The blowback from inter-imperialist rivalry has hit the international working class hard again, this time in Nicaragua. Over the last month, thousands of students have led the way in protesting planned cuts to social security and an increase in payroll taxes. The criminal president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, has responded with state terror, resulting in as many as 63 dead, hundreds wounded, and mass calls for Ortega’s resignation.
The history of the Nicaraguan ruling class, as well as imperialist interests in the region, exposes the roots of the current crisis.
Nicaragua caught in imperialist crosshairs
Nicaragua’s geography, bridging the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, has placed it in the crosshairs of imperialist rivalry since the 16th-century Spanish conquest. In 1912, after German and Japanese bosses threatened to build a canal to compete with the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal, the U.S. Marines invaded Nicaragua and occupied the country until 1933.  
Today, while the U.S. remains the dominant imperialist in Central America and the Caribbean, with $80 billion in two-way trade last year, its position continues to weaken as Chinese and Russian bosses close in  (Bloomberg News, 6/5/2017). China considers Central America a part of their “New Silk Road,” a plan for world economic dominance, and has invested billions in a competing canal, an effort that stalled after workers protested their displacement. In 2016, Russia docked war ships off the Nicaraguan coast and sold the Ortega regime 50 new tanks and aircraft in exchange for access to airspace and ports. Additionally, the Russian ruling class is building a law enforcement center near Nicaragua’s Pacific coast (Miami Herald, 9/15/2016).
The U.S. has responded to China’s “soft power” and Russia’s “hard power” in kind.  In 2017, the U.S. Congress passed the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act (NICA), which threatens to cut off foreign aid. Simultaneously, the U.S. conducted naval exercises with mock invasions of 13 countries, including Nicaragua, to challenge China’s maritime claims  (Asia Times, 4/26/2016).
The U.S. bosses’ moves to ice out imperialist rivals dates to 1936, when the U.S. ruling class installed the Somoza family, representing Nicaragua’s wealthy land-owners, as a brutal and corrupt dictatorship. Meanwhile, the U.S. pillaged resources from Nicaragua for the next 43 years.
Phony Left Sandinistas
In 1979, U.S. control suffered a blow from the Sandinista “socialist” revolution, led in part by fake-leftist Ortega.  Under President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. funneled money and drugs to fund the CIA-backed Contra rebels, the rightwing terror groups that instigated a civil war and murdered as many as 50,000 people (Washington Post, 6/10/04). Voted out of office in 1990, Ortega and his wife (and current vice president), Rosario Murillo, re-invented themselves. In 2006, they partnered with former enemy and Contra leader Jaime Morales to return to electoral power.  Upon winning, “the first thing the administration would do is talk immediately with all the businessmen to maintain their confidence and reassure them everything was fine” (The Guardian, 11/8/06).
Oil-financed socialism
Ortega quickly formed an alliance with then-president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, built a network of oil-financed businesses, and joined Chavez’s trade bloc, in direct opposition to the U.S. bosses.  According to Nicaragua’s Central Bank, Venezuela gave Nicaragua $457 million in aid, with a joint Venezuelan-Nicaraguan company managing the funds. Ortega’s family skimmed much of this wealth to consolidate its power.  In 2009, in a clear move toward fascism, Nicaragua’s Supreme Court and Supreme Electoral Council removed constitutional obstacles to Ortega standing for another term in office.  This power play effectively eliminated opponents from other political parties (BBC News 11/7/11).  
But by 2015, with the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and the loss of cheap Venezuelan oil on credit, the U.S. became Nicaragua’s main source of oil. As a result, the Nicaraguan ruling class was forced to stockpile U.S. dollars to pay up front. This economic crisis triggered the latest political crisis, with the Nicaraguan bosses attempting to solve their problems on the backs of the workers.
These attacks have not been taken lying down.  In 2015, thousands of small farmers protested Ortega’s deal with Chinese billionaires to build a canal through Nicaragua. This spring, militant students and workers have taken to the streets to fight back against both the police and Ortega’s fascist Sandanista Youth gangs, which have collaborated with the police to stone protesters.  
U.S. sponsored protests
With Ortega cozying up to Russian and Chinese bosses, the U.S. rulers appear to be financing the student resistance. As The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) noted, “The 19 of April Movement shares many characteristics with…the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the Movement for Black Lives” (5/14).
According to the New York Times, all of these movements have been funded and trained by the CIA and pro-imperialist groups like the National Democratic Institute and George Soros’ Freedom House (New York Times, 4/14/11). Ditto for the Color Revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, which have largely failed in ousting pro-Russian ruling class factions  (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 5/28/14).
Deepening splits within the Nicaraguan ruling class likely led to a shift by the Superior Council on Private Enterprise (COSEP), which initially supported Ortega, to organize an April 22 student march. On April 23 the U.S. Embassy closed its Managua operations (NACLA, 5/14).
Nicaragua workers need communism
Although Ortega has rolled back his proposed cuts to the social security system, the nationwide protests have continued. The working class of Nicaragua recognizes that it has long been sold out by the FSLN, the political party founded by the Sandinistas, which was rooted in the anti-revolutionary strategy of all-class unity. This fake-left movement was aligned from the start with business interests and Nicaragua’s reactionary clergy; it never had intentions of sharing wealth and power with the working class.
Nicaragua is yet another example of the detrimental impact of the collapse of the old communist movement in Russia and China. The working class needs a mass communist party now more than ever.
Absent of communist leadership and ideas, the rebellion in Nicaragua will at best be another sponsored movement under the bosses’ control, like the Arab Spring in Egypt. But workers’ fighting spirit is alive and well, and the Progressive Labor Party aims to spread it to every country worldwide. Our fight will not be for the removal of one politician, but for the destruction of the capitalist system and an end to oppression of all the workers of the world.