6 A Brief History of Nicaragua

Pre-Columbian Era

The evidence is convincing. By 1492 Indian activity throughout the Americas had modified forest extent and composition, created an expanded grasslands, and rearranged microrelief via countless artificial earthworks. Agricultural fields were common, as were houses and towns and roads and trails.^[1]

According to the archaeological record, Nicaragua has been inhabited since 12,000 BCE. In pre-Columbian times, Nicaragua was home to many Indigenous groups that lived on the Pacific coast and Caribbean coast, many of whom had migrated from different parts of North and South America to Central America. By the late 1400s CE, several different Indigenous peoples related to the Aztec and the Maya lived in the country.

Before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, present-day Nicaragua was well-established as an agrarian society: the soil—enriched by the presence of Nicaragua’s many volcanoes—supported a variety of crops, such as corn, peppers, cacao, and beans. Arable land was shared among the people that lived there. These communities came together to work the land, and to trade and distribute food in their marketplaces. At the time of the Spanish conquest in the early sixteenth century, Nicaragua was inhabited by five hundred thousand to one million Indigenous people, who occupied different parts of the country, including the Caribbean coast. On the Pacific coast, communities dedicated themselves to agricultural production, and there were a number of towns. On the Caribbean coast, there was less agricultural expansion, and coastal communities occupied temporary settlements based on the seasons.

Colonization and Spanish Rule

With the exception of a short period in the eighteenth century, the Indian population has declined continuously since the sixteenth century, with the greatest losses being sustained during the first few decades of Spanish rule.^[2]

At the turn of the sixteenth century during his third exploration of the Americas, Christopher Columbus landed on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. It wasn’t until 1522 that the Spanish began an exploration of the country in earnest, led by Gil González de Ávila; in the subsequent year, a force of Spanish conquistadors and soldiers arrived, dividing Nicaragua’s fertile land into estates on the Pacific lowlands and highlands.^[3] The conquistadors’ focus was gold, and once they began the process of colonization in the sixteenth century, they forced many Indigenous Nicaraguans to shift from agricultural cultivation to gold mining. By the seventeenth century, much of Nicaragua’s rural land was being used for cattle farming, exporting goods like beef and hides; aside from this, the colonial economy was supported by the cultivation of several cash crops, particularly cacao and indigo.^[4]

The Spanish, under the leadership of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, founded the cities of León and Granada in 1524, which remain two of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas. These two cities alternated serving as the capital of Nicaragua until 1852 when Managua—situated in between the two other cities—was officially declared the permanent capital. A series of battles between several Spanish conquistadores who wanted recognition for claiming Nicaragua’s territory followed five years after the founding of Granada and León. This became known as “The War of the Captains,” and concluded when some were executed; one victor was Pedro Arias Dávila, who previously had control over the Panamanian territory but gave that up to move his base to León. In 1538, during the establishment of viceroyalties throughout Mexico, Central and South America, the Viceroyalty of New Spain was created, including México and all of Central America, less Panama. There were various grabs at power and control over the country’s main cities of Granada and León throughout the following centuries.

The British were active on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua from the early nineteenth century as pirates and colonizers. This had a profound effect on the identity of the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast, and as a result many coastal inhabitants identify more with the British (as they speak English, for example) than with the Nicaraguan Pacific-side government.

Independence

Indeed, the Nicaraguan nation of today largely inherits its lack of equilibrium from the confusing days of the separation from Spain and Mexico . . . [including] [t]he latent rivalry of colonial days between the creole city of Granada and the provincial capital, Leon.^[5]

