The Ends of Modernization: Development, Ideology, and Catastrophe in Nicaragua After the Alliance for Progress
THE ENDS OF MODERNIZATION: DEVELOPMENT, IDEOLOGY, AND CATASTROPHE IN NICARAGUA AFTER THE ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by David Johnson Lee December 2015 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Richard Immerman, Advisory Chair, History, Temple University Dr. Harvey Neptune, History, Temple University Dr. David Farber, History, University of Kansas Dr. Michel Gobat, History, University of Iowa © Copyright 2015 by David Johnson Lee All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the cultural and intellectual history of Nicaragua from the heyday of modernization as ideology and practice in the 1960s, when U.S. planners and politicians identified Nicaragua as a test case for the Alliance for Progress, to the triumph of neoliberalism in the 1990s. The modernization paradigm, implemented through collusion between authoritarian dictatorship and the U.S. development apparatus, began to fragment following the earthquake that destroyed Managua in 1972. The ideas that constituted this paradigm were repurposed by actors in Nicaragua and used to challenge the dominant power of the U.S. government, and also to structure political competition within Nicaragua. Using interviews, new archival material, memoirs, novels, plays, and newspapers in the United States and Nicaragua, I trace the way political actors used ideas about development to make and unmake alliances within Nicaragua, bringing about first the Sandinista Revolution, then the Contra War, and finally the neoliberal government that took power in 1990. I argue that because of both a changing international intellectual climate and resistance on the part of the people of Nicaragua, new ideas about development emphasizing human rights, pluralism, entrepreneurialism, indigenous rights, and sustainable development came to supplant modernization theory.
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