Father: When I went to see my children I told my boss. 'I want to go and take this food to my children who are leaving for the mountains. He said, 'Do it!' I caught the bus. Aberto came to see me. He spoke in a very gentle way, as always — "Dad, I can't stay long because we're training." So I gave him the food and soft drink and said, 'May God be with you.'
Bradbury: 13 years ago Pedro and Julita Madrigal lost their two sons to a war fought in the name of the Sandinista Revolution, a revolution they still believe in.
Julita: The Revolution was a beautiful thing because it was made from the blood, the bones and the tears of the mothers who wept for their children.
I am a Sandinista and will never stop saying I'm a Sandinista until the day God takes away my life.
Music
Bradbury: Today the party that created the Revolution - the Sandinistas - are again fighting for political power this time through the ballot box rather than with bullets.
The Sandinista leader, Comandante Daniel Ortega, or simply, 'Daniel,' as he's known to the party faithful, is once again calling on the nation to re-kindle the socialist idealism that once was at the heart of the Sandinista Revolution.
Ortega: When we say we are the party of the poor, the party of the humble — it’s because we want them to leave their misery behind — to raise themselves up again from the situation that they have been living under these past years.
Chanting/Music:The people unitedwill never be defeated!The people armedwill never be crushed!In the name of our dead we swear to defend our victory!
Bradbury: I first came to Nicaragua in 1983 to make a film about the Sandinistas at the height of the war with the US-backed contras. I called that film No Pasaran - "They will not Enter.”
Now 13 years later, on the eve of Nicaragua's elections I’ve come back to see what happened to the Children of the Revolution.
Abby: How many of there are you?Boy: Two.Abby Fields left a well paid job in New York to come and work unpaid for the Revolution picking cotton.
Her husband, Daniel Allegria, happily risked his life behind enemy lines for $40 a month.
Abby: My motivation for coming here was because I really believed in the process of revolutionary change that was taking place here. I felt it was good, it was just, it was equitable and I thought it offered hope for the entire world for something that positive that could take place.
Bradbury: Today Daniel and Abby have become disillusioned, not with the ideals of the revolution but with the party leadership.
Daniel: People like me feel like we've been ousted from an exclusive party that used to be ours. I still consider myself to be a Sandinista but I don't identify with the orthodox, and you know, like who stole the keys to the temple? They did. Well you know, we're still Sandinistas and there's a lot of us.
Bradbury: Daniel's loss of faith Is remarkable given that he used to be a bodyguard and translator for one of the heroes of the revolution, Tomas Borge.
Borge: Long live the struggle for the defence of our country! Freedom for our homeland! Or death!
Bradbury: Borge was one of the most potent symbols of the determination and courage of the Revolution.
Borge's first wife was murdered by Somoza's National Guard. He himself was imprisoned and tortured by them for years before the Sandinistas triumphed in 1979.Borge: I retreated by my gun jammed. They captured me and brought me to these cells. Normally I was in this position. I could never stand up straight. I had to squat while they stood over me, because I was stuck to this ring here.
Bradbury: It’s been two years now since Daniel and Borge have seen each other, a result of Daniel's disillusionment with the party leadership, including Borge.
Under the Sandinistas, Borge was one of the most powerful men in Nicaragua. He was the Minister in charge of state security and the police.
Today he's director of Barricada, the party's propaganda newspaper and still an active leader of the Sandinista front. No longer the penniless guerilla, he's now a millionaire and along with other party leaders he's tainted with allegations of corruption that in the dying days of Sandinista rule they helped themselves to houses, land and cars. It's called La Pinata.
Daniel: I don't know exactly who are the Pinateros but it's obviously the comandantes and the second echelon after them.
And the fact they are still the leaders of this party is a disgrace for this party. Because it means this party hasn't been able to renew itself, hasn't been able to get rid of a corrupt leadership, hasn't been able to get rid of the stigma.
