Sandinismo as a civilizational force – Aldo Díaz Lacayo, Father Miguel d’Escoto and their indispensable revolutionary contribution

Click here to read this article in Spanish/Español.

The constant imperialist psychological war against the independent governments of the majority world always affirms the cultural and moral superiority of the West despite its undeniable centuries-old history of genocide and criminal plunder. So a fundamental task for the peoples of the majority world is to resist and overcome the constant aggression of the collective West against our cultures. This struggle for sovereign identity highlights the relevance of the Global Civilization Initiative launched in 2023 by President Xi Jinping as a clear challenge to the anti-values of Western culture that have caused so much damage to the human development of Peoples around the world.

In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, the centuries-old struggles for the independence and sovereignty of the region’s peoples have greatly contributed to human civilization. Sandinismo is one of the purest expressions of this civilizational force for Peace and Brother and Sisterhood counteracting the West’s anti-civilization of arrogance, envy, greed and hatred. Precisely this civilizational clash characterizes the endless US political-military, economic and cultural interference and aggression against the region’s countries. In the long process of regional liberation, the Sandinista Popular Revolution continues to be an essential point of reference, certainly in terms of the country’s authentic democratization, but also as a result of its indispensable contribution to the cultural emancipation of the region’s peoples.

In this sense, two great Nicaraguan figures, Aldo Díaz Lacayo and Father Miguel d’Escoto, throughout their extraordinary lives, projected the anti-imperialist essence of Nicaragua and the Sandinista Popular Revolution internationally, with all the moral and spiritual strength of Rubén Darío and Augusto C. Sandino. The legacy of Aldo and Miguel is alive and vibrant among us because of their capacity for sensitive insight, their extensive knowledge, their emphatic ideological commitment and their comprehensive mastery of practice. The great and vital work of both together helps us fully appreciate the formidable dimensions of the achievements of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, of all its heroes and martyrs, of Comandante Carlos Fonseca, Comandante Daniel and Compañera Rosario.

Two Paths, One Revolutionary Faith

Father Miguel was born in 1933 and Compañero Aldo in 1936, so they became adults at the time of the coup d’état in Guatemala in 1954, the heroic act of justice of Rigoberto López Pérez against Somoza in Nicaragua and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Although their trajectories as young people were very different, Aldo as a revolutionary militant and Miguel as a young priest, their experiences led them to the same destination in defense of the Sandinista Popular Revolution as diplomats committed to acting with the highest moral integrity and unquestionable political loyalty. Both always affirmed and insisted on the leadership of Comandante Daniel. For example, Father Miguel recalls in a reflection in 2011 about his 50 years of priesthood:

“I received the second and definitive call from God when I had been a priest for just 16 years. It came to me through the Sandinista National Liberation Front in the person of Daniel whom God had entrusted to guide the liberation of our people, a project that is still advancing, firmly, but which still needs, and will continue to need Daniel for a long time, to continue consolidating and also to consolidate the solid unity of Latin America and the Caribbean, indispensable to making our definitive independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity a reality, even as it is threatened by the diabolical pretensions of domination of the imperialist powers.”

Compañero Aldo also emphasized Daniel’s leadership at the forefront of the revolutionary collective process. In an interview with the documentary filmmaker Thierry Deronne in 2010, Aldo explained the essential need to perceive the structural tendency of history, observing

“…this is what we have to discover and this is why we have to follow Chávez, Daniel, Fidel, because they are the ones who perceive it, as simple as that… these leaders know they emerge as a product of popular struggle. They don’t direct it in the sense of creating the direction the struggle takes…. the leader is part of the collective, we already know that. But the collective ultimately requires unity and that unity is expressed in a person… its point of departure is the collective, but that is expressed in a person.”

For that reason, in Nicaragua now, We Are All Daniel.

Victories of Sandinista Diplomacy

Father Miguel and Compañero Aldo implemented their successful diplomacy based on the absolutely clear understanding that they were contributing their great talents to defend and carry out a collective revolutionary project. This is a fundamental part of their legacy, because their values of irrevocable commitment to the people, of humility and loyalty in their actions, are still very much alive in the practice of our Foreign Ministry, as Co-Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke has expressed,

“In Sandinismo we do not talk about individual or personal successes; we talk about Struggles, Commitments and Victories that we build collectively.”

Thanks to the leadership of Comandante Daniel, the talents and the committed work of Father Miguel and Aldo Díaz Lacayo and their comrades, Sandinista diplomacy achieved two tremendous victories in the extremely difficult years of the 1980s. One was the process of regional negotiations free of US interference initially developed, albeit unsuccessfully, by the Contadora Group which finally culminated in the Esquipulas II Agreements of 1987. The other was the 1986 ruling in favor of Nicaragua by the International Court of Justice condemning President Ronald Reagan’s terrorist war against the Nicaraguan people.

In relation to the complex and long negotiation process of the Esquipulas Agreements which facilitated the end of the Central American conflicts, independently of US interference, Compañero Aldo explained in an interview with Alberto Mora on Channel 4 in 2012,

“Esquipulas was Nicaragua’s triumph in the field of diplomacy against the United States. That is true, and it was the last battle fought which favored the Sandinista Popular Revolution, this is also true. Thanks to Esquipulas there has been internal pacification, thanks also to Esquipulas all the guerrilla movements survived, and thanks to Esquipulas the Sandinista Front survived.”

