The U.S. government sometimes seems obsessed with elections in Nicaragua. Early in this century, after assisting in some violent transfers of power in Central America and Panama, the United States decided that henceforth, elections would be the only acceptable means for changing governments in that strategic region. The problem was that, except in Costa Rica, elections on the Isthmus did not change governments; incumbents regularly rigged the voting to stay perpetually in office, leaving their opponents no route to power save armed revolt—which they often took, to the detriment of the U.S. objective of “stability” in the region. To break the cycle of violence in Nicaragua and allow the withdrawal of its occupation forces, the United States undertook to guarantee free and fair presidential elections in 1924, 1928, and 1932. The result was new cycles of violence and a 33-year dictatorship that ended in an anti-Yankee cataclysm, prompting the return of U.S. military intervention (this time by proxy) and renewed concern in Washington for free elections.
Thomas J. Dodd’s book properly puts Nicaraguan developments into their isthmian context and appropriately focuses on U. S. supervision of Nicaraguan elections during the momentous intervention of 1927–33. The word managing in the title is well chosen, for while ballots were freely cast and honestly counted in precincts supervised by U.S. personnel (areas under the control of General Augusto César Sandino’s guerrillas were excluded), voters’ available choices were limited by dubious Yankee interpretations of Nicaraguan law. The exclusion of Emiliano Chamorro from the 1928 presidential campaign was, as Dodd shows, a major mistake on the part of the United States, one that had grievous and long-lasting consequences for Nicaraguan political development and relations with the United States. The U.S. government has been able to get its choices elected in Nicaragua but, as the author points out, has not always been able to manage them once they were in office. The conflict between the administrations of George Bush and Violeta de Chamorro was one more chapter in a continuing saga.
Professor Dodd’s well-conceived and insightful case study is solidly based on primary sources. He utilizes not only the pertinent records of the governments in Managua and Washington but also draws on his own interviews, dating from the 1960s, with key Nicaraguan figures of the 1927–33 period. He demonstrates a sure mastery of the subject matter, a comprehensive command of the sources, and a clear familiarity with recent scholarship in the area. This authoritative and succinct monograph is recommended for specialists in Latin American history and political science, and also for any U.S. policymakers who might still entertain notions of managing democracy in Central America—or anywhere else in the world.
