Women And The Nicaraguan Revolution

Those who survived the brutal dictatorship of the Somoza family have tended to portray the rise of the women’s movement and feminist activism as part of the overall story of the anti-Somoza resistance. But this depiction of heroic struggle obscures a much more complicated history. As Victoria González-Rivera reveals in this book, some Nicaraguan women expressed early interest in eliminating the tyranny of male domination, and this interest grew into full-fledged campaigns for female suffrage and access to education by the 1880s. By the 1920s a feminist movement had emerged among urban, middle-class women, and it lasted for two more decades until it was eclipsed in the 1950s by a nonfeminist movement of mainly Catholic, urban, middle-class and working-class women who supported the liberal, populist, patron-clientelistic regime of the Somozas in return for the right to vote and various economic, educational, and political opportunities. Counterintuitively, it was actually the Somozas who encouraged women's participation in the public sphere (as long as they remained loyal Somocistas). Their opponents, the Sandinistas and Conservatives, often appealed to women through their maternal identity. What emerges from this fine-grained analysis is a picture of a much more complex political landscape than that portrayed by the simplifying myths of current Nicaraguan historiography, and we can now see why and how the Somoza dictatorship did not endure by dint of fear and compulsion alone.

The revolution in Nicaragua was unique in that a large percentage of the combatants were women. The Role of Female Combatants in the Nicaraguan Revolution and Counter Revolutionary War is a study of these women and those who fought in the Contra counter revolution on the Atlantic Coast. This book is a qualitative study based on 85 interviews with female ex-combatants in the revolution and counter revolution from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s, as well as field observations in Nicaragua and the autonomous regions of the Atlantic Coast. It explores the reasons why women fought, the sacrifices they made, their treatment by male combatants, and their insights into the impact of the revolution and counter-revolution on today’s Nicaragua. The analytical approach draws from political psychology, social identity dynamics such as nationalism and indigenous identities, and the role of liberation theology in the willingness of the female revolutionaries to risk their lives. Researchers and students of Gender Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Political History will find this an illuminating account of the Nicaraguan Revolution and counter revolution, which until now has been rarely shared.

The dramatic and significant changes that affected Nicaraguan women in the late 1980s are examined in this comprehensive presentation of the realities of women's lives in conditions of war and economic crisis. Written just prior to the February 1990 elections, this book covers things relevant to women in any Third World political climate and throws a new light on some aspects of issues that engage Western women's own concerns. Included are chapters dealing with women's movements; single mothers; reproduction and abortion; machismo and male violence; the "double day"; and survival in the face of the US economic blockade. The role of education, of the church and unions in women's liberation; women workers, rural and urban; women's involvement in defense; and debates around pornography are also explored. The central role of women in the peace and autonomy plans for the Atlantic Coast region is the focus of one chapter. Personal testimonies, case studies, interviews in quotations from Nicaragua newspapers, graphically highlight the viewpoints of the women themselves. How far the political changes consequent upon the 1990 election results will affect the Nicaraguan people remains to be seen, but that the women, who have demonstrated so much courage and initiative, will continue to work for the realization of their aspirations for a better life seems in no doubt.--Back cover.

Sandino's Daughters, Margaret Randall's conversations with Nicaraguan women in their struggle against the dictator Somoza in 1979, brought the lives of a group of extraordinary female revolutionaries to the American and world public. The book remains a landmark. Now, a decade later, Randall returns to interview many of the same women and others. In Sandino's Daughters Revisited, they speak of their lives during and since the Sandinista administration, the ways in which the revolution made them strong--and also held them back. Ironically, the 1990 defeat of the Sandinistas at the ballot box has given Sandinista women greater freedom to express their feelings and ideas.

This volume is a valuable re-assessment of the Nicaraguan Revolution by a Marxist historian of Latin American political history. It shows that the FSLN’s lack of commitment to democracy was a key factor in the way that the revolution went awry.

The dramatic and significant changes that affected Nicaraguan women in the late 1980s are examined in this comprehensive presentation of the realities of women's lives in conditions of war and economic crisis. Written just prior to the February 1990 elections, this book covers things relevant to women in any Third World political climate and throws a new light on some aspects of issues that engage Western women's own concerns. Included are chapters dealing with women's movements; single mothers; reproduction and abortion; machismo and male violence; the "double day"; and survival in the face of the US economic blockade. The role of education, of the church and unions in women's liberation; women workers, rural and urban; women's involvement in defense; and debates around pornography are also explored. The central role of women in the peace and autonomy plans for the Atlantic Coast region is the focus of one chapter. Personal testimonies, case studies, interviews in quotations from Nicaragua newspapers, graphically highlight the viewpoints of the women themselves. How far the political changes consequent upon the 1990 election results will affect the Nicaraguan people remains to be seen, but that the women, who have demonstrated so much courage and initiative, will continue to work for the realization of their aspirations for a better life seems in no doubt.--Back cover.

Randall interviewed these outspoken women from all walks of life: working-class Diana Espinoza, head bookkeeper of an employee-owned factory; Daisy Zamora, a vice minister of culture under the Sandinistas; and Vidaluz Meneses, daughter of a Somozan official, who ties her revolutionary ideals to her Catholicism. The voices of these women, along with nine others, lead us to recognize both the failed promises and continuing attraction of the Sandinista movement for women.