Food and Revolution

Fighting Hunger in Nicaragua, 1960-1993

Christiane Berth

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780822987406
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Food policy and practices varied widely in Nicaragua during the last decades of the twentieth century. In the 1970s and '80s, food scarcity contributed to the demise of the Somoza dictatorship and the Sandinista revolution. Although faced with widespread scarcity and political restrictions, Nicaraguan consumers still carved out spaces for defining their food choices. Despite economic crises, rationing, and war limiting peoples' food selection, consumers responded with improvisation in daily cooking practices and organizing food exchanges through three distinct periods. First, the Somoza dictatorship (1936–1979) promoted culture and food practices from the United States, which was an option only for a minority of citizens. Second, the 1979 Sandinista revolution tried to steer Nicaraguans away from mass consumption by introducing an austere, frugal consumption that favored local products. Third, the transition to democracy between 1988 and 1993, marked by extreme scarcity and economic crisis, witnessed the re-introduction of market mechanisms, mass advertising, and imported goods. Despite the erosion of food policy during transition, the Nicaraguan revolution contributed to recognizing food security as a basic right and the rise of peasant movements for food sovereignty.

CHAPTER ONE

GROWING TENSIONS

THE AGRO-EXPORT ECONOMY, FOOD CULTURE, AND NUTRITION SURVEYS, 1950–1965

In 1952 Nicaraguan doctors traveled to Ciudad Darío in Matagalpa department to investigate an outbreak of night blindness, an illness caused by vitamin A deficiency. Local peasants had been surviving for months on a diet limited to tortillas, coffee, and beans. Hesitantly they admitted that they had even substituted maize with millet for tortilla production, which aggravated the situation. In particular, peasants who had lost land because of the expansion of agro exports were struggling for survival. Once newspapers reported on the case, the Somoza regime denounced the accusations as a political maneuver. In a situation where Nicaragua proudly presented high economic growth rates to international funding institutions, the regime feared any negative publicity and was unwilling to hear the experts’ critical statements. Nonetheless, the reports put the drama of rural malnutrition on the political agenda. Shortly afterward, an INCAP technician made a survey of the region and diagnosed acute hunger. By 1960 experts were publicly denouncing malnutrition in Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan doctor Emilio Álvarez Montalván even compared the situation to hunger crises in tsarist Russia and India. By doing so, he indirectly linked the Somoza regime to authoritarian rule and colonialism. The regime, however, still contradicted the experts’ reports and maintained that Nicaraguans were well nourished.¹

This incident reveals two trends: the political establishment’s unwillingness to acknowledge the problem of malnutrition and the new authority gained by experts such as doctors and nutritionists to evaluate Nicaragua’s food situation. INCAP expert teams in the 1950s traveled to every Central American country and published the first science-driven evaluations of local diets. They expressed these evaluations in the powerful new language of calories, vitamins, and nutrients. According to contemporary nutrition science wisdom, they frequently diagnosed lack of protein as a main problem, but they also emphasized the socioeconomic origins of malnutrition. The struggle between the experts who denounced widespread malnutrition and a political establishment that denied the existence of any problem at all shaped the debates over food in Nicaragua for the next two decades.

Social tensions over the nutritional situation and consumption developed in Nicaragua from the early 1950s to 1965. Culinary change accelerated in this period because of three factors: the agro-export boom, the growth of the middle classes, and urbanization. All of these factors also challenged the prevailing organization of food production and supply. Because of the rapid expansion of the cotton and cattle industries, social conflicts intensified concerning land distribution in the countryside and food prices in urban areas. During the mid-1960s, Nicaragua became the most urban country in Central America with 40 percent of the population living in cities.² The fact of living in urban environments changed Nicaraguans’ daily diet. In the growing cities, rural migrants from different parts of the country met, integrated new foods into their everyday meals, and participated in a vivid street food culture. By analyzing culinary literature and oral testimonies, I identify important flavors, dishes, and ingredients for Nicaraguans in the second half of the twentieth century. Both Nicaraguan intellectuals and interviewees highlighted culinary creativity; nutrition experts criticized limited diets that lacked micronutrients and protein.

