Sandinista Government Research Articles

The Nicaraguan Conflict as a Factor in the Cold War Confrontation

This article is devoted to the analysis of the Nicaraguan conflict as an element of the Cold War and its impact on the international political situation. The author conducts a detailed review of the latest research on this problem, both in domestic and international scientific literature, focusing on the causes of the conflict, the role of international actors, socio-economic consequences and the global impact on the Cold War. The study found that the Nicaraguan conflict was caused by political, economic and social factors such as the authoritarianism of the Sandinista regime, social inequalities and external interference. The role of international actors in the conflict turned out to be crucial, in particular due to their support for different sides of the conflict and the competition for influence in the region. The conflict was accompanied by serious socio-economic consequences, such as economic decline, destruction of infrastructure and exacerbation of political contradictions. Its global impact was to change the dynamics of the Cold War and the tensions between the superpowers. The findings of the study emphasize the importance of understanding the consequences and influence of the Nicaraguan conflict on the Cold War and the international political situation. This makes it possible to develop effective approaches to the settlement of similar conflicts in the future and contribute to the achievement of stability and peace in the region. Understanding these consequences can serve as a basis for further political negotiations and peace-making measures aimed at reducing the socio-economic consequences of the conflict and strengthening international stability.

Education in Black and White: Myles Horton and the Highlander Center's Vision for Social Justice

Education in Black and White: Myles Horton and the Highlander Center's Vision for Social Justice

Education in Black and White: Myles Horton and the Highlander Center's Vision for Social Justice

Education in Black and White: Myles Horton and the Highlander Center's Vision for Social Justice

A discursive-images analysis of political posters in Sandinista Nicaragua (1979-1990)

In July 1979 the Popular Revolution in Nicaragua, led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), became victorious. The first years after the revolutionary insurrection were marked by the implementation of a broad program of social transformations. The struggles and experiences built throughout the 1980s, which marked the construction of a new identity and everyday culture in Sandinista Nicaragua, were promoted and recorded through posters that presented or disseminated values and ideas for the new times to come. The graphic documents that illustrated the political-cultural awakening of the Nicaraguan people reveal the challenges faced and the achievements obtained in their struggle for the right of self-determination and for the conduct of a process of revolutionary transformation of society. In this sense, the objective of this article was to carry out a discursive-imagery analysis of the production of political posters in Sandinista Nicaragua during the 1980s, verifying how a discursive-ideological formation centered on the exaltation of nationalism constituted itself as a driving force for the advancement of the objectives of the Nicaraguan revolution. As a result, we found that the graphic posters used in the context of the great campaigns of the Sandinista government were constituted as communicative practices of ideological propaganda and fulfilled an educational and politicizing function, as well as popular mobilization in defense of the Revolution.

Food and Revolution: Fighting Hunger in Nicaragua, 1960–1993

Food and Revolution: Fighting Hunger in Nicaragua, 1960–1993

Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America

Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America

The Nicaraguan Question: Contadora and the Latin American Response to US Intervention Against the Sandinistas, 1982–86

AbstractWhile much has been written about the United States’ efforts to undermine Nicaragua's Sandinista government (1979–90), historians have paid little attention to Latin American state perspectives on the only successful armed revolution in the region since Cuba. In fact, the war that subsequently emerged between Sandinista armed forces and US-backed contras was a thoroughly regionalized affair: at least 12 Latin American countries—including the five largest—became directly involved in efforts to broker peace by the mid 1980s. How and why did they become involved? What can Latin American diplomacy vis-à-vis the Sandinista Revolution tell us about the shape of inter-American relations in the twilight years of the Cold War?To answer these questions, this article uses diplomatic archival sources and oral history interviews from Nicaragua, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Panama to trace Latin American state responses to US intervention against the Sandinista government between 1982 and 1986. While the Reagan administration viewed Nicaragua as the place where it would begin to roll back Soviet-sponsored communism in the Third World, a bloc of Latin American governments—especially those associated with the Contadora peace process—saw Central America as the site where they would push back against US unilateralism and the threat it posed to their real interests and shared hopes for regional sovereignty. In stark contrast with the earlier reaction to the Cuban Revolution, most Latin American states rejected US intervention and sought to legitimize Managua's left-wing government. The regional dimensions of Nicaragua's civil war therefore show how the political fault lines of Latin America's Cold War shifted over time.

The Nicaraguan Revolution's Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine: Sandinistas and Western Europe, 1979–1990

AbstractThis article analyzes the revolutionary diplomacy of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) through the prism of Nicaraguan and Western European relations during the final decade of the Cold War. It contends that —despite the FSLN's ideological affiliation with Third World national liberation movements, Cuba, and the socialist bloc—the campaign to influence Western European foreign policies was central to the Sandinista government's international strategy. By pushing Western European governments to play a prominent role in Central America's violent Cold War conflicts, the Sandinistas sought to undermine US power in the isthmus and alter the inter-American dynamics that shaped their region's history up to the late 1970s. Furthermore, by building financial ties with Western European countries, the FSLN could avoid complete financial dependency on the Soviet bloc and strengthen Nicaragua's image as a nonaligned state. The Sandinistas’ campaign to challenge US hegemony in Central America through a pragmatic outreach to Western Europe was largely successful, but it came at the cost of implementing domestic reforms that ran counter to their own ambitions. Ultimately, this prompted the FSLN to hold elections in 1990, which resulted in their removal from power.

Why Reagan was not impeached

In the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam, Congressional investigations uncovered the largely unknown activities of the CIA and other agencies, which included arming and interfering in the domestic politics of regimes in both Central America and Iran. These programmes had also involved supporting reactionary regimes in ways that some saw as drawing the United States into conflicts, like Vietnam, without public knowledge or consent. In 1987, it was revealed that the Reagan administration had operated a clandestine policy in Nicaragua that evaded the restrictions placed upon the executive by the Boland Amendment in terms of aid given to the Nicaraguan Contras and that National Security Council (NSC) staff had lied to Congress and concealed these illegal actions. They had solicited funds from foreign allies and smuggled arms to the Contra insurgents in support of their efforts to topple the Sandinista regime. Contrary to the Arms Export Control Act and to its own publicly stated policy, the administration had also sold arms, particularly missiles, to Iran, which had been branded a sponsor of international terrorism since the Iranian revolution, and which was currently at war with its neighbour, Iraq. Such deals had formed part of ‘arms for hostages’ negotiations that were also contrary to official policy. Finally, it was disclosed that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to fund the Contras and hence to evade Congressional restrictions on funding. This article explores why these illegal actions did not result in President Reagan’s impeachment. It considers the merits of the administration’s claims that this was a ‘rogue operation’ by zealots within the NSC, and the success of its efforts to present Reagan as eager to cooperate with efforts to discover the truth of what had happened. It reviews the interactions between the Tower Commission, Congressional investigations and Office of Independent Counsel probe (Lawrence Walsh) and shows how these contributed to Reagan’s ‘escape’ from impeachment. It reviews the argument that Reagan’s underlying health problems contributed to his lax management of NSC operations and it considers the importance of televised testimony, particularly that of Oliver North, in shaping public opinion in the administration’s favour. Finally, it considers how this significant episode in 1980s politics foreshadowed major trends in US politics that can be seen as culminating in the present, acute partisan divide, Donald Trump’s double impeachment, and a manifest decline in public trust and respect for American political institutions.

Ahí me van a matar: Cultura, violencia y Guerra Fría en Costa Rica (1979–1990)

Ahí me van a matar: Cultura, violencia y Guerra Fría en Costa Rica (1979–1990)

Organizing the Mechanism of Conducting the “Secret War” of the USA Against the Sandinista Regime of 1984

