DOCSLIB.ORG

Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of Democracy

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of Democracy EXCERPTED FROM Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of Democracy David Close Copyright © 2016 ISBNs: 978-1-62637-435-5 hc 1800 30th Street, Suite 314 Boulder, CO 80301 USA telephone 303.444.6684 fax 303.444.0824 This excerpt was downloaded from the Lynne Rienner Publishers website www.rienner.com Contents Acknowledgments vii 1 Nicaragua’s Political Transitions 1 2 Thinking About Regimes 13 3 Nicaragua in 1979 41 4 Radical Sandinismo and the Vanguard Regime 63 5 Electoral Democracy, 1984 –2000 87 6 Power-Sharing Duopoly, 2000 –2011 111 7 Dominant Power and Personalistic Rule, 2011 –Present 135 8 Putting Nicaragua in Perspective 163 List of Acronyms 193 Bibliography 195 Index 211 About the Book 224 v 1 Nicaragua’s Political Transitions President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua has been a central figure in his country’s government since 1979, when he was one of the key leaders of the Sandinista Revolution that overthrew the four-decade- long dictatorship of the Somoza family. From 1979 to 1984 he was a mem - ber of the nine-person Dirección Nacional (DN, National Directorate), the ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, Sandinista National Liberation Front) and the Junta de Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional (JGRN, Governing Council of National Reconstruction), the rev - olutionary government’s executive body. From 1984 to 1990, he was Nicaragua’s president. On losing the presidential election in 1990, Ortega became an opposi - tion leader as head of the FSLN, then the country’s second largest party. For sixteen years, however, he remained an essential part of the govern - ment, trading the often much-needed support of his FSLN for benefits that kept him and the party close to the apex of power. In 2006, Daniel, as he is universally known in Nicaragua, made his political comeback, winning the presidency for a second time. In 2015 he remains the president, having secured reelection in 2011. Should he opt to run again in 2016, Ortega will win his third straight term. Besides his being popular (his approval ratings generally run over 60 percent), the FSLN controls the electoral system— everything from issuing the ID cards needed to vote and deciding if a party or candidate can run, to counting the votes and declaring the winner—and Daniel’s family and his personal friends own the vast majority of Nicaragua’s mass media. The power to rule is concentrated in his hands. This book is about how that came about. In his three-plus decades in Nicaraguan politics, Daniel Ortega has seen four political transitions that brought Nicaragua a new regime. These occurred in 1979, 1984, 2000, and 2011. The first two left Nicaragua more 1 2 Nicaragua pluralistic and democratic; the last two moved away from democracy. These transitions did not just bring a new government, but rather installed radically different political systems built around a new logic, using a dis - tinct set of institutions, employing restructured processes, and bringing in a fresh set of influentials. In fact, when considering political transitions, it is most often changes from one regime to another, say a dictatorship to a democracy, that interest us. An ordinary change of government (i.e., alter - ing the personnel who control “the set of institutions that makes decisions and oversees their implementation on behalf of the state for a particular period of time” 1) can produce dramatic changes if the new governing party has a program starkly different from its predecessor, but a new regime will almost certainly be a source of significant reforms. In Ortega’s case, the first transition occurred in 1979 and followed the Sandinistas’ seizure of power. The first Sandinista regime was a revolution - ary vanguard system, one that reserved the right to rule to the group that led the revolution. Nicaragua’s version of this regime differed from the Soviet and Cuban models by retaining a level of political pluralism that was suffi - cient to accept that other anti-Somoza forces could also legitimately oppose the FSLN, provided they worked through official state institutions. Within three years the Sandinista leadership began moving toward an electoral democratic regime. This was largely the result of pressure from three sources. One was their domestic loyal opposition, those who accepted the need to preserve the revolutionary regime but opposed at least various policies of the FSLN government. Then there were Western European social democratic parties, who provided diplomatic support while pressur - ing the Sandinistas to move more decisively toward electoral democracy. Finally, there were the counterrevolutionary insurgents, who forced the administration to fight a counterinsurgent war and divert its economic and social reforms. Nicaragua’s first acceptably