What Really Happened With the Sandinistas

Jeff Jacoby describes what happened after the Sandinistas seized power in Nicaragua.

After seizing power in 1979, the Sandinistas had quickly moved to take over Nicaragua's radio and TV stations, and to impose strict censorship on La Prensa, the leading newspaper. It arrested and tortured independent labor leaders. It vilified the Catholic church, persecuted the small Jewish community, and treated evangelical Protestants with particular viciousness. It expelled thousands of Miskito Indians from their homes, forcibly relocating them to government camps. With Cuban and Soviet aid, it launched a massive military buildup.

Like all communists, the Sandinistas were ruthless toward dissenters; by 1983, their prisons held more political prisoners than those of any Western Hemisphere nation except Cuba. The Sandinistas also produced what every communist regime produces: a flood of refugees. It was estimated in 1986 that one-10th of Nicaragua's population had fled from Sandinista repression.