In 1821, Nicaragua was annexed into the First Mexican Empire, which lasted for two short years. It collapsed due to lack of support, and in 1823 Nicaragua became part of the United Provinces of Central America, a republic that included all present-day Central American countries except for Belize and Panama. In 1840, Nicaragua became its own, fully independent state. By this time, the multiple factions in the Nicaraguan body politic had splintered even further. Similar to the tensions between strong-arm conquistador leaders and their control over territory during colonial rule, the mestizo leaders of cities and towns often entered into conflict with each other. León and Granada mobilized armed groups to defend their economic interests, ideological positions, and political goals. “In Nicaragua, liberal León was primarily involved in exporting animal products such as leather and tallow and soon became the center for free-trading liberalism. The conservative elite in Granada, however, had made their fortunes under the old protectionist system and resisted change.”^[6] Practically stateless during its first forty years of statehood, Nicaragua degenerated into little more than constant civil war.^[7] The incapacity to establish intra-regional national identity and a functioning state mainly related to how “Nicaraguans became entangled in logics of mutual distrust and disbelief in themselves which reinforced time and again vicious cycles of internal divisiveness, civil war, and mutual annihilation.”^[8] In the scramble for political and economic control during this tumultuous period, conservative and liberal elites deployed various means and tactics to consolidate power across the country.

The cattle-farming and cash crop industries dominated Nicaragua’s economy until the introduction of coffee in the mid-nineteenth century. Many other Central American countries were experiencing a coffee boom by the 1870s, which was followed by the development of the coffee bourgeoisie who exercised political and economic control over their respective states.^[9] In Nicaragua, the area referred to as “the Uplands”—a southwest stretch of land from Managua-Granada to Jinotepe—became the primary base of commercial coffee plantations. These farms received support from the government via railroad construction and through legislation such as the Subsidy Laws of 1879 and 1889, which gave planters a subsidy of US$0.05 per tree planted.^[10] Through the end of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, Nicaragua’s economy rose and fell with the price of coffee.

Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast and Foreign Relations with England and the United States

Bluefields is the most important town in Central America as far as American interests are concerned.^[11]

English pirates first established a presence on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua in the seventeenth century. By the end of the century, piracy waned as “Britain and France finally joined with Spain to bring the lawless practice to an end,” but the British presence on the Caribbean coast continued, and they extended their control over the Mosquitia, as the Caribbean coast was called.^[12] The Caribbean coast of Nicaragua is the most geographically isolated part of the country as well as the poorest; yet, it has immense natural resources. The Caribbean coast is also home to at least six different ethnic groups including Afro-descendant Creoles, Afro-Indigenous Garifuna, and Miskitu, Mayagna, and Rama Indigenous groups along with mestizos from the Pacific coast. The Afro-descendant Creoles were the progeny of the British and Afro-descendant people who had made their way to Nicaragua. “Creole culture formed within the tiny British-dominated slave society of the Mosquito Coast in the eighteenth century, nearly 150 years before the emergence of the now-dominant Nicaraguan national culture.”^[13] Arriving to the Caribbean coast in the late nineteenth century from Honduras, the Garifuna are an Afro-Indigenous people originally from the Caribbean. The first Garifuna families came to the Pearl Lagoon basin, north of Bluefields, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The social hierarchy of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast has evolved over the centuries, and its unique history emerges through Miskitu Indigenous leadership and the power struggle for control between British and Spanish colonial interests.^[14] “Between 1687 and 1860 the Miskito Kingdom became a British ‘protectorate.’”^[15] The British relinquished their claims to this part of Nicaragua under the 1787 Treaty of Versailles.

The India rubber boom of the 1860s led to increased U.S. trading settlements on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua in Bluefields, Pearl Lagoon, and other coastal towns. By the 1870s, the United States had replaced Great Britain in social and economic influence along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. U.S. companies expanded their reach by beginning to cultivate and export bananas from Bluefields. By 1894, these companies controlled 90 percent of production and had capital investments in coconuts, bananas, rubber, gold mining, transportation, and commercial enterprise, totaling somewhere between at least $2 and $10 million.^[16] The Caribbean coastal city of Bluefields then became an economic hub and underwent a population boom.

The English exercised their control over the coast through the Miskitu kings until 1894 when the Nicaraguan state “reincorporated” the Mosquitia—or the Caribbean region of Nicaragua—under Nicaraguan President José Santos Zelaya as part of a negotiated settlement with the British. Afro-descendant Creoles initiated “the Overthrow,” during which Nicaragua’s military occupied Bluefields and the Creoles gathered 1,750 signatures to petition England for the resumption of the English Protectorate over Mosquitia, claiming: “We will be in the hands of a Government and people who have not the slightest interest, sympathy, or good feeling for the inhabitants of the Mosquito Reservation; and as our manners, customs, religion, laws, and language are not in accord, there can never be a unity.”^[17] Once the Nicaraguan army occupied Bluefields, riots occurred until the British military occupied the region. In July, armed Creoles began retaking the region, but the U.S. military quickly intervened to protect business interests.^[18] They continued to grow their ago-export businesses on the Caribbean coast to the extent that in 1905, a U.S. consular agent commented on the importance of Bluefields for U.S. interests, a statement that exemplifies the justifications used for continual U.S. occupation, investment, and intervention in Nicaragua.^[19]

The Continuation of Nicaragua’s Contested Relationship with the United States

Crucial to any understanding of the country . . . is Nicaragua’s long, troubled relationship with the United States, which began in earnest with the 1848 gold rush and simultaneous Manifest Destiny-driven U.S. westward expansion, dramatically accentuated by an entrepreneurial trans-isthmian canal plan.^[20]

Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States saw Central America as a potential answer to quicker maritime transportation by constructing a canal that cut through the isthmus. The question became whether to place this canal in Panama or Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan route came to the forefront of U.S. minds during the mid-century gold rush, when it was shown to be an ideal journey to the western coast of the United States compared to traveling around South America or through Panama. This rush westward caught the notice of British capitalists as well as the United States, and eventually a treaty “binding both nations to neutrality and joint control over any canal built in Central America or Panama” was drawn up in 1851.^[21] By 1852, the United States had a plan underway to build a canal through Nicaragua.

Meanwhile, conflicts between the Liberals and Conservatives continued in Nicaragua. There were vicious rivalries between the economic and political elites of León and Granada, who were liberal and conservative respectively, which at times degenerated into civil war during the mid-nineteenth century. William Walker, a U.S. mercenary, took advantage of these conflicts to insert himself in Nicaraguan politics. The Liberals were searching for support abroad and signed a military contract with Walker to gain U.S. support. On May 4, 1855, Walker joined the Liberal forces with 56 volunteers. Once Walker’s side won the war, he quickly usurped power and declared himself president of Nicaragua from 1855 to 1857.^[22]

Walker wanted to continue expanding his power throughout Central America, which concerned Nicaragua’s neighboring Central American countries and motivated them to band together against him. However, who truly challenged Walker’s presidency was Cornelius Vanderbilt, owner of the Accessory Transit, a company created during the 1850s gold rush that transported prospectors in the United States from the east coast to the west coast. When Walker declared himself president, he promptly revoked the Accessory Transit’s contract to use trade routes in Nicaragua and gave the rights to Vanderbilt’s competitor, Morgan and Garrison. Vanderbilt was outraged and demanded that the U.S. government intervene.^[23] However, the U.S. government ignored Vanderbilt’s request and Vanderbilt initiated his “independent foreign policy,” which consisted of hiring secret agents abroad and negotiating and conspiring with other nearby countries.^[24] Costa Rica’s President Juan Mora referred to Walker as “this revolutionary spirit that has been the greatest of our enemies.” In total, one thousand soldiers from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador joined together as the Allied forces in order to fight Walker’s one thousand five hundred troops in the National War. Since the U.S. government allowed Vanderbilt’s rival company, Morgan and Garrison, to send ships down to Nicaragua, Vanderbilt worried they carried supplies for Walker’s forces. Therefore, Vanderbilt provided the Allied army with arms and funds. The National War ended on May 1, 1857, with William Walker’s surrender and return to the United States. Walker returned to Central America in 1857, 1859, and 1860. However, in 1860 Walker was captured by the British Navy and was turned over to the local Honduran authorities, who executed him.^[25]

In 1893, Liberal José Santos Zelaya of Managua led a revolt and ultimately established himself as president of the country. Zelaya’s rule was characterized by reforms, such as better railroad and education systems. Still, he controlled the government in an authoritative fashion, regardless of his liberal stances on modernization.

