Territorial Militia
While military service consolidated Nicaragua's regular army, increasing its defensive capacity, the militia, Nicaragua's "volunteer army," perfected itself in the 190s through reorganization into territorial militia battalions.
This structure at the territorial level was designed to augment the civil defense mechanisms in each area according to its particular characteristics. People in each neighborhood and zone have taken inventories of the strategic places in their area (work centers, gas or oil deposits, communication facilities, etc.). The territorial militia had the responsibility to defend their area to the best of their ability.
The counterrevolutionary attacks and the number of armed men involved in these (between 6,000 and 10,000 according to State Department figures) indicate that Nicaragua could face a prolonged war for some time to come. This has emphasized the necessity to create a military organization in which all the nation must participate at different levels. The territorial militia must become the vanguard in their zone and among their neighbors of this popular mobilization for defense.
As Commander Humberto Ortega said, “The counterrevolution will find the country ‘mined’ with better organized and better armed militia in specific places of the military theater." That image describes the pragmatic sense of the new strategy: decentralize, specialize, extend, familiarize the militia with the areas or strategic targets which they must defend, and make each militia member “personally” responsible. About a thousand militia instructors at the company level have currently been given the task to restructure these territorial MPS so that they learn to fight "as the first ring of defense" in the city, in the rural areas or in the factories. They will also be trained to organize the people in their areas into preventive brigades to fight fires, clean up, administer first aid, care for children, construct bomb shelters, etc.
These are the structures and strategies still evolving as happens in any revolutionary process with which Nicaragua is confronting the war imposed from outside and is preparing for other types or escalations of this war. In fact, the weapons, the strategies and all the structures are organized neither offensively nor defensively, but rather with the overall goal of stopping the war. "We continue fighting to win the best war of all, the one which can be avoided," said Nicaragua's Defense Minister in July, the same day that the first three battalions of territorial militia were formally constituted.
The challenge facing Nicaragua's new army defending national sovereignty and the life of its citizens is part of the larger challenge facing the Nicaraguan government and its people to build a lasting peace.
"The Army in the New Nicaragua"
Excerpts from Chapter 4, "The Army in the New Nicaragua", in a document entitled WE WANT PEACE, published by the Nicaraguan Christian Base Communities.
"It is obvious that an organized and professional army will occupy an important place in Nicaragua for a long time to come. A long-term challenge, therefore, is the democratization of this army.
Within this ideal of democratization, the officers of this new army should be selected by the people and held accountable to them through a process which will reaffirm the nation’s political power. We are not suggesting that officers be elected by their troops, but rather that mechanisms be established so that the army is controlled by the people and not vice versa.
Nicaragua’s army is a defensive one. The attacks coming from Honduras, and on a different scale from Costa Rica, reveal this fact. Faced with the continuous attacks from Honduran territory, Nicaragua has never responded by crossing the border. And this is true despite the fact that the exact location of the counterrevolutionary camps has been known for some time. The strongest proof of the defensive nature of Nicaragua’s response to the war imposed upon it, is that all the dead bodies are on the Nicaraguan side of the border.
The statement that “all armies are equally bad” is not something that we can affirm. A healthy and Christian criticism of the use of arms and of militarism must always be kept alive, but to achieve this end it is necessary that those who take up arms maintain a critical distance from them. This distance can insure that weapons are not glorified as sometimes happens with money, power, or prestige, for example.
We consider that the insurrections and the armed defense of the poor, underdeveloped nations are part of the same search for peace as the disarmament protests of the developed nations. Those who organize pacifist demonstrations in Europe and the United States, those who struggle heroically in El Salvador, and those who defend Nicaragua’s borders with arms are all serving the same cause – humanity. … The modern world is not just the “global village” which the mass media would have us believe. It is also a collection of realities, a set of unsynchronized histories of peoples who are at different stages in the development of their collective identities.
The Nicaraguan youth who must enter active military service and the older men who must join the reserves are joining an army whose members want to be part of a new army. This new army is evidenced when its soldiers patiently and prudently resist the provocations along the border or when they work alongside the campesino at harvest time. They are joining an army in which “defending the homeland” means defending that land which the agrarian reform has given to the campesinos. So, in joining the army, they will join the ranks of a national self-defense movement, a military formula, in which this new army and the future of the armed forces of our country should be understood.
It should be emphasized here that, while the military service law recognizes the courage and heroism of the armed forces, it places those forces alongside the many other groups which defend the nation and serve the people. Health workers, adult education teachers, rural and industrial workers, parents and many others are all essential participants in building a more just nation. These people also are called daily to generosity and to heroism. They are the “peace artisans” which Nicaragua needs.
It is within the context of opposition to the arms race and the recognition of the self-sacrificing work of the majority of citizens, that we believe the military service law should include the legal provision for “conscientious objection”. Only the willingness to engage in alternative service – including service in the war zones – can legitimize the conscientious objection to the taking up of arms."
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