Abby: The fact that these were revolutionaries and the fact that these were people who had dedicated their lives to the well being of the common people makes it unacceptable that they would do such a thing.
Borge: I will appear before the Holy Trinity to say what I’ve always said and to explain that La Pinata is above all, a lie. I believe the essence of the so-called Pinata is mainly the spreading of false accusations — most of them unfair and untrue. I have to confess that we’ve committed abuses of authority with the implementation of the laws which distributed land in this country but if we compare it with the scramble which occurred in Nicaragua during the time of this government, the so-called Pinata is but an insignificant grain of sand in this universe of national corruption that’s taken place in Nicaragua.
Bradbury: It was in Nicaragua’s north that towns like Jinotega were the front line of the defence of the Revolution. It was here untrained peasants and high school students put their lives on the line.
Ariel: "No Pasaran". Some say, "They won't Pass the Border," just that. But it also means they won't return us to the past, to a Somoza-style regime or any other system that we don't want.
Bradbury: Ariel was 19 and burning with commitment when I first met him back in 1983.
Ariel: We’ve known what Somoza offered. We’ve had enough of those experiences in the past, murder...torture, persecution of the young.. We were not given any education like we are now. Since the revolution in 1979, we've achieved much.
Bradbury: Today in Jinotega, the only gun you'll see openly displayed is the one this policeman carries guarding the bank where Ariel now works.
Ariel's now 32, and second in charge at the bank. He's a bit fatter around the waist but he hasn't lost that winning smile.
Now the only thing Ariel wears strapped to his belt is a beeper which keeps him in constant touch with the daily price of coffee on the world market.
He works hard. He now owns a coffee plantation and with his wife, they have a little milk run which he does early each morning before he goes off to the bank. He works seven days a week. It’s for his children he says.
Ariel: I now believe the sense of the phrase 'No Pasaran' is rather a philosophical one. It’s true, they did come into Managua when we lost the elections in 1990.
The fact that we lost a battle doesn't mean we have lost the war. I think from the next elections the Sandinistas have to rise with a more mature position — a clearer vision of how we are to attack the main enemy which is not our fellow Nicaraguans. But there are other people who pretend to be Nicaraguans, but I believe they are not real Nicaraguans - who are trying to bring Somocismo back to Nicaragua again because of the parties they support are just like Somoza.
Bradbury: 13 years ago I found Ariel and his companeros in these mountains in northern Nicaragua, fighting for what they believed was an ideal, for justice and for a basic fairer share of the resources of this rich country of Nicaragua.
Many of his friends died in that fight, many on the other side died fighting for the contras, to try and stop the Sandinistas bringing what they feared would be a communist regime to Nicaragua. Now there’s peace in Nicaragua, but unfortunately, not too much justice.
MusicChildren: Ten cents. Ten cents.
Bradbury: Today Nicaragua has returned to the economic situation that existed before the revolution, desperate poverty.
Bradbury: Carla is six years old. Her father was killed in the war. There's no social security here to support her or her family. Carla has to cope the best she can in Nicaragua's new market economy.
Daniel: Now it is 60 per cent unemployment, nation wide. In some places in Nicaragua it is 90 per cent unemployment like the Atlantic coast. One out of every ten people there who are able to work, work. The rest traffic drugs, they fish occasionally but they don't have a job. Nobody’s producing anything.
Bradbury: Managua's not a big city, yet there are now 50,000 kids addicted to sniffing glue.
These bottles of glue in baby food containers meant to fix shoes are openly sold for less than 50 cents.
Q: Why do you sniff glue? A: Because... Q: Why? A: To get high.
Q: Why do you sniff it. Tell me... Because you like it? Because you're hungry? What happens When you sniff it? A: For happiness. Q: For happiness.
Music
Bradbury: This is Arnoldo Aleman. He's running for President and at the last count was neck and neck with Daniel Ortega in the polls.
Aleman has a strong following because when he was Mayor of Managua, he fixed the potholes in the streets and gave them a coloured fountain lit up at night.