Nicaraguans begin to fight back against U.S. policies and the Somoza Regime

Sandino declared that peace could be achieved only by the withdrawal of the marines, the ‘replacement’ of Díaz by any neutral candidate except Moncada, and the supervision of the coming presidential election by the representatives of the Latin-American republics.^[26]

Born in 1895, Augusto César Sandino would become the face of Nicaraguan resistance against U.S. imperialism and national dictatorship. In 1921, at the age of twenty-six, Sandino left Nicaragua and became sensitized to the effects of U.S. involvement in Central America and was inspired to work towards the total expulsion of U.S. forces. During Sandino’s time outside of Nicaragua, the country experienced a complicated election between Dr. Juan Bautista Sacasa and General Emiliano Chamorro; the latter lost, although a coup later put Chamorro in place, but the U.S. government (which backed Sacasa) stated they would not recognize Chamorro’s administration and entreated him to resign. Once Chamorro resigned, the U.S. State Department put Adolfo Díaz in place as provisional president in 1912, who soon after was forced to rely on the U.S. Marines to combat a Liberal-led revolt. This resulted in over a decade of U.S. military presence in Nicaragua, eventually ending in 1925. Immediately following their departure, a violent conflict broke out between the Liberals and Conservatives known as the Constitutionalist War and became a civil war that lasted until 1927. A battalion of U.S. soldiers re-entered the country during this time, helping to create a new Nicaraguan national army called the Guardia Nacional (National Guard), whose purpose was to oversee the 1927 November presidential election. Scholars recognize that the creation of the National Guard was a combination of U.S. support and cooperation by the Nicaraguan state with long-term effects for the country.^[27]

One of the most overlooked realities of modern Nicaraguan history is that in a little less than eight years—from the eruption of civil war in late 1926 to Sandino’s assassination in February 1934—the military arm of the national state, for the first time in history, successfully monopolized the country’s violence-making capacities in a single institution blanketing the whole of the national territory. This upward displacement of coercive power from local-regional caudillos to the central state . . . was made possible by two driving forces: the determination of the United States to see its state-building experiment succeed, and the process of war, mainly in the mountainous northern region of Las Segovias.^[28]

Sandino, who had rejected the agreement between Nicaragua and the United States and had been organizing a rebellion, did end up pushing the U.S. soldiers out of Nicaragua by waging guerrilla warfare in 1933. However, his life came to an end at the hands of General Anastasio Somoza García and the National Guard in 1934; following this, Anastasio Somoza García took over the government in 1936, starting the rule of the Somoza family dynasty that would continue until 1979.

The Somoza Dynasty

During a familial succession unique in Latin America, backed by the gangster-like National Guard (Guardia Nacional), essentially a private army, plus dependable financial and military support from the U.S. government, the [Somoza] triad dominated Nicaragua from 1936 to 1979, monopolizing nearly every industry and natural resource in the country.^[29]

The post-WWII world era saw Nicaragua’s economy diversifying in order to meet changing demands; cotton, for example, became the country’s second largest export, after coffee. In December 1960, the Central American Common Market (CACM) was formed, which helped stimulate Nicaragua’s economy with specialization in areas like processed foods and metal manufacturing. By 1970, however, the CACM collapsed in the wake of the 1969 Football War between El Salvador and Honduras, and by the end of the 1970s, Nicaragua had the highest level of foreign debt in Central America, due to major loans for reconstruction following natural disasters. The Somoza dynasty was firmly in control of Nicaragua’s economy during this period: they owned between 10 and 20 percent of the country’s arable land, and much of the food processing and transportation industries. The early twentieth century strong-arm leadership model deployed by Somoza can be described as “a masked and modernized form of caudillismo.”^[30] Anastasio Somoza García ruled until 1956, when he was assassinated and succeeded by his son, Luis Somoza Debayle. Luis Somoza’s dictatorship was much shorter compared to his father’s, lasting only until 1963 when he, too, died, thus passing the presidency to the final member of the Somoza dynasty, his younger brother Anastasio Somoza Debayle.

