Nicaragua: Can it Find its Own Way?

Placing Central American struggles on the line of East-West conflict is not simply a compass error, to be corrected by a truer North-South heading. It is a basic mistake. It means to ignore the simultaneous ferment of three processes that have proceeded elsewhere in gradual stages: nation-building, modernization, and class conflict. The paramount problems of Central America are those of the Third World:political dependency, cultural backwardness, and social disarticulation. The need to overcome them jointly and quickly makes the state a crucial agency of development. Third World states are invested by social movements—the rainbow of the poor and the displaced, more a mass of “people” than a class or coalition—to which, ...