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.
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.
