Playboy Interview: Daniel Ortega

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that you--Nicaragua's head of state--are also a poet, since many of the top Sandinista leaders are poets as well. Is that some kind of credential for a political post in Nicaragua?

[A] Ortega: I wouldn't say I'm a poet. But Nicaragua's great national poet Rubén Darío gave all of us an obligation to write. Nicaraguans like to write poetry. Given the culture, many sorts of poets emerge--good poets, all kinds of poets.

[Q] Playboy: And you are--

[A] Ortega: An amateur.

[Q] Playboy: We understand you wrote a poem with an unusual title: I Never Saw Managua When Miniskirts Were in Fashion. Under what circumstances did you write it?

[A] Ortega: I was in jail--in Somoza's jail. I was there for a total of seven years, including the late Sixties.

[Q] Playboy: Your family had a history of strong opposition to the Somozas; is that correct?

[A] Ortega: On both sides--my father's and my mother's. Both were strong fighters against the Somozas; both were jailed by Somoza. My father was in the struggle with Sandino at different times, different places. Once, he was taken prisoner in the mountains in the north of Nicaragua. Later, my grandfather, who was a respected director of a school in Granada, used his influence to get my father freed.

[Q] Playboy: That was the first Somoza?

[A] Ortega: Yes. El primo Somoza. Well, Somoza personally scolded my father and said that the only reason he wasn't killed was my grandfather's intervention. Then Somoza gave my father a sealed envelope. When my father got home, he opened the envelope and found money inside. He immediately returned it. So Somoza responded by sending him a telegram with the following words: Eat Shit! When I was a child, my father would often show me and my brothers that telegram.

[Q] Playboy: So the fact that you ended up in jail, writing poetry, under the third Somoza, was hardly surprising. Father Cardenal gave us this copy of one of your efforts:

The shit and piss,hot damn, so many people.... Jail man!

Don't let nobody talk with this man;let 'im sleep on the floor, and if he makes a move, belt 'im one....

The galleys, Auschwitz, BuchenwaldNicaragua.

Did you really feel a parallel to Auschwitz and Buchenwald?

[A] Ortega: Well, our situation often seemed to me very much like the concentration camps I've read about. For instance, I was in a tiny cell with 150 other prisoners--99 percent of them were common criminals. We had only one toilet, and there was a permanent line of 50 to 60 men to go to the toilet. There was terrible hunger. You got one tortilla, a small one, and maybe 30 beans--you could count them. Nothing else. There were all kinds of vices--drugs, homosexuality. There was a code among the common criminals to respect the political prisoners, but sometimes, when the prison warden came to visit, the common criminals were ordered to beat us. Later, they'd excuse themselves. Needless to say, there was torture--and a lot of isolation periods. Beatings--many beatings. You know, it's interesting: One of the wardens once slit a prisoner's stomach open and then took a needle and thread and sewed him up on the spot. I believe he is still inside one of the embassies here in Managua, getting political asylum.

[Q] Playboy: You were eventually freed as part of the prisoner exchange during the famous 1974 "Christmas party" commando action. As a result, a group of you were allowed to take a plane to Cuba.

[A] Ortega: Yes. I must say that when we got to Cuba, finding ourselves free in Havana was a tremendous experience. After seven years of imprisonment, it seemed unreal--it took all of us quite a while to adapt ourselves to freedom.

[Q] Playboy: After your time in Cuba, you went back to fighting the guerrilla campaign against Somoza--until your victory on July 19, 1979. After all those years, going back two generations to Sandino's original revolt, what were your feelings as you marched into Managua?

[A] Ortega: Actually, the triumph in Managua was kind of anticlimactic for me. We had already captured León, and although Somoza had already fled, his National Guard was still fighting us in Managua. That was on the 18th of July--the last night of the old regime. There we were, resting up for the next day's march, watching television in León. And on that night, for the first time, I saw some old film footage of Sandino being broadcast. During all the years of Somoza, we had never seen any film of him and I had known about Sandino only from photographs and books. But there he actually was, waving his hat! And that was the thing that impressed me most: to see Sandino waving his hat on TV.

