An Analysis of the Nicaraguan Sociopolitical Crisis of April 18th (original) (raw)
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How was the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua able to resist the Reagan Administration’s coercive efforts to rollback its revolution? Héctor Perla challenges conventional understandings of this conflict by tracing the process through which Nicaraguans, both at home and in the diaspora, defeated U.S. aggression in a highly unequal confrontation. He argues that beyond traditional diplomatic, military, and domestic state policies, a crucial element of the FSLN’s defensive strategy was the mobilization of a transnational social movement to build public opposition to Reagan’s policy within the United States, thus preventing further escalation of the conflict. Using a contentious politics approach the author reveals how the extant scholarly assumptions of international relations theory have obscured some of the most consequential dynamics of the case. This is a fascinating study illustrating how supposedly powerless actors were able to constrain the policies of the most powerful nation on earth.
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Contra Solidarity: Revolution and Counterrevolution in the United States and Nicaragua
Cold War History
This article explains how the Contra war was shaped by interaction between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries both before and after Nicaragua's 1979 revolution. In successfully carrying out the overthrow of the Somoza government, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) built a multilayered revolutionary coalition out of the fractured Nicaraguan politics created by the Cold War developmental state. In response to the FSLN's successful solidarity politics, the U.S. government from the beginning of the revolution through the Contra war in the 1980s applied a diverse set of tactics that drew inspiration from the successes of Nicaragua's revolutionary practice in order to undermine the revolution. This adaptive response helped radicalise Nicaragua's revolution, widened support for the Contra war despite adverse U.S. and global public opinion, and made possible the unraveling of the Iran-Contra Affair.
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