In 1985 Sanders
traveled to Managua,
Nicaragua to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the rise to power of Daniel Ortega and his Marxist-Leninist Sandinista government. In a
letter which he addressed to the people of Nicaragua, Sanders denounced the anti-Communist activities of the Reagan administration, which he said was under the control of corporate interests. Assuring the Nicaraguans that Americans were “fair minded people” who had more to offer “than the bombs and economic sabotage” promoted by Reagan, he declared: “In the long run, I am certain that you will win, and that your heroic revolution against the Somoza dictatorship will be maintained and strengthened.”
Following his trip to Nicaragua, Sanders
penned a letter to the White House indicating that Ortega would be willing to meet with Reagan to negotiate a resolution to the conflict. The mayor also sought to enlist the help of former president
Jimmy Carter, telling him that the people of Nicaragua were very fond of him. Sanders even invited Ortega to visit Burlington, though the Nicaraguan president declined.
By no means was Sanders's trip to Nicaragua his only trek to a Communist country. He
also visited
Fidel Castro's Cuba in the
1980s and had a friendly meeting with the mayor of Havana.
In an August 8, 1985
interview on a Vermont government-access television station, Sanders discussed his recent trip to Nicaragua and drew parallels between the Castro and Ortega regimes. "In 1961," he said, "[America] invaded Cuba, and everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world, that all the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that he educated the kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society. You know, not to say Fidel Castro and Cuba are perfect -- they are certainly not -- but just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people does not mean to say that the people in their own nations feel the same way. So they expected this tremendous uprising in Cuba; it never came. And if they are expecting a tremendous uprising in Nicaragua, they are very, very, very mistaken." (For video of this 1985 interview,
click here.)
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