[Q] Playboy: And now you have the power that you always fought for. We wonder, Comandante, whether or not you find it more difficult to run a revolutionary country than to overthrow a dictatorship.

[A] Ortega: Well, we still have all kinds of problems--not the least of which is Reagan's war against us. But we're preparing ourselves to resist any type of aggression by the United States in Central America--and to defeat it. We're already facing this invasion at our borders, and we're defeating it--the first phase. There will be other waves of invasions coming, including, perhaps, as a final element, the North American Army. We're preparing for all of that. This war may (continued on page 196)Daniel Ortega(continued from page 63) last much longer than the war in Vietnam. But that's our situation, and we're as determined as the Vietnamese were to confront invasion and aggression.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that Nicaragua could become the Vietnam of the Eighties?

[A] Ortega: That depends on what the Reagan Administration does. The way things are going now--yes. Yes, Nicaragua is turning into the Vietnam of the Eighties. It's already started to happen.

[Q] Playboy: Do you really believe that Reagan and his people are that dangerous?

[A] Ortega: Yes. The Reagan Administration is playing with fire--a fire that, once started, would not be easy to extinguish; a fire that could spread everywhere very quickly. They are not just doing that with us. To play, for instance, with the fire of nuclear weapons is a very dangerous game. From the moment nuclear weapons stopped being the possession of one country, the need to be the dominant power became absurd. Those who insist on a dominant position are risking not only their own people but all of humanity as well. We cannot separate the phenomenon of Reagan's aggression against Nicaragua and Central America from the international tension it raises--and it is that fire, lighted here, that could start greater fires.

[Q] Playboy: Your brother Humberto Ortega, the minister of defense, recently suggested to The New York Times that if the U. S. deployed new missiles in Europe, you might permit Soviet missiles here in Nicaragua. Is that true?

[A] Ortega: I think possibly The New York Times misunderstood what Humberto said. He couldn't have spoken in those terms, because the situation doesn't exist. What does exist, clearly, is the desire of Reagan or his advisors to regain public support in the U. S. and to frighten the Europeans into siding with him.

When the matter of the missiles is brought up, the only people claiming that there could be missiles here are Reagan's people. The missiles we do have in Nicaragua are the people of Nicaragua, and we think they are a very powerful missile, more powerful than those invented by scientists.

[Q] Playboy: That doesn't quite answer the question. Are you saying categorically that you wouldn't accept the missiles if they were offered to you?

[A] Ortega: We have a situation of confrontation that we're not going to solve with missiles. We're going to confront and destroy the North American invasion with armed people.

[Q] Playboy: Let's try another tack: When you talk of the possibility of this conflict's escalating into something larger, perhaps even a global holocaust, you're implying that the Soviets might defend you if push came to shove. But that's hardly realistic. The U. S. traditionally does little more than protest when the Soviets do something in their geographic sphere of influence--such as in Czechoslovakia or Poland--and the same is true of the Soviets in the North American sphere of influence. When you met Soviet premier Yuri Andropov last March, did he give you any indication that the Russians would break that tradition and support you militarily?

[A] Ortega: I wouldn't--I don't want to discuss the matter of spheres of influence. What I should say is that in Nicaragua, we are not counting on the support of other countries in preparing our defense; rather, we prepare by assuming that we will have to defend ourselves alone.

[Q] Playboy: Then how are the Soviets supporting you? What precisely did Andropov offer you?

[A] Ortega: Economic support. Development aid. Help in getting our hydroelectric projects started, for instance. They have a lot of experience with that.

[Q] Playboy: The Reagan Administration says you are getting far more--tanks, guns, Migs and all sorts of military hardware.

[A] Ortega: I'm sure that's what Reagan says. Jeane Kirkpatrick is also always talking about the incredible number of Soviet, Bulgarian and German Democratic military advisors we're supposed to have here. But I can tell you, those numbers are invented. We make a great effort to develop our own cadres without rejecting the minimum necessary advisory help.

[Q] Playboy: As proof that you're planning on getting Russian Migs, Reagan has charged that you intend to extend your airport runways to accommodate them. What is your response?

