This collection represents 309 books, collected by Walter J. Petry from 1983-1992. They have been written or edited by historians, political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, theologians, journalists and travelers on various aspects of the Revolution.
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Sandinista : Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan revolution
Matilde Zimmermann
Sandinista is the first English-language biography of Carlos Fonseca Amador, the legendary leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (the FSLN) and the most important and influential figure of the post–1959 revolutionary generation in Latin America. Fonseca, killed in battle in 1976, was the undisputed intellectual and strategic leader of the FSLN. In a groundbreaking and fast-paced narrative that draws on a rich archive of previously unpublished Fonseca writings, Matilde Zimmermann sheds new light on central themes in his ideology as well as on internal disputes, ideological shifts, and personalities of the FSLN.
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The death of Ben Linder : the story of a North American in Sandinista Nicaragua
Joan Kruckewitt
In 1987, the death of Ben Linder, the first American killed by President Reagan's "freedom fighters" -- the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras -- ignited a firestorm of protest and debate. In this landmark first biography of Linder, investigative journalist Joan Kruckewitt tells his story.
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Biografía y otros documentos originales relativos a Miguel Larreynaga
Manuel Pineda de Mont and Carlos Tünnermann Bernheim.
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Adiós muchachos : una memoria de la Revolución sandinista
Sergio Ramírez
Twenty years after the hopeful triumph of the Nicaraguan revolution and almost ten years after its defeat, one of the central figures, Sergio Ramrez, narrates the story of the Sandinista decade, sometimes successful and at times tragic and imperfect.
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Easy blood
Mike Layton
In Easy Blood Mike Layton describes his travels through Central America and the different political upheaval going on during the 1980s and 1990s. Layton focuses mainly on Nicaragua and El Salvador because the United States financed the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the right-wing party in El Salvador.
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Contradiction and conflict : the popular church in Nicaragua
Debra Sabia
Sabia examines the complex interaction of religious belief and political inspiration among internal divisions of Nicaragua's popular church. Contradiction and Conflict explores the rich history, ideology, and development of the popular church in Nicaragua. From careful assessments within the context of Nicaragua's revolutionary period (1970s-1990), this book explains the historical conditions that worked to unify members of the Christian faith and the subsequent factors that fragmented the Christian community into at least four identifiable groups with religious and political differences, contradictions, and conflicts. Debra Sabia describes and analyzes the rise, growth, and fragmentation of the popular church and assesses the effect of the Christian base communities on religion, politics, and the nation's social revolutionary experiment.
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A twilight struggle : American power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990
Robert Kagan
A prominent architect of Latin American policy in the Reagan Administration presents a detailed history and analysis of the Nicaraguan Revolution and the American response to it, including the arming of the Contra rebels.
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The murals of revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1992
David Kunzle
In the years following Nicaragua's 1979 Sandinista Revolution, more than three hundred murals were created by Nicaraguan and international artist brigades. David Kunzle was profoundly moved by the aesthetic and political power of these murals, and when he saw that they were being destroyed after the Sandinistas were voted out in 1990, he resolved to document them. This visually exciting, emotionally compelling book is the result of his efforts.
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The Sandinista legacy : lessons from a political economy in transition
Ilja A. Luciak
When the Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua, they promised to establish social and economic democracy. As Ilja Luciak tells us in this study of regime transitions, their legacy is mixed, though they deserve credit for institutionalizing electoral democracy. While they improved the life of the peasantry and achieved an impressive record in the areas of education and health, by 1990 their progress had been halted and in many instances reversed. Luciak maintains that the Sandinistas' loss at the polls in 1990 was a blessing in disguise: after eleven years in power, the revolutionary movement needed time to rejuvenate itself and return to its popular roots. He examines the evolution of Sandinista democracy and analyzes Sandinista policies toward two rural grassroots movements, the Association of Rural Workers and the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers, showing the inevitable tension that results when a vanguard party attempts to strengthen participatory democracy.
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The fall and rise of the market in Sandinista Nicaragua
Phil Ryan
This study looks at the difficulties that arise when a particular vision of socialism is applied in a country such as Nicaragua. It is argued by the author, Phil Ryan, that the Sandinistas pursued a project of social transformation inspired by a Marxism much more orthodox than has been previously recognized. Ryan maintains that tensions between the socio-political Marxist agenda and other factors such as war and external debt led to the severe economic crisis of the mid-1980s. The four broad areas focused on in the text are the organization and role of the state sector, price policy, relations with the bourgeoisie, and agrarian reform. The interactions between these areas, and between the technical and political contradictions they reveal, demonstrate the complexity of choices faced by the Sandinista leadership.
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Powderburns : cocaine, Contras & the drug war
Celerino Castillo III and Dave Harmon
The truth about the remaining dark secret of the Iran-Contra scandal- the United States government's collaboration with drug smugglers. Powderburns is the story of Celerino Castillo III who spent 12 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration. During that time, he built cases against organized drug rings in Manhattan, raided jungle cocaine labs in the Amazon, conducted aerial eradication operations in Guatemala, and assembled and trained anti-narcotics units in several countries. The eerie climax of Agent Castillo's career with the DEA took place in El Salvador. One day, he recieved a cable from a fellow agent. He was told to investigate possible drug smuggling by Nicaraguan Contras operating from the ilpango air force base. Castillo quickly discovered that Contra pilots were, indeed, smuggling narcotics back into the United States - using the same pilots, planes, and hangars that the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, under the Direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North, used to maintain their covert supply operation to the Contras.
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Washington, Somoza, and the Sandinistas : state and regime in U.S. policy toward Nicaragua, 1969-1981
Morris H. Morley
This study of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter presidencies reveals the fundamental importance Washington placed on preserving state institutions in Latin America while adopting a much more flexible approach regarding support for elected regimes or dictatorial rulers. The Carter White House decision to dump a longstanding ally, Somoza, and support a regime change was triggered by the appearance of a mass-based social movement led by radical nationalist guerrillas posing a challenge to both the dictatorial regime and, more importantly, the state structure that underpinned it. This book is based on the extensive use of personal interviews and recently declassified U.S. government documents. Among its distinctive features is the emphasis on the pivotal role Washington played in contributing to the long-term survival of the Somoza dictatorship. It is the first detailed study, based on original research, of Nixon and Ford policy toward Nicaragua, and it contains the most detailed discussion of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua during the early period of Sandinista rule.
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Rise and fall of the Nicaraguan revolution.
Pathfinder Press
Lessons for revolutionists everywhere from the workers and farmers government that came to power in Nicaragua in July 1979. Based on ten years of socialist journalism from inside Nicaragua, this issue of New International magazine recounts the achievements and worldwide impact of the Nicaraguan revolution. It traces the political retreat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front leadership that led to the downfall of the revolution in the closing years of the 1980s.
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Sandino's daughters revisited : feminism in Nicaragua
Margaret Randall
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. Randall interviewed these outspoken women from all walks of life: working-class Diana Espinoza, head bookkeeper of a 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. This is a moving account of the relationship between feminism and revolution as it is expressed in the daily lives of Nicaraguan women.
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Capitalists and revolution in Nicaragua : opposition and accommodation, 1979-1993
Rose J. Spalding
By tracing the complex relationship between the Sandinista government and the Nicaraguan business elite, this book examines the shifting mix of alliances and oppositions that shaped the Sandinista revolution. Rose Spalding takes issue with models of the business sector that assume a high degree of class cohesion. Drawing on carefully structured interviews with ninety-one private-sector leaders at the end of the Sandinista era, Spalding documents responses to the Sandinista government that range from extreme ideological hostility to enthusiastic support. To explain this variation, Spalding explores such factors as the prerevolutionary social and economic characteristics of the elite, their organizational networks, and their experiences with expropriation and government subsidies. She is one of the first scholars to look at the ways in which these groups have evolved in the postrevolutionary era under the Chamorro government. In addition, Spalding provides a valuable analysis of four other cases of attempted structural change, thereby drawing broader, cross-national comparisons and developing theoretical insights about the political character of the 'bourgeoisie.'
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Teoría y práctica revolucionarias en Nicaragua : curso breve de marxismo
Equipo Interdisciplinario Latino americano.
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The civil war in Nicaragua : inside the Sandinistas
Roger Miranda and William Ratliff
During the 1980s, many Americans dealt with Nicaragua's Sandinistas and the Contra war according to their own political agendas. Alone among the dozens of books on these events, The Civil War in Nicaragua gives an inside view of how and why policies were made by the nine Sandinistas and what impact those polices had on Nicaragua, the United States, and the region.
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At the fall of Somoza
Lawrence Pezzullo and Ralph Pezzullo
This powerful narrative describing the fall of Nicaragua's dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle is told from the unique perspective of the top U.S. official on the front lines of diplomatic activity during the final weeks of the Somoza regime. Lawrence Pezzullo was dispatched to Nicaragua in June 1979, at the climax of a brutal war that finally ended a forty-year dynasty. To negotiate Somoza's abdication from power, Ambassador Pezzullo had to battle both a stubborn despot and the jitters in Washington. Working in tandem with a colleague who was meeting with the Sandinista junta in exile in Panama and Costa Rica, Pezzullo helped to negotiate their installation as Nicaragua's legitimate government. At the Fall of Somoza draws on many Spanish-language sources otherwise not known in this country. It is also an eyewitness account of events, evoking the vivid colors, sounds, and smells of a volatile Managua, torn by violence and fear. Added to the ambassador's story are narratives by many other participants: Sandinistas, National Guardsmen, the archbishop of Managua, city people and peasants, even those who chronicled their experience in poetry.
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The regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956
Knut Walter
To many observers, Anastasio Somoza, who ruled Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956, personified the worst features of a dictator. While not dismissing these characteristics, Knut Walter argues that the regime was in fact more notable for its achievement of stability, economic growth, and state building than for its personalistic and dictatorial features. Using a wide range of sources in Nicaraguan archives, Walter focuses on institutional and structural developments to explain how Somoza gained and consolidated power.