In relation to the legal and diplomatic triumph of the condemnation of the US government by the International Court of Justice, our Comandante Daniel recalled in the Act of Homage to Father Miguel in 2017,

“I remember that moment when meeting with Miguel, he began to propose that we take the United States to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Well, I was listening to him very carefully, but some colleagues present… they told me to one side: “That’s just a mad idea of Miguel’s”; but I told Miguel: Let’s go ahead!… And in the end, for the first time in history, a State, a great power was condemned; the greatest power on the planet was condemned for acts of terrorism against Nicaragua, for criminal actions against Nicaragua… If back then the United States owed Nicaragua more than 17,000 million dollars for the damages caused to this Country, then now that is surely quadrupled or quintupled. The sentence is still alive!”

Darío, Sandino – Union and Sovereignty

Several threads of moral and spiritual inspiration intertwined to strengthen the bonds of revolutionary political and cultural commitment uniting Father Miguel and Compañero Aldo in the cause of Sandinismo. Both celebrated our General Sandino as a prophet of Latin American and Caribbean union. Father Miguel observed how,

“Sandino was a great admirer of Bolivar. Sandino was excited because Bolívar’s words resonated emotionally… Bolívar and Sandino were absolutely clear that in order to be respected, we had to make ourselves respected, and that the only way to do so was by acquiring the strength that union gives us.”

Both also celebrated Nicaragua’s national poet Rubén Darío together with Sandino. Aldo Díaz Lacayo points out that

“Sandino and Darío are not strangers to each other. In their own sphere, both are supreme expressions of the national collective unconscious. Both invoke the blood and culture of the coutnry’s original peoples as the basis of their own identity and both recognize the Spanish transculturation as an irrevocable, but not fundamental, factor of that identity. Both are equally open to the world, dedicated to the defense of freedom and to a religious and philosophical vision of life. Consequently, both are national paradigms, the maximum representatives of the Nicaraguan identity.”

Father Miguel deepens this appreciation when he writes in a reflection,

“To all those who have not yet managed to insert their spirit into the current of Darío, Sandino and our Heroes and Martyrs, I invite you to do so, aware that to achieve this it is not enough to have read about our history and about the exploits of our great heroes and heroines. For many, being able to insert themselves into the core of our national identity and dignity means having to cast off the influence of ruling class values which make it impossible or, at least, difficult, to enter into the logic of the dispossessed majorities.”

More broadly, Aldo Díaz Lacayo and Father Miguel highlighted the contribution of the revolutionary Latin America and the Caribbean to the cause of a new world order based on solidarity, respect, equality and Peace. In a December 2011 interview with compañero Roberto Zuñiga, Father Miguel observed,

“Latin America encourages the World… look comrades, we are brothers! We are brothers and sisters, we must live together for the Common Good. We have to love and care for our Mother Earth, aware that she can live without us, but that we cannot live without her. These are the wonderful ideas that Latin America and the Caribbean are presenting to the world right now… on the one hand, the need for Unity is very important! But on the other hand, it has to be a Unity with content.”

Peace, Solidarity, Christian Love

In 2017 Aldo elaborated on how,

“The thought of Simón Bolívar, creator of the geopolitical unity of America, and of its insertion into the world with the specific weight that corresponds to it, resurfaces… With the same revolutionary impetus of two hundred years ago, the pro-independence political-ideological principles of America, defined better than anyone by Sandino a hundred years later, are resurfacing: nationalism, anti-imperialism, Latin Americanism, internationalism, and constitutionalism. Our own values.” And compañero Aldo also observed. “In Latin America, the culture of Peace was born along with independence. It’s nothing new. Simón Bolívar’s great concern was Peace.”

It is precisely that message of Peace and Unity of Comandante Daniel and Compañera Rosario that Compañera Rosario invokes daily in her messages to the nation.  Our Co-Presidents have always emphasized the invincible continuity of a cosmovision derived from Nicaragua’s original peoples, developed by all the country’s national heroes, from the Spanish colonial times and the invasion of the filibusters, from Zeledón, Darío, Sandino, Blanca Araúz and Comandante Carlos, supported wholeheartedly by Comandante Daniel and Compañera Rosario. All their life, compañero Aldo Díaz Lacayo and Father Miguel d’Escoto affirmed and reinforced this great contribution by Nicaragua to global civilization towards a new world order of Peace and Solidarity.

In their statement on the death of compañero Aldo, our Co-Presidents stated

“In confirming Aldo’s departure to eternity where we all will meet, we give grateful faith of everything his transit through this land and this blessed Nation has meant for history, memory and the constant commitment we all have to go Always Further On, a spiritual commitment, mystical, enlightened and true which we have made our own, following the legacy of all our Patriotic Heroes, and of Sandino, our General of Free Men and Women.”

And Compañera Rosario declared after the solemn ceremony in 2017 in homage to Father Miguel d’Escoto,

“…what is it which fills us with Vigor every day? Christian Love. And there is Miguel, the Soul of Miguel, in that Love and in that commitment which we assume as Christians, to continue changing Nicaragua, for better, and even better!… Father Miguel is with us always! With us as we make our way along the Paths of Victories on which all of us are going: Yesterday’s Youth, Eternal Youth, Today’s Youth, and Tomorrow’s Youth. Let us go onward, Compañeros and Compañeras…! For we are going onward, out of Love for Nicaragua, and out of Love for each other, strengthening Peace every day, which is the most important treasure Nicaragua’s People and families have.”

*

Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution.

This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from the author / Tortilla Con Sal

Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation.