Thomas W Walker - Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua

Books on revolution often leave much to be desired. The subject evokes strong emotions. As a result, cardboard portrayals of the revolutionaries as either flawless saints or bloodthirsty, conspiratorial devils flow off the presses almost as soon as an old regime is overthrown. And because important vested interestsinternational as well as localare inevitably affected by revolution, deliberate disinformation or black propaganda (to use the CIAs term for it) becomes routine. Covertly funded propaganda books, articles, and op-ed pieces appear in the guise of scholarly or journalistic products. In addition, revolutions are so media marketable that they inevitably stimulate an outpouring of quick, often sensationalist, ahistorical, and ethnocentric journalistic efforts. Normally anecdotal in character, the latter rarely give the type of verifiable documentation essential for a scholarly understanding of the subject.

Even the well-trained scholar honestly interested in producing an objective overview of the revolutionary experience is faced with an almost impossible task. Because true revolution implies a rapidly evolving multifaceted process of social, cultural, economic, and political change, it is difficult for any one individual to keep abreast of everything that is going on.

Those are some of the factors that motivated me on four occasions to organize multiauthor efforts at documenting the Nicaraguan revolution. I reasoned that a team of scholars, each focusing on a discrete, manageable subject within her or his area of expertise, ought to be able to produce the type of comprehensive, yet accurate and well-documented, volume that is so often lacking in the study of revolutions.

I have had a scholarly interest in Nicaragua and the subject of revolution since long before the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. I spent the summer of 1967 in that country doing the research for my M.A. thesis, The Christian Democratic Movement in Nicaragua, which was published under the same title in 1970. Because few U.S. scholars prior to 1979 had ever paid much attention to this seemingly obscure and unimportant ministate, my little monograph (which came out also in Spanish in Venezuela) made me, by default, one of only a handful of U.S. specialists on Nicaragua at the time.

When I accepted my current teaching position in 1972, I inherited a course on revolution in Latin America, which I have taught ever since. I have found that the give-and-take with bright students that one experiences in teaching any course has a marvelous way of honing ones analytical perceptions of, and piquing ones interest in, the subject of that course. This certainly was the case with my course on revolution in Latin America.

Though I was already at work on a concise introduction to Nicaraguapublished as Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino (Westview, 1981; third ed., 1991)the idea of organizing a team effort to document in greater detail the revolutionary reality of that suddenly very important ministate took shape almost immediately after the Sandinista victory. In fact, if I remember correctly, it occurred to me as I was hitchhiking into Nicaragua on the first Sunday after the Sandinista victory of July 19, 1979. Over time it resulted in two books on the revolution itself Nicaragua in Revolution (1982) and Nicaragua: The First Five Years (1985)and one on the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution, entitled Reagan Versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua (Westview, 1987). The purpose of this fourth volume is to tie the two strands together and provide a reasonably comprehensive contemporary history of both the revolution and the counterrevolution during the nearly eleven years in which the Sandinistas were in power.

Thomas W. Walker

THOMAS W. WALKER

From the late 1970s through 1990 the tiny republic of Nicaragua was the focal point of inordinate attention by the U.S. government and, hence, the U.S. media. That a poor, underdeveloped country of only a few million people could command such attention from the worlds leading superpower may seemand probably wasabsurd. But what was happening in Nicaragua was unusual. A traditional pro-American dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was overthrown on July 19, 1979, by a mass-based insurrectionary movement. That movement then proceeded to implement pragmatic but sweeping changes in social, economic, political, and foreign policy. As perceived by conservative policymakers in Washington, those changes were a threat and a challenge to U.S. hegemony in Central America, our backyard. In less than two years, the United States would be engaged in an undeclared surrogate war against the upstart state. The U.S. obsession with Nicaragua would ultimately subside only in 1990 whenafter the destruction of the Nicaraguan economy and the death of nearly 1 percent of the populacea desperate Nicaraguan electorate would vote to end the revolutionary experiment and replace it with a regime endorsed and sponsored by the United States.

In order to understand what happened in Nicaragua in that period, it is necessary first to examine the history of revolution and counterrevolution in Latin America. In addition, the Nicaraguan experience of the 1970s and 1980s must be set in its historical and national context.