Aleman: What we've done for Managua, we'll now do for Nicaragua.
Bradbury: Aleman, or Arnoldo to his supporters is a right winger with good friends amongst Nicaragua's elite who've returned from Miami and neighbouring Costa Rica since the Sandinistas lost power. He also has good friends amongst Somoza's old generals and the Contras.
Abby: He's going to be like Somoza without the National Guard which is going to mean a very small elite are going to benefit enormously from this government. They're going to take their six years and they're going to get what they can and they're not going to worry for a second about anybody else.
Aleman: Why do our adversaries fear, us? Why are they trembling? Why do they lie about us? Because they know we will stamp them out this October 20th.
Cheers
Bradbury: But not everyone is trembling in the face of Arnoldo Aleman, and not everyone has lost their faith.
Isabel, was once a Sandinista guerilla. She had a job and a place to live. But the current government took her land away. She and her ten children now live on Managua's rubbish dump.
Isabel: This war of starvation war is sad. People have only this — some beans — and there are many who eat them. When the Sandinistas were in control we had good jobs — land where we lived. But the new government — they took twenty blocks of land that had been given to us. That is the reason we are here..
I am a guerilla and I have a love for our country. I am a Sandinista at any price. I don’t care what people say — I am Sandinista.
Bradbury: For Nicaraguans democracy has thrown up a stark choice: Arnoldo Aleman and a possible return to the old order or the Sandinistas and the hope that this time around they'll live up to the faith that many still have in them.
Abby: The same conditions that motivated the last generation to fight to end the dictatorship to bring about a more, a just government, and create a society which was fair to people. None of that has been resolved. So the problem is not that the generation hasn’t learned from the last one that the armed struggle doesn’t work, the problem is that the same injustice continues to exist.
Daniel: These people who have lost their children to the Revolution and still think that Frente is their, they identify with it, that’s a measure of what their hopes were and how just the struggle was. I’d do it again. I think that struggle is fine. We lost our way in details and we made bad mistakes but the idea, the basic idea of putting an end to the unequal distribution of wealth I think is still valid and it is very obviously valid here.
Bradbury: 13 years ago Pedro and Julita Madrigal lost their two sons to a war fought in the name of the Sandinista Revolution, a revolution they still believe in.
Julita: The Revolution was a beautiful thing because it was made from the blood, the bones and the tears of the mothers who wept for their children.
I am a Sandinista and will never stop saying I'm a Sandinista until the day God takes away my life.
Music
Bradbury: Today the party that created the Revolution - the Sandinistas - are again fighting for political power this time through the ballot box rather than with bullets.
The Sandinista leader, Comandante Daniel Ortega, or simply, 'Daniel,' as he's known to the party faithful, is once again calling on the nation to re-kindle the socialist idealism that once was at the heart of the Sandinista Revolution.
Ortega: When we say we are the party of the poor, the party of the humble — it’s because we want them to leave their misery behind — to raise themselves up again from the situation that they have been living under these past years.
Chanting/Music:The people unitedwill never be defeated!The people armedwill never be crushed!In the name of our dead we swear to defend our victory!
Bradbury: I first came to Nicaragua in 1983 to make a film about the Sandinistas at the height of the war with the US-backed contras. I called that film No Pasaran - "They will not Enter.”
Now 13 years later, on the eve of Nicaragua's elections I’ve come back to see what happened to the Children of the Revolution.
Abby: How many of there are you?Boy: Two.Abby Fields left a well paid job in New York to come and work unpaid for the Revolution picking cotton.
Her husband, Daniel Allegria, happily risked his life behind enemy lines for $40 a month.
Abby: My motivation for coming here was because I really believed in the process of revolutionary change that was taking place here. I felt it was good, it was just, it was equitable and I thought it offered hope for the entire world for something that positive that could take place.
Bradbury: Today Daniel and Abby have become disillusioned, not with the ideals of the revolution but with the party leadership.
