Margaret Randall’s interviews with 12 women in this volume add to the literature analyzing the FSLN’s rule in Nicaragua and its defeat in the 1990 election. The women range from those who fought with the guerrillas or organized and ran different branches of the administration during the period of Sandinista rule to those who found themselves removed from the power center. Most come from middle-class or wealthy families. Some of their parents supported Somoza. The majority attended Catholic schools, and a few completed college in the United States. Several are poets who worked with Randall when she first visited Nicaragua.
The women speak of the problems that arose as they attempted to build a revolutionary government and adjust to the changes in the power structure after the exit of Somoza. One headed the nation’s police; another took charge of its medical program; a Miskito physician turned legislator and factory worker helped to reconstruct her company when the employees left the country shortly after Somoza fell. Following the FSLN’s loss at the polls, the company owners returned, and the workers had to hire a lawyer in an effort to retain the plant. This story is typical of the problems of those who benefited from the revolution.
Randall, a lesbian, feminist, and revolutionary, obviously chose women who, at least in part, supported her ideas. She asked questions aimed mainly at eliciting their reaction to women’s difficulty in retaining positions of power and influence. The women interviewed emerge as fascinating individuals as they describe their personal backgrounds and their different experiences during and after the Sandinistas’ tenure in power. The women comment on allies and antagonists among the party members; both Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario, receive criticism.
The interplay between personalities, male and female, during the long days of trying to organize and promote the new administration while dealing with a war financed by their powerful northern neighbor may give only a limited view of the period, but it raises important questions and issues. All these women experienced shock and surprise when the people of Nicaragua voted for UNO and doña Violeta Chamorro. Many blamed the FSLN’s defeat on the male leaders of the party, who strayed too far from the lives of average people. They reasoned that Nicaraguans (especially the women) voted above all for peace, and for the hope that an administration supported by the United States would end the male draft and the deaths of so many young men.
Randall illustrates many of the problems of women in politics in Latin America. Her book could be effective in a women’s history course. It also reinforces the studies of anthropologist Florence Babb and others, showing that although the war did end, the standard of living for the average working-class family deteriorated with the return of capitalism and the strong influence of the United States.
It would have been helpful to have an appendix defining the many initialed agencies and an alphabetical list of people mentioned, with a sentence or two defining their roles (although Randall does this when first mentioning an important individual). An occasional inclusion of poems in their original Spanish, which Randall has translated into English, would also have been interesting.
