The first day I was in the archive I found some creepy drawings of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in a small book entitled Ein vereintes Volk wird nie besiegt werden: was in Nicaragua geschah is kein Marchen (A People United will never be defeated: What happened in Nicaragua is not a Fairy Tale). This little book was created by the youth division of IG Metall (Industrial Union of Metalworkers) in order to raise awareness of the atrocities committed by the Somoza regime.
This is not the first union I have found engaged in solidarity, especially prior to 1979. Canadian unions pressured their government to take a firm stand against Somoza and send aid to the people of Nicaragua. Labor unions in the North Atlantic, with the exception of those in the United States, tended to support the revolution and looked favorably on the Sandinistas once they came to power, due in large part to a shared ideological background. There was also a practical side to supporting the Sandinistas. In 1985 western labor unions opposed the U.S. embargo of Nicaragua, pressuring their governments to challenge the U.S. policy. Although ideological solidarity and moral outrage largely motivated union resistance, many union leaders feared the loss of Nicaraguan raw materials and the closing of a market for their manufactured goods. However the fears of losing exports or imports to the embargo were minimal considering Nicaragua’s negligible economic relations with Western Europe and Canada. However, the impact on Nicaragua was devastating due to the fact that the United States was the small nation’s largest trading partner.
Andrew W. Wilson 