Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and Politics in Contemporary Nicaragua Author(s): Carlos M.

Vilas Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1992), pp. 309-341 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/157069 . Accessed: 16/08/2011 12:42
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Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and Politics in Contemporary Nicaragua

CARLOS M. VILAS*

As I get older I give more importance to continuities, and try to discover them under the appearances of change and mutation. And I have reached the conclusion that there is only one great continuity: that of blood.' Class structure never entirely displaces other criteria and forms of differentiation and hierarchy (e.g. ethnicity, gender, lineage) in the constitution of social identities and in prompting collective action. Class as a concept and as a point of reference is linked to these other criteria; often it is subsumed in them, thus contributing to the definition of the different groups' forms of expression and of their insertion into the social totality. But class does not eliminate these other criteria nor the identities deriving from them, nor can it preclude the relative autonomy derived from their specificity, as they define loyalties and oppositions which frequently cross over class boundaries. The relevance of these criteria in Latin America is even greater since the society's class profile is less sharply defined because of the lower level of development of market relations and urban industrial capitalism. Several studies have pointed to the importance of ruling families in structure of Latin American countries, their shaping the socio-economic institutions and their cultural life.2 Prominent families have been political

* I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the many colleagues, friends and other people who aided me, through the years, in the frequently difficult reconstruction of family networks in contemporary Nicaragua. Joan Alcasar from Universidad de Valencia, and Johanna von Graffenstein from Instituto Mora (Mexico City) were kind enough to comment on a previous version of this article. None of them is responsible, however, for the final result. I must also point out that the unavoidable mention of names does not carry with it any judgement about either individuals or their involvement in public 1 Felix Luna, affairs. Soy Roca (Buenos Aires, 199 ), p. 15. 2 See Frances Cancian et al., 'Capitalism, Industrialization and Kinship in Latin America: Major Issues', Journal of Family History, 3 (Winter 1978), pp. 319-38; Alan Wells, 'Family Elites in a Boom-and-Bust Economy: The Molinas and Peons of Porfirian Yucatan', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 62, no. 2 (1982), pp. 224-5 3; David Carlos M. Vilas is a Full Researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones disciplinarias en Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico.
J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 24, 309-34I Printed in Great Britain

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considered the axis of Latin America's history from the last part of the colonial period until the beginnings of the present century - and until even more recently in some countries. Interestingly enough, these historical studies have contributed to a better understanding of one of the features most frequently discussed in today's sociological studies of Latin America: the weak or inchoate differentiation between public and private life and between collective and individual action.3 Though the family is a collective entity, it is the individual who acts. When the family or the kinship group is the central reference point for individuals, their influence on public affairs can be interpreted as the result of their belonging to a (private) family structure. Underlining the relevance of family networks and kinship in the economic and political matrix of Latin America societies does not oblige us to consider them as the only principle of explanation of social development, nor should we give them priority as units for analysis. Economic and political factors condition the effective weight of kinship groups and family networks, reinforcing or weakening the content and reaches of their members' actions. The very fact that, when speaking of families, we mean above all notablefamilies, i.e. those with the most social prestige, political authority and economic power, is indicative of a clear articulation between the elite's kinship groups and families and the socioeconomic structure and socio-economic criteria of stratification. But by the same token, the examination of these groups offers the possibility of a richer analysis and contributes to a more accurate interpretation of important aspects of social and political development. In what follows I discuss the articulation of class and kinship in Nicaragua and the way kinship structures introduce specific features into collective political behaviour and into the access of particular groups to state power, with relative autonomy to ideological definitions and to the open features of social conflict, even when social conflict is a revolutionary one. The article takes the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie during the Sandinista revolution and immediately afterwards, as a case in point, complementing my previous works on contemporary Nicaragua where I focused on class conflicts, state policies and interethnic confrontations.4
Walker, Kinship, Businessand Politics: The Martinet del Rio Family in Mexico, I824-I867 (Austin, I986); Enrique Gordillo Castillo et al., 'Grupos de poder econ6mico y de politico en los Altos a fines del siglo XIX: La familia Sanchez', Cuadernos Investigacion de de la Universidad San Carlos, i (1989), pp. 43-56; Diana Balmori et al., Las alian:as de familiasy laformacion delpais en America Latina (Mexico, I990); and Samuel Stone, The (Lincoln, i990). Heritage of the Conquistadores 3 Alain Touraine, Ame'rica Latina: Politicay sociedad(Madrid, 1989). 4 See, for example, Carlos Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution(New York, I986).

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Politics and Economyin the Buildingof Classes The combination of capitalist and precapitalist production relations and the mode of insertion into the world market gave the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie a particular physiognomy which it has retained until very recently: low entrepreneurial skills, political patronage, patrimonial styles of domination, and weak organisational development even in comparison with the Costa Rican, Guatemalan or Salvadoran bourgeoisies. Since the productive cycle relied on international commercialisation, over which the domestic producers had no control, the development of their business skills (an appropriate combination of production factors, the implementation of advanced techniques for the various crops, etc.) was limited to their ability to secure enough land and cheap, abundant labour. Direct intervention of state power was fundamental to fulfil these conditions, through destruction of indian villages and the liberation of their labour force by means of the enactment of vagrancy laws. Immigration of European and Middle East traders and petty merchants, farmers and adventures (Germans, Italians, Palestinians and Jews) attracted by the coffee boom, which contributed to the modernisation of the economies and the ruling groups in Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica by the end of the nineteenth century, and more recently in Honduras, was much smaller and had a milder impact in Nicaragua.5 The direct control of the state's agencies came to be of strategic value for transforming economic groups into a ruling class of national scope. The state was the basis and the launching platform for enrichment and accumulation, for the configuration of the nation as a political body, and for the establishment of links with the international market and its dominant actors. Nicaragua's long periods of political instability after independence from Spain are an expression of the competition among different local groups structured around families of Spanish descent, devoted mainly to commerce, for the control of the state apparatuses. These families became, through that control, intermediaries of the external world and, in so doing, they came to be accepted as the nationally dominant group. This role of the state, and the importance for the contending groups of direct, exclusive control over it, reveals the fragility of the class system and the weakness of Nicaraguan political regimes until very recently:
5

Pedro Belli, 'Proleg6meno para una historia econ6mica de Nicaragua, 1905-I966' Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano,I46 (enero-marzo I975) pp. 2-30; Jaime Biderman, 'The Development of Capitalism in Nicaragua: A Political Economic History', Latin American Perspectives,36 (Winter 1983), pp. 7-32.

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reflected in the absence or extreme vulnerability of social organisations and of the institutional representation of their interests, the fragility of public institutions and the everpresent temptation to resort to violence and direct action in order to maintain control over society. The traditional denomination of' oligarchy' conveniently conceptualises this type of bourgeoisie in that it synthesises the broad spectrum of factors that gives this class its identity: above all the economic aspect, but also politics, ideology, education and life styles. In particular, the term 'oligarchy' clearly expresses the peculiar intertwining of economic and extra-economic factors in defining its behaviour and collective orientations: for example, the articulation of class identities with practices of patronage and the promotion of clientelism; the combination of the profit motive with subsidies to primary loyalties; the tension between abstract perceptions of society and the attention paid to private and particular motivations; and the launching of business ventures based upon affection and emotional ties. The coffee boom that started in the last third of the nineteenth century contributed to the political and economic consolidation of some liberalminded exporters. Arrayed behind Jose Santos Zelaya, they promoted a sweeping series of reforms commonly interpreted as the first attempt to implement a bourgeois design in Nicaragua.6 Political and socio-economic modernisation advanced greatly, although comparatively less than in post-liberal-reform Guatemala, not to mention Mexico. The liberal agenda was frustrated by conservative resistance, which in I909 brought about Zelaya's resignation and, shortly afterwards, United States' armed invasion. In the 193os Anastasio Somoza Garcia took over as head of the National Guard created by a further US intervention, and with little difficulty gained control over the state, thus beginning a family dictatorship that was to last almost half a century - a process similar to that headed by Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The Somoza regime politically subordinated the conservative factions of the traditional ruling groups. This reinforced their internal cohesion and strengthened their condescending, contemptuous attitude towards this latecomer whom they detested because of his obscure origins, the methods he had used to climb to the top (it was said that Somoza's appointment as Chief of the National Guard was mainly due to his close relation to the US Ambassador's wife), which were totally divorced from accepted
6

in B. I. Teplitz, ThePoliticalandEconomic Foundations Modernization Nicaragua:The of Administration JoseSantosZelaya,PhD Diss., Ann Arbor, Michigan, I974; Oscar R. of
y Vargas, Acumulacion, mercadointerno desarrollodel capitalismo en Nicaragua (1893-1906) (Managua, 1983).