[A] Ortega: First of all, we have every right to obtain fighter planes--whether they are Migs or of any other manufacture. Why shouldn't we have an air force to defend our country? Remember, we tried to get weapons from the United States, but our effort was completely blocked. Actually, we don't even buy weapons--we look for countries that will give us donations, grants.

[Q] Playboy: Grants?

[A] Ortega: Yes. Our economy would be wiped out if we bought all the weapons we needed. But as to this constant reference to the Migs and the expansion of our airfields, this was something already being planned when Somoza was in power! The runways were simply too short to accept larger aircraft. We've had occasions when a North American plane couldn't make a safe emergency landing. So we started thinking about lengthening for that reason--not because we were expecting Migs.

But I repeat, people must understand that we're a country driven into a corner, suffering aggression, and we have to buy weapons where we can. If Libya wants to give us weapons, we'll take those weapons. That should be understandable. Remember how the North American people, in their fight for independence from the British, tried to get weapons anywhere they could.

[Q] Playboy: What is your answer to the charge that those weapons aren't for self-defense but to export your revolution throughout Central America?

[A] Ortega: We export nothing but our example. The greatest stimulator of revolution in Latin America is the United States, not us. It was the U. S. that supported such dictators as Somoza, and he was hardly the exception. In every country of Central America, the same conditions prevail--unemployment, exploitation, hunger. So no matter how many "elections" you give them, no matter how much propaganda you throw at them, no matter how much you suppress the populace, it always results in the same thing--a revolutionary situation. No matter what Reagan says, Nicaragua did not invent this. Unjust policies did.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk further about El Salvador. The Reagan Administration says you're shipping arms to the insurgents. You say, in effect, "No--we'd like to, but it makes too much trouble for us." When we heard that response from the other Sandinista leaders we've interviewed, we found it hard to believe that you would not help your comrades in El Salvador by "allowing" them to get arms.

[A] Ortega: First of all, the insurgents have the financial means to buy weapons. They're much better off economically than we were from 1975 through 1977. Furthermore, the weapons that the insurgents are using have been in their hands for a long time--long before our revolution triumphed here. Now, certainly, we openly sympathize with the Salvadorans. But to send them weapons would be to play into the hands of those who want to name Nicaragua as the great arms supplier to El Salvador. That does not mean that our territory cannot be used at some time to move weapons to El Salvador. Revolutionaries use all manner of territory to move arms. We ourselves, during our time of insurrection, used the territory of the United States to move weapons through!

[Q] Playboy: When was that?

[A] Ortega: In 1972. The first big batch of weapons--M-1 carbines and M-2s--was bought in the U. S. and moved out clandestinely. In fact, our minister of tourism was even arrested in the U. S. for his work.

[Q] Playboy: To put it directly: If you found Salvadoran weapons moving through Nicaraguan territory, would you stop them?

[A] Ortega: Yes, we would. It would go against our feelings to do it, but we would--because reason has to be the important thing. We have to act with seriousness and responsibility. When Thomas Enders was here, we asked him to give us what information he had on these arms shipments through our country. He simply said that since U.S. relations with us were so bad, it was not possible. We went even further: We spoke with the president of Honduras at that time, General Policarpo Paz García, on the need to have a joint patrol on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua to interdict the movement of weapons. General Paz thought that was a good idea, as did the members of his general staff. But the United States did not think it was a good idea. What they did was sack those military commanders, and they brought in the hard-line General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez as chief of staff.

I would say that the principal weapons supplier of the Salvadoran rebels is the North American Government. The arms that the rebels are getting are weapons that the United States had given Salvadoran-government soldiers. They inevitably get captured; so the more weapons the United States sends to El Salvador, the more weapons for the revolutionaries.

[Q] Playboy: In Reagan's speech before Congress, he said, "The government of Nicaragua has treated us as an enemy. It has rejected our repeated peace efforts." Is that true? Have you rejected them?

