While Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been criticized for his lack of foreign policy experience compared to his opponent, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, research by the U.S.-based Fusion website has revealed that the senator was politically and ethically invested in the U.S. government’s involvement in Latin America during the 1980s, specifically Nicaragua.
While serving as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for eight years in the 1980s, Sanders wrote a series of letters and official resolutions to President Jimmy Carter and President Ronald Reagan, addressing U.S. involvement in the civil war in Nicaragua.
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In 1983, Sanders wrote a letter to Reagan saying: “At a time when your administration has imposed horrendous cutbacks to the American people … I am appalled that you are using taxpayers’ money to destroy the government of a small nation.”
In the letter, Sanders condemned Reagan’s intervention in Nicaragua in the “strongest possible terms.”
The letters and statements form part of an archive labeled "Nicaragua," which includes more than 1,000 pages of Sanders' writing on the issue and can be found in the archives of the University of Vermont, according to Fusion.
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The papers show that he had done his utmost efforts to understand the situation before taking a stance. Eventually, Sanders gave his support to the Sandinistas, the left-wing group which overthrew a right-wing dictatorship while objecting to U.S. support to a different right-wing group, the Contras.
As events took place at the height of the Cold War, Washington was keen to prevent a socialist government from governing successfully in the Central American nation.
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But Sanders, a self-identified social democrat, warned at the time that supporting the Contras would lead to a Vietnam-type conflict.
Further stressing his support for the leftist Sandinistas, Sanders visited Nicaragua in 1985 and attended the sixth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. He was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the country.
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“The real issue is a very simple one,” Sanders told a press conference during his visit as he slammed his government’s meddling in Nicaragua.
“Does the government of the United States of America have the unilateral right to destroy the government of Nicaragua because the president of the United States and some members of Congress disagree with the Sandinistas?
Furthermore, in his 1997 book "Outsider in the House," Sanders described the U.S. war in Nicaragua as “illegal and immoral."
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“It was an outrageous waste of taxpayer money. As a mayor, I wanted more federal funds for affordable housing and economic development. I did not want to see taxpayer dollars doing to the CIA for an appalling war … this was very much a municipal issue," he said,
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