The Civil War In Nicaragua

"The conflict in Nicaragua is one of the leastunderstood struggles of the Cold War. . . . This account clarifies the central issue and dispelsmany lingering myths." --Zbigniew Breinski,National Security Advisor during the Carter administration

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading "I will not abandon my resistance until the . . . pirate invaders . . . assassins of weak peoples . . are expelled from my country. ... I will make them realize that their crimes will cost them dear. . . . There will be bloody combat. . . Nicaragua shall not be the patrimony of Imperialists. I will fight for my cause as long as my heart beats. ... If through destiny I should lose, there are in my arsenal five tons of dynamite which I will explode with my own hand. The noise of the cataclysm will be heard 250 miles. All who hear will be witness that Sandino is dead. Let it not be permitted that the hands of traitors or invaders shall profane his remains." - Augusto César Sandino For much of the 20th century, Latin American governments in large part lived under a system of military junta governments. The mixture of indigenous peoples, foreign settlers and European colonial superpowers produced cultural and social imbalances into which military forces intervened as a stabilizing influence. The proactive personalities of military heads and the rigid structures of such a hierarchy guaranteed the "strong man" commanding officer an abiding presence in the form of executive dictator. Such leaders often bore the more collaborative title of "President," but the reality was, in most cases, identical. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor was often vast, and a disappearance of the middle class fed a frequent urge for revolution, reenergizing the military's intent to stop it. With no stabilizing center, the ideologies most prevalent in such conflicts alternated between a federal model of industrial and social nationalization and an equally conservative structure under privatized ownership and autocratic rule drawn from the head of a junta government. Whichever belief system was in play for the major industrial nations of Central and South America, a constant bombardment of foreign influence pushed the people of states such as Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and others toward overthrow, in one direction or the other. To the left came Stalinist influences from the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba, while the German World War II model and an anti-communist mindset from the United States worked behind the scenes to upset any movement toward extreme liberalism. The tacit acceptance of these right-wing dictators across South America was part of an overarching effort known as Operation Condor, consisting mostly of CIA operations that are as infamous and controversial as ever, with a lasting legacy that affects current events such as reactions to the ongoing unrest in Venezuela. Few examples remain as memorable as the conflict in Nicaragua, where the Frente Sandinista de Liberation Nacional (FSLN), a left-wing revolutionary party, seized power in the small Central American nation of Nicaragua in July 1979, toppling four decades of dictatorial rule perpetrated by the Somoza dynasty. A decade later, on February 25, 1990, in an election organized by the FSLN, one that the party was fully confident it would win, the FSLN suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of a coalition generally thought to be associated with the American-funded Contra movement. This was a sobering moment for the Latin American leftist revolution, and, as many were apt to see it, a triumph for American policy in the region. What happened in that critical decade in Nicaragua, what was the Sandinista movement that led Nicaragua into a leftist revolution, and why did the Americans vehemently oppose the Sandinistas with force? The Sandinistas: The Controversial History and Legacy of Socialist Resistance, Civil War, and Politics in Nicaragua looks at the turbulent 20th century in Nicaragua, and the various roles the Sandinistas have played. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about the Sandinistas like never before.

Recounts how the American government financed and orchestrated the ten-year civil war between the Sandinistas and the Contras

Latin America has among the world's highest homicide rates. The author analyzes the illicit organizations, complicit and weak states, and territorial competition that generate today's violent homicidal ecologies.

Written by Luis Moreno (known as "Mike Lima" during this decade long conflict) the author examines in his book Principio Y Fin de la Guerra de los Contras (The Contras War: From Beginning to End) the armed struggle and the strategy that may have cost the lives of more than 6,000 Contra fighters and a total of some 15,000 anti-Sandinista supporters and family members in and out of Nicaragua. The armed conflict took place between the Nicaraguan Resistance (the Contras) and the Sandinista security forces (over 100,000) who helped govern Nicaragua in the 1980's. Moreno provides an inside perspective of the manner in which the Contras developed as a small force of less than 1000 in the early 1980's to over 20,000 that would demobilize after the Violeta Chamorro election of early 1990. A significant study by Moreno that should be read along with those books by Stephen Kinzer--Blood of Brothers, Christopher Dickey--With the Contras, Glenn Garvin--Everybody Had His Gringo, Sam Dillion--Commandos, Timothy Brown--The Real Contra War, and other publications that seek to explain the Nicaraguan Resistance and the extent it was seen as a failure or a success in the politics of the Nicaraguan nation and United States foreign policy. What makes this study important and distinct is that Moreno provides a detailed insight into the creation of the Resistance by folding together two major forces: the Milpas (anti-Sandinista farmers and peasants), former Sandinista insurgents and remnants of Somoza's army and EBBI--survivors of the 1979 fight against the Sandinista insurgents. As both a field commander inside Nicaragua and a member of the Strategic Command after tragically losing part of his right hand and arm in a training accident Moreno is able to talk about Resistance personalities, thinking within the Resistance, and the decisions that the Resistance faced. In addition, Moreno, the Resistance "Operations Director" in the Strategic Command discusses the strategy, plans, and institutional relations of the Resistance--especially with the Hondurans and the Americans. Why read this book? The detailed picture of the Nicaraguan rural areas of conflict; how an insurgent movement is organized; the importance of the rural population support to the Resistance. Caesar D. Sereseres Profesor de Ciencia Politica y Estudios Internacionales Facultad de Ciencias Sociales Universidad de California, Irvine"

An account of U.S. policy from the Sandinista revolution through the Iran-contra scandal and beyond. Sklar shows how the White House sabotaged peace negoatiations and sustained the deadly contra war despite public opposition, with secret U.S. special forces and an auxiliary arm of dictators, drug smugglers and death squad godfathers, and illuminates an alternative policy rooted in law and democracy.

Robert J. Sierakowski's Sandinistas: A Moral History offers a bold new perspective on the liberation movement that brought the Sandinista National Liberation Front to power in Nicaragua in 1979, overthrowing the longest-running dictatorship in Latin America. Unique sources, from trial transcripts to archival collections and oral histories, offer a new vantage point beyond geopolitics and ideologies to understand the central role that was played by everyday Nicaraguans. Focusing on the country’s rural north, Sierakowski explores how a diverse coalition of labor unionists, student activists, housewives, and peasants inspired by Catholic liberation theology came to successfully challenge the legitimacy of the Somoza dictatorship and its entrenched networks of power. Mobilizing communities against the ubiquitous cantinas, gambling halls, and brothels, grassroots organizers exposed the regime’s complicity in promoting social ills, disorder, and quotidian violence while helping to construct radical new visions of moral uplift and social renewal. Sierakowski similarly recasts our understanding of the Nicaraguan National Guard, grounding his study of the Somozas’ army in the social and cultural world of the ordinary soldiers who enlisted and fought in defense of the dictatorship. As the military responded to growing opposition with heightened state terror and human rights violations, repression culminated in widespread civilian massacres, stories that are unearthed for the first time in this work. These atrocities further exposed the regime’s moral breakdown in the eyes of the public, pushing thousands of previously unaligned Nicaraguans into the ranks of the guerrilla insurgency by the late 1970s. Sierakowski’s innovative reinterpretation of the Sandinista Revolution will be of interest to students, scholars, and activists concerned with Latin American social movements, the Cold War, and human rights.