Introduction. In Russian historiography, the issue of the reasons for the beginning of the U.S. special operations in Nicaragua is a complex problem that requires careful development due to its importance as one of the elements of the confrontation during the Cold War. The scientific relevance of this issue is determined by the insufficient degree of its study. The socio-political relevance is related to the current military-political situation in the world in general and the actions of the United States in particular, which, as part of ensuring their national security, use special operations to achieve certain goals and objectives. An example of this is the U.S.-led special operation to destroy Osama bin Laden, during which the sovereignty of Pakistan was violated. Another example of U.S. special operations at the present stage is Washington’s support of the “proxy” forces loyal to it in Syria. Special operations conducted by the United States in Nicaragua during the first half of the 80s were in many ways the main tool for achieving U.S. state interests in this country. In this regard, it seems that a detailed consideration of the first attempt in the history of the United States to conduct a global special operation, which began with the program of supporting the anti-Communist forces “Contras” in Nicaragua, which was later funded by the illegal supply of American weapons to Iran, would be useful for the domestic scientific doctrine. Methods and materials. In the course of the research, the historical-comparative method, the method of analysis and synthesis, as well as the system approach are applied. The study uses: 1) a set of unpublished materials on the special activities of the United States in Nicaragua, declassified in connection with the “Iran-Contra” scandal, and contained on the electronic website of the National Security Archive at the George Washington University; 2) published sources related to the Cold War; 3) scientific literature on the problems of U.S. special operations during the cold war; 4) memoir literature. Analysis. This article analyzes the reasons that influenced the decision of the U.S. political leadership to authorize special operations in Nicaragua based on the documents and materials studied in the Iran-Contra Affair. Results. The scientific development of the problems of the U.S. special policy in Nicaragua was observed back in the 80s in the USSR. However, it was conducted in hot pursuit, it was biased, considered a complex set of processes taking place in Central America from the perspective of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and did not take into account the American position, which made the scientific assessment of these events less complete and justified. New studies of this period take this factor into account, are based on new methods and previously unknown to the scientific community documents and materials that were declassified after the end of the Cold War. Results. In the course of the study, an attempt was made to highlight the mechanism for the development and implementation of U.S. special operations in Nicaragua. The author concludes that the use of the National Security Council personnel for special operations was conditioned by the need to avoid legislative restrictions of the U.S. Congress when implementing U.S. foreign policy in Nicaragua.

The changing drivers of oil palm cultivation and the persistent narrative of 'already degraded land'. Insights from Nicaragua

The article explores the histories of oil palm in Nicaragua during the 20th century within a drastically changing Political Economy. In Nicaragua, palm oil cultivation dates back to the 1950s, when the United Fruit Company started to plant oil palm on the Atlantic Coast. In the 1980s, due to the agrarian reform of the Sandinista revolution, political conditions and economic strategies changed completely. In this era, a socialist government started to create agricultural cooperatives for oil palm. After the defeat of the revolution, during the neoliberal era of the 1990s, palm oil cultivation expanded in different surges. This expansion was tied to funding from international organizations, especially during the conjuncture of the bioenergy framework, which implied a new narrative of sustainability from the global level. The extent of the territory on which oil palm is cultivated more than quadrupled between 2005 and 2010, and again more than doubled between 2010 and 2016, although the Sandinista government was back in power and not particularly supportive of oil palm. The article argues that although the drivers, the main actors, their specific arguments, funding sources, and policies promoting oil palm have varied over time, the narrative of 'already degraded land' has consistently been used. Social contestations from below point not only to environmental and social consequences, but to the funding schemes and narratives of international institutions sponsoring and promoting oil palm.

Outfoxing the Eagle: Soviet, East European and Cuban Involvement in Nicaragua in the 1980s

This paper examines the relations of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the East European socialist states with Nicaragua from Anastasio Somoza's removal in July 1979 until Violeta Chamorro's election victory in February 1990, using a wide array of original documents, collected from Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, German and Czech diplomatic, party and security services archives. It delves deeply into the motivations behind the Kremlin's circumscribed approach, attempting to break new ground by looking in detail at Moscow's communication and coordination with its East European allies and Cuba, aimed at supporting Managua without risking major confrontation with Washington. This research aims to contribute to the existing historiography by looking not only at the motivations behind Soviet and Eastern Bloc involvement, but also by taking into account the circumstances preventing Moscow and its allies from developing more comprehensive political and economic relations with the Sandinista regime.