honest elections since 1932 took place in 1984. They saw Daniel Ortega elected president, the FSLN take nearly two-thirds of the legislative vote, and six other parties win seats and form the parliamentary opposition. That this regime worked as it should, and not necessarily as the FSLN hoped, was demonstrated when the next elections, held in 1990, saw Ortega and the revolutionaries swept from office. The system, however, lasted until 2000, when a power-sharing duopoly was constructed by Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC, Constitu - tionalist Liberal Party), who was then president of the republic. Under the new regime the president became less accountable, normally nonpartisan state institutions (courts, the electoral authority, and the national controller) came under the control of the duopolists, and a number of legal obstacles were erected to make it exceedingly difficult for other parties to challenge the power-sharing system. Nicaragua’s Political Transitions 3 The latest stop on Nicaragua’s itinerary of regime transformations began in 2006 when Daniel Ortega staged a comeback after sixteen years out of office, winning a second term as president. This regime, best described as a dominant power system based on personal rule, 2 has seen electoral manipulation, the reappearance of violence as a political tool, and ever more effectively unaccountable political power vested in the hands of the president and his family. That this should occur in Nicaragua today may surprise some. After all, when the FSLN came to power in 1979 many saw the Sandinistas as the good guys. However, time has not been kind to democracy in Nicaragua. Since 2000 the FSLN, along with numerous collaborators, has participated actively in moving the political system toward semidemocratic/semiautocratic. From 1979 to 1990, Nicaragua and the FSLN were big news and a hot topic for academic research. But when the FSLN lost power in the 1990 elections, Nicaragua’s second since those same Sandinistas brought the country electoral democracy in 1984, interest began to fade. This was understandable, as other stories were bigger, timelier, and more exciting. Yet Nicaragua did not stand still. Rather it continued changing, experiment - ing with new modes of governing and government, restructuring its politi - cal system twice more. In the process, a great deal of what once caused people to support the Sandinistas has changed, and perhaps the greatest changes are those that affected the FSLN and its leader Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of Democracy examines the politi - cal changes the country has experienced since the Sandinista revolution of 1979. The first twenty-one years of that period saw the quality of democ - racy improve in the country. After that, Nicaragua’s democracy began exhibiting more undemocratic characteristics. The country is still too plu - ralistic politically to be deemed autocratic, but it has strayed from the radi - cal democratic path it laid out in 1970, as well as from the orthodox repre - sentative democratic course it embarked on in 1984. The Book’s Background This book traces its lineage back to 2004 and a book titled Undoing Democracy: The Politics of Electoral Caudillismo, coedited by me and Kalowatie Deonandan. That book was about what Nicaraguans still call “the pact”: the deal between the then-president of Nicaragua, Arnoldo Alemán of the PLC, and the Sandinista ex-president (1984–1990), Daniel Ortega, that gave rise to the power-sharing duopolistic regime analyzed in Chapter 6. We called the book Undoing Democracy because until the new regime that was initiated in 2000, Nicaragua was becoming steadily more democratic. It had moved beyond the redistributive focus of a surprisingly 4 Nicaragua pluralistic radical, revolutionary democracy to embrace electoral democ - racy in 1984. Eleven years later it took an important step toward constitu - tional democracy with a broad package of constitutional amendments, whose principal effect was to reduce presidential powers and make the chief executive more accountable. Those reforms unfortunately proved too much for the men heading the parties that got 89 percent of the presidential vote in 1996 (51 percent for the PLC, 38 percent for the FSLN). Freeing themselves and the successors of those restrictions changed Nicaragua’s political trajectory away from democracy. It has continued on that path to this day. In this book, I extend the examination of the country’s political transi - tions from 1979 to 2015, which encompassed four regime changes. Again, these were not just changes of governments, as they went far beyond sim - ply reordering personnel and policies. They were full-scale makeovers of the political system: the entire
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Inside the Volcano – a Curriculum on Nicaragua
