Nicaraguan Socialist Party

(NSP; Partido Socialista Nicaragüense), the party of the Nicaraguan Communists, founded in 1939 at the National Assembly, convened to unite the Marxist groups and circles that had existed since the 1920’s. By the end of World War II the party had a strong organization, and it was legalized in July 1944, during an upsurge in the democratic movement. But as early as December 1945 the NSP was forced underground by the dictator Anastasio Somoza’s persecution of Communists. An enlarged plenum of the Central Committee of the NSP, held in 1956, analyzed the party’s activity and redefined its course of action.

The Eighth National Conference, held in 1964, adopted the first party program and bylaws. The Ninth National Conference in November 1966 devoted much attention to the problem of mobilizing the country’s forces in the struggle against the military dictatorship and called on all antidictatorial forces to form a united front against the regime. The conference decided that henceforth the national conferences would be called congresses. The Communists’ work in organizing the antidictatorial movement and their struggle for democratic changes strengthened the party’s influence among the masses. The General Confederation of Labor, an independent organization comprising most of the country’s trade unions, accepted the leadership of the NSP. In 1967 the National Confederation of Peasants and Agricultural Workers was founded on the party’s intiative.

The Tenth Congress, held in October 1973, adopted a new program, in which the immediate goal was Nicaragua’s liberation from domination by the USA and local reactionaries and its transformation into a truly independent and democratic state. The party declares that this goal can be attained through an anti-imperialist, agrarian, democratic people’s revolution aimed at the formation of a people’s patriotic government that would make fundamental democratic and antifeudal changes. The Congress also modified the party bylaws.

In 1973, 80 percent of the Nicaraguan Communists were workers, 15 percent were peasants, and 5 percent belonged to the intelligentsia. Delegations of the NSP attended the International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in Moscow in 1960 and 1969, and the NSP approved the documents adopted at the meetings. In accordance with its bylaws, the NSP is organized along the principles of democratic centralism. The highest party organ is the Congress; between Congresses the party is directed by the Central Committee and by the Political Commission and Executive Secretariat, both elected by the Central Committee. L. Sánchez Sancho is the first secretary of the Central Committee of the NSP. The NSP issues several illegal periodical publications.