for police chiefs, legal prosecutors, and other specializations. The quality of the PS apparently declined somewhat in remote towns and villages; the press carried frequent stories concerning "irregularities" in police activities in these more distant areas. In 1981 the PS appeared to be increasing the effectiveness of its operations, but it still faced significant rates of crime. Barricada and Patria Libre reported that in 1980 a total of 139 bands of "deliquents" had been broken up-eighty of them in Managua alone. Over 20,000 crimes were reported during that year, having a 65 percent rate of solution. A total of fifty-two Sandinista Police officers were killed in the line of duty during the PS' first full year of operations. The police worked closely with other elements of the Sandinista Armed Forces. They also received considerable help from Sandinista mass organizations and from Sandinista Police Volunteers. These volunteers, or “Auxiliary Police," numbered about 2,000 in mid-1981 and were assigned such duties as traffic control, disaster relief, and crime reporting. Secret Police, Intelligence, and Internal Security Relatively little reliable information was available on the secret police, intelligence, and internal security system, which functioned as part of the Ministry of Interior. These institutions, along with the other elements of the Ministry of Interior (PS, Police Volunteers, and the prison system), formed the power base for Borge and the Prolonged Popular War (Guerra Popular Prolongada-GPP) tendency of the FSLN. It was thus no coincidence that these elements bore a strong resemblance to their Cuban counterparts and that there was a strong presence of Cuban advisers in the Ministry of Interior. Borge defined the main function of the state security apparatus as "the prevention, arrest, and repression of the counterrevolutionaries. The precise organizational form of the state security apparatus was kept vague and confusing. However, published news of promotions, successful operations against "counterrevolutionaries," and press releases permitted some glimpses into the structure. An FSLN brigade commander was in charge of the central Directorate of State Security under the Ministry of Interior. On a geographic basis the State Security system had representatives in each of the seven military regions, suggesting both a close working relationship with the EPS and a "political watchdog" function for the Directorate of State Security. On a functional basis press reports suggested that state security included the following sections and functions: intelligence, counterintelligence, personnel, immigration control, prisons, Internal Order Police (whose function is to ensure discipline within EPS and PS units), special forces, communications, press and public relations, and political direc tion. At least some (and probably a considerable degree) of the ministry's manpower strength lay in its paramilitary units, or organizations whose uniforms and insignia made them indistinguishable from the EPS; many of the individuals who made up these units were veterans of the pre-1979 FSLN struggle. In referring to these units Barricada wrote of the "combatants" of the politicalmilitary structures of the Ministry of Interior. The strong military atmosphere at the Ministry of Interior was apparent at a major public ceremony at the end of 1980 when military promotions within the ministry were awarded to three brigade commanders, eleven commanders, and nine subcommanders. No data on the number of Ministry of Interior personnel had been public as of mid-1981, but a Venezuelan magazine suggested that Tomás Borge has been very careful to ensure that the Ministry of Interior (including the PS) would always have about as many "combatants" as the EPS-the figure of 30,000 was mentioned at the end of 1980. Published Nicaraguan reports on Ministry of Interior security operations have consistently stressed their success, their cooperation with the EPS, PS, and mass organizations, and the fact that the targets of their operations were always the "counterrevolutionaries." Extensive reports in Barricada and Patria Libre in late 1980 provided details of State Security successes in a number of such operations since the fall of Somoza: discovery of conspiracies, exNational Guard bands, COSEP plotting, Atlantic Coast separatism, assassination attempts, and others. The report noted that sixtyeight assassination attempts had been discovered, of which 48 percent had been directed against Borge, 15 percent against Daniel Ortega, and the rest at other members of the FSLN National Directorate and the government junta. The elimination of COSEP vice-president Jorge Salazar was presented as a major triumph for State Security; the Ministry of Interior produced a commander who was alleged to have penetrated the COSEP conspiracy and obtained the detailed information on Salazar's plotting, which permitted State Security to break the conspiracy. Confessions from the captured members of the group soon followed. Apparently torture and physical and mental abuse had been employed to obtain confessions; according to the report on Nicaragua in the 1980 edition of the United States Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, these abuses were followed by forced signatures of statements by prisoners that they were not tortured or abused. The report noted that “Minister Borge has admitted that torture has occurred and promised to punish those responsible." Like the EPS and the PS, State Security was conscious of its public and revolutionary image: this was one motive behind its program of Red and Black Sundays and volunteer work. During the early 1981 cotton harvest the Ministry of Interior organized two "battalions" to pick cotton for two weeks in the western cotton fields. A topic of considerable controversy in relation to the Nicaraguan state security apparatus has been the impact of the Cuban presence. Given the pro-Cuba orientation of Borge and his GPP tendency of the FSLN, it would not be a surprise to find a strong Cuban influence in the Ministry of Interior. Hard facts, however, were not available in mid-1981. Of particular concern was the presence in Nicaragua of senior officials from the Cuban General Intelligence Directorate (see Foreign Influences on the Armed Forces, this ch.). Although much had been written about the Nicaraguan revolution in mid-1981, there were relatively few books and articles which dealt specifically with national security and the armed forces. Richard Millett's Guardians of the Dynasty is the best account of the Somocista National Guard up to 1977. Yvonne Dilling's Nicaragua: A People's Revolution provides a wealth of information (not unbiased) on the 1978-79 fighting; also useful for this period is Robin Navarro Montgomery's article "The Fall of Somoza: Anatomy of a Revolution.' For the post-July 1979 era the best sources of detailed (albeit selective and fragmentary) information on the military are the Sandinista Armed Forces' magazine, Patria Libre, and the FSLN newspaper, Barricada. Stephen Gorman has a valuable chapter, "The Role of the Revolutionary Armed Forces" in Thomas Walker's Nicaragua in Revolution. Gorman's article, "Sandinista Chess: How the Left Took Control" contains much material on the FSLN's consolidation of power. United States Congressional hearings in the 1979-81 period, especially those of the Subcommittee of Inter-American Affairs of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, are another valuable source of information on Sandinista activities in Central America and on the Cuban role in Nicaragua; related material can be found in several Department of State documents such as the February 1981 white paper on El Salvador and the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Claudio Fragoso's "Human Rights in Nicaragua, 1980" has detailed information on the post-Somoza legal system, crime, law enforcement, and public order. (For further information see Bibliography.) Appendix Table Conversion Coefficients and Factors 2 Population Increase, 1960-2000 3 Percentage of Population by Regions, 1963-2000 4 Urban Population Distribution by Size of City, 1960-80 5 Population Totals and Urban-Rural Distribution Patterns, 1960-2000 6 Net Urban and Rural Population Increase, 1960-2000 7 Gross Domestic Product, Total and Per Capita, and Annual 8 Sectoral Shares in Gross Domestic Product, Selected Years, 1950-80 9 Area, Production, and Yield of Major Crops, Selected Years, 1960-80 10 Value Added In Manufacturing, 1960 and 1970-77 11 Trends in Output, Labor Force, and Productivity, Selected Years, 1950-77 12 Merchandise Exports, Selected Years, 1950-78 17 Major Items of Military Equipment on Hand, Mid-1981 |