Stephanie Huezo. Review of Jarquín, Mateo. The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews

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Huezo on Jarquín, 'The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History'

Jarquín, Mateo.  The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2024. 336 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 9781469678498.

Reviewed by Stephanie Huezo (Fordham University)
Published on H-LatAm (November, 2024)
Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz (Johns Hopkins University)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=60842

The year 1979 brought intense change in Nicaragua and the broader Western Hemisphere. That year, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) successfully overthrew the US-backed Somoza family dictatorship, which had held power for more than four decades. This historic moment provided inspiration for revolutionaries throughout Central and Latin America generally but also generated concern and fear for the United States in the context of the global Cold War. What followed was a decade-long struggle to fulfill the revolution’s goals of socioeconomic and political change in the face of internal and external challenges. English-language scholarship on the rise and fall of the Sandinista Revolution has primarily been told from a US perspective. But the regional history of the revolution provides us with a more complete understanding of its successes and failures as well as its impact in the rest of Latin America.

Mateo Jarquín’s book, The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History, contributes to this regional perspective of one of the most well-known revolutions in twentieth-century Latin America. As the title suggests, Jarquín dives into the international history of the Sandinistas, emphasizing the role of Nicaraguan and Latin America leaders in defining the Sandinistas’ political project. This is his major contribution. Moving beyond the framework of US intervention in Cold War Latin America, Jarquín highlights the role of other regional actors like Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela in dictating the Sandinistas’ revolutionary trajectory.

His identity as the son of Sandinista diplomats and his personal experiences of learning about the revolution through an international lens while living outside of Nicaragua shaped his approach in focusing on the “thinking and decision making of national elites” (p. xvi) as well as Latin American diplomats. In order to center the narrative on these historical actors, Jarquín relies on archival sources from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and the United States as well as interviews with top Sandinista Front officials. While these documents provide evidence of the Sandinistas’ military, political, and diplomatic actions, the interviews with Sandinistas and Latin American political figures add another layer of complexity to understanding the changing views of the revolution. This impressive multisited research and access to interviewees due to his proximity to national elites through family connections allows Jarquín to argue that the “revolution was shaped [and reshaped] by how it fit within a global picture” (p. 6).

Taking a top-down approach to the Sandinista Revolution, Jarquín organizes his book in four parts that closely tie in with the three phases of the Sandinista period: “insurrection and state breakdown, consolidation in power, and civil war” (p. 6). Part 1, “Origins, 1933-1979,” provides the historical context that led to the success of Nicaragua’s revolution. As a left-wing guerrilla organization, in the 1970s the FSLN was weak and divided. The three tendencies (or factions) that made up the FSLN—the Guerra Popular Prolongada (GPP) tendency, the Tendencia Proletaria (TP), and the Tendencia Insurreccional (or Tercerista tendency)—had varied goals and approaches to taking power. And while Jarquín explains these differences, he privileges the Terceristas’ work as it reveals best the diplomatic choices made that led to Somoza’s defeat. After creating a revolutionary junta and outlining their revolutionary agenda, Tercerista leaders sought foreign support, first by Venezuela’s president Carlos Andrés Pérez. Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Panama would later offer support. Jarquín demonstrates that despite these leaders’ differing interests and political stance (Pérez was an anticommunist), each wanted Somoza out. They provided weapons and military expertise. Additionally, Jarquín argues that these regional leaders also isolated Somoza diplomatically while legitimizing the Sandinistas’ armed approach. In effect, Jarquín asserts that external support and political connections that helped Sandinista leaders take power.

After a detailed demonstration of the pivotal role of Nicaragua’s Latin American neighbors in Somoza’s defeat, the book moves on to discuss the challenges Sandinistas faced as they consolidated their power. The broad-based revolutionary coalition that helped bring Sandinistas to power now presented obstacles in implementing a governing style. As Sandinista leaders gained state control and carried out redistributive economic policies, the moderate and conservative members of their anti-Somoza coalition became alienated. And while internal divisions arose in the country, the FSLN government strove to create friendly diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. But their relationship with Cuba and its support to the Salvadoran guerrilla organization, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), alarmed the United States, especially under the Reagan administration, which viewed Central America as a hotbed for communism. What followed is well known among scholars of Latin America and US intervention—the Contra War—but before getting there, Jarquín reveals how countries like Venezuela and Mexico used Nicaragua’s revolution and early years of consolidating power to minimize US intervention in Latin America. Once again, the role of Latin American leaders during the Sandinista Revolution complicates the history of the Cold War in the region. Nicaragua’s revolutionary outcome and future was not based solely on US foreign policies but also on local and regional interests and desires.

It is this complexity that also animated the Contra War. In the third section, “War, 1982-1985,” Jarquín argues that the Contra War was both a war of foreign aggression and at the same time a civil war, moving away from narratives that claim one stance over the other. While the US government did heavily arm and financially support the contras to undermine FSLN power and supposedly contain communism, there were social projects like land reform that also served to push sectors of society to support the US-backed contras. Heavily relying on written personal accounts and interviews with Sandinista commanders, Jarquín demonstrates why peasant farmers joined the contras despite being a central population for the new government’s revolutionary projects. While he includes a 1991 oral history report of peasant contra commanders, this section leaves us wanting more. How exactly did rural Nicaraguans experience land reform? Did others outside of the “middle peasantry” (p. 130) support the contras as well? Of course, as in any monograph, the author must make choices, and Jarquín chose to stay within the lens of diplomacy. But the inclusion of peasant voices in a discussion about land reform would have provided a more nuanced view of this project and its connection to contra support.

The last chapter of part 3 as well as the last section of the book (part 4, “Peace, 1986-1989”) highlights once again the importance of diplomacy in the Sandinista Revolution. While the Sandinistas were fighting the US-backed contras, Latin American governments were carefully watching the potential consequences of this war. Latin American leaders worried about the United States’ view of Nicaragua as a proxy war battleground of the Cold War. If Nicaragua continued with its revolution, the United States could justify a military invasion that would affect the whole region. To quell any possible US invasion in Latin America, leaders from Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia came up with a diplomatic solution, the Contadora process, to bring an end to the war in Nicaragua. While Contadora did not lead to any substantial change when it was created in 1983, it did eventually lead to the Central American peace process ushered in by Costa Rican president Óscar Arias. Just like the Contadora, these peace negotiations limited US foreign policy in the country. Even with these changes, the Sandinistas would not continue in power; in 1990, Nicaragua democratically elected Violetta Chamorro (former member of the Sandinista junta) to become president, delivering a heavy blow to revolutionary projects in the Latin American region. Yet, some Sandinista leaders conclude that the legacy of the revolution wasn’t lasting socioeconomic changes but democracy. Considering the aftermath of the revolution and Nicaragua’s current political situation, one must consider what definition of democracy these leaders used before accepting this legacy.

For its analysis on the diplomatic history of the Sandinista Revolution, this book is a must-read for those interested in Nicaragua, Central America, Latin American relations, and even US intervention in Latin America. Ultimately, this book calls us to see the Sandinista revolution not just as a Nicaraguan event nor a Central American one but a truly regional historical moment that defined the end of Cold War Latin America.

Citation: Stephanie Huezo. Review of Jarquín, Mateo. The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. November, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60842

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.