Dick Nichols

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By Dick Nichols

February 12, 2022 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The articles that follow this preface deal with the background to and the conduct of the November 7 general election in Nicaragua. In addition to returning outgoing president Daniel Ortega and vice-president Rosario Murillo with over 75% of the vote, the election saw the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) increase its majority in the 90 elected seats of Nicaragua’s National Assembly from 71 to 74 and from 14 to 15 in its 20-seat contingent in the 126-seat Central American Parliament.

That result would seem to mark a gain for the whole Latin American left, to be ranked with recent advances like those of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Libre in Honduras, and Apruebo Dignidad in Chile.

Was it? The Latin American left is divided on how to take Ortega’s and Murillo’s win. While welcomed by the Cuban, Venezuelan and Bolivian governments, Chilean presidential candidate Gabriel Boric, who was to win the second round of his country’s presidential poll on December 19, disowned the Nicaraguan election.

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By Iosu Perales[1]

San Sebastián, August 2021 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Shortly after learning of the departure into exile from Nicaragua of Mónica Baltodano[2] and her family I sat down at the computer and began to write, without a prepared script, without an organised plan for producing a document. A sort of improvisation with its thinking focused on the critical reaction that the left should have, but—with a few honourable exceptions—will not have.

I will be clear from the outset. I feel and believe that no small part of the Latin American left has—along with its political project—been disabled intellectually. Instead of the rule of critical, combative thinking, we find a conservatism that does not match the achievements of a heroic past.

By Dick Nichols

July 21, 2021 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On June 26, in a theatre with a panoramic view of Granada’s Alhambra, the refoundation congress took place of Forward Andalusia, a political force with the ambition to be “an instrument for the emancipation of the Andalusian people” (words of newly elected spokesperson Teresa Rodríguez). The congress adopted three documents, on political line, feminism and organisation, completing a six-month-long reconstruction of Forward Andalusia as common home of the Andalusist left.

Launched last December by the coalition’s four affiliate organisations — Andalusian Spring (PA), Andalusist Left (IA), Defending Andalusia (DA) and Anticapitalists Andalusia — this process took the form of a “bottom-up” public discussion called “Andalusia Doesn’t Surrender!” Over 2000 participants across the eight provinces of Spain’s southernmost mainland region got involved in the exchange, which took place in 26 local organising centres. 

Interview with Dick Nichols

March 28, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — As the Spanish state attempts to deal with its spiralling COVID-19 death toll—over 4000 as of March 27 and second only to Italy in Europe—Federico Fuentes spoke to Dick Nichols, Green Left’s Weekly’s European correspondent based in Barcelona, about the debates engulfing country, the government's response, including its "nationalisation" (or not) of private hospitals, and how, among all the anguish, people’s solidarity is shining through.