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313

channels of social ascent - particularly commerce, and his dark skin.7 Nevertheless they also depended on his ability to maintain the state's cohesion and political stability - conditions needed for the normal functioning of economic life - and for that service they did him public homage. Until the Second World War, none of this involved economic subordination by the traditional conservative families nor economic competition with Somoza and the small groups that began to form around him. Things began to change in the 195 os with the cotton boom and later on with the industrial growth linked to the Central American Common Market. Economic bonanza was closely intertwined with the wielding of political instruments and with close relations to international development agencies, with which the state acted as an intermediary. For that reason, Somoza and his followers found themselves in better conditions than others to participate in the accelerated economic growth that characterised the 1950s and i96os. In some cases they did this directly in the new productive fields of industry, farming and animal husbandry. In other cases they became involved in commerce or finance. According to Jaime Wheelock, the Somozas became known as 'the loaded dice group',8 since their economic progress was based above all on the manipulation of the state apparatus and political decisions. This situation generated conflicts between the groups and factions which accumulated capital on the basis of the market and those that, headed by Somoza, accumulated capital above all on the basis of the state - conflicts that were to explode in the 1970s. Economic growth and the increased differentiation of society set forth the conditions for the growing gap between the new segments of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie linked to capitalist modernisation, with up-todate entrepreneurial styles, that experienced competition from the Somoza-run state and the dictator's clique, and the inertia and tone of traditional politics. In the late I940s several members of the Liberal Party, which was under the iron-clad control of Somoza, decided to leave it and founded a new one, the Independent Liberal Party (Partido Liberal PLI), but this implied no effective opposition from the point Independiente,
7

illustrationI recall a conversationheld in late December I989 with a personalfriend, member of the National Assembly, holding a PhD from a West German university. While lunching in 'Los Ranchos' and speaking of traditionalopposition to Somoza, he pointed out to me that 'they hated him because for the first time in Nicaraguan history dark-skinnedpeople, like myself, reachedhigh government positions. It was too much for them.' Jaime Wheelock, Imperialismodictadura y (Mexico, I976).
a very articulate leader of an opposition political party. He was, and is, a prominent

Race seems to have been an important, although not decisive, question. As a brief

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Carlos M. Vilas

of view of the emergent social groups of the I96os and 1970S. PL's politicians were concerned about government while the brand-new businessmen had their eyes on the market. On the other hand, the Conservative Party insisted on its traditional tactic of carrying tensions with Somoza nearly to the breaking point on the eve of elections, only finally to bargain with him for some congressional seats and a few positions in the foreign service. The relationship of the emerging sectors of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie with the state and the traditional political system became more tense after the December 1972 earthquake that almost entirely destroyed Managua. Reconstruction was manipulated by Anastasio Somoza Jr and his associates to make inroads into the economy through real estate speculation and the construction industry, activities which had previously been the exclusive terrain of the 'market-based' groups. Shortly after, Somoza Jr used the suspension of constitutional guaranties decreed from December 1974 to September I977 (as a response to the FSLN's seizure of the Minister of Foreign Affairs home) to carry out bloody repressive measures which in some cases touched the traditional elite groups whose children were FSLN members or collaborators. The new forces emerging or regrouping in society and in the economy had no political organisation or expression of their own. The creation in the early 1970S of the first Nicaraguan businessmen's association is closely linked to two political factors: (i) the conflictive but subordinate relationship of the entrepreneurial class to the Somocista state, which the businessmen criticised because of what they called 'unloyal competition' for credit, in prices, investments and access to foreign funds; (2) later, the Sandinista revolutionary upsurge and the increasing intervention of the United States government to negotiate Somoza's withdrawal. Both factors pointed to the need for modern businessmen to have their own organisations differentiating themselves from the traditional actors and giving them their own political identity vis-a-vis the state, the United States government, and the Sandinistas.9 Regionsandfamilies The traditional factors of regionalism and lineage played a role in this process of politicisation, providing internal cohesion to the participating actors, contributing to their reciprocal differentiation and introducing specific features into their social and political identities.
9 It is worth noting that the most importantbusinessassociationswere all createdin the 1970S: Asociaci6n de Algodoneros de Le6n (ADAL), Asociaci6n de Algodoneros de

Chinandega(ADACH), and Consejo Superiorde la Iniciativa Privada (COSIP), the

latter's first congress being held as recently as March 1974.

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

3I5

The weight of regionalism as an objective and not merely symbolic or emotional factor derives from the slow development of the national market due to territorial disintegration, deficient communications and transport infrastructures and the difficulties faced in the process of capital accumulation. The road from Managua to the Rama river was built in 1946; the Pan-American Highway which bisects Nicaragua's western half from north to south dates from the 95 os; while the highway connecting the Pacific, the mining district and the Northern Atlantic Coast through Managua and Matagalpa was only finished during the Sandinista government. Weak territorial integration hinders the national circulation of capital, goods and labour and makes the effective establishment of a national authority difficult. The formation and reproduction of regionallybased socio-economic and political groups loosely linked to a central power is based on this slow, unequal territorial development of the market and is an essential ingredient of Nicragua's history, albeit with declining heuristic potential. The animosity between Granada and Le6n is as old as Nicaragua itself. The traditional confrontation of Conservatives and Liberals is closely linked to it and translates geography into politics. The boom caused by Colonel Vanderbilt's Transit Company in the mid-nineteenth century turned Granada into Nicaragua's centre of commercial capital, which would eventually subordinate agricultural exports and the nation's whole economy until the mid-twentieth century. Granada was also home-base for the fortunes, social prestige and political power of Nicaragua's most prominent families: Cuadra, Chamorro, Cardenal, Lacayo, Guzman,
Pellas, Zavala.... As in the rest of Central America, the origin of this

commercial capital is to be found in unscrupulous dealings and smuggling: the local version of primitive accumulation. Its geographical location on Lake Nicaragua made Granada into a strategic point, first for the colonial and later for the independent governments, in their attempts to oppose British designs on the Atlantic port of San Juan del Norte (also known as Greytown) and the Mosquitia. Granada's and its leading families' early importance in both legal and illegal trade derives from this privileged position between East and West in a country that was searching for geographic and political integration. The Transit Company boom (1848-69) definitively consolidated this group, tightly knit together by a solid and complex kinship network. Rivas, more closely linked to extensive cattle raising, also received a dynamic stimulus from Transit business, although to a lesser extent. Le6n, on the other hand, derived its prominence from eminently extraeconomic factors: it was the site of the colonial administration, the university and the ecclesiastic authority, and exercised jurisdiction over

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Carlos M. Vilas

the port of Realejo: insufficient factors to compete with the commercial drive from the South. The national war against William Walker consolidated the power and prestige of Granada and its satellite Rivas. Le6n's Liberals supported the brigand, who razed Granada. After Walker's defeat and execution in Honduras, the conservatives - i.e. Granada - governed for thirty years
until I893. In
1909

they forced the resignation of Zelaya - who in regional

terms was a representative of the coffee growers of Matagalpa and the highlands surrounding Managua - and applauded the United States invasion in 91o0. It was Emiliano Chamorro, by then the undisputed head of the Conservative party, who co-signed with the United States government representative the document doomed to become the very symbol of the abdication of national sovereignty: the so-called ChamorroBryan treaty.
The economic upsurge from 1950 to the I970S and particularly the

expansion of cotton profoundly changed both the traditional economy and society. It took place mainly in the western departments of Le6n and Chinandega. The big family names in cotton and related activities (Gurdian, Icaza, Vijil, Teran, to name just a few) had no meaningful relationship with Granada families. The notoriety of their social rise was due without doubt not only to the growth of their economic position, but also to the very fast pace of the boom itself. Land devoted to cotton crops
went from 23,900 manzanas in I950-5 I to 123,600 in 1953-4, years later, and 259,300 in 1973-4 (i manzana = 1.7 acres). 164,700 ten

The involvement of Leon's bourgeoisie in capitalist modernisation was more significant than that of their counterparts in Granada. Le6n's latecomers were able to take better advantage of the opportunities brought about by new times. This was made possible by the ecological conditions of their region and in some cases because of their preferential insertion into Somocista institutions which gave them a certain weight in the formulation of sectoral policies or made them the first to benefit from them. The small world of lawyers and notary publics linked to Leon University's Law School and to the area's businessmen enjoyed frequent opportunities to manipulate legislation and benefit from the land transfers which abounded at the start of the cotton boom: the liquidation of communal lands, the transition from rent in kind to rent in cash, the eviction of indebted peasants, and the like.'? This does not mean that the Granada group was weakened. With the expansion in sugar cane cultivation following the United States embargo
10

and See Robert G. Williams, Export Agriculture the Crisisin CentralAmerica(Chapel Le6n's notable families prior to the cotton boom.
Hill, 1986). Sergio Ramirez's novel Castigo Divino (Managua, 1988) vividly portrays

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

3 7

against Cuba in the early I96os, the Pellas family consolidated its interests in that field. As the owners of what was until recently the largest sugar factory in Central America, the Pellas became very prominent in Nicaraguan and Central American banking. However, there was a sharp contrast between the Le6n group's enormous ability to make the most of opportunities for accumulation and the more modest possibilities open to their Granada and Rivas competitors. These differences were even more evident in that they contrasted with what had historically been the prominence of the latter group, and because of the sustained dynamism of the Nicaraguan economy over those years. The relatively closed nature of the economic regions and of their social actors until four decades ago reinforced the existing social and kinship structures there, in as much as kinship structures contributed to the consolidation of economic power and political influence. In an incipient capitalist economy with a weak and only very recently developed financial sector, with no stock companies or equity markets and with a poorly developed legal system, economic operations and relations are not impersonal and abstract, but specific and concrete, permeated by social rituals - such as parties, social receptions, huge meals, and the like. Marriage and inheritance are the most important means for transferring assets and for the circulation of capital, and belonging to a family structure is perhaps the best recommendation for commercial and banking credit. Social class exists above all as a network of families in a particular region and as interrelated lineage structures: an extended but exclusive kinship web in which everyone is, in one way or another, cousin to everyone else. This phenomenon is not peculiar to Nicaragua. Stone identified a 'dynasty of the conquistadores' to refer to the lineage structures that have come down through the whole history of Costa Rica,11 and for many years the ruling elite of El Salvador was known as 'the fourteen families'.12 According to several studies, the history of Guatemala since the mideighteenth century has been heavily influenced by the 'Aycinena clan', among other family groups.13 The extended family, with its far-reaching system of loyalties and interests, is a typical actor in stages prior to urban, industrial capitalism, and one of the foundations of Nicaragua's social structure and political system until today. This is particularly notorious in milieus and regions
de 1l Samuel Z. Stone, La dinastia los conquistadores Jose, 1975). (San
I977).

