According to the Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres, or the Autonomous Women’s Movement (MAM), the new government led by President Daniel Ortega has begun demonstrating a consistent pattern, which displays an undemocratic style of government that could be very dangerous for Nicaragua’s still-fragile democracy. Considering that MAM decided a few years ago to fight for democracy, not only for women but for the whole country, it is very likely to expect an escalation in the levels of confrontation between Ortega’s government and MAM. If Ortega’s undemocratic style of government does not change radically, MAM and other organizations from civil society could become targets for harassment, or even worse, repression and prosecution (legal and illegal), as they increasingly articulate opposition to Ortega’s government.
In fact, during a recent trip to Nicaragua in early June, I heard concern among members of MAM about an increasing climate of harassment against them. In this article I will analyze this issue, putting things in context and perspective for a better understanding of this complex and delicate situation. Let me start by saying that MAM has a unique history with the Frente Sandinista. As is true of almost all social movements in Nicaragua, practically the entire leadership of MAM were Sandinista militants during the revolutionary period of the 1980s. Even today, most of them still identify themselves as Sandinistas in a broad sense. However, a significant difference with other social movements has been the fact that since the days of the revolution, a large number of leaders in the women’s movement have learned that it was only through political independence that a social movement, and specifically the women’s movement, could be successful.
By political independence, I mean that the main decisions made by a social movement about its agenda, methods and strategies are made democratically by its own members. The opposite of political independence is to be subordinated to a party that decides what the agenda should be and what methods and strategies should be used at any given time. That was the case in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution when the nine leading members of the Frente Sandinista (who were all men), decided the agenda, goals and strategies of the women’s movement and other social movements.
As a result, women leaders who were very committed to the revolution and at the same time to women’s struggles started to see large contradictions and limits in the way that their women’s organizations functioned. Maxine Molyneux, a British scholar who worked in Nicaragua during the 1980s, was one of the first people who theorized about those contradictions. Her work is now considered a classic of feminist theory in analyzing of women’s movements worldwide. Molyneux introduced the distinction between “strategic” and “practical” needs of women. Practical interests were those focused on attending the immediate needs of most of the women in the country living in poverty. Strategic interests were those focused on changing the gender inequalities in society that facilitate women’s subordination.2 According to Molyneux, the Nicaraguan Revolution focused on resolving women’s practical interests, but left little room to advance women’s strategic interests.
As a result, the women’s movement was the first social movement in Nicaragua to declare independence from the Frente Sandinista’s control. This formally happened after the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990 and was publicly recognized during a national meeting of women held in Managua in January 1992 called “Diverse but United,” which is widely considered the founding moment of the Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres (MAM)3. A majority of the movement has remained independent since that time. The only organization that has not openly been part of this trend was the Asociación de Mujeres Nicaragüenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza (AMNLAE), which was the only women’s organization in the country at the beginning of the Revolution. AMNLAE never separated or became independent from the FSLN; in many ways it became a very marginal organization.
From that founding meeting, two main trends emerged and were followed by different women activists and their organizations. The larger trend focused on creating multiple women’s networks organized by issues. The minority position promoted an organizing model focused on creating a single national organization with an explicit feminist agenda. From that first meeting, six different women’s organizations were created, of which the Red de Mujeres contra la Violencia (Women’s Network against Violence) has become the most successful women’s network with the greatest nationwide presence.
However, one of the most interesting developments during the last fifteen years was the creation of many women’s organizations all around the country. The leadership of almost all these organizations emerged from participants splitting off from from AMNLAE and from the different Women’s Secretariats of other Sandinista organizations, mainly from rural organizations such as Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC) and the Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos (UNAG). Almost all of those new women’s organizations adopted the legal status of a non-governmental organization (NGO), get funds from international cooperation agencies, mostly European, and focus their work on specific projects.
Over the years, the women’s movement became increasingly frustrated with its own fragmentation and lack of a common direction. By the end of the 1990s, the entire movement was in a very intense and productive debate. That debate was sparked by the attacks of then-President Alemán on several women’s organizations and women’s rights in general. Additionally, the alliance that Alemán created between the Nicaraguan state and the most conservative elements in the Nicaraguan Catholic Church on population and reproductive issues was perceived as very dangerous for women’s rights.
Initially, the discussion of the women’s movement focused on the organizing model and the limits of NGOs to foster and nurture social movements4. However, in a very interesting turn of events, during the last three years, some of the most influential leaders of the movement have changed the terms of the discussion. Instead of talking about the dissolution of the existing networks and NGOs, their idea now is to use those existing structures to create sub-groups that are local, independent and autonomous and whose participants are women that participate in local NGO programs. This provides women an outlet to advocate for themselves on a local level and nationally as a part of MAM. This change is the result of a better understanding of the value of the outcomes of all those local women’s organizations.
MAM today
During the last eight years, there has been a growing process of unity in the Nicaraguan women’s movement. Since 2003, MAM has become the most promising structure in this regard. It has decided that the women’s movement needs to move from a short-term vision based on projects to a strategic vision based on processes.5 There are three main elements in MAM’s proposal:
1. The struggle for democracy: According to MAM, the development of true democratic institutions, the rule of law, and the arrival in power of democratic and progressive forces are preconditions to finding a solution to the strategic and practical needs of women. MAM’s goal is the transformation of “power relationships between men and women, and between the government and its citizens.”6
2. Strengthening the women’s movement: Being able to advance women’s rights requires the existence and consolidation of an organized autonomous women’s movement, with the aim of promoting citizenship for women. This movement would have to establish alliances with other actors in civil society to be able to accomplish their objectives. According to MAM, “Autonomy is a necessary element to keep your own agenda, but it is not enough to make that agenda effective. To be able to do that and advance women’s rights requires coherent and organized movement, political openness, and a progressive force in power.”7
3. Promoting a new kind of leadership in the women’s movement: According to MAM, “We need leadership in coherence with our own principles, such as equality, democracy and respect… leadership committed to the elimination of authoritarianism.” MAM has even talked of a “feminist ethic sense”, where “authority should be based on legitimacy and be compatible with democracy8.