Daniel: People like me feel like we've been ousted from an exclusive party that used to be ours. I still consider myself to be a Sandinista but I don't identify with the orthodox, and you know, like who stole the keys to the temple? They did. Well you know, we're still Sandinistas and there's a lot of us.
Bradbury: Daniel's loss of faith Is remarkable given that he used to be a bodyguard and translator for one of the heroes of the revolution, Tomas Borge.
Borge: Long live the struggle for the defence of our country! Freedom for our homeland! Or death!
Bradbury: Borge was one of the most potent symbols of the determination and courage of the Revolution.
Borge's first wife was murdered by Somoza's National Guard. He himself was imprisoned and tortured by them for years before the Sandinistas triumphed in 1979.Borge: I retreated by my gun jammed. They captured me and brought me to these cells. Normally I was in this position. I could never stand up straight. I had to squat while they stood over me, because I was stuck to this ring here.
Bradbury: It’s been two years now since Daniel and Borge have seen each other, a result of Daniel's disillusionment with the party leadership, including Borge.
Under the Sandinistas, Borge was one of the most powerful men in Nicaragua. He was the Minister in charge of state security and the police.
Today he's director of Barricada, the party's propaganda newspaper and still an active leader of the Sandinista front. No longer the penniless guerilla, he's now a millionaire and along with other party leaders he's tainted with allegations of corruption that in the dying days of Sandinista rule they helped themselves to houses, land and cars. It's called La Pinata.
Daniel: I don't know exactly who are the Pinateros but it's obviously the comandantes and the second echelon after them.
And the fact they are still the leaders of this party is a disgrace for this party. Because it means this party hasn't been able to renew itself, hasn't been able to get rid of a corrupt leadership, hasn't been able to get rid of the stigma.
Abby: The fact that these were revolutionaries and the fact that these were people who had dedicated their lives to the well being of the common people makes it unacceptable that they would do such a thing.
Borge: I will appear before the Holy Trinity to say what I’ve always said and to explain that La Pinata is above all, a lie. I believe the essence of the so-called Pinata is mainly the spreading of false accusations — most of them unfair and untrue. I have to confess that we’ve committed abuses of authority with the implementation of the laws which distributed land in this country but if we compare it with the scramble which occurred in Nicaragua during the time of this government, the so-called Pinata is but an insignificant grain of sand in this universe of national corruption that’s taken place in Nicaragua.
Bradbury: It was in Nicaragua’s north that towns like Jinotega were the front line of the defence of the Revolution. It was here untrained peasants and high school students put their lives on the line.
Ariel: "No Pasaran". Some say, "They won't Pass the Border," just that. But it also means they won't return us to the past, to a Somoza-style regime or any other system that we don't want.
Bradbury: Ariel was 19 and burning with commitment when I first met him back in 1983.
Ariel: We’ve known what Somoza offered. We’ve had enough of those experiences in the past, murder...torture, persecution of the young.. We were not given any education like we are now. Since the revolution in 1979, we've achieved much.
Bradbury: Today in Jinotega, the only gun you'll see openly displayed is the one this policeman carries guarding the bank where Ariel now works.
Ariel's now 32, and second in charge at the bank. He's a bit fatter around the waist but he hasn't lost that winning smile.
Now the only thing Ariel wears strapped to his belt is a beeper which keeps him in constant touch with the daily price of coffee on the world market.
He works hard. He now owns a coffee plantation and with his wife, they have a little milk run which he does early each morning before he goes off to the bank. He works seven days a week. It’s for his children he says.
Ariel: I now believe the sense of the phrase 'No Pasaran' is rather a philosophical one. It’s true, they did come into Managua when we lost the elections in 1990.
The fact that we lost a battle doesn't mean we have lost the war. I think from the next elections the Sandinistas have to rise with a more mature position — a clearer vision of how we are to attack the main enemy which is not our fellow Nicaraguans. But there are other people who pretend to be Nicaraguans, but I believe they are not real Nicaraguans - who are trying to bring Somocismo back to Nicaragua again because of the parties they support are just like Somoza.
