i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

This perspective aimed at eliminating dependency and advancing the struggle
against underdevelopment. Nicaragua has “produced consumable goods, while other
countries have specialized in the production of the means of production” (Wheelock
1985:483). As Egyptian Marxist scholar Samir Amin explains, “Capitalism exists
wherever means of production that have been produced by social labor are not managed
by society as a whole but by a section of the latter, which then becomes the ‘bourgeoisie’.
Capitalism makes its appearance when the level of development of the productive forces
is sufficiently advanced for these means of production, which are themselves products, to
be no longer simple enough to be manageable by the individual producer” (Amin
1976:59). Nicaragua did not have the tools for industrial transformation. Therefore, the
Sandinistas intended to modify Nicaragua’s role in the international economy through
agrarian reform and agricultural development.
Instead of selling logs for manufacture elsewhere, Nicaragua needed to
manufacture wood products with its own natural resources and replace imported
manufactured goods. The same went for cotton. Instead of exporting raw fiber for
manufacture elsewhere, Nicaragua could industrialize these resources and sell a finished
product within its borders, simultaneously creating jobs, infrastructure, and reducing
dependence on imports. The confiscation of idle and abandoned lands was intended to
“curtail the power of agro-export capitalists to dominate the activities of other sectors and
control the socio-economic formation of Nicaragua’s countryside” (Envio 1981: 6).
In order to confiscat large landholdings and redistribute them to the workers and
landless poor, the Sandinistas needed to restructure the organizational framework for
these “new” communities. The FSLN directorate divided the country into six regions and
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