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Nicaragua: The threat of a good example?

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Dianna Melrose's "Nicaragua : the threat of a good example?" tells a side of the Sandanista struggle for social justice and freedom that most North Americans know little about. Before the Sandanistas came to power in Nicaragua Samoza and later the National Guard (renamed the Contras or "freedom fighters") was carrying out massive atrocities in the war against the Sandinistas, killing tens of thousands of people, all with the blessing of the United States. Ronald Reagan launched a large-scale terrorist war against Nicaragua, combined with economic warfare that was even more lethal in crippling Nicaragua and limiting the effectiveness of Sandanista reforms as they had to redirect massive amounts of money from social programmes to military expenditures in order to combat the Contras and the US.

In "Nicaragua : the threat of a good example?" Dianna Melrose explains why the US went to such lengths to sabotage the Sandanista government: the Sandanista revolution was a threat because it was an example of how one small nation could overcome the oppression and subjugation of the world's largest economic and military superpower.

In fact, Melrose explains, the international development organization Oxfam explained the real reasons, stating that, from its experience of working in 76 developing countries, "Nicaragua was... exceptional in the strength of that government's commitment... to improving the condition of the people and encouraging their active participation in the development process." Melrose reports that Nicaragua showed a substantial effort to address inequities in land ownership and to extend health, educational and agricultural services to poor peasant families. In the early 1980s, the World Bank called its projects "extraordinarily successful in Nicaragua in some sectors, better than anywhere else in the world." In 1983, The Inter-American Development Bank concluded that "Nicaragua has made noteworthy progress in the social sector, which is laying the basis for long-term socio-economic development."

"Nicaragua : the threat of a good example?" vividly illustrates the the true values of "neo-liberal free-market economics", its dependence on terrorism to stifle public dissent and how most in the First World pay only lip-service to the principles of social justice, freedom, egalitarianism amd integrity. A book of tremendous social and historical value.