Archives of Bernie Sanders’s mayoral papers shed light on the foreign policy views he held at the start of his political career.
In November 1983, less than a month after U.S. forces invaded the Caribbean nation of Grenada, Bernie Sanders, the mayor of Burlington, Vt., wrote a letter to one of the state’s U.S. senators, Patrick Leahy. Sanders had some questions about the invasion, which came after a coup against the small island’s leftist prime minister.
“Not quite like Chile — but close,” Sanders wrote, adding, “I have heard the C.I.A. was active in Grenada before the invasion. Is that true?” Sanders, who was elected Burlington’s mayor in 1981 on a socialist platform, boasted that his administration was “more radical” than any other in the country and made efforts to expand social programs and affordable housing even as he attempted to cut spending during a financial crisis. But while he focused on his city, Sanders also engaged in his own brand of international diplomacy.
On Sanders’s campaign webpage, “responsible foreign policy” is preceded by a list of 21 other issues. However, his current platform does broadly align with some of the values he expressed as Burlington’s mayor. It is critical of “endless war” abroad and the “forces of militarism” while calling for “a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness.
“If we are going to be successful in improving international relations, and in moving toward a world where international disagreements can be settled by negotiations or legal proceedings rather than war ... it is absolutely necessary that there be as much intellectual and cultural exchange between nations of differing opinions as is possible,” he wrote.
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega became the country’s president, and his government worked to improve social mobility and literacy, while engaging in human rights abuses including mass executions and repression of indigenous groups. The Sandinistas also waged a brutal civil war against militants called Contras who were supported by the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
The sister city relationship between Burlington and Puerto Cabezas became official on July 16, 1985, as Sanders visited Nicaragua. That weeklong trip has become somewhat infamous since it included Sanders meeting with Ortega and attending a rally where the Nicaraguan leader gave a fiery speech amid anti-American chants.
“We will keep defending this truth that is called revolution, with rifles in the hands of the people,” Ortega declared, later adding, “Who are the ones who are ready to grab the rifles to combat the aggressors who are being sent by the imperialism and the Yankee intervention?”“They say, some of the Strategists of the Yankee intervention, Pentagon specialists or CIA analysts say, that ending with the Sandinistas, to end the revolution, would be easy,” Ortega said.
Back in Vermont, Sanders continued to comment on the situation in Nicaragua. In a draft of remarks from a week after his trip, Sanders called it a mission to “prevent the tragedy of another Vietnam.” Sanders was also involved in an effort to provide a shipment of goods to Nicaragua, according to documents in the archive. The papers indicate that a “sister city ship” stocked with supplies for Puerto Cabezas set sail in February 1986. Officials from Puerto Cabezas wrote letters thanking Sanders for the cargo, which they received in September 1988. A Nicaraguan report said the shipment included medical supplies, gardening tools, bicycles and clothing.
Sanders responded with a letter of his own wherein he argued that the “temporary suspension of civil liberties” in Nicaragua was “considerably more complex” and justified by American aggression.
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