RONALD RADOSH
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the Sandinistas would have won had Cruz participated, why does he
think that the Sandinistas refused to agree to extend the election
deadline - the issue at hand - and allow Cruz to wage a real cam–
paign? An electoral victory by the Sandinista Front for National
Liberation (FSLN), after all, would certainly have legitimized their
power.
What Harrington chooses to ignore is the overwhelming
evidence about the Sandinistas' real agenda. We have known for a
few years - Harrington certainly must have read Robert Leiken's
three-part series about the elections in
The
New York Review of
Books-about
Bayardo Arce's secret speech to FSLN cadre, in which
he explained to party militants that while elections were a "hin–
drance" to their goal, they could serve as "an expedient to deprive
enemies of an argument ." Even George Black, then of the North
American Congress on Latin America and now an editor of
The Na–
tion,
wrote in a
New York Times
op-ed piece that the
commandantes
found "elections a nuisance except insofar as they would help to
'perfect revolutionary power'." And Black honestly wrote that at the
Socialist International meeting, it was only the combination of
Perez's and the Socialist International's pressure that had forced
Arce to agree even to negotiate with Cruz in the first place. Unlike
Harrington, Black explained that Bayardo Arce, not Cruz, backed
out "just when an agreement appeared to be within reach." A similar
conclusion was also reached by James Chace, the noted anti–
interventionist scholar, who is now with the Carnegie Foundation .
Chace wrote in
The New York Times Magazine
of November 25 , 1984,
that the Sandinistas "refused to extend the deadline for registra–
tion ... despite pleas from Western European and Latin American
socialist leaders on the scene." The breakdown took place, he con–
cluded, "precisely because the Sandinista hard-liners did not want to
risk the possibility of a large pro-Cruz vote ." Nowhere does Har–
rington tell his readers that the agreement broke down because Arce ,
not Cruz, walked out at the crucial moment.
One would have hoped that Harrington , as the only American
member of the Socialist International's Committee to Defend the
Nicaraguan Revolution, would have joined Perez and his comrades
in pressuring the Sandinistas. Indeed , I spoke with Cruz and his son
a few days before the Socialist International meeting. They informed
me that they wished to speak with Harrington to make known their
views . Cruz Jr. in particular, an adviser to his father and a forme r
