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Bernie Sanders had some nice things to say this week about leftist Latin America, expressing his opposition to the "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Cuba and his support of the Sandinistas — stances that the record shows are nothing new for the senator from Vermont.
In 1985, when Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he said in a Channel 17/Town Meeting Television interview after a trip to Nicaragua that the leftist Sandinistas had “intelligence and sincerity,” despite what President Ronald Reagan was saying about them. Sanders criticized U.S. interventionism in Chile, Cuba and Nicaragua, saying that “just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people, doesn’t mean that people in their own nations feel the same way.”
Following the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship, the Reagan administration began funding the deposed dictator's former security forces, who became known as the Contras. But as Sanders noted, the people of Nicaragua overwhelmingy supported their socialist revolution; indeed, they "don't give a damn" about what Reagan wants.
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In the interview, Sanders said the press would no doubt brand him a “dumb duke” for his sympathetic comments, noting that White House had “trained and well paid people who are professional manipulators of the media." After his visit to Nicaragua, Sanders put out an open request to be questioned by the media, a request that only yielded one interview, which produced a negative article.
The half-hour interview on Latin American politics spanned decades of anti-democratic U.S. policy, but the then-mayor said that he did not claim to be an expert. Still, his analysis was not superficial: he said that he began reading up on Latin America since an early age, his interest sparked as a schoolboy.
Sanders expressed dismay that many U.S. citizens were "intellectually lazy" and did not try to learn more about a government demonized by their own.
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