Aarón Farrash (A.F.) is a Nicaraguan student. He is in exile in Costa Rica after he split with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), in 2009. We met him in the solidarity with Nicaragua activities promoted from the Workers Party (Partido de los Trabajadores-PT), Costa Rican section of the International Workers League.
We transcribed a first interview granted to Socialismo Hoy (Socialism Today) Digital, of Costa Rica.
SH: When did you decide to split with the FSLN and why?
A.F: From 2008-2009 there was a wearing within the party. The spaces to think are shut down and critical voices within the party are silenced. This generated discomfort among some old guard leaders and the youth who had just graduated in the last cadre school of the FSLN.
The party called me to participate in the National Sandinista Youth Committee, a political committee with more intervention in the party. I joined as the leader of the student movement and won space in the National Committee. There, I began to coordinate government organizational and institutional matters.
As I got involved in the party dynamic, I realized that the project that vindicated as socialist was degenerating and it was more related to money. Small groups were created within the party linked to corruption. I got to know people who had four posts within the State and earned up to 85 thousand cordobas per month. When you asked if this was true they answered, “Well, it’s an opportunity and one must seize it”.
This corruption started getting to me. My political education was opposed to this, an education with a socialist view of structural changes. I found myself in a demagogue worn out party that had lost its way. The FSLN became a new elite, a new bourgeoisie. In fact, the state now generates new rich due to the money handling and the state waste of resources.
I decided to quit the party in November 2009 in a National Youth Committee, after they stopped me from doing an intervention, where I asked not to use the funds of the Education Ministry in the FSLN campaign. I decided to split from the party because I did not see a socialist political project there. It seemed more like a capitalist country, a mob managed the system to buy people’s consciousness. I renounced because all sense and reason was lost. My decision as a young person, as a good revolutionary, was to quit and split from the party, beginning a new stage of struggle against this oppressive system.
S.H: Why do you define the Nicaraguan regime as a dictatorship?
A.F: The left must understand that there is a dictatorship in Nicaragua, and mainly, there is no socialism. There is the management of great capital, an obedient conduct with all international financial institutions and a government with all state powers co-opted.
I believe there are four basic characteristics to speak of a dictatorship in Nicaragua. The first is that it became an assistentialist government, for people to depend on it. In the second place, the co-opting of all the powers of the Republic, like the Supreme Electoral Council, the Supreme Court of Justice, and the National Assembly, to use them in their favor and change the Constitution. The third characteristic is the disguised evolution of a dictatorship, in a very repressive regime with military court, which took place from Daniel Ortega buying all the high posts of the National Police and the Army chiefs. Therefore, setting them in his service and applying force to any demonstration against the government. The fourth is the alliance between Daniel Ortega and the sectors of power. He is one of the wealthiest people in the region. He managed to take 1.5 billion dollars from the Venezuelan cooperation to private enterprises through a business like Albanisa, or the different oil subsidiaries in Nicaragua. Today, the Ortega family is one of the greatest action holders of enterprises in Nicaragua. It controls all distribution systems, like energy distribution, which belongs to the Ortega family.
One cannot set aside these elements. They turn the Ortega administration into a dictatorship with full control of the Powers of the Republic. He managed to achieve military power and co-opt economic power to subdue the people systematically.
S.H. Why is it important to build a real left in Nicaragua, opposed to the Ortega regime?
A.F. In Nicaragua, there is an imperative need to build a socialist party and government. There is much wealth in the country and an unbelievable culture of work. People are in solidarity and the socialist system is an actual need. But our country has been ruled by agents of foreign politics that do not express the will and the needs of the people. Sadly, those who have reached office have ruled with capitalist thoughts, leading the country to poverty. Therefore, the struggle for a real socialist system without exploitation in all Nicaragua is necessary.
S.H. Why are you approaching the PT in Costa Rica and the IWL project in Central America?
A.F. I approached in the context of the actions of solidarity with Nicaragua that the party has promoted since protests begun. After getting to know the party, I saw a coherent socialist political project and the organizational structure that I hope for Nicaragua. I see in this party a coherent organization in the fight against aggressive and systematic policies of the governments, imposed by international financial institutions. An organization that vindicates the workers and promotes real social transformations towards actual socialism.