    Inside the Volcano: A Curriculum on Nicaragua Edited by William Bigelow and Jeff Edmundson Network of Educators on the Americas (NECA) P.O. Box 73038 Washington, DC 20056-3038 Network of Educators' Committees on Central America Washington, D.C. About the readings: We are grateful to the Institute for Food and Development Policy for permission to reproduce Imagine You Were A Nicaraguan (from Nicaragua: What Difference Could A Revolution Make?), Nicaragua: Give Change a Chance, The Plastic Kid (from Now We Can Speak) and Gringos and Contras on Our Land (from Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo). Excerpt from Nicaragua: The People Speak © 1985 Bergin and Garvey printed with permission from Greenwood Press. About the artwork: The pictures by Rini Templeton (pages 12, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 38, 57 60, 61, 66, 74, 75, 86, 87 90, 91. 101, 112, and the cover) are used with the cooperation of the Rini Templeton Memorial Fund and can be found in the beautiful, bilingual collection of over 500 illustrations entitled El Arte de Rini Templeton: Donde hay vida y lucha - The Art of Rini Templeton: Where there is life and struggle, 1989, WA: The Real Comet Press. See Appendix A for ordering information. The drawing on page 15 is by Nicaraguan artist Donald Navas. The Nicaraguan Cultural Alliance has the original pen and ink and others for sale. See Appendix A for address. The illustrations on pages 31, 32 and 52 are by Nicaraguan artist Leonicio Saenz. An artist of considerable acclaim in Central America, Saenz is a frequent contributor to Nicar&uac, a monthly publication of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Spotlight on Nicaragua
    February 16, 2021 CLOSING OF POLITICAL AND CIVIC SPACES: SPOTLIGHT ON NICARAGUA TABLE OF CONTENTS February 16 Agenda ................................................................................................................ 2 Part I: Nicaraguan Spring: The Rise & Repression of a Protest Movement ............. 5 State-Sponsored Violence & the Closing of Political Space Part II: How Did We Get Here? Background on the Current Political Landscape ... 7 State-Sponsored Violence & the Closing of Political Space El Pacto: Leftist on Paper but Not in Practice Questionable Reelections Reforms Favor Authoritarianism An Economy in Ruins Impacts of COVID-19 and Hurricanes Eta & Iota The 2021 Election Part III: Recent Laws Limiting Civic Space .......................................................................... 15 Law of Regulation of Foreign Agents Special Law of Cybercrimes Law of Life Sentence Law of Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, Self-determination for the Peace Penal Code Reform A Diverse and Divided Opposition Civic Alliance for Justice & Democracy White & Blue Unity Great National Coalition Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights U.S. Policy and the Biden Administration’s Challenges Speaker Biographies ................................................................................................................ 24 1 February 16, 2021 AGENDA AGENDA Welcome & Introduction Introduction to Topics for Meeting Understanding the Current Context of Nicaragua • Current Political
    [Show full text]
  • Download the Full Report in English
    HUMAN RIGHTS Critics Under Attack Harassment and Detention of Opponents, Rights Defenders, WATCH and Journalists ahead of Elections in Nicaragua Critics Under Attack Harassment and Detention of Opponents, Rights Defenders, and Journalists Ahead of Elections in Nicaragua Copyright © 2021 Human Rights Watch All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-62313-915-5 Cover design by Rafael Jimenez Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people worldwide. We scrupulously investigate abuses, expose the facts widely, and pressure those with power to respect rights and secure justice. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. Human Rights Watch is an international organization with staff in more than 40 countries, and offices in Amsterdam, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Goma, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Nairobi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Tunis, Washington DC, and Zurich. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.hrw.org JUNE 2021 ISBN: 978-1-62313-915-5 Critics Under Attack Harassment and Detention of Opponents, Rights Defenders and Journalists Ahead of Elections in Nicaragua Summary ........................................................................................................................... 1 Recommendations .............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Chávez, Daniel. Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia. Development and Culture in the Modern State. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015
