Internationalizing Revolution: The Nicaraguan Revolution and the World, 1977–1990

This special issue traces its roots to a workshop on the international, transnational and global dimensions of the Nicaraguan Revolution held at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in May 2019. Convened by Dr. Eline van Ommen and Dr. Tanya Harmer, the editors of this special issue, the workshop was generously funded by the LSE Department of International History and the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre. Most of the articles that follow were first presented at this workshop, where a lively exchange took place on the revolution's history and present-day legacies.

Connecting Central America to the Southern Cone: The Chilean and Argentine Response to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979

The history of the Cold War in Latin America in the 1970s is commonly split into two episodes: the establishment of anticommunist dictatorships and the ensuing repression across the Southern Cone in the early and middle decade, and the Nicaraguan Revolution and the eruption of violent conflicts across Central America at its close. By exploring the Chilean and Argentine response to the Nicaraguan Revolution, this article brings these two episodes together, demonstrating how they were understood to belong to one and the same ideological conflict. In doing so, it highlights the importance of the revolution in the Chilean and Argentine perception of the Cold War and explores how the Sandinista triumph directly shaped Southern Cone ideas about US power and the communist threat, also prompting reflection on their own ‘models’ for anticommunist governance. Both regimes responded by increasing their support for anticommunist forces in Guatemala and El Salvador, often conducting this aid through a wider transnational and clandestine network. This article contributes to new understandings of the nature of Latin American anticommunism in this period, challenges traditional understandings of external involvement in Central America, and demonstrates the need to understand events in Latin America in this period in their full regional context.

Mexicans in Nicaragua: Revolution and propaganda in Sandinista documentaries of the University Center for Cinematographic Studies (CUEC-UNAM)

Film production played a decisive role in the Nicaraguan Revolution. During the preparation of the 1979 Ofensiva Final (Final Offensive), the Sandinistas clearly understood the need to produce audio-visual documents that would serve as testimony and political propaganda of this historic moment. To do so, they sought the support of internationalist filmmakers among whom a group of Mexicans were most prominent. This article focuses on materials on the Sandinista Revolution preserved at the film archive of the University Center for Cinematographic Studies (CUEC) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). It analyses them in relation to the role of left-wing film internationalism in political documentary in Latin America and builds an ‘other’ history of a Mexican film institution that in the 1970s was uniquely politicized as a result of the 1968 Mexican student movement and, later, the influence of Latin American exiles. As a particular case study, this article rescues one of the key figures of Mexican internationalism during the Sandinista Revolution, Adrián Carrasco Zanini Molina, and the role of Mexican filmmakers in the creation of institutions dedicated to film production in Nicaragua such as the Nicaraguan Film Institute (INCINE).

Isolating Nicaragua’s Somoza

This chapter analyzes Sandinista transnational activism in Western Europe in the immediate lead-up to the Nicaraguan Revolution. The work incorporates a host of emerging trends in Cold War history and in international history more broadly. Engaging with nonstate actors, the chapter taps into the transnational turn while melding the transnational with the international. The chapter describes the Sandinista impulse to take their political struggle to the global stage, particularly as the tercera faction successfully engaged with European social democrats to build a strong and lasting base of support across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the chapter reveals explicit link between the nonstate activism of the Sandinistas and the Western European governments themselves.

Elective affinities between Sandinismo (as socialist idea) and liberation theology in the Nicaraguan Revolution

The history of the Nicaraguan Revolution has received considerable analytical attention. Typically, the successful overthrow of the Somoza regime in the late 1970s is associated with the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, a Marxist/socialist inspired vanguard group. While the role Christians played in the revolution is often acknowledged as a significant one, in part because many Sandinista cadres were Christian revolutionaries, little attention has been paid to the degree to which Sandinismo, as a unique perspective on socialism, shares elective affinities with liberation theology, a prophetic expression of Christianity. This manuscript sets out to explore the relationship between liberation theology and Sandinismo-as-socialism. It starts by considering the perspective of Christian revolutionaries on this relationship. It then identifies the electives affinities between the aforementioned cultural frameworks, and it evaluates the Nicaraguan Revolution in light of these elective affinities. The latter evaluation includes exploring the connection between Saint Paul and what it means to be a Sandinista revolutionary.