... by Duke University Press 1982 Since the July 1979 fall of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, numerous volumes have appeared in Spanish describing and analyzing the revolution and the victorious Erente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). The value of these works has varied greatly, some...

..., 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...

... that, according to post-election surveys, only 43.9 percent of the workers and employees voted the FSLN ticket. In the lead chapter Paul Oquist, who oversaw much of the Sandinistas’ pre-election polling, finds that the most important factors in the FSLN defeat were the U.S. aggression, the new international...

... directorate. Thus, the book provides interesting primary as well as secondary source material for the history of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). This latest edition contains no important new material, with the only noticeable changes from the original being the addition of several...

... of the Disappeared to the supporters of General Pinochet, even in the shanty towns of Chile. The political malleability and polysemic character of motherhood is amply evidenced in this study of post-1979 Nicaragua. Lorraine Bayard de Volo shows how the triumphant revolutionary party, the FSLN, seized upon images...

... of the party’s inner workings. Gilbert is at his best when he is sorting out the Sandinistas’ contradictory messages. The formal outlines of Sandinista organization and theory, he correctly points out, suggest that the FSLN is a standard Leninist organization that has dominated Nicaraguan society. However...

...; for example, AMNLAE, the CDSs, UNAG, and the unions. If, early on, the FSLN apparently made a serious effort to organize a national political system that would encourage direct democracy through these organizations, by the middle of the decade, Vanden and Prevost argue, the party and the state were retreating...

... the political agendas of Somocistas and Sandinistas alike. Almost immediately, the populace of León mourned the students as martyrs to a repressive regime, and subsequently both the Somoza dictatorship and the revolutionary government of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacíon Nacional (FSLN) sought to use...

... of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). Sandino’s “theosophy of liberation,” Hodges believes, reflected the general’s spiritual orientation, but it also was a contrivance designed for ideological combat with the Catholic church—which Sandino regarded as an arm of the capitalist-imperialist...

... with a moment of optimism about the power and potential of Third World liberation. But Nicaragua s revolution struggled to keep its global purchase in the late 1980s, amid a decline in East-West tension and the Soviet Union s distancing from these movements (p. 5). Van Ommen s analysis of the FSLN leadership s...

... over the direct democracy as structured by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) through the Council of State in the early 1980s. Although blaming United States pressure for much of this antipopular trend, he also faults corrupt authoritarian FSLN caudillos as well as Chamoro’s...

... the theory and practice of FSLN-sponsored rural labor unions and agricultural producer associations, cooperative peasant stores, and the women’s movement in the countryside. Wright views the Sandinista regime more broadly, but the picture he paints is basically the same as Luciak’s; one of complex...

... that ultimately led to their relinquishing power. Chapters on the mass organizations (Luis Hector Serra), the opposition parties (Eric Weaver and William Barnes), the FSLN as a ruling party (Gary Prevost), the role of women in the revolution (Patricia Chuchryk), and the role of both Catholic and Protestant...

... are openly critical of the Sandinista government or supportive of Reagan administration policy. The book’s claim of having transcended an ideological perspective is, thus, disingenuous. There are two essays by Jiri and Virginia Valenta and Arturo Cruz, Sr. on the Leninist character of the FSLN...

... for not institutionalizing the revolutionary process in Nicaragua, but he used elements of Sandino’s thought to formulate the FSLN program. FSLN theorist Ricardo Morales Avilés, who considered a Marxist political approach essential to sandinismo , but a Marxist world view expendable, adapted Antonio Gramsci’s theory...

... 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...

...). The importance of the peasants and the urban laboring masses in the revolutionary process is noted, but Vilas doubts that there could have been a successful revolution without the vanguard role played by the FSLN. Indeed, “The FSLN knew how to unite under their leadership all the forces exploited and oppressed...

... and sharply cut back the state sector. During these challenging years, a commitment to gender equity became a sort of litmus test of leftist political practice in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the Farbundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary...

... she concur with FSLN supporters that the movement is merely a continuation of the Sandinista support for political mobilization. Instead, she argues that current trends in social mobilization are related to both historical and current developments. In chapter 3, Babb outlines how neoliberalism...

... of Sandino’s thought and its quirks is probably better than Ramírez’s. Also included are a short bibliography, a Sergio Ramírez essay with an excellent capsule history of Nicaragua and a concise biography of Sandino, and an excerpt from Viva Sandino by Carlos Fonseca, founder of the FSLN. A last short piece...