With these core elements in mind, MAM has defined eight main programmatic proposals, as follows9:
In the public sphere:
1. Democracy as a political system, true citizenship, gender equity, and recognition of women’s rights.
2. Establishment of a modern and secular state.
3. Construction of women as political and economic actors with self-determination, identity and autonomy.
4. Construction of the women’s movement as an agent and as a collective political actor, with autonomy from political parties and any other kind of interest groups.
In the personal and private sphere:
5. The right to personal integrity and to live without gender violence in the economic, social, cultural and political arenas, both in the private and public spheres.
6. The exercise of sexual rights.
7. The exercise of reproductive rights.
8. The exercise of economic and legal rights, in equal conditions to men; the ability to have access to goods and productive means, such as property rights, access to employment, equal pay, credit, technical assistance, and to the market.
MAM and Ortega’s government
With democracy at the center of MAM’s political proposal, it is not surprising that it has become one of the most active critics of the undemocratic style of government that Ortega’s administration has shown. I would like now to summarize some of these main areas of confrontation between MAM and Ortega’s government so far.
First, MAM is dedicated to supporting progressive political forces that make advances in women’s rights. Because of this, at the beginning of 2006, MAM established a political alliance with the Movimiento de Renovacion Sandinista (MRS) and actively supported presidential candidate Herty Lewites. Lewites was a former mayor of Managua who became a political dissident after being expelled from the FSLN for challenging Daniel Ortega for the Presidential candidacy. Lewites died from a heart attack five months before the Presidential election of November 2006, and was replaced on the ballot by Edmundo Jarquín. At the same time, MAM had their own candidates for the National Assembly on behalf of the alliance MRS-MAM. The FSLN’s leaders had a difficult time with the fact that these women leaders of MAM were former Sandinista activists, therefore they treated them as dissidents and traitors, harassing them whenever possible.
Second, in October 2006, prior to the Presidential election in November, medically-necessary abortions were banned completely after having been legal for more than a century. This step back was the direct result of the political agreement between the FSLN and the most conservative elements in the Nicaraguan Catholic church that most feel was an election ploy. The change in the law was approved thanks to the support of the members of the FSLN at the National Assembly, despite the protest and mobilization of the women’s movement.
Finally, Ortega’s government has oversimplified women’s role in society and their aspirations for equal participation in public spheres. Before the inauguration, Ortega announced that during his tenure, women would hold 50% of state positions. However, his cabinet is strongly dominated by men. Ortega’s interpretation of his own commitment has been that he will share 50% of his power with his wife on all decisions to be made by the executive branch. As a result, Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo have been stating that in no other Nicaraguan government in history have women been better represented.
There is a long story that helps explain why Ortega took this position. As you may remember, around 1998, Daniel Ortega was accused by his stepdaughter, Zoilamérica, of abusing her sexually for a long period of time. Ortega was able to survive that scandal on a political level thanks to two main factors. He was able to avoid prosecution due to a much criticized policy of political immunity granted by a law that was approved as a result of the political pact signed with former President Arnoldo Alemán. Additionally, Ortega had support from Murillo, who publicly repudiated her daughter and cleared him of any wrongdoing. Over the years, this family tragedy resulted in political implications for the whole country, considering Murillo’s own political ambitions. Since the days of the sexual abuse scandal, Ortega has been paying back Murillo for publicly backing him. Rosario Murillo has become one of the most controversial and polarizing political figures in Nicaragua, now even more so than Ortega.
Democracy is currently in danger in Nicaragua, and supporting the Nicaraguan women’s movement is one of the most direct ways of defending it. Although this always has been true, today it is even more obvious and necessary than ever before. WCCN is proud to have been working side by side with the Nicaraguan Autonomous Women’s Movement since its inception in 1992. We will stay by their side in their fight for democracy, a precondition for any real change in Nicaragua.
Endnotes
1 The title of this article was inspired by the title of a book by feminist author Sonia Alvarez on the role of women’s movement during the struggle for democracy in Brazil. See Alvarez, Sonia (1990). Engendering Democracy in Brazil. Women’s Movements in Transition Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2 Molyneux, Maxine (1985). “Mobilization without Emancipation? Women’s Interest, the State and Revolution in Nicaragua”. Feminist Studies 11, No. 2. Pp. 227-254.
3 Criquillón, Ana (1995). “The Nicaraguan Women’s Movement: Feminist Reflection from Within”. In: The Politics of Survival: Grassroots Movements in Central America. Minor Sinclair (ed.). New York: Monthly Review.
4 For a good discussion on those limits see Ewig, Christina (1999). “The Strengths and Limits of the NGO Women’s Movement Model: Shaping Nicaraguan’s Democratic Institutions”. Latin American Research Review, Vol. 34, number 3. Pp. 75-102.
5 Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres (2006). Politica y Ciudadanía de las Mujeres. Bases de la refundación del Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres de Nicaragua. www.movimientoautonomodemujeres.org
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