In 1961, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was founded, a revolutionary group who sought to liberate Nicaragua from dictatorship and foreign (U.S.) control. The FSLN organized against the Somoza dynasty, with much of their efforts going toward ousting Anastasio Somoza, using guerrilla warfare tactics inspired by their organization’s namesake, Augusto César Sandino.

In 1970, Anastasio Somoza controlled the National Guard and showed his lack of willingness to negotiate with the opposition by killing five Sandinista leaders.^[31] Somoza developed a close relationship with U.S. President Richard Nixon. Somoza also allegedly gave Nixon one million dollars to fund his re-election campaign, delivered to the White House in Somoza’s mother’s handbag.^[32] With other Central American countries remaining unaligned throughout the Cold War, Somoza’s loyalty was a relief to the White House.^[33] In 1972, Nixon ended the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty at the behest of Somoza, an agreement signed between the United States and Nicaragua in 1914 that granted the United States rights to build a canal in exchange for $3 million. As American investment increased in Nicaragua, Somoza and leaders within the National Guard grew wealthier.^[34] This gave the Somoza regime more control over the country, and they expanded land-holdings, taking land from two hundred thousand peasants for personal gain.^[35]

On December 23, 1972, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake shook Nicaragua; its epicenter was twenty miles northeast of the center of Managua. The earthquake caused widespread destruction and suffering for the population of Managua: 18,000 dead, 40,000 injured, 200,000 left homeless, and 70 percent of the city in ruins.^[36] The earthquake initiated a series of events which ultimately led to Somoza losing control over the country and the rise of the Sandinistas. President Nixon gave Nicaragua $32 million for reconstruction. However, the Nicaraguan Treasury received $16 million, and the other $16 million went to funding for the National Guard, which then profited from selling relief supplies.^[37] The lack of disaster relief caused civil unrest and Somoza’s grip began to loosen. The U.S. noticed and promptly sent six hundred soldiers from the canal zone in Panama in order to support Somoza.^[38]

In 1977, Nicaraguan Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo sent a letter to U.S. President Jimmy Carter condemning the National Guard.^[39] A small group on Capitol Hill wanted to end aid to Nicaragua; however, Nicaraguan lobbyists blocked the movement and delayed any action. Regardless, this could not prevent the suffering of Nicaraguans as the rebellion began to spread. In 1977, the United States sent $2.5 million dollars in arms for the National Guard. Somoza began bragging about his connections in Washington, D.C., which highlighted the discrepancy between Carter’s commitment to human rights while simultaneously allowing Somoza to remain in power and keep the FSLN at bay.^[40]

In 1979, Carter stated the United States would not support Somoza, to which Somoza replied, “Come and remove me physically.” Carter reacted by cutting off any form of military and economic aid. Since the United States was no longer providing aid, Israel and Argentina sold Somoza arms, which led to increased debt for Nicaragua. Somoza asked the International Monetary Fund for a loan and the United States acquiesced to Somoza’s request for a $66 million loan.^[41] The trajectory changed in 1979 when ABC newsman, Bill Stewart, was dragged out of his car and killed by Somoza’s National Guard. The footage was released in the United States and U.S. viewers were horrified by the violence inflicted on Stewart and Nicaragua in general. In 1979, a general strike was organized by the FSLN which successfully ousted Somoza and allowed them to take control of the Nicaraguan government on July 19, 1979. Somoza fled to Paraguay and was eventually assassinated by FSLN supporters in 1980.