[A] Ortega: I know the others have talked to you about this--in fact, Sergio Ramírez replied to the charge that we treat the U. S. as an enemy, "Ah, the old story of the pigeon attacking the buckshot." But let me add a little more: When Reagan says he's tried to negotiate with us, he lies. For instance, in 1981, Enders came here and we asked to set the basis of a dialog. What was the answer of Reagan and the State Department? They immediately tried to set all kinds of conditions for a dialog to even start--that Nicaragua couldn't arm itself; that Nicaragua could not permit the trafficking of weapons to El Salvador; that the "opposition" be a part of the regime.

On many occasions since, we have shown our willingness to have a dialog. We have said, "We have never tried to become a threat to North American security. We want normal relations with the U. S." But their position seems to be a closed one. A few times over the past few years, contacts were made. Once, there was a meeting between Secretary of State Alexander Haig and our foreign minister, Father Miguel D'Escoto. Haig left the meeting giving one version of what happened, and Father D'Escoto left the meeting and gave his version. The same thing happened when Enders came here. So this really goes nowhere.

[Q] Playboy: Is there any way around it?

[A] Ortega: Yes. We have a proposal; we've made it elsewhere, but we'll make it here in playboy, too. We propose contacts with the U. S. to establish a dialog in the presence of a third country--any common friend of the United States and Nicaragua. It could be in Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, France--there could be several countries represented. That would prevent the problem we've encountered in the past: everyone leaving the meeting saying what he pleased.

[Q] Playboy: So you're saying here, categorically, "We want to negotiate. Name a place."

[A] Ortega: Yes! Yes!

[Q] Playboy: Turning to the question of freedom of the press in Nicaragua, La Prensa, the opposition newspaper, has been shut down on several occasions. There is also censorship of your newspapers. Journalists throughout the West find that particularly abhorrent.

[A] Ortega: Censorship was imposed because we're in a very vulnerable state. Even the United States has censorship in emergency situations. But it happens that right now, the United States is not living under the same pressure as Nicaragua. So when a North American looks at our situation, he has to step aside from his own reality and see ours.

[Q] Playboy: Pablo Cuadra of La Prensa was recently quoted in The New York Times as saying, "A revolution that loses its critics soon stagnates." When you censor the press, you lose your thoughtful critics.

[A] Ortega: I think he's right! I think a revolution that loses its critics is condemned to congeal, become frozen. It can die. But the problem with Cuadra is that he confuses the kind of freedom that he and members of his class had under Somoza with the type of freedom we have now. Under Somoza, someone with Cuadra's views was permitted to speak; most others were denied the possibility. It would be good to remember that in 1944, Cuadra was a fervent admirer of Somoza's. He had a typically fascist position--he supported the Blue Shirts, a movement reminiscent of Mussolini's Fascists. As a congressman under Somoza, he wished Somoza would stay forever in Nicaragua. So it's understandable that Cuadra would think that now the situation was very bad for him.

[Q] Playboy: It still doesn't explain your brand of censorship. You even kill disrespectful cartoons.

[A] Ortega: You have to be aware of what a revolutionary situation is like. Revolutions are often characterized by their effervescence, their excesses and, especially, their violence. There are no guillotines or firing squads in Nicaragua. But we are being invaded, and some of these overreactions have to be understood.

[Q] Playboy: Revolutions are also characterized by people who take power but aren't qualified to govern. Do you feel limited by the fact that you've spent most of your life as a guerrilla, as a warrior?

[A] Ortega: Well.... No, we have been primarily politicians. Was is a part of political action. I had very rich experiences, despite my years in hiding and in prison. The dimensions have been human and have led me to see all sectors of the population: the poor, the needy, the workers, the peasants--and the houses and the chauffeurs of the rich. That has given me an opportunity for wide human contacts.

[Q] Playboy: And yet, remembering that you are a poet brings to mind these lines of Bertolt Brecht's: "By chance I was spared. If my luck leaves me, I am lost." Given what you've been through--prison, torture, the insurrection, the revolution and now the fight to keep the revolution--does that bit of poetry describe your life?

[A] Ortega: Yes, precisely. My time in prison hammered that thought into us every day. As prisoners, we always faced the possibility that each day would be our last. I think that in this time, too, we are surviving day to day.

"Yes, Nicaragua is turning into the Vietnam of the Eighties. It's started to happen."