not so politicized or a collective identify or a program of change that they become dangerous, as they did in the past.

Judy Butler told me in the year I was focused on the Civil Coordinador [2000] that the NGOs in Nicaragua were different than NGOs elsewhere, that they were less what you were describing as model number one, that they were more militant, more political. What do you think of that?

They are, obviously, because we have the past. But not all of them are completely conscious. What is happening now is that many people say, "well I have been ten years in this NGO, working for development and nothing happens. We must do something else." Then what we have been preaching is let’s go back to the basics. Take the money that comes to the NGOs and use it to rebuild the social movements. And let the people do the fight. That is what we need.

So in this process we feminists are finally beginning to permeate some sectors of the NGOs and the women’s movement, and this is the reason that there is this space for the first time to talk about it. Because it hurts women. It is not that the women’s NGOs have not been efficient and working, but we have abandoned our own agenda for the agenda of the donors, of the World Bank, of the issues they impose on the movement.

They seem to love micro development.

Micro development, yes. So the movement is becoming a collective Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and this is not the role of the feminists: to tend for the poor, the dead, the children and the sick. This is being Florence Nightingale. We are given the domestic role within the State, it is again given to women, and forget about making political changes. We have been falling into this trap, and we have to get our feet out. But what is done is done. There is nothing to repent. We learned a lot but let’s not get stuck in that. Let’s use the NGOs for some other purpose, which is to build social and political change for women. The idea is not to kill the NGOs, but that they become conscious of how they are being used, and the people working inside of them become functional.

It seems that there is a paradox in what you are saying, which is that the NGOs do a good job within their limits, but at the same time many in the NGOs are saying, our results are terrible. Those two are contradictory to me.

Because the people in the NGOs have higher expectations.

It is not that their micro development projects are failing?

No, but they don’t think that it is changing much, because it is too damn tiny, and you don’t move the elephant. Some of them are becoming worried, tired, because they feel like they are servants for God knows what purpose. They know that they are helping in a little dimension.

I remember reading something in NACLA few years ago that even on that level, because of the economy as a whole, because of the prevalence of the informal sector, because of women’s difficult position, these little projects don’t help them very much.

This is basically what we have been explaining in the debates on this issue. And this is how the damn system works theoretically speaking. [looking for overhead chart]

This [chart] was done to explain to the people — this is the State [highest level], this is the political system which includes the political parties, the media, the pressure groups and the interest groups [middle level or what she later refers to as the mediators]. Then you have what is called civil society as such, the NGOs, the social organizations, the social movements and the civil associations [bottom level]. Theoretically the system should work, because it is a system for democracy. If nothing else it is a system for regulating conflict. And you get to the political system through the political parties, the media, the pressure groups, and the interest groups.

So how is the case of Nicaragua? The political parties are not a channel for civil society because they have become privatized and under the ownership of men, of caudillos. Pressure groups, there they are the big economic interest groups, like Pellas, COSEP, and whatever. Then you have the interest groups. That is where they are putting us in the model, the NGOs, to deal with problems of violence, of abortion, of maternal mortality, etc. But in Nicaragua the only thing that really works is the media. The idea is that theoretically you push all the issues from civil society up to the mediators, who bring them to the State, and they return it to society converted into political solutions or government actions. But in the case of Nicaragua, this thing [State or highest level] is up here and this thing [civil society or lowest level] is down here, and here is a gap between the two.

That has been one of the discussions. And the other thing that we are trying to explain — these are the charts that we or I use to present this discussion — we drew up a balance between the State and civil society. This is civil society, political society and the State. If civil society is too near, if this box moves too near the State, you say that you have co-opted civil society. Then the tendency of the regime is to become authoritarian. The more autonomous civil society is from the State, the more democratic the regime becomes.

So in our case we need to transform civil society basically from a co-opted one to a more autonomous one, which requires a density of organization, a change in values and visions, and new forms of organization in order to become independent and strong. And to force the rebuilding of civil society in order to change the State and the politics. That is basically it.

And then the more independent civil society is of the State, the more the regime is democratic. This is something that we have been trying to explain in different spaces, to the NGOs, and particular in the women’s movement, which is the task that we have given ourselves in the CNF. So through this discussion we have been able in the seminars — I think the seminars are the best tool — to open this up.

Do you have a new round of seminars?

We have kept the basic ones. We have the whole year to do the second round of seminars. Now we will continue this one but with the process of updating and political building of organizations.

Are these seminars going on now, or is it down the road?

It is down the road for the rest of the year. This time they are going to be more open, and will include other people from the movement. So the idea is that we spend the rest of the year now in a dialogue with the different women who want to rebuild the women’s movement. And we have decided to open this from March 8th for the rest of the year. After these discussions many more women were much more interested in affiliating themselves with the CNF. So we have a meeting tomorrow with the Managua chapter. And we have 13 new guests who are going to become members of the CNF in Managua. Q — Why is it that more women have become interested in the CNF?

Because they are beginning to understand what the hell is going on and what has to be done. And they have understood that through the discussion promoted by my group. So it is beginning to render results.

For a while it was the CNF over here and the rest of the movement over there.

Yes, because we first had to create this first group in order that they go out and explain again and reproduce the discussion, and now is the moment I think, this year is the moment to grow into a better and more efficient organization and with a stronger leadership. And since I do believe that I am strong, and I have invested so much in the CNF for the last two or three years, pushing it on, this time I will accept to be a candidate for the CNF.

For the head of the CNF? This was a position held by Luz Marina [Torres]?

Yes she was a member of the executive commission [Luz was Vice coordinator], but they are going out of office. They don’t want to continue because they were for a transition period, and they are tired, obviously. Two of them will repeat, and the third new one will be me. I have never been conducting, officially at least, the CNF. I have had no responsibilities in the executive commission, but have worked mainly in the formation program, in the seminars.

And you worked on ideas for the structure and so on?

Yes.