Sandino Reincarnated: The Sandinista Revolution

[T]he [Sandinista] government has introduced policies that are aimed at increasing the supply of goods to the countryside, the wages paid to rural workers, and the prices paid to rural producers for their crops.^[42]

The reclamation and re-creation of Nicaragua as a modern state from the ashes of the Somoza dynasty would prove difficult. The state under the revolutionary forces was to be based on “the support and participation of the general population”;^[43] this would demand constant effort to keep the U.S. government out of domestic affairs in order to focus on unification of Nicaragua’s various ethnic groups. To achieve this, a balance needed to be struck between having an effective federal authority while maintaining the autonomy of different regions, particularly, the Caribbean coast. It also meant empowering sectors of the population who may have been marginalized in the past, such as women. “The Sandinista state represented itself as the agent of transformation and justice that would resolve existing contradictions of class, nation, and gender, and thus deliver the New Man and New Woman. However, in hinging the success of the revolution on the figure of the New Man, the state unleashed political-economic and cultural processes that (re) produced those very contradictions at every turn.”^[44] This critique is not just applicable to women but also to Indigenous people and Afro-descendant communities on the Caribbean coast. Promoting inclusion and granting rights was challenging for the Sandinistas for multiple reasons: first, they were fighting a proxy war with the United States through its support to counter-revolutionary forces based in Honduras and fighting in Nicaragua, and second, global ideologies about the New Man (or multicultural commitments to inclusion of ethnic minorities) conflicted with local patriarchal practices and the income-generating potential of natural resources, respectively.

The birth of a middle class also arose during this time of reformation, particularly due to governmental agrarian reform. It was the goal of the Sandinista government to dismantle the agro-export economy that they had inherited from Somoza. “The first measures had the objective of eradicating the big landholders, primarily on the Pacific coast, and nationalizing the means of production, and with that, reorganizing economic activities through cooperatives.”^[45] Policies geared toward improving conditions for workers in the countryside—such as increased wages and higher prices paid for crops—had the added benefit of discouraging rural migration into cities and closing the gap of inequality between rural and urban populations.^[46] When the Sandinistas (FSLN) took over the government, the goal was to shift the economy’s focus from private to public ownership. However, the Sandinistas continued to operate Nicaragua with a mixed economy; much of their post-Revolution efforts went to the reconstruction of the country and its infrastructure, which helped to slowly increase GDP. It proved difficult to mend what had been so horrifically broken during the Somoza dynasty. Still, Sandinista policies such as public provision of education and healthcare created a “social wage” that supplemented real cash flow and subsequently supported the average citizen.^[47] During the first ten years of Sandinista government, they were also fighting a war against the counter-revolutionary forces.

The Sandinistas won almost 70 percent of the national vote in general elections in 1984, beating out the U.S.-backed Arturo Cruz. By this point, the Reagan Administration had already been supporting a reactionary group of ex-National Guard members based out of Honduras known as the Counter-Revolution or Contras, both financially and by supplying them with weapons, in order to overthrow the Sandinistas and reinstate U.S. control. This move was reported to the U.S. public as being in the best interest of the “spread of democracy,” as the FSLN government maintained a socialist ideology, with ties to the USSR and Cuba. Thus, the conflict in Nicaragua was considered an “active front” in the Cold War against the spread of communism. Eventually, the Sandinistas and the Contras established a ceasefire in 1988, and the ex-Contras were allowed to reintegrate into Nicaraguan society.

Over the course of the conflict between the U.S.-supported Contras and the Sandinista Army, the Contras killed 8,000 civilians and 910 state officials.^[48] Total U.S. aid approved from 1982 to 1990 amounted to $322 million for the Contras, $124 million in military assistance, and $124 for nonmilitary purposes.^[49] “The costs of the eight-year Contra War on Nicaraguans were substantial: approximately 30,000 Nicaraguans killed, thousands more maimed and wounded, 350,000 internally displaced, and $9 billion in direct damages. ‘By any measure,’ writes Lynn Horton, ‘Nicaragua’s armed conflict of the 1980s took a devastating human and economic toll.”’^[50] During the Sandinista Revolution (1977–79), Nicaragua experienced a sharp decrease in foreign investment and a dramatic shift in expenditures from private sector endeavors to the military budget. It is estimated that the GDP dropped 25 percent in 1979, due to loss of life and infrastructure during the Revolution.

By the end of the Sandinista government era in 1990, Nicaraguan mothers began to organize against the