For one brief decade, Nicaragua—a country about the size of Iowa, with a slightly larger population and a much smaller economy—was elevated to an ill-deserved position of world historical significance. In those days, Managua’s Inter-Continental Hotel was jammed with journalists, activists, spies, and scholars. Soon, a flood of publications on Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution and the country’s modern history issued from scholarly presses and journals. But in 1990, the FSLN, Nicaragua’s ruling revolutionary party, lost power in national elections. Soon, the “Inter” emptied out, the flood of publications abated, and Nicaragua was relegated to its accustomed obscurity.
Those who care about what happened after 1990 will want to read Adam Jones’s Beyond the Barricades. This well-written book narrates the history of a key Sandinista institution, the party newspaper Barricada, from its origins in the 1979 victory over the Somoza regime to its demise two decades later. Since the fortunes...