12 Eduardo economicos la burguesia de salvadorena Colindres, Fundamentos (San Salvador,

13

Balmori et al., Las alianZas familias..., pp. 85-97. See also Gustavo Palma Murga, de 'Niicleos de poder local y relacionesfamiliaresen la ciudad de Guatemalaa fines del
12 siglo XVIII', Mesoame'rica, (Dec. I986), pp.
24I-308.

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Carlos M. Vilas

which were violently, openly exposed to capitalist modernisation and socio-political changes during the last four decades. The interrelation of families through the marriage of the younger generations permitted the reproduction of a structure of power and prestige which Somoza could not destroy and with which the Sandinistas had to build political alliances. Close daily contact among relatives who play, grow and are raised together, attend the same schools, receive first communion together and marry each other, reinforces their feeling of a common origin and a shared future, consolidates the differentiation between them and the rest of society and endows the class with certain attributes of a caste. The Nicaraguan expression serfamilia (to be a relative), that is, to have blood or marriage ties to others, points to the social and political relevance of this network of interactions. Acknowledged by both insiders and outsiders alike, this network generates intense loyalties and reciprocities and synthesises a plethora of determining elements: birth, patrimony, education, ethnicity, the region, power, past generation, a future.14 The prominence of regional and lineage structures around Granada and Le6n should not obscure the existence of equivalent kinship structures in other regions: the Picado in Matagalpa, the Guevara in Rfo San Juan,
Talavera in Rivas, Baltodano in Managua's highlands.... However, their

lesser economic importance or their dependence on the impetus of Granada and Leon prevented them from attaining similar relevance and national projection, confining them to the role of a subordinate periphery of the dominant groups. By the same token these factors contributed to a laxer internal cohesion of these subordinated family networks, whose outer limits became weaker and more diffuse. It should also be pointed out that in Nicaragua, as in the rest of Central America, the extended family is above all a feature of the well-to-do segments of society, a question that points to the connection between family networks and economic structures. The maintenance of extended, complex kinship structures requires permanently carrying out economic functions like assistance and rewards - both real and symbolic - for large numbers of people; the effectiveness and scope of these operations depending on access to usually huge economic and human resources, and
14

At a micro level certainsituationsarisingfrom this network may look odd to observers with differentculturalbackgrounds.I remember,e.g., the delight of a colleague from Masayawhen she discoveredshe was 'a relative' of her husband;this strengthenedher ties with him and his family, some of whose membersconsideredher something like an outsider.But at the same time her sister-in-law(her husband'ssister)was up against the dark side of this structure:marriedto her mother's cousin, when she intended to divorce, it was difficultfor her to forbid him access to the home, since he was a family member.

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

39

to political influence. In the medium and lower strata of society there are, in contrast, domestic communities, without the economic and political projections of the notable families networks and without their heavy dose of symbolism and social recognition. Financial links were developed from kinship networks to build the two largest and most powerful Nicaraguan economic groups at the beginning
of the I95os. The BANIC group, named after Banco Nicaragiiense

(BANIC), contained the biggest cotton-growers and business from Le6n and Chinandega and industrialists from Managua: Ramiro and Alfredo Sacasa Guerrero, Xavier and Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, Eduardo Montealegre Callejas, Alfonso Callejas Deshon, J. Ignacio Gonzalez, Alfonso Lovo Cordero and Alfonso Robelo Callejas were the most prominent names. The Bank of America group, on the other hand, also known as the Pellas group, had a clear conservative profile: in addition to the Pellas family, traditional names from conservative politics were found at its leading levels: Manuel Ignacio Lacayo, Adolfo Benard, Duilio Baltodano, Carlos Hollman and Eduardo Fernandez Hollman, among others. Some names from the first group were also found on company rosters of the second group, as much as marriage of members of one group with members of the other (e.g. BANIC's Chamorros and the Pellas group's Hollmans) consolidated relationships and the reciprocal circulation of capital.15 The relationship between family networks and financial connections introduced particular dynamism into lineage structures. Finance capitalism arising from agro-export modernisation hastened the breakdown of bloodline, affinity and regional frontiers which had characterised the traditional ruling groups. It did not eliminate these frontiers, nor immediately reduce the reciprocal stratification of the various groups, but it did generate room for approximation, understanding and association above and beyond their political identities - though these continued to be a factor for differentiation. Conversely, kinship networks underlying the financial relationships would prove to be of invaluable aid when, years later, the class had to confront revolutionary turmoil.
Class, lineages and revolution Crisis of Somocismo

From the 195os on, the youth of some distinguished conservative families began to be involved in active opposition to the Somoza dictatorship,
15

H. W. Strachan, Family and Other BusinessGroups in EconomicDevelopment: The Case of Nicaragua (New York, 1976) is a pioneering piece of research into the family networks amongst Nicaragua's business elites at the beginning of the I970s.

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looking for ways of going beyond traditional liberal-conservative hosted the ideobipartisanship. During the I96os Revista Conservadora debate of young conservatives enthused by the reformism of the logical Alliance for Progress and Eduardo Frei's Christian Democratic government in Chile.16 Young people like Pedro Joaqufn Chamorro Cardenal, who participated in armed actions against the Somoza government, Reynaldo Antonio Teffel, at that time president of the Conservative Youth, or Ricardo Coronel Kautz, were linked to these efforts to modernise conservatism and the country. Later on Teffel and Coronel would join the FSLN, in whose regime both would hold ministry positions. In I974 Chamorro Cardenal provided the impetus for founding Uni6n Democratica Electoral (UDEL), which gathered together several political groups regardless of traditional bipartisan barriers. UDEL was not very successful, basically due to Conservative Party distrust of an alliance with Liberal groups and of Chamorro's leadership and reformist programme, and because of the indifference of the large industrialists and landowners who thought that such an effort would not gain the support of the United States government and would therefore be condemned to
failure. 17

The integration of young members from traditional families into the ranks of Sandinismo during the late sixties and early seventies was less a product of their spontaneous ideological evolution than the successful culmination of a Sandinista strategy.18 FSLN activism in the Jesuit Central American University in Managua played a key role in this process and by the same token laid the ground for an approach by the revolutionary leadership to the parents of some of these young people. Several members of the Grupode los 12 - a group of twelve professionals, intellectuals and businessmen whom the FSLN's Tendencia Tercerista brought together in I977 as a part of its strategy of broad antidictatorial alliances - were the fathers of children integrated into the Sandinista-led struggle, or were themselves FSLN collaborators. The religious and university environments in which these youngsters were approached by Sandinismo helps to explain their recruitment into two of the fractions that divided the FSLN by that time: the terceristaor
16

changed its name to Revista Conservadora By the end of the 196os Revista Conservadora From and del PensamientoCentroamericano later to Revista del PensamientoCentroamericano. I983 on it moved headquarters to San Jose, Costa Rica; under the direction of the fervent Catholic businessman Carlos Mantica, the Review adopted a strongly antiSandinista stance which brought it close to some fractions of the counterrevolutionary groups acting from Costa Rican territory. 17 Carlos M. Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution(New York, 1986) chapter iv. 18 See Uriel Molina, 'El sentido de una experiencia', Nicarduac, 5 (April-June 1981), pp. sandinista. Entrevista al Comandante 17-37; Marta Harnecker, Los cristianosy la revolucion de la RevolucionLuis Carrion Cruz (Managua, I986).

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua insurreccional (insurrectionist) and the 'proletarian' 'tendencies'.19

321 The

GPP) tendency did not popularprolongada, 'protracted people's war' (guerra in this process due to its emphasis on a Vietnamese-like participate strategy of peasant guerrilla warfare, even though GPP activism in the state-run University of Le6n favoured the incorporation into its ranks of youth from the western liberal petty bourgeoisie as well as from Matagalpa. When focusing on the initial stages of Sandinismo in the early sixties, special attention must be given to the Ventana group, named after the literary magazine published in Leon under the joint direction of Sergio Ramirez and Fernando Gordillo, at the time both university students.
Ventana was published from I960 to 1964 and enjoyed institutional

protection from the University's president Mariano Fiallos Gil. The magazine brought together a large group of students, young professionals and literary figures. In addition to those of Ramirez and Gordillo, Ventana published frequent contributions by Mariano Fiallos Oyanguren (Fiallos Gil's son), Alejandro Serrano Caldera, Carlos Tiinnerman Bernheim, Gustavo Tablada, Luis Rocha, Michele Najlis, Napoleon Chow, among many others. Lacking any explicit political identity beyond a shared dislike for Somoza and Somocismo, many of them had been active a few years earlier in the student movement which culminated in the government recognition of university autonomy, and experienced a more than literary devotion to the poet Manolo Cuadra. With few exceptions the more active members of the Ventana group were of a middle class or petty bourgeois orientation with a liberal approach to society and politics. A decade and a half later many of them would hold key positions in the Sandinista government. The establishment at this relatively early stage of solidarities and friendships upon which this intellectually restless group was formed, socially subordinated to the ruling groups and to a certain extent sheltered by the institutional umbrella of a university presided over by a wellknown conservative, anti-Somoza intellectual, proved to be a decisive political step for the group's later political evolution. Rejection of the Somoza regime would involve them, with uneven intensity, in the opposition to the dictatorship, both within and outside the FSLN; their intellectual and personal links would consolidate their articulation to the traditional groups that supported the revolutionary process. Lineage factors are present in the final acceptance of the revolutionary appeal by traditional conservative elites. Somocista repression against the youth of conservative families due to their Sandinista involvement boosted the likelihood of conflict between their parents and a government
19 On Sandinistainternaldivisions, see Dennis Gilbert, Sandinistas (New York, 1988).

