Selected writings of the Marxist Leninist Popular Action Movement of Nicaragua.
MAP–ML (the Movimiento de Acción Popular–Marxista-Leninista) was formed by workers and revolutionary militants who rejected the reformism of the pro-Soviet revisionists of the Socialist Party (PSN) in 1971. They also rejected the Castroist tactics of the isolated guerrilla band and social-democratic ideas, both of which they believed were combined in the policies of the Sandinista Front.
Before the 1979 revolution, MAP–ML had led the 1973 month-long national strike of 20,000 construction workers that defeated Somoza’s decree imposing a 60-hour work week. In 1974-75 it had formed the FO (Frente Obrero) as its revolutionary trade union center, and during the next years it established deep roots not only among construction workers, but among workers in many other industries, including at the largest sugar mill in Central America.
Then, beginning in September 1978, MAP–ML organized the MILPAS (Milicias Populares Anti-Somocistas). The MILPAS mobilized thousands of workers, peasants and barrio youth for the 1978-79 liberation war, with hundreds of them giving their lives. Apart from the FSLN, the MILPAS were the only other organized armed force of the insurrection. And in March 1979, MAP–ML launched the daily newspaper El Pueblo, which achieved a press run of some 10,000 copies in a country where the largest bourgeois newspaper only printed 50,000 copies. MAP–ML also originated its youth group and cultural groups during the 70s.