Grandma’s 1990 letter to Gordon Humphrey re Nicaraguan elections. Text:
Why did you lie today while being interviewed on the Canadian news program on public radio? Why did you say “and now finally after ten years they’ve had an election?”
Or are you really so uninformed that you didn’t know there was an earlier election in Nicaragua, 5 or 6 years ago, and that it was monitored by an international team of observers and judged to be fair?
Also, the vote today was a vote against the dire economic conditions in Nicaragua, which are a direct result of the American embargo and of the U.S. created and subsidized Contra war, which has forced the government to direct half the budget away from important social programs that had earlier been making steady progress in the quality of life for all citizens.
The Sandinista government was never a puppet of Moscow. It was always an independent, pragmatic body, combining free enterprise and socialism, and making changes if something did not work. If Nicaragua had been left alone by the U.S., it would today be a model for the rest of third world countries to follow. The U.S. has been trying to turn it back into a banana republic. Let’s hope it doesn’t succeed.
