Feeling the Bern

A few weeks ago, I found out that this June I will present at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations’ annual conference in San Diego as part of a panel discussing cities and municipalities as transnational actors. In preparation for my paper, which will discuss the international sister city or twinning movement with Nicaragua in the 1980s, I have been skimming through some digitized newspaper collections and, in the process, come across a number of articles discussing the former mayor of Burlington Vermont, Bernard “Bernie” Sanders.

It turns out that Sanders was not only a vocal opponent of the Reagan administration’s support for the Nicaraguan Contras, which he described as “a local issue” that robbed the Vermonters of the “funding we need for our children, our elderly people, our poor people,” but he also worked to promote peaceful relations with the Sandinistas.

In 1984, Sanders encouraged the creation of a sister city partnership between Burlington and the Nicaraguan city of Puerto Cabezas, which allowed for North American aid to reach the impoverished Central American community and facilitated a grassroots “people to people” diplomacy. In 1985, he visited Puerto Cabeza and later traveled to Managua in order to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship.

Today, the Puerto Cabezas/Burlington sister city relationship, unlike many similar partnerships begun during this era, is still in effect, with the citizens of Burlington having helped create a tree nursery and other sustainability programs in Puerto Cabezas. For his part, Sanders, who the people of Vermont would later elect as one of their Senators and is currently competing for the Democratic presidential nomination, was deeply moved by his experiences in Nicaragua, which he described as “deeply emotional.” It is, however, unlikely that Sanders still holds Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who is criticized by many for the apparent corruption of his administration, in as high of esteem as he did in 1985.

Advertisement

Killer Cartoons

Between the spring of 1986 and the fall of 1987, the presidents of five Central American states came together in Esquipulas, Guatemala in order to find a solution to the region’s military conflicts. The cartoon above shows the five presidents who signed the Esquipulas Peace Agreement, or Esquipulas II. From left to right, the signers of the peace agreement were: Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala, José Napoleón Duarte of El Salvador, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, José Azcona Hoyo of Honduras, and Óscar Arias Sánchez of Costa Rica. The cartoonist apparently believed that Cerezo, Duarte, and Azcona were using the peace process as a means of hiding their misdeeds, while Arias organized the meeting out of his own vanity and desire for a peace prize. The cartoonist’s bias is quite evident considering Ortega stands with nothing to hide. However, the indigenous peoples of the Miskito coast might have disagreed with this portrayal. After the Sandinistas came to power they sought to incorporate the Miskito people of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, who had historically enjoyed a large amount of autonomy. This led to a Miskito revolution against the Sandinistas, which culminated in the return of Miskito sovereignty in 1987. Ironically many who supported the Sandinistas in their struggle against the United States, such as Gabi Gottwald, also supported the Miskito Indians in their struggle against the FSLN, revealing that for many connected to the solidarity movement a conviction to supporting human rights often trumped political considerations.