    Chávez, Daniel. Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia. Development and Culture in the Modern State. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015. Print. 363 pp. ________________________________________________ JOSÉ MARÍA MANTERO XAVIER UNIVERSITY The recent work Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia. Development and Culture in the Modern State by Daniel Chávez offers a timely study of recent Nicaraguan history and the distinct cultural and political manifestations of national utopian projects. As ambitious, grounded, and well-documented as the study is, the work would have benefited from a more Central and Latin American contextualization of utopia, the central theme and theory of the analysis. Essays and poems by Simón Bolívar, José Martí, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Enrique Rodó, José Carlos Mariátegui, and works such as La raza cósmica (1925) by José Vasconcelos and the poem “Salutación del optimista” from Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905) by Rubén Darío, for example, call for a defense of Latin American identity and for the construction of an America where no one nation was subjugated by another and the influence of the United States in national and international affairs was offset by the strength of a continental consciousness. In all, Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia. Development and Culture in the Modern State is a valuable contribution to the field of Nicaraguan and Latin American studies that combines the study of lesser-known documents (the inauguration speeches of the Anastasio Somoza García and Violeta Chamorro, for example)
    [Show full text]
  • A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism? Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista Revolution
    A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism? Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista Revolution edited by Hilary Francis INSTITUTE OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism? Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista Revolution edited by Hilary Francis Institute of Latin American Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2020 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. More information regarding CC licenses is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/. This book is also available online at http://humanities-digital-library.org. ISBN: 978-1-908857-57-6 (paperback edition) 978-1-908857-78-1 (.epub edition) 978-1-908857-79-8 (.mobi edition) 978-1-908857-77-4 (PDF edition) DOI: 10.14296/220.9781908857774 (PDF edition) Institute of Latin American Studies School of Advanced Study University of London Senate House London WC1E 7HU Telephone: 020 7862 8844 Email: [email protected] Web: http://ilas.sas.ac.uk Typesetting by Thomas Bohm, User Design, Illustration and Typesetting. Cover image © Franklin Villavicencio. Contents List of illustrations v Notes on contributors vii Introduction: exceptionalism and agency in Nicaragua’s revolutionary heritage 1 Hilary Francis 1. ‘We didn’t want to be like Somoza’s Guardia’: policing, crime and Nicaraguan exceptionalism 21 Robert Sierakowski 2. ‘The revolution was so many things’ 45 Fernanda Soto 3. Nicaraguan food policy: between self-sufficiency and dependency 61 Christiane Berth 4. On Sandinista ideas of past connections to the Soviet Union and Nicaraguan exceptionalism 87 Johannes Wilm 5.
    [Show full text]
  • Solidarity, Activism and Travel from North America to Nicaragua
    Building a movement – Solidarity, activism and travel from North America to Nicaragua by Daniel McRoberts A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Environmental Science in Geography - Tourism Policy and Planning Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2012 © Daniel McRoberts 2012 Author’s Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract Many new forms of tourism have emerged over the past two decades claiming to provide an alternative, responsible approach to international travel. Unlike ecotourism and volunteer tourism, travel centered on solidarity activism has not been thoroughly explored in the academic literature. Through narrative interviews conducted with organizational staff, former travelers, and members of a rural host community, this study profiles three organizations that organize solidarity travel experiences in Nicaragua. Qualitative analysis of the interviews and secondary materials including blog posts and videos reveals that staff, travelers and community members feel that they benefit from the exchanges that take place during solidarity travel. However, the study participants also articulated a number of concerns and issues with the practice of solidarity travel, including the limited nature of ongoing contact between travelers, coordinating organizations, and the communities that are visited while in Nicaragua. The experience of solidarity travel provided participants with a greater understanding of the connections between Nicaragua and North America, and a critical self-awareness for young travelers in particular, as many were experiencing the Global South for the first time.