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Carlos M. Vilas

which not only excluded them from economic bonanza, but victimised their children as well. The foundations for an alliance of conservatives and Sandinistas were set. It was a tighter relationship than that which was being forged with the other anti-Somocista groups and fractions: the latter was based on external relations with civic, political and labour organisations, while the former took place above all through the personal, direct integration of members of the traditional elites to the FSLN. They were part and parcel of Sandinismo, not just an external ally.
The Sandinista government

Revolutionary triumph opened up a new era in Nicaragua's contemporary history. A massive popular outpouring, mostly headed by the FSLN, at times spontaneous and at others led by smaller revolutionary groups, made possible the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and the beginning of profound socio-economic and political transformations. The attention of both observers and participants focused on this fundamental aspect of the revolution: its popular character which expressed an entire people's deeply-felt aspirations for social justice, national sovereignty and dignity - the hope, or fantasy, of a better life. The revolution was all of this; but it was something more as well. The strategy of broad political alliances and, above all, the family links of several FSLN leaders and cadres to Granada's and Rivas' conservative elites, permitted a large number of members and representatives of traditional anti-Somoza and emerging business groups access to government: the so-called strategy of national unity. As the revolution made its first steps confronting the remnants of Somocismo and responding to urgent popular demands, the business groups integrated into the government and to the new state apparatuses were involved in an intense internal fight whose victor would be Granada's (and Rivas') traditional elites. It was a process developing at a dizzying speed. By the end of 1980 few representatives of the more recently formed Liberal business groups remained in government positions. The infighting manifested itself in different opinions over the reaches and objectives of business nationalisation and of the agrarian reform - particularly over the extent and role of state property and government regulations. From a certain perspective these differences might be interpreted as expressions of tensions and conflicts between the revolution on one side, and the bourgeoisie on the other. But they also marked the conflicts between the more traditional, conservative southern business and family groups, with their stronger integration into the revolutionary state apparatuses, and their nascent, modernising competitors whom they stigmatised with the label of

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

323

'Somocismo' and whom they hoped to deprive of political and economic

power.

The FSLN's rupture in late 1979 with industrialist Alfonso Robelo Callejas - then a member of the revolutionary government Junta - and the successive confrontations culminating in Robelo's departure from Nicaragua in I98 and the confiscation of his properties, may be seen as a part of this chain of quarrels and competition. One of the most important of Nicaragua's modern businessmen, Alfonso Robelo built his capital on the cotton boom in Le6n and Chinandega and in the dynamic stimulus to the Nicaraguan economy from the Central American Common Market. He supported the business community's complaints over Somocista 'unloyal competition' and in 1978 joined forces with a group of technicians, professionals and businessmen to form the first modern bourgeois political party in Nicaragua: Movimiento Democratico Nicaragiiense (MDN). Robelo served in the first government Junta and as such he was the most important non-Sandinista, non-Conservative figure in this initial stage of the revolutionary regime. His fall marked the early break of the nucleus of modernising industrialists and businessmen from Chinandega, Le6n and Managua with Sandinismo, following their frustrated efforts to redirect the revolutionary design in a particular direction which at the time was contemptuously referred to as 'social democratic'. In concrete terms their criticism was above all related to the speed and orientation of specific policies such as nationalisations, the relations between the state and the private sector and the call for legal guarantees for businessmen who had not been tied to the Somoza regime, but did not identify themselves with the Sandinistas either. Robelo's departure from the Junta coincided with that of Violeta de Chamorro. The vacancies were filled by two well known figures of the Conservative party: economist and banker Arturo Cruz Porras, and lawyer and landowner Rafael C6rdoba Rivas. Cruz Porras had been up to then chairman of the Central Bank; his brother-in-law, businessman Luis Carri6n Montoya, a descendant of one of the oldest families in Nicaragua - the first Carri6n arrived in the sixteenth century - was one of the most prominent capitalists in Nicaragua, a driving force in the already mentioned BANIC group. Luis Carri6n Cruz, the elder son of Carri6n Montoya and Arturo Cruz Porras' nephew, was one of the nine members of the FSLN's National Directorate. Rafael C6rdoba Rivas, a big landowner and cattle grower in Chontales and Boaco, had joined Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal in UDEL and participated as an attorney in the legal defence of several Sandinista leaders imprisoned by the dictatorship - Tomas Borge being one of them. More than just personal stories, these cases illustrate the consolidation of a close alliance between

3 24

Carlos M. Vilas

the Sandinista and the traditional elite groups who had opposed the Somoza regime perhaps less for its dictatorial features than for its impact on business competition and family affairs. At the time, popular Nicaraguan humour summed up the contrast between on the one hand the masses, the student movement and petty bourgeois fractions, who had struggled against Somoza and his National Guard and on the barricades of the revolutionary insurrection, and on the other, the dominant social profile in the upper ranks of the Sandinista government in the comment: 'Le6n put up the dead; Granada put up the
Ministers '.20

Sandinismo established alliances with this structure of traditional power: not through marriage, since traditional families always behaved as almost endogamous groups, but rather by opening up possibilities for their return to government positions in the stage that was being built after Somoza's downfall. It was not the traditional families that took the initiative in favouring marriages with new figures from the revolutionary movement - as in the paradigmatic case of Giovanni de Lampedusa's astute Gattopardo.On the contrary, it was revolutionary politics to take the initiative and call representatives of the traditional families to join the new government and state apparatuses, appealing to the leverage provided by the incorporation of the heirs of several of these families into the FSLN. The very few cases in which sons or daughters of traditional families married Sandinista leaders or cadres ended up in divorces shortly after the revolutionary triumph.21 Nevertheless these divorces did not imply political ruptures, a situation which hints at a class, more than personal, character in the political alliance.22 Notable family names of Granada quickly multiplied within the highest levels of the revolutionary government, particularly within the army and the implementation of agrarian reform. By the mid-eighties the
20

A former peasantwho had fought in the FSLN's 'northern front' in 1978 and I979 madean ironic remarkto me about the composition of the first SandinistaJunta: 'This is the second Conservativerevolution' (Esteli, Aug. I980). His irony contrastedwith academicobservers who, on the contrary, claimed to see the building of a classless society as a feature of the Sandinista revolution: see H. Dietrich, Nicaragua:La
construccidn la sociedadsin clases (Mexico, I986). de

21

This is a fact not considered by Stone when linking SandinistaCommandersCarlos Nuniez Tellez and Hugo Torres to one of Granada'smost traditionalfamilies: see
Stone, The Heritage of the Conquistadores, pp. i9i and I94.

22 The question of the 'class character'of this allianceis a complex one to the extent that the class identity of traditionalgroups is much clearerthan that of the insurrectional
ranks, about which little can be said beyond their predominantly petty bourgeois sociodemographic profile - taking into account the enormous diversity of petty bourgeoisie in Central American agrarian societies. See Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution,ch. iii, for a discussion on this question on the basis of empirical information.

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

325

sociological profile of the Sandinista government reflected the existence of a broad and dense matrix of family interconnections. Chairman of the Central Bank of Nicaragua was don Joaquin Cuadra Chamorro, a descendant of one of the most traditional Granada families, whose origins go back to sixteenth-century migration from Spain. His first cousins include Alfredo Pellas Chamorro, the head of the already mentioned Banco de America financial group as well as the owner of the San Antonio sugar mill and the well-known Flor de Cafa rum factory, and Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal - founder of UDEL, a member of the BANIC group and the editor of La Prensa, who was assassinated by Somocismo in January 1978. Cuadra Chamorro, who moved to the Central Bank from his previous position of Finance Minister, is the father of General Joaquin Cuadra Lacayo, Chief of Staff of the Sandinista Army (Ejercito Popular Sandinista, EPS) and one of the leaders of the 'internal front' during the Sandinista insurrection in Managua, June 1979. General Cuadra Lacayo is both a direct cousin and a brother-in-law of EPS' Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel Osvaldo Lacayo Gabuardi, whose other sister Marta Patricia married the already mentioned Comandante Luis Carri6n Cruz. As legal adviser to his cousin's Banco de America, don Joaquin Cuadra Chamorro was the author of the strategy of capital flight with which the bank's stockholders and big customers managed to move their liquid assets out of the country during the Sandinista insurrection and the Somoza government debacle.23 Through his wife Maruca Lacayo Hurtado, don Joaquin and his children are related to another two of the most traditional Nicaraguan families, as well to the Argiiello family, coffee growers from the highlands around Managua. Several members of the Argiiello family served in important positions in the Sandinista regime: lawyer Roberto Argiiello Hurtado was a member of the Supreme Court and was later appointed as Nicaragua's ambassador to France, while his brother Alvaro, a Jesuit priest, was the representative of the Nicaraguan Clerical Association (Asociacidn del Clero Nicaragiense, ACLEN) at the Council of State he also headed the Council's Commission for (I980-82) -where International Affairs - and the director of the well-known Central American Historical Institute (IHCA) at Managua's Central American University. William Hiipper Argiiello took over from Cuadra Chamorro at the Ministry of Finance - of which he had been Deputy Minister up to that moment - and William's mother, Sra Lenor Argiiello de Hiipper was Nicaragua's consul in the United States and afterwards ambassador to
23

diciembre de 1978', La Prensa (Managua, I8 May I990).