Bradbury: 13 years ago I found Ariel and his companeros in these mountains in northern Nicaragua, fighting for what they believed was an ideal, for justice and for a basic fairer share of the resources of this rich country of Nicaragua.
Many of his friends died in that fight, many on the other side died fighting for the contras, to try and stop the Sandinistas bringing what they feared would be a communist regime to Nicaragua. Now there’s peace in Nicaragua, but unfortunately, not too much justice.
MusicChildren: Ten cents. Ten cents.
Bradbury: Today Nicaragua has returned to the economic situation that existed before the revolution, desperate poverty.
Bradbury: Carla is six years old. Her father was killed in the war. There's no social security here to support her or her family. Carla has to cope the best she can in Nicaragua's new market economy.
Daniel: Now it is 60 per cent unemployment, nation wide. In some places in Nicaragua it is 90 per cent unemployment like the Atlantic coast. One out of every ten people there who are able to work, work. The rest traffic drugs, they fish occasionally but they don't have a job. Nobody’s producing anything.
Bradbury: Managua's not a big city, yet there are now 50,000 kids addicted to sniffing glue.
These bottles of glue in baby food containers meant to fix shoes are openly sold for less than 50 cents.
Q: Why do you sniff glue? A: Because... Q: Why? A: To get high.
Q: Why do you sniff it. Tell me... Because you like it? Because you're hungry? What happens When you sniff it? A: For happiness. Q: For happiness.
Music
Bradbury: This is Arnoldo Aleman. He's running for President and at the last count was neck and neck with Daniel Ortega in the polls.
Aleman has a strong following because when he was Mayor of Managua, he fixed the potholes in the streets and gave them a coloured fountain lit up at night.
Aleman: What we've done for Managua, we'll now do for Nicaragua.
Bradbury: Aleman, or Arnoldo to his supporters is a right winger with good friends amongst Nicaragua's elite who've returned from Miami and neighbouring Costa Rica since the Sandinistas lost power. He also has good friends amongst Somoza's old generals and the Contras.
Abby: He's going to be like Somoza without the National Guard which is going to mean a very small elite are going to benefit enormously from this government. They're going to take their six years and they're going to get what they can and they're not going to worry for a second about anybody else.
Aleman: Why do our adversaries fear, us? Why are they trembling? Why do they lie about us? Because they know we will stamp them out this October 20th.
Cheers
Bradbury: But not everyone is trembling in the face of Arnoldo Aleman, and not everyone has lost their faith.
Isabel, was once a Sandinista guerilla. She had a job and a place to live. But the current government took her land away. She and her ten children now live on Managua's rubbish dump.
Isabel: This war of starvation war is sad. People have only this — some beans — and there are many who eat them. When the Sandinistas were in control we had good jobs — land where we lived. But the new government — they took twenty blocks of land that had been given to us. That is the reason we are here..
I am a guerilla and I have a love for our country. I am a Sandinista at any price. I don’t care what people say — I am Sandinista.
Bradbury: For Nicaraguans democracy has thrown up a stark choice: Arnoldo Aleman and a possible return to the old order or the Sandinistas and the hope that this time around they'll live up to the faith that many still have in them.
Abby: The same conditions that motivated the last generation to fight to end the dictatorship to bring about a more, a just government, and create a society which was fair to people. None of that has been resolved. So the problem is not that the generation hasn’t learned from the last one that the armed struggle doesn’t work, the problem is that the same injustice continues to exist.
Daniel: These people who have lost their children to the Revolution and still think that Frente is their, they identify with it, that’s a measure of what their hopes were and how just the struggle was. I’d do it again. I think that struggle is fine. We lost our way in details and we made bad mistakes but the idea, the basic idea of putting an end to the unequal distribution of wealth I think is still valid and it is very obviously valid here.