    [Show full text]
  • William Walker and the Seeds of Progressive Imperialism: the War in Nicaragua and the Message of Regeneration, 1855-1860
    The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Spring 5-2017 William Walker and the Seeds of Progressive Imperialism: The War in Nicaragua and the Message of Regeneration, 1855-1860 John J. Mangipano University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Latin American History Commons, Medical Humanities Commons, Military History Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Mangipano, John J., "William Walker and the Seeds of Progressive Imperialism: The War in Nicaragua and the Message of Regeneration, 1855-1860" (2017). Dissertations. 1375. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1375 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WILLIAM WALKER AND THE SEEDS OF PROGRESSIVE IMPERIALISM: THE WAR IN NICARAGUA AND THE MESSAGE OF REGENERATION, 1855-1860 by John J. Mangipano A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School and the Department of History at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: ________________________________________________ Dr. Deanne Nuwer, Committee Chair Associate Professor, History ________________________________________________ Dr. Heather Stur, Committee Member Associate Professor, History ________________________________________________ Dr. Matthew Casey, Committee Member Assistant Professor, History ________________________________________________ Dr. Max Grivno, Committee Member Associate Professor, History ________________________________________________ Dr. Douglas Bristol, Jr., Committee Member Associate Professor, History ________________________________________________ Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • An Illness Called Managua
    Working Papers Series No.37 - Cities and Fragile States - AN ILLNESS CALLED MANAGUA Dennis Rodgers Crisis States Research Centre May 2008 Crisis States Working Papers Series No.2 ISSN 1749-1797 (print) ISSN 1749-1800 (online) Copyright © D. Rodgers, 2008 Crisis States Research Centre An illness called Managua Dennis Rodgers1 Crisis States Research Centre Abstract: This paper focuses on Managua’s urban development in order to explore the underlying dynamics of post-revolutionary Nicaraguan society, using the city’s evolution as a window onto the evolution of the country’s political economy, but also highlighting its role as a major contributing factor shaping the specific transformations that this particular political economy has undergone. It begins by providing a view from barrio Luis Fanor Hernández, a low-income neighbourhood in the city which graphically encapsulates the general movement of Nicaraguan society from a sense of revolution-fuelled collective purpose in the 1970s and 1980s to more individualised and segregated socio-spatial practices in the 1990s and 2000s. The paper then moves on to consider Managua’s development more broadly in order to seek further insights into the underlying nature of this particular trajectory. The changing morphology of the city, its determinants, and the key actors involved, all point to salient elements to be taken into account in order to attain a more nuanced comprehension of the logic of post-revolutionary Nicaragua, which is then explored in a third section. What emerges starkly from this threefold panorama is that while the particular urban development of Managua can be seen as a reflection of the persistent oligarchic structure of Nicaraguan society, it is also a major pathological factor – an ‘illness’, one might say – that contributes to the perpetuation of this oligarchic configuration, albeit in a renewed form.
    [Show full text]
  • The Marines and the Guardia Nacional De Nicaragua 1927-1932
    THE MARINES AND THE GUARDIA NACIONAL DE NICARAGUA 1927-1932. Brent Leigh Gravatt Copyright by Brent Leigh Gravatt 1973 TriS MARIN2S ANiJ THE IUARJIA NACIONAL de NICARAGUA 1927-1932 by Brent Lei?h Gravatt // Department of Political Science Duke University Author* s Note The ooinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily correspond to those of The departments of the Navy or jefense. TAiiLE OF CONTENTS • INTRODUCTION . 1 Chapter I. TIPITAPA 5 Rationale for Intervention Prelude to fipitapa The Settlement II. SANJINO'S REVOLT 37 III. THE NASCENT GUARJIA k? IV. MISSION IN FLUX 62 V. MILITARY OPERATIONS 79 VI. TRAINING 102 VII. TnE TURNOVER 123 VIII. CONCLUSIONS 137 APPENDIX 156 BlbLIOGRAPHY 163 LIST OK TABLES Table 1. Trade Statistics 11 2. GN and USMC Forces in the Northern and Central Areas 63 3. Patrol Contacts 64 4. 2nd Brigade Strength, 1929 71 5. GW Force Distribution 75 6. 2nd Brigade Force Jistribution, 1929 86 7. Monthly Patrol Contacts for 1929 87 8. Contacts by Area, 1927-1930 93 9. GN Force Jistribution, 1931-1932 96 10. Contacts by Area, 1931-1932 99 11. Casualties, 1931-1932 100 12. Enlistments, 1927-1932 109 13. Desertions, 1927-1932 110 14. GN Patrol Contacts, 1927-1932 120 15» Nicaraguan Senior Line Officers . 134 Tables in Appendix 1. Estimated Sandinista Force Levels . 157 2. Field Companies of the Guard i a nacional . 158 3. Total Casualties, 1927-1932 159 LIST O?1 ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. Organizational Chart, January, 1928 61 Figures in Appendix 1. Map of Nicaragua lbl 2. Political/Military jepartments of Nicaragua .