See 'Comunicadodirigido a quienes eranaccionistasdel Banco de Americaal dia 3I de Barricada(Managua, 25 May I990);

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Carlos M. Vilas

Costa Rica. Another sister of Roberto and Alvaro was the Nicaraguan consul to Mexico City until I990. A sister of don Joaqufn Cuadra's mother, Sra Berta Chamorro Benard, married the above mentioned Alfredo Pellas Chamorro, don Joaquin's cousin. Comandante Guerrillero y de Brigada Rene Vivas Benard, who for many years was Deputy Minister of the Interior and later served as Chief of the Sandinista Police (Policia Sandinista,PS), is a relative of both. Comandante de la Revoluci6n Luis Carri6n Cruz, a member of the Sandinista National Directorate, is the son of Luis Carri6n Montoya, one of the heads of the BANIC finance group during Somoza's regime. During the initial months of the revolutionary regime Carri6n Montoya moved from BANIC's board to the Sandinista government, where he was appointed Chairman of the newly created National Finance System - the government body holding together the recently nationalised banking system, including the former BANIC and Banco de America groups. Commander Carrion Cruz is also a nephew of the previously mentioned Arturo Cruz Porras, the conservative politician and banker who presided over the central Bank of Nicaragua from the time of the Sandinista triumph until he joined the Sandinista Junta early in I980. Arturo Cruz acted afterwards as Nicaragua's ambassador to the United States until he resigned in I982. For a while he was tied to Alianza Revolucionaria Democratica (ARDE), the counterrevolutionary group headed by Eden Pastora (former 'Comandante Cero') from Costa Rica. Arturo Cruz ran as the presidential candidate for Coordinadora Democratica Nicaragiiense (CDN) in the electoral campaign in 1984, from which CDN eventually withdrew. Later on Cruz became a member of the counterrevolutionary leadership up to 1987. Through his marriage to Marta Patricia Lacayo, Commander Carri6n Cruz is also related to the extended family network of don Joaqufn Cuadra Chamorro's wife. Trappist monk and poet Ernesto Cardenal Martfnez, who served as Minister of Culture, and his Jesuit brother Fernando, who was the Minister of Education from I985 to I990 after leading the Literacy Campaign and FSLN party activism amongst the Sandinista Youth, are both direct cousins of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal and of Ernesto Castillo Martfnez, who acted as Chairman of the Higher Education National Council (Consejo Nacional de Educaci6n Superior, CNES), subsequently as Minister of Justice and even later as the ambassador to the Soviet Union. In addition, Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal are direct cousins of Alejandro Martinez Urtecho, who is the father of Alejandro Martfnez Cuenca, Minister of Foreign Trade between 1980 and 1988, and Secretary (Minister) of Budget and Planning from 1988 to I990. Vanessa Castro Cardenal, a niece of Ernesto and Fernando, is the wife of

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

327

Commander Jaime Wheelock Roman, a member of the FSLN's National Directorate. Former Conservative, later Sandinista, poet Jose Coronel Urtecho is a direct cousin of Alejandro Martfnez Cuenca's father. Coronel Urtecho's sons Ricardo and Manuel Coronel Kautz joined the top echelons of the Instituto Nicaragiiense de Reforma Agraria (INRA) at the very beginning of the revolutionary regime, and of the Ministry of Agrarian Development
and Reform (MIDINRA) from early 1980 to
1990.

Their brother Carlos

Coronel Kautz was the Director (Minister) of the Nicaraguan Fishing Institute until he left Nicaragua in mid-I98I to join forces with Eden Pastora, who was then moving into counterrevolutionary opposition. Guerrilla Commander Richard Lugo Kautz, the son of a family of prominent businessmen from Managua and a direct cousin of the Coronel Kautz brothers, was Chief of the Sandinista Navy until his death in 1987; he was also a direct cousin of Guerrilla Commander Walter Ferrety Lugo. The example of the Coronel Kautz brothers is illustrative of how far the articulation of political alliances supported by family networks can reach. Prior to the revolutionary triumph the Coronel Kautz brothers had been related to the Pellas Chamorro business group, holding managerial positions in the San Antonio sugar factory. From a southern landowning family, the Coronel Kautz brothers developed their own agricultural and cattle raising activities on their family's vast lands on both sides of the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border. By the early sixties Ricardo Coronel Kautz was one of the most enthusiastic promoters of cattle breeding on the agrarian frontier of southern Nicaragua and of beef exports,24 sharing with other young conservatives of his class and generation a restless search for new political ideas and intellectual patterns. In 1977 Ricardo Coronel was a member of the Grupo de los 12 that was inspired by the FSLN's tercerista tendency, and his brother Carlos was actively engaged in the tercerista fraction southern guerrilla front. However, in 1978 they joined up with the 'proletarian' tendency, headed by Jaime Wheelock and Luis Carri6n Cruz. Following the revolutionary victory this alliance allowed the Coronels to play a decisive role in the planning and implementation of the agrarian reform - whose Minister was Commander Wheelock, also a member of the FSLN's National Directorate. The Coronels brought along with them many of their professional and personal relations into INRA and later on to MIDINRA, several of whom also had links to the Pellas family's San Antonio sugar factory. In a reciprocal way, this relationship allowed the FSLN's 'proletarian' fraction to consolidate its ties with the relatives of the young people who had
24 Ricardo Coronel Kautz, 'La ganaderia en la economia nacional. Situaci6n actual', Revista Conservadora,13 (Oct. 196i), pp. 3I-3.

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Carlos M. Vilas

adhered to the 'proletarian' fraction passing through the ideological sieve of the university and the Christian student movement. There is not much to gain from any discussion concerning whether the alliance with the 'proletarian' tendency enabled these former terceristas to accede to a power position within the Sandinista state by compensating for the setback experienced as a result of their rupture with what proved to be the strongest of the Sandinista fractions, or whether, on the contrary, the alliance with these dynamic figures of traditional society was what enabled the then weak 'proletarian' tendency to consolidate its participation in the Sandinista reunification as well as in state apparatuses. It appears that the alliance worked in both directions. It did open doors permitting members of the traditional landowning groups to influence the design of what was both the most important chapter in the revolutionary agenda (land reform) and that which most affected the traditional elites, and pushed the 'proletarians' directly onto the central stage of state policy-making. The San Antonio sugar factory owned by the Pellas family was like a business management school for an important group of technicians and professionals which later became high-ranking officials in the Sandinista government. In addition to the Coronel brothers, the list includes Dionisio Marenco, who would serve as Minister of Domestic Commerce, Minister without portfolio attached to the Presidency, Secretary (Minister) for Budget and Planning and head of the FSLN's party section for Propaganda and Agitation, and also Alfredo Cesar, a member of the team that wrote the Programme for the first Sandinista Junta, and Chairman of the Central Bank until he left the FSLN, and Nicaragua, early in 1982; in 1987 Cesar joined the counterrevolutionary directorate and in that capacity participated in the signature of the ceasefire agreement in Sapoa
(March 1988).

The 'San Antonio technocrats', as they have been called, played a decisive part in formulating Sandinista strategies for agrarian reform and development, imbuing them with a statist and big business outlook which generated a great deal of controversy and criticism even within Sandinismo.25 In addition to the Coronel brothers, MIDINRA's top leadership brought together a wide range of very traditional family names from Granada and Rivas: Barrios, Hollman, Talavera, Fiallos, Mayorga, etc. The first two are direct cousins, and also relatives of Violeta Barrios, the widow of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal; they were also linked to the newspaper La Prensa. It has already been pointed out that several
25 See Eduardo Baumeister, 'Tres condicionantes politico-ideol6gicas en la formulaci6n de de las politicas agrarias en Nicaragua', Boletin Socioecondmico INIES, 7 (May 1988), pp. 3- I.

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

329

of these family names were present on the boards of directors of both the BANIC and Banco de America financial groups. The status of the three daily newspapers published in Nicaragua by the mid-eighties gives a good picture of the tight family connections working above and beyond political allegiances or oppositions. Barricada,by then the FSLN's official newspaper, El Nuevo Diario, an open, strong supporter of Sandinismo, and La Prensa, the expression of recalcitrant opposition to Sandinismo, were under the respective editorship of Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios (a son of Pedro Joaqufn Chamorro Cardenal and Violeta Barrios), Xavier Chamorro Cardenal (a brother of Pedro Joaquin and his partner in BANIC group) and Pedro Chamorro Barrios (a brother of Carlos Fernando and Xavier's nephew) and later by Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, a sister of Pedro and Carlos Fernando. The list of family interconnections would go even farther should we include the almost one hundred deputy Ministers, Director Generals and managers of state-owned firms, but what has been said up to this point supports the hypothesis of a very close family network relating traditional families to the Sandinista government. In October 1989, on the eve of the electoral campaign, La Prensa published a long list of Sandinista government officials named Chamorro. The author concluded his piece commenting with irony on the fact that he had been unable to find a similar number of Sandinos or Fonsecas in the Sandinista government.26 A similar contrast occurs with regard to the very few family names from Le6n. Policy-making in the revolutionary regime, particularly with regard to agrarian reform and investment plans, reveals the strong influence of technicians and professionals coming from the ranks of the conservative bourgeoisie. Agrarian reform, with its strong emphasis on state farms, capitalist farms and cooperatives, on technology-intensive investments and a relatively small generation of labour employment, and on a heavy agro-export bias, with a slow distribution of land to peasants and restricted grass-roots participation, owes a great deal to the decisive presence of these technicians and professionals in the policy-making process. They expressed an ideology of entrepreneurial efficiency that combined a conventional Marxian focus on the development of material productive forces, with the traditional Marxian distrust of peasants as synonymous with backwardness, and an explicit support for 'green revolution' approaches. In addition, these enthusiastic young technocrats contributed to the reproduction of traditional criteria of authority and command within the state enterprises and the agrarian reform, thereby
26 Ignacio Fonseca, 'El fierrode los Chamorroen la era sandinista',La Prensa (Managua,
17 Oct. 1989), p.
2.

