Sandino in Mexico: The Perils of Anti-Imperialist Alliances

Abstract

Abstract: Scholars seem to share a blind faith than anti-imperialist alliances between states and/or non-state actors are, ipso facto, worthwhile and successful. Yet guerrilla leader Augusto Sandino’s collaboration with allies from beyond his native Nicaragua brought him into a web of dependence that nearly destroyed his movement. For a few years, his support from Honduras, Mexico, and points farther away seemed to herald a far-reaching and powerful resistance movement to U.S. military interventions in Latin America. Yet the very fraying of some of those alliances compelled Sandino to leave his own rebellion and relocate to Mexico for almost an entire year in 1929–1930. There, he lost more allies than he made, as he found himself caught up in strategic and political disputes between Mexican and Soviet communists and between those same Mexican communists and the ideologically hardening Mexican state. While many ordinary Mexicans fêted Sandino, erstwhile partners isolated and nearly starved him of resources. Historians of Sandino’s Mexican trip have noted its failure, but they have remained largely unconcerned with the meanings of the trip for the larger transformations occurring on the continent or the lessons it offered for transnational, multi-party alliances. Documents from Nicaragua, the United States, and Europe demonstrate that divided ideologies and structural weaknesses hobbled the many relationships at play from the start.