    [Show full text]
  • Lifestyle Projects of US Expatriates in Nicaragua
    Offshoring The American Dream: Lifestyle Projects of U.S. Expatriates in Nicaragua Aaron M. Trumbo April 5, 2018 Anthropology Departmental Undergraduate Thesis University of Colorado Boulder Thesis Advisor: L. Kaifa Roland, Anthropology Committee Members: Joe Bryan, Geography Carla Jones, Anthropology Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 5 Nicaragua Map ............................................................................................................... 6 Introductory Chapter Introduction .................................................................................................................... 7 Methods.......................................................................................................................... 11 Literature Review ........................................................................................................... 13 Thesis Structure ............................................................................................................. 21 Chapter 1: Nicaragua & the USA: Imperialism and the Rhetoric of Friendship Intro ................................................................................................................................ 24 Crossroad of Capitalism: U.S. Interventions in the 19th Century .................................
    [Show full text]
  • Conflict Beyond Borders: the International Dimensions Of
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, History, Department of Department of History Spring 5-2016 Conflict Beyond Borders: The nI ternational Dimensions of Nicaragua's Violent Twentieth- Century, 1909-1990 Andrew William Wilson University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss Part of the Diplomatic History Commons, Latin American History Commons, Other History Commons, and the United States History Commons Wilson, Andrew William, "Conflict Beyond Borders: The nI ternational Dimensions of Nicaragua's Violent Twentieth-Century, 1909-1990" (2016). Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History. 87. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/87 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. CONFLICT BEYOND BORDERS: THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF NICARAGUA’S VIOLENT TWENTIETH-CENTURY, 1909-1990 by Andrew W. Wilson A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: History Under the Supervision of Professor Thomas Borstelmann Lincoln, Nebraska May, 2016 CONFLICT BEYOND BORDERS: THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF NICARAGUA’S VIOLENT TWENTIETH CENTURY, 1909-1990 Andrew William Wilson, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2016 Advisor: Thomas Borstelmann The purpose of this research is to identify the importance of Nicaraguan political contests in the global twentieth century. The goal is to demonstrate that, despite its relatively small size, Nicaragua significantly influenced the course of modern history.
    [Show full text]
  • Revolutionary Nicaragua: the Evolution of Governmental Institutions
    Thomas Walker, ed., Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua (Westview 1991), Chapter 2, 15-47 The Evolution of Governmental Institutions By Andrew Reding Following two years of popular insurrection, the revolutionary triumph of July 19, 1979, was absolute. Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled first to Miami and then to Paraguay, where he was later assassinated by Argentine extremists. His praetorian National Guard disintegrated. While officers were rescued by a U.S. government DC-8 disguised with Red Cross markings, soldiers fled for the borders.1 Thousands were captured and imprisoned by a population outraged by the slaughter of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens. Many of the government institutions that did not collapse outright were so thoroughly discredited by their collaboration with the dictatorship that they were abolished after the triumph. Such was the case with local government, the courts, and the congress, all of which had been little more than sinecures for the dictator’s family, friends, and supporters.2 So strong was the popular revulsion that even the buildings in which these institutions had been housed—most notably the National Palace— had to be converted to other uses. Only the portions of the legal codes that did not conflict with the new revolutionary decrees were allowed to stand, pending preparation of new laws. Most government institutions had to be created anew, beginning with those essential to restoring order: a provisional executive authority, a new army and police force, and new courts. These initially constituted the aptly named Government of National Reconstruction. By spring 1980 the revolutionary government was able to install a rudimentary legislative body, the Council of State, which by the following year had begun the complex task of translating the revolution’s commitment to political pluralism into a Law of Political Parties.
    [Show full text]