Carlos Fonseca was one of the FSLN's founders.

33

Carlos M. Vilas

generating confrontations and tensions with workers', peasants' and indian communities' demands for participation in policy-making.27 They also supported the frustrated attempt to put forward economic adjustment policies in early I985; although they were more successful in 1988, their effort then has been interpreted as an objective contribution to the electoral defeat of Sandinismo.28 Nationalisation decrees affecting the big financial groups during the initial months of the revolutionary regime did not involve a corresponding political alienation of their representatives and officials. Following the revolutionary victory many of them moved from the administration of those groups and their main firms to the economic and financial offices of the new government and the administration of the new state sector - the
People's Property Area (Area de Propiedad del Pueblo, APP). Family

networks underlying property relations and financial interests held the groups together along with control of the firms, despite institutional transformations, ideological debates and legal ownership transfers. The loss of legal ownership did not necessarily imply the loss of economic property, i.e. the ability to make decisions on the firms' operations, investments, labour force and the like, through access to state control of previously private, now public, assets. Conversely, the very fast occupation of the state, the government and the army high ranks by officials and officers from traditional society elites, contributed to the reproduction, within the revolutionary regime, of the most ancient and established expressions of social hierarchy in Nicaragua: whites versus mestizos, rich versus poor, gentlemen versus chapiollos.29 The incorporation of many of the most distinguished elements of the traditional society into the revolutionary government may be understood as a result of the FSLN's multiclass character and its broad alliances with anti-Somoza propertied classes, in a society whose bourgeoisie was based on strong, interrelated family structures. Additional factors contributed to the outcome. The technicians and professionals demanded by the state's new tasks were only to be found in these upper levels of society, while participation of members of the traditional groups in the new government
27 See Marvin Ortega, 'La participaci6n obrera en las empresas agropecuarias del APP', in Richard Harris y Carlos M. Vilas (eds.), La revolucion Nicaragua (M6xico, 1985), pp. en 228-38; Carlos M. Vilas, State, Class and Ethnicity in Nicaragua (Boulder and London, I989). ch. 4. 28 See Rafael Gonzilez Rubi, 'Nicaragua: Transfondos econ6micos del vuelco politico', Comercio Exterior (Aug. I990), pp. 745-51; Carlos M. Vilas, Transicidn desde el subdesarrollo (Caracas, I989), chs. iii and iv. 29 The Nicaraguan term chapiollorefers to someone who is mestizo, lacks formal culture, and has unrefined, rude manners. Perhaps the closest approximation to chapiollo is 'plebeian', although it lacks the benevolent connotation generally associated with the Nicaraguan term.

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

31

could be held up to the international community as proof of a broad-based collaboration and as additional evidence that Sandinista Nicaragua would not turn out to be a 'second Cuba'. But there was also a great deal of political inertia, since collaboration with the incumbent government had been a constant feature in the political style of Nicaraguan conservadores. For the purposes of the present discussion, sociological and cultural differences are relevant to the extent that they project their effects onto the political arena. Family links contributed to the building of bridges of stable contact among people and groups of even the most diverse political affiliations, thereby setting the basis for a differentiated dealing of issues and actors. Once again the San Antonio sugar factory is an illustrative case in point. In July 1988 President Daniel Ortega announced the intervention of the state in San Antonio, based on its owners' and managers' involvement in capital-flight manoeuvres and in non-fulfilment of production schedules. Afterwards an additional argument was added: the evidence that funds were channelled to Resistencia Nicaragiiense (the contras)through the US-based Wells Fargo bank, in whose stock capital the Pellas family participated. According to the Sandinista government statement, the intervention was decided upon after the San Antonio owners and managers elected to ignore repeated government requests to end these activities.30 Engineer Dionisio Marenco was initially appointed as San Antonio's comptroller, because of his previous, already mentioned, relation to the firm. After a while Marenco was replaced by Miguel Barrios, a MIDINRA high-rank official and a nephew of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Later on, the intervention was transformed into expropriation, with compensation payments to the Pellas family made in sugar produced by the factory, at a time when international sugar prices were on the rise. The prudence, advance warnings and early notices characterising the intervention in San Antonio, as well as the lucrative final result of the transaction, stand in stark contrast to the way in which the confiscation of houses, lands, cattle and equipment was expedited with regard to small and middle peasants who were found collaborating with the contras.In many cases 'collaborating with the contras'meant no more than sneaking food to a son that was hiding out in the nearby hills or bushes, or helping him to escape the draft. Another case in which clear differences arose concerned students
30

See Barricada (Managua, 14, i6, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27 and 28 July, 1988); Nuevo Diario (Managua, 14, 15 July 1988); La Prensa (Managua, 18 May I990); Barricada (Managua, 25 May I990). Initially MIDINRA presented the intervention as a purely technical, administrative decision, aimed at saving the Nicaraguan sugar industry's main factory. See Jaime Wheelock's statement in Barricada, 14 July 1988.

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Carlos M. Vilas

travelling abroad to study. With the revolution's coming to power, there was a big jump in the number of young Nicaraguans receiving overseas scholarships. But whereas children of elite families continued to pursue their studies in well-known United States and Western European universities (now, with the revolutionary government's sponsorship), middle class and poorer students, as well as children from well-to-do families lacking integration to the traditional elite, were sent to the USSR or Eastern Europe, usually for long periods of no less than five years. Upon their return, the former were often offered high-ranking appointments in government institutions in Managua, while the latter were either sent to remote rural areas, failed to find a job or had no choice but a second class, poorly paid position. When economic crisis deepened, they were simply advised to stay abroad.31 Additional illustrations of this discriminatory treatment might be added, and they all point to an uneven but consistent allocation of penalties and rewards. The dividing line was drawn not only between propertied groups (for whom economic incentives were never lacking) and the officially designated 'fundamental forces of the revolution' - i.e. workers, peasants, small businesspeople, technicians and professionals but also, within the former group, between the lofty traditional elite and those of a more recent prosperity.32 However, the existence and survival of these ingredients of traditional society within the political nucleus of the revolutionary regime should not be exaggerated, for a number of reasons. First, this situation was closely linked to a major change in government personnel which, though not total or systematic (assuming this is something that can be achieved), was the most far-reaching ever experienced in modern Nicaragua. Secondly, other social networks, in addition to families, had a stake in this. Several members of the Ventanagroup achieved significant government positions in the Sandinista regime: Sergio Ramirez Mercado was a member of the Junta de Reconstrucci6n Nacional (1979-84) and then Vice-President (1985-90); Alejandro Serrano Caldera served successively as Nicaragua's
31

See 'Juventud Sandinista busca alternativas de empleo a graduados en el exterior', Barricada, 14 July I988. In an informal interview, an official at the Nicaraguan Embassy to Sweden told me that because of institutional changes and economic crisis in the

Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as political change in Nicaraguaafter the February I990 elections, hundreds of Nicaraguan students in those countries were coming to Swedenasking for the Embassy'shelp to go backhome (Stockholm, 26 Oct.
I990).
32

In a long conversationI had with Daniel Nnfiez, the Presidentof the NicaraguanUnion of Farmersand Cattlegrowers(UNAG) in May I985, he named a long list of huge Conservativelandowners that had not been affectedby the agrarianreform, despite the fact that much smaller landholdings belonging to Liberal ranchers had been expropriated.

Class, Lineage and Politics in Nicaragua

333

Ambassador to the United Nations' organisations in Geneva, as a member of Nicaragua's Supreme Court, as Ambassador to the United Nations and as the National University's president; Carlos Tiinnermann was a member
of the 'group of 12', Minister of Education (1979-84) and Nicaraguan

Ambassador to the United States. UNO (Union Nacional Opositora) government

The 25 February
I990

elections

turned Nicaragua's

government

into a

coalition of heterogeneous parties united by the common denominator of anti-Sandinismo; it is, literally, a union for opposition. With regard to the main point being discussed in this article, the relevant factor is the maintenance of the pattern of family ties despite explicit political antagonisms between the new government and the new Sandinista opposition. A case in point is that of industrialist Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, Minister of the Presidency. Lacayo is the president's son-in-law; a nephew of don Joaquin Cuadra Chamorro; a direct cousin of EPS' Chief of Staff General Joaquin Cuadra Lacayo; a direct cousin of EPS' Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel Osvaldo Lacayo Gabuardi; a direct cousin of Comandante Luis Carrion Cruz's wife; and a direct cousin of Mariano Fiallos Oyanguren, Chairman of the Supreme Electoral Council. Alfredo Cesar, initially one of dofia Violeta's closest advisers and currently Chairman of the National Assembly, is married to one of Antonio Lacayo's sisters who for some months served in dofia Violeta's government as the Treasurer General. Minister of the Interior (Gobierno)Carlos Hurtado, a member of the already mentioned Argiiello Hurtado family, is married to a cousin of Antonio Lacayo, while another of Lacayo's sisters is married to a brother of Carlos Hurtado. Minister of Agriculture Roberto Rond6n Sacasa, a powerful landowner unaffected by the agrarian reform and Chairman of the Nicaraguan Cattle Ranchers Association, is a direct cousin of former Sandinista Deputy Minister of Agrarian Reform Salvador Mayorga Sacasa, as well as a brother-in-law of Comandante Victor Tirado Lopez, a member of the FSLN's National Directorate. UNO's Minister of Telecommunications, Pablo Vijil, is a brother-in-law of Minister Carlos Hurtado, and a brother of Sandinista Minister of Housing Miguel Ernesto Vijil, who later served as Chairman of the National Cotton Commission. Pablo Vijil is also a brother-in-law of Pedro Antonio Bland6n, the Sandinista government's Deputy Minister for Foreign Cooperation. Alvaro Chamorro Mora, the new Minister of Tourism, is a brother of Javier Chamorro Mora, former Sandinista Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Deputy Minister for the Presidency, Antonio Ibarra Rojas, is a brother-in-law of Commander
13 LAS 24