Helping the Contras: The Effectiveness of U.S. Support for Foreign Rebels During the Nicaraguan Contra War (1979–1990)

During the 1980s, the United States spent substantial political and economic capital supporting the Nicaraguan Contras. How effective was this in helping the rebels take on the Sandinista government? This article explores this topic by extending the application of principal-agent theory. It finds that, as expected, the effect of U.S. assistance was undermined by adverse selection and agency losses. However, the most important factor that undermined support effectiveness was the great inconsistency of the level of U.S. aid awarded to the insurgents. Reductions of official U.S. government support led to insurgency campaign collapse and meant that, in the end, the U.S. support program was only partially effective in helping the Contra struggle.

The autonomy dilemma

This paper explores the emergence of conflict between the Miskito and the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in the early years after the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. Outlining the polarisation of the debate in the late 1980s between supporters and opponents of the Sandinistas and their views of its revolutionary project and noting the lack of agency attributed to the Miskito themselves in these arguments, the article rejects arguments centred around race or ideology as an explanation for the conflict. Instead, use is made of Kate Crehan’s development of Gramscian analysis to explore the contrasting meanings ascribed to notions of territoriality and autonomy in public statements by Miskito and Sandinista leadership in the early 1980s.

Las universidades, modelo de alianza, diálogo y consenso para políticas de ciencia y tecnología

El presente artículo, tiene como objetivo visualizar los escenarios viables para formular las políticas de Ciencia y Tecnología de manera participativa e inclusiva. El abordaje de este estudio parte de análisis documental utilizando el enfoque cualitativo sobre la base epistemológica retrospectivo y racionalismo crítico. Se ha encontrado que los actores académicos y no académicos aun operan a un nivel que demanda el rol decidido del estado para convocar y orientar un desempeño más sistémico. Las partes del sistema están ahí y un accionar por muchos años ha mostrado que las acciones en marcha aún son a baja escala y lo que se requiere es escalonar las acciones para activar una formulación de políticas con evidencias empíricas que alimenten la política para construir escenarios dinámicos y ser retome temas estratégicos de la economía nacional. Se concluye que las posibles plataformas de interacción que resulten requieren primero el rol del estado y en segundo lugar llegar a un dialogo entre las partes para establecer un lenguaje de ciencia y tecnología adaptado a la realidad nacional lo que implica no copiar conceptos y enfoques sin antes ser profundamente validados.

Movilizaciones y oportunidades políticas en Nicaragua. Un debate desde el feminismo

En este texto se abordan las estructuras que ofrecen oportunidades políticas en Nicaragua y a partir de ellas se analizan los procesos de repolitización de los jóvenes. Se discuten las repercusiones de la despolitización electoral y de la repolitización sandinista, y la ausencia de oportunidades para las mujeres. Existen tensiones y posibilidades para la juventud, que no se identifica con el proyecto sandinista actual aunque reconoce la Revolución Sandinista como un referente importante. Se parte de un trabajo etnográfico realizado en tres ciudades,Managua, León y Chinandega, durante las elecciones presidenciales de 2016, y de entrevistas con jóvenes feministas.