With the first Central American nutrition survey in 1965, experts’ findings on malnutrition in Nicaragua reached broader international audiences. The survey demonstrated that children, in particular, suffered severely from malnutrition in the mid-1960s when the food supply was generally insufficient. Nevertheless, the Somoza regime resisted all pressure to give food policy a higher priority. US support in the early years of the Cold War still allowed the Somoza regime to mitigate tensions through food aid. At the same time, the dictatorship repressed peasant protests and political opposition.

As social inequality increased and low-income sectors struggled with high food prices, Nicaraguan elites and members of the middle class embraced US consumption models. Their public display of wealth through imported goods made social gaps in Nicaraguan society more obvious. Their profligate consumption became visible in the late 1950s, in the first supermarkets and fast food restaurants. The high prices impeded the ability of most Nicaraguans to participate in these new establishments, which strengthened feelings of exclusion. Overall, by the mid-1960s social tensions over food were manifested in land conflicts and public criticism of malnutrition from experts and conservative intellectuals, as well as in growing urban support for the FSLN. Nevertheless, economic aid in the framework of the Alliance for Progress still alleviated pressure on the Nicaraguan food system until the late 1960s, which allowed the Somoza regime to maintain its long-term rule.

MECHANISMS OF POWER AND THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT, 1940S TO 1960S

The Somoza regime was one of the most long-lasting dictatorships in Latin America. Its rule in Nicaragua started in 1936, when Anastasio Somoza García deposed the elected president, Juan Bautista Sacasa. With a short interruption from 1947 to 1951, Somoza García remained in power until his assassination in 1956. Throughout his rule, he created a system of domination based on various elements. It was strongly focused on the person of the president, who according to the 1939 constitution should “personify the nation.”³ His rule relied on continuous manipulation of the constitution, the political institutions, and the electoral process. The regime based its power on a “pyramid of corruption” that extended throughout Nicaraguan society.⁴ Finally, the Somozas employed the National Guard as a repressive force in times of political crisis.⁵

The United States welcomed these developments because of the fear of the rise of left-wing social movements in Latin America. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the United States intervened frequently in Central American politics and in Nicaragua inserted itself into politics and stationed US Marines in the country from 1912 to 1933. Although US military presence remained limited, a group of Wall Street bankers controlled Nicaraguan public finances. Shortly before retiring from the country, the United States supported the buildup of the Nicaraguan National Guard whose first commander was the later president Anastasio Somoza García.

The US campaign to intern and expropriate “enemy aliens” during the Second World War fostered the self-enrichment of the Somoza clan. Although US–Latin American relations had temporarily improved during the 1930s with the era of the Good Neighbor Policy, the 1940s witnessed renewed US interventions on the continent.⁶ During the Second World War, the United States abandoned the principles of the Good Neighbor Policy and intervened in Latin American nations’ sovereignty. Overestimating Nazi influence but also interested in eliminating German economic competition, beginning in 1941 the United States pressured Latin American governments to intern and expropriate German, Italian, and Japanese nationals. Once the governments had yielded, local political leaders used the measures for their own interests. Anastasio Somoza García, for example, benefited personally from the expropriation of German coffee plantations.⁷ These US wartime interferences in Latin American affairs were a prelude to later Cold War interventions.

Although most of Latin America became more democratic during the 1940s, US interventions strengthened authoritarian rule in some places on the continent. The year 1944 marked a political rupture for Central America when the long-term dictatorships fell in Guatemala and El Salvador.⁸ Nicaragua, however, remained an exception. By 1946 it was among the five remaining Latin American countries with authoritarian presidents. Although this overall political trend toward democracy raised hopes for a more egalitarian future throughout Latin America, these hopes were soon shattered. In the postwar period the United States declared the fight against communism as its central mission. It provided military support to those governments promising to fight left-wing organizations. The United States perceived the Somoza regime as a guarantor of regional stability and consequently reinforced its military training as well as economic aid to Nicaragua.

Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, the United States supported Nicaraguan agriculture and health programs. Following up on sanitary projects executed in Nicaragua during the Second World War, the United States pursued Nicaraguan public health schemes in the postwar period. In the early 1950s US advisers also exerted influence on key political decisions in related Nicaraguan ministries. Between 1953 and 1957, Nicaragua received $8.9 million of nonmilitary aid from the United States, mainly for health, education, and agricultural programs.⁹

The Cuban Revolution in 1959 reinforced US support for anticommunist dictatorships in Latin America, among them the Somozas. After the assassination of Somoza García in 1956, his son Luis Somoza Debayle took over the presidency, but his administration marked no significant change from his father’s regime. He continued the brutal suppression of the opposition and engaged in anticommunist activities so as to attract further US economic and military support. This tactic was quite successful as his presidency coincided with the Cuban Revolution and the start of the Alliance for Progress in 1961.

The Cuban Revolution was a watershed for Latin America. The United States redesigned foreign policy for the hemisphere so as to prevent any similar insurrections. It evaluated all governments based on their position regarding Cuba and their repression of left-wing social movements. US officials frequently overestimated communist influence and hence misjudged the political character of these movements. Based on unsubstantiated suspicions the United States intensified support for authoritarian regimes and extended training capacities for Latin American police and military. Simultaneously, the United States launched a huge economic assistance project for the continent—the Alliance for Progress, which temporarily mitigated tensions in the Nicaraguan food system. After the presidency of René Schick (1963–1966) and a short interim, Somoza García’s second son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, took over the presidency in 1967.¹⁰

The Somozas benefited from US support and used their position of power for personal gain. Over the decades the clan built an economic imperium based on plantations and industrial firms. Calculating the exact value of the family’s properties has always been difficult as the Somozas used a complex network of straw men and established companies with foreign domiciles and bank accounts all over the globe to hide their assets. In 1979 the family owned one-fifth of all cultivatable land in Nicaragua, which contributed to the family’s reported wealth of least one billion US dollars. The Somoza clan was omnipresent in commerce, industry, and agro exports and also controlled important sectors of Nicaraguan food production, such as industrial meat production and the milk industry.¹¹

THE RISE OF AGRO EXPORTS, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND INCREASING TENSIONS OVER FOOD

In the 1950s and 1960s social structures in Nicaragua changed with the expansion of the agro-export economy. First, the number of landless laborers increased, which accelerated urbanization. Second, the Nicaraguan population grew quickly at approximately 3 percent annually.¹² Third, more and more women were entering the workforce; women’s share in the economically active population rose from 14 percent in 1950 to nearly 29 percent in 1977. Fourth, the urban middle class increased, as the expanding state bureaucracy needed more employees. In 1960 the middle class made up 11 percent of the Nicaraguan population, including state employees, professionals, and small business owners.¹³ The rise of the middle class contributed to the growth of a consumer goods market, but its size remained small compared to that in other Latin American countries.

Changing social structures in Nicaraguan society also influenced food policy and consumption habits. Population growth and urbanization required a long-term strategy for ensuring food supply; however, the government neglected strategic planning and depended increasingly on food imports. The challenge for the regime was to provide the growing urban population with enough food at accessible prices. For the regime’s leaders this was less a social compromise than a means to avoid protests. However, the government was only partially successful, as unrest about food prices intensified in the early 1970s. In addition, the official intent to cheapen food for urban workers happened at the cost of the peasants. Insufficient income from basic grains sales and less access to hacienda land forced them to rely on salaried work on farms. Owing to the cotton boom in Northern Nicaragua, many peasants lost their land and their employment stability; hence, land invasions increased.¹⁴

The agricultural policy favoring agro exports had deep roots in the nineteenth century. At that time the Nicaraguan economy had become increasingly dependent on the export of agricultural products such as coffee. From the 1950s onward coffee exports decreased, and cotton, cattle, and sugar exports began their ascendancy. Coffee production was concentrated in the interior mountain regions of Matagalpa, Jinotega, and the Segovias as well as in the southern uplands in the departments of Managua and Carazo. In those regions with a village structure where coffee was produced on smaller farms, peasants could still cultivate basic grains on small plots. This changed during the rapid expansion of cattle and cotton in the 1950s. Cattle and cotton production expanded mainly in the Northern and Central Pacific’s fertile volcanic soil as well as in the Pacific interior (see figure 1.1).¹⁵ In 1950, cotton already occupied nearly 40 percent of all arable land and deeply transformed landscapes, mainly the surrounding areas of the cities León and Chinandega.

FIGURE 1.1. Food production in different Nicaraguan regions, 1980. This map is based on a map developed for the 1980 report of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. It shows the status of food production after three decades of intense agro-export cultivation. The map indicates the geographical distribution of Nicaragua’s main agricultural products but neglects regional varieties at the agricultural frontier and at the Caribbean Coast.

In Chinandega department, where 46 percent of all Nicaraguan cotton was cultivated, the expansion produced a major social rupture. Prior to the 1950s most hacienda owners provided agricultural workers access to small plots of land where they grew corn and held cattle. In addition, the owners supplied their workers with milk or cheese. Rural women contributed to survival with the collection of fruits and wild plants.¹⁶ In the 1950s landowners expanded cotton cultivation and hence denied workers access to land. At the same time hacienda owners appropriated municipal lands for cotton farming that peasants had used traditionally for hunting and subsistence agriculture. More and more peasant families were cut off from land, which worsened their supply situation. By the 1960s rural workers increasingly relied on salaries of around six Córdobas per day, which were insufficient for acquiring enough milk, cheese, rice, and beans for their families’ survival.¹⁷ The scanty wages created growing social unrest in the Nicaraguan countryside. Over the long run, the regime leaders’ ignorance of rural people’s needs contributed to the outbreak of the revolution. The FSLN guerrillas managed to get a foothold in some rural communities throughout the 1960s.

Cotton, meat, and sugarcane production displaced peasants and moved them to the agricultural frontier between 1950 and 1965. Given the difficult ecological conditions, peasants produced fewer basic grains in disconnected areas, which affected Nicaraguan food supply. At the same time as the cotton boom, meat exports to the United States increased, which meant that more land was assigned to livestock farming. Sugarcane production expanded slightly later than cotton production and concentrated on the Pacific Coast and in the southern interior. The exports of all three products soared by more than 300 percent between 1960 and 1979.¹⁸ This expansion required immense areas of land, and basic grains production had to move into the country’s interior. Peasants who had previously engaged in subsistence agriculture were forced either to work on export plantations or to move inland or directly to the cities. Although the areas cultivated with basic grains did not diminish between 1952 and 1960, the yields decreased by 30 percent, as the soil quality was lower. Compared to other Central American countries, Nicaraguan agricultural productivity was relatively low, especially in corn production. All peasant migrants struggled with the different climate and inferior soil at the agricultural frontier. In addition, these regions lacked access to transport infrastructure.¹⁹

Settlements at the agricultural frontier especially changed food production and social relations in the sparsely populated Caribbean departments. Basic grains production increased, but farmers also faced difficulties because of climate and isolation. The massive influx of settlers in the Caribbean regions provoked conflicts over land use. The Somoza regime actively encouraged the resettlement of peasants in the interior from the 1960s onward. With financial support from the World Bank and the Inter-American Developm...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations Used throughout This Book
• Map of Nicaragua
• Introduction
• Chapter One. Growing Tensions: The Agro-export Economy, Food Culture, and Nutrition Surveys, 1950–1965
• Chapter Two. Tensions Revealed: Food Politics, Natural Disaster, and Social Conflicts, 1965–1979
• Chapter Three. The Enthusiastic Founding Stage: Early Revolutionary Food Policy, 1979–1982
• Chapter Four. The Revolutionary Consumer: Food Consumption, National Self-Sufficiency, and External Aggression in the Early 1980s
• Chapter Five. Food Policy Deteriorates into Crisis Management: Economic Cuts, Industrial Agriculture, and Food Aid in the Mid-1980s
• Chapter Six. Food Policy in Tatters: The Return of Hunger during Economic Transition, 1988–1993
• Chapter Seven. Caribbean Transitions: Agricultural Colonization, Nostalgia, and Food Cultures, 1960s–1990s
• Epilogue. Nicaragua’s Role in the Debates on Food Security and Food Sovereignty, 1980s–2019
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index