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Carlos M. Vilas

Bayardo Arce, a member of the FSLN's directorate, and Dr Duilio Baltodano, the Attorney General, is the father-in-law of Sandinista Subcomandante Rafael Solis Cerda, the National Assembly's former Secretary General from 1985 to 1990. This close intertwining supports a comment made by a colleague not related to these notable families, during the tense transition from FSLN to UNO government: 'It is ironic to watch relatives exchanging power amongst themselves'. Or, as a Sandinista militant belonging to the world of chapiollos probably overstated: 'The government crossed Calle Atravesada from one sidewalk to the other'.33 Despite the scepticism or irony these comments may reflect, it should be pointed out that participation of family networks in UNO's government is generally weaker than that registered in the FSLN government. At present there is a more pronounced participation of cabinet members coming from groups or factions with no ties to those traditional networks: a situation suggesting that the relation between the sociological profile of a government and its political and ideological orientations is more complex than is usually assumed. The split between the group closest to President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and the hard-line faction led by Vice-President Virgilio Godoy reproduces within UNO's government Nicaragua's recurrent social conflict, which is, at one and the same time, more and less than a class conflict. It is less than a class conflict because, in the final analysis, it is a confrontation between two factions pertaining to the same class, with one of the factions expressing itself as a complex kinship structure. And it is more than a class conflict, since it reflects the world of cultural manifestations, the structure of ethnic hierarchies, the symbolic universe of society, and moves with a notorious independence over political and ideological frontiers. The first of these two groups emerges coalesced around dofa Violeta, supported by the previously mentioned family network. Dofia Violeta is the President and also the matron and the mother, with all that this implies in the context of a traditional society with a strong male chauvinist culture of veneration of the mother.34 In addition to this shared social origin, several of the President's men belong to CORDENIC, Comisi6n para la Recuperaci6n y Desarrollo de Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan counterpart of the International Commission for Central American Reactivation and Development headed by US Senator Terry Sanford. CORDENIC was
Calle Atravesadais the street on which Granada's wealthiest families traditionally have their homes. 34 Edmundo Jarquin, second-in-command of the FSLN's representatives at the National Assembly, is also one of dofia Violeta's sons-in-law.
33 Testimonies collected by the author in April I990.

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founded in April 1988 by Enrique Dreyfus, a prosperous businessman who in the early i98os chaired Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada (COSEP), whose opposition to the Sandinista government put him in gaol for some months in I98I. Afterwards Dreyfus served as a financial adviser to the international financial firm Lazar Freres and was a member of both the International Commission headed by Senator Sanford and the Interamerican Dialogue. CORDENIC brings together a small group of businessmen and professionals, some of whom are members of dofia Violeta's presidential cabinet: Dreyfus, who has been appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs; Antonio Lacayo, Minister of the Presidency; Francisco Rosales, Minister of Labour; Silvo de Franco, Minister of Economic Affairs; Roberto Rond6n Sacasa, Minister of Agriculture; and Francisco Mayorga, the first Chairman of the Central Bank. Sofonias Cisneros, who was the first Minister of Education in UNO's government, and Humberto Belli, initially the Deputy Minister and now Minister, belong to the 'City of God', a traditionalist Catholic lay group much favoured by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. Other members of 'City of God' include Health Minister Ernesto Salmer6n and deputy Minister Petronio Delgado, dofia Violeta's brother-in-law Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, and prominent businessman Carlos Mantica, the owner of one of the two largest supermarket chains in Nicaragua (partially expropriated by the Sandinista government in 1979), and now the President's adviser on religious affairs.35 Without minimising its opposition to many Sandinista policies this faction of UNO's government - the so-called 'grupo de Las Palmas', named after the neighbourhood where dofa Violeta's home and office is - displays a strong propensity to maintain a dialogue with the FSLN, which is eased by the already mentioned family links. The second UNO faction, headed by Vice-President Virgilio Godoy and by Managua's mayor Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo, stands in stark contrast to dofia Violeta's. It includes representatives of several Liberal political factions, emerging businessmen with no ties to the traditional groups and those whose properties were seized by the Sandinista agrarian reform or nationalised because of their relations to the Somoza regime, a small group of union leaders gathered around the Congreso Permanente
35

The appointment of Ernesto Salmer6n as Health Minister seems to be due more to the

fact that he is dofia Violeta's grandchildren'spaediatricianthan to his expertise on

previouslybeen the presidentof the Parents'Associationat the Jesuit CentralAmerican Elementaryand High School in Managua.See footnote i6 for a previous referenceto Carlos Mantica.
13-2

health policies. Dr Salmer6n is also Daniel Ortega's children's paediatrician: see Trish O'Kane, 'The New Old Order', NACLA Report on the Americas (June I990), pp. the UNO government's first Minister of Education had 28-36. Sofonias Salvatierra,

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del Trabajo, minor political parties including the Communist Party, and a large number of mayors of rural towns from the V (departments of Boaco and Chontales) and VI (departments of Matagalpa and Jinotega) regions. It is a very heterogeneous coalition held together by its shared extreme confrontation with Sandinismo and by the absence of personal or family links to the traditional elites. Due to its comparative economic weakness, and having been heavily affected by FSLN nationalisations and reforms, this faction fans the flames of anti-Sandinismo as a way of achieving United States government favours in order to compensate for the economic power and links to the (former) Sandinista army and police of the 'Las Palmas group'. With no organic ties to UNO's hardliners, but closer to them than to 'Las Palmas' because of the former's confrontation with the traditional family elites, the ex-contrasof Resistencia Nicaraguense (RN) claim to have been abandoned by the US government and accuse dofia Violeta of heading a 'bourgeois government' and not living up to her electoral campaign promises.36 RN leaders have made public their intention to form their own political party, even hoping to attract former members of the Sandinista Army and disenchanted Sandinistas, based on the common peasant identity of those who over the years fought the contrawar on both sides of the trenches versus those who conducted the war either from Managua or from Miami.37 A political appeal is made to basic cultural and class identities with a potential strong impact on Nicaragua's subordinated masses now that the FSLN is seen by many as being more interested in formal institutions than in social and economic change.38 The idea is of something akin to a party of the poor, the plebeian masses, the mestizos, the peasants, the chapiollos,those who risked and gave their lives, health and fortunes independently of the banners imposed by the rich, white, cultured urbanite gentlemen from either side, who are familia to one another and who hold control of government institutions both then and
now.39
36

See RN leader Israel Galeano's ('Comandante Franklin') interview in Pensamiento Propio, 70 (May i990), p. 29. 37 Author's interview with Boanerges Matus ('Comandante Pepe'), Managua, 3o Nov. I990. 38 See Carlos M. Vilas, 'El debate interno sandinista', Nueva Sociedad, 13 (May-June 1991), pp. 28-36. 39 Matus' interview (see footnote 37). Several high-ranking officials of UNO's government have previously been either Sandinistas or members of the Sandinista government. In addition to the well-known cases of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, Virgilio Godoy and Alfredo Cesar, it is also true of Labour Minister Francisco Rosales, a former deputy member of the FSLN's directorate in the I970S. Carlos Hurtado, now Minister of Government (Interior) joined the FSLN in I974 and was a middle-ranking MIDINRA official up to I982 when he moved into opposition and to Costa Rica. Francisco Mayorga, briefly Chairman of the Central Bank at the beginning of UNO's government,

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This is an option that has also been raised from within Sandinismo: an alliance between the social rank-and-file of both FSLN and RN, 'based on people's interests with particular attention given to the demands of organised workers in both the cities and the countryside, as well as the bulk of the peasantry, irrespective of whether they maintain traditional alliances to either the Sandinistas or the RN'.40 The participation of both Sandinista and non-Sandinista workers in the May and July I990 strikes and rallies, a certain cooperation amongst Sandinista peasants and contra rural supporters in defence of their lands, the joint defence of wages and working conditions by followers of both tendencies in the countryside, and the equally shared resistance to the reconstitution of latifundia by both FSLN and RN peasants, are some of the cases used to illustrate the feasibility of such an alliance - a class alliance in the strictest sense of the term. On the contrary, this proposal is rejected by Sandinistas from the traditional families who brand it as demagoguery, calling instead for an FSLN open to all.41 These well-to-do Sandinistas prefer, on the contrary, a FSLN diluting its class connotations in order to promote the 'development of the productive forces, including those owned by Sandinista militants and cadres' and 'to defend the meek ones'.42 This is a proposal that, in an apparent effort to bring to an end a traumatic political cycle, recalls the strategy of 'Somocismo without Somoza' championed a decade earlier with no success by the most lucid elements of traditional society.43 Families, classesandpolitics: final considerations The preceding presentation had very modest goals: to illustrate, on the basis of a particular case, the way lineage structures condition and qualify the dynamics of social classes and political power in the developing world, and the impact of this conditioning upon the nation-wide political arena. Insofar as Nicaragua resembles many Latin American societies, we may assume that the Nicaraguan example is also relevant for other countries.

TribunalesPopulares Lacayo,Ministerof Information,was a memberof the Sandinista

Antisomocistas. 40 Orlando Nifiez, 'Pactos, acuerdos y alianzas', Barricada, 14 June I990. 41 See Alejandro Martinez Cuenza, 'Alianzas y convivencia basica', Barricada, 16 June
I990;

had been an advisor to the Sandinista Ministry of Planning from I979 to 1982; Danilo

Edmundo Jarquin,'Nicaraguaparatodos, o paraalgunos?', Barricada, Nov. 23

1990. 42 Alejandro Martinez Cuenca, 'Los nuevos retos del sandinismo', La Avispa, I (Oct.-Nov. I990), pp. 7-9. 43 See Carlos M. Vilas, 'Nicaragua after the Elections: The First ioo Days', Z Magazine (Nov. 1990), pp. 91-7; The Sandinista Revolution,ch. iv.

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The relationship of class and kinship we have dealt with receives its specificity from the particular moment in the process of development and modernisation of Nicaraguan society to which we have directed our attention. According to the prevailing approaches in Latin American sociology on processes of revolutionary change, people should align themselves in social conflict and in the definition of political allegiances and confrontations, according to political banners responding to class identities. We have seen that things are not exactly shaped in this way, and that the burden of traditional family networks is still heavy within the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie despite the profound political and ideological cleavages that have fractured the country in the recent past. The common assumption that revolutions shape immediately and simultaneously every ingredient in the social matrix can also be questioned. Many of the issues we have dealt with in our presentation basic identities and loyalties, the importance of regional and kin factors - survive for a long time after revolutionary political change and contribute to the moulding of its development. The old system reproduces itself within the new one and frequently appeals to the new one to survive. Family networks and lineage structures are particularly efficacious in times of political and economic instability. Family intertwinings permitted some elements of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie to resist, or to adapt to the shocks of political change and economic transformations, to preserve the basic features of their social identity and to maintain their social prestige, as other segments lacking those links, or with weaker family networks, succumbed to the pressure of the market and politics, or were swallowed by them, re-emerging, at best, after dramatic changes. Family networks subsequently permitted some elements in the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie to resist Somoza's competencia desleal,to transfer capital abroad, to ingratiate themselves in the Sandinista regime and participate there in high level policy-making positions, as well as to join the anti-Sandinista UNO government. Meanwhile, actors with weaker family roots and links were marginalised by market changes, were expropriated by the revolutionary regime, had to leave Nicaragua, experienced the burden of economic crisis, or are suffering the impact of anti-Sandinista revenge. Nicaragua's relative marginality with regard to the transformation of the Western economies during the nineteenth century and the beginning of the present one, and her late attempt at capitalist modernisation, contribute to an explanation of the preservation of kinship structures and the strong influence of family networks. It may be assumed that further economic development and, in particular, advancements in urbanisation, industrialisation and market relations, will introduce modifications in this situation. Similarly, the economic and political improvements for many

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Sandinista and former contraleaders and cadres will undoubtedly introduce changes and tensions in the traditional social fabrics. The presence of notable families on both sides of the profound political fractures in contemporary Nicaragua may also be understood as a moderating buffer against foreign political pressures, particularly the virulent anti-Sandinismo expressed by agencies and high-ranking officials of the US government. Family interconnections have woven a defensive web over dofia Violeta's government to confront pressures from US hardliners to remove from the state, and above all from the army, every remnant of Sandinismo, and to protect Sandinista cousins in their positions. Accordingly, what some observers interpret as the FSLN's cooperation in the stabilisation of dofia Violeta's government is made easier by those family links, or at least these links contribute to a reduction in the intensity of confrontations. The strength and permanence of extended family structures within the oligarchic fractions of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, with its relative independence from political conflicts, stands in stark contrast with what is to be found at the lower levels of social stratification: family fragmentation due to political confrontations and economic crisis. Forced migrations, unwanted direct involvement in the political and military conflict, having to leave the country in search of job opportunities elsewhere, have inflicted profound wounds on the social texture of subordinate classes. In this social environment, those who joined counterrevolutionary forces lost every contact with those who remained loyal to Sandinismo; the ones who stayed in Nicaragua loosened links with those who migrated to Honduras or to Costa Rica. In the oligarchic groups of traditional society family networks acted to prevent, or to reduce, the ruptures emerging from political conflict, and helped to back the winner on every occasion. On the contrary, socioeconomic vulnerability at the lower levels of society determined that political confrontation and economic collapse did indeed separate members of the same family.44
44 Shortly after the Sandinistavictory in July 1979, the husband of N. C. - one of my collaboratorsin the Atlantic Coast Northern area- left Nicaraguato join one of the first armed groups to form the contra. had been a member of Somoza's National He Guard and climbed quickly in what was initially named Fuerza Democratica Nicaragiiense(FDN). Over the following eleven yearshis wife and three childrenlost any contact with him. There was no news, no letters,no messages; they knew nothing of his whereabouts nor whether he were alive or dead. After the February I990 elections she received news from him: he was one of 'Comandante' Franklin'sfield 'commanders'. The family reunion took place up in the mountains of Jinotega, in a who had laid down arms. During the years of separationN. C. moved camp of contras from one job to another,including an appointmentin Sandinistastate security.It was moving to watch the emotional impact on her, on him and on the children- now,

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Under these circumstances, the reunification of families, presented as one of UNO's central electoral campaign goals, gathered broad support amongst popular sectors affected by war and crisis. This was a goal that could be presented as an entirely non-political issue - i.e. not affected by the confrontations that shocked Nicaraguan society for more than a decade, to be easily linked to a religious discourse of forgiveness and pardon for offences, and by the same token handled as a critical point against the FSLN, since the FSLN's militarism was presented as the main factor responsible for divisions within families. Emphasis on this point by dofia Violeta Barrios de Chamorros increased its appeal. From the distant perspective of a different cultural background, the Chamorro Barrios are a particularly illustrative case of Sandinista and anti-Sandinista cohabitation within one and the same family. But, in many people's eyes, whose homes had been ripped apart by war, they were a living testimony of family divisions because of politics - i.e. because of Sandinismo. It is worth stressing that, despite the strong influence notable families managed to keep throughout the Sandinista decade, the two most powerful officials in the regime - brothers Daniel and Humberto Ortega - were outside these networks, as was Comandante Tomas Borge, the only survivor of the FSLN's formation in the early i 96os. It is also a wellknown fact that the Ortegas' road to political power owed nothing to those networks; on the contrary, traditional family advancement within the Sandinista regime was to an important extent built upon proximity to the political and institutional areas where the direct authority of the Ortega brothers was particularly strong.45
youngsters- as they tried to rebuildfamily life. This case contrastswith that of R. L., a son of a SandinistaGuerrilla Commanderrelated to one of the most traditional families from southern Nicaragua.The young man was kidnappedin mid-I987 by a contra patrolwhile serving the draft,then carriedto Honduraswhere he was a prisoner for some weeks in one of ResistenciaNicaragiiense'scamps there. His family rapidly asked for help from one of his father'sdirect cousins, who immediatelyintercededon R.L.'s behalf. This cousin was a former Sandinistaminister, who went into exile in Costa Rica in the early I98os, where he became a political adviser to Alianza RevolucionariaDemocratica (ARDE), Eden Pastora's counterrevolutionarygroup. R. L. was sent by plane to San Jose where he stayedin his relative'shome before going back safely to Managuaa few weeks later. 45 Stone fails in his attemptto establishan 'aristocraticsocial background'for Daniel and Humberto Ortega; his data are not convincing and his prose is plagued by vague statements, which contrast with his accuracy when dealing with other not-socontroversialNicaraguanofficials. His only source is a secondaryone, authored by a formeradviserto Lt Colonel Oliver North. See Stone, TheHeritage theConquistadores, of p. 40. The most Stone is able to establish is that the Ortega brothers were socially connectedneitherto a poor peasantrynor to the ruralproletariat,but to what I might call a relativelywell-to-do chapiollo yeomanry.A reading of Eric Wolfs PeasantWars Century of the Twentieth might have saved him time and effort.

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34I

We may conclude, then, that family networks and lineage structures are not independent of the socio-economic matrix nor of political power relations. The latter contribute to the former's development, inasmuch as they are conditioned by them. Insofar as the incidence of lineage structures was more intense at the beginning of the century than after the
1950S, it is plausible to expect it to be relatively reduced in the future, as

processes of social transformation and political change continue to take shape. Or, at least, the social groups acting through family networks and lineage structures will be forced by these processes to take into account the new ingredients of change and to adapt to them.46 The rigidity of Nicaragua's traditional structure of family networks, and its resistance to the incorporation of new elements, should also be stressed. Somocismo was, in fact much more than in intention, the most decisive attempt to break down that structure and to dispute traditional hegemony, marginalising it from government and confronting it on the economic terrain. The great number of members of traditional Conservative families from Granada and Rivas within the middle and high ranks of the Sandinista government may be interpreted, from this point of view, as a political reaction to the intense competition from Somocista newcomers. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the close relationship of traditional families to Sandinismo has had such a meagre expression in terms of marriages - the most traditional way to introduce new elements into lineage groups. In addition to emphasising the strong endogamous preference of these groups, it suggests a style, and perhaps also a strategy, of social reproduction that assures the group's aspirations to autonomy and to social differentiation. Nicaragua's traditional families did not espouse Sandinismo - neither in wedding ceremonies nor in political terms - as is revealed by their more diluted, but in any case effective, participation in the UNO government.
46

Literature on 'notable' family networks in Latin American politics (a) focuses much more on the predominantly agrarian past than on the mostly urbanised and industrialised present, and (b) dedicates much more attention to subordinate or marginal economic areas than to the dynamic centres of economic and political modernisation. See the extensive bibliography listed in Balmori et al., Las aliantas de familias y la formacion del pais....