The Jury as a Translation of Democratic Participation and Political Conflict

A long tradition in scholarship champions the juror as an important manifestation of democratic participation. Some scholarship advances the jury as an expression of and method to instill democratic duty and produce lay participation at the individual level (Dalton 2008; Hans 2007; Fukurai, Knudtson, and Lopez 2009). Other scholarship views the jury as an institutional manifestation of deliberative democracy and as a method to facilitate consensual democracy (Gastil et al. 2002; Smith and Wales 2000; Hans, Gastil, and Feller 2014; Warren and Gastil 2015). Both approaches view the jury as a mechanism to establish further democracy through participation in democratizing societies. In her presidential address, Valerie Hans offers the useful concept of translating to understand further the adoption, expansion and decline of trial by jury in established and developing democracies. I use her deployment of this term to argue that the implementation of liberal democratic structures in new democracies opens new opportunities to translate the jury system into and onto new democratic societies.Hans's address is grounded in the idea of lay participation, but she also alludes to the concerns that policy makers have about the strength and vibrancy of this participation (31). This concern opens questions as to policy makers' decision-making processes to translate trial by juror into the fabric of polities. I would argue here that the aims of policy makers are not always democratic. Nonetheless, the consequence of the translation of trial by jury furthers democratic development. To express this idea I examine specifically the adoption (or attempt to adopt) trial by jury in three countries: Nicaragua, Mexico and Russia. These three countries implemented the process to adopt trial by jury between 1992 and 2008. In all three cases, governments adopted or attempted to adopt the jury trial in the aftermath of control of the state apparatus by a hegemonic political party. The strategic decision to adopt trial by jury was partly an attempt to remove legal decision making from the sole control of a state that was occupied by officials who the new government believed retained allegiance to the prior government.In Nicaragua, the Popular-Socialist Sandinista (FSLN) government partly abolished the jury trial in 1988 because of juries' tendencies to acquit, particularly to acquit poor defendants (Wilson 1990). Juries during the Revolutionary period use the intima conviccion (innermost belief) standard to guide deliberations (Wilson 1992: 359). The government prior to the Sandinista state (the Somoza dictatorship 1933-1979) had constitutionally established trial by jury, but rarely were people tried-by-jury in civilian criminal courts during the period of the Somoza regime.The Sandinista Government did embrace the concept of lay participation in legal decision-making process. As Hans's address highlights, the jury is only one of several forms of lay participation in legal decision-making. The Sandinista government attempted to institute the concept of lay participation by allowing non-attorneys to populate the lower levels of the judicial hierarchy (Walker 2003). Jackson and Kovalev (2016) point out that the lay-judge mechanism has been adopted in some European countries to replace juries as a mechanism of lay participation.The Sandinista Government built its justice system on the idea of popular justice. It, nonetheless, abolished trial by jury. Indeed, the Government's overall lay participation program failed. Beyond juries' tendencies to acquit, the Sandinista Government constructed criminal justice system on a socialist model of justice that requires a machine-like system of judgment and punishment (Ventura 1971: 101). Because the Sandinistas opted for the socialist model of justice, they viewed the jury system as flawed in its ability to efficiently allocate judgment and punishment. In addition, the system requires judges, even lay-judges, to interpret cases and to base their decisions on the norms of formal law, rather than popular sentiment (McDonald and Zatz 1992: 289). …

Red Christmases: the Sandinistas, indigenous rebellion, and the origins of the Nicaraguan civil war, 1981–82

In December 1981, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government forcibly resettled some 8,500 Miskito Indians, killing dozens and displacing thousands in a controversy known as la Navidad Roja – the Red Christmas. Two starkly contrasting narratives exist around this episode: one which viewed the affair as a domestic one driven by longstanding ethnic tensions, and another which saw a CIA plot behind the violence. This article explores the chasm between those narratives and traces the breakdown in the FSLN–Miskito relations in 1981, ultimately showing how both indigenous action and Latin American state interventions played an understudied role at the onset of the Nicaraguan Civil War.

American Foreign Policy Fiascos

The US policy toward the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua represented one of the most complex and most controversial chapters in the history of American foreign policy. The tiny Nicaragua, a nation of 2.5 million, retained the complete attention of a superpower 100 times larger. In fact, few foreign policy issues commanded the attention of the foreign policy establishment as much as the Nicaraguan Revolution. For over a decade, US policy makers directed an exceptional amount of human and intellectual energy to design the lines of a complex policy. US efforts to contain the Nicaraguan revolution took the shape of an extended low-intensity conflict based on diplomatic pressure, economic pressure, intelligence operations, and a covert counter-revolutionary war, mixed with a colossal public relations campaign. The US-Nicaraguan relations stimulated severe political debates in Washington, caused one of the most noticeable Executive-Legislative disagreements, and even led to one of the most delicate presidential scandals in the political history of the United States. But why was Washington so worried about the Nicaraguan Revolution? Why did such a tiny country with no vital strategic resources, and with less than one percent of total US foreign investment, warrant so much attention from the American power elite? This article tries to offer some answers to the Nicaraguan issue through a description of the various strategies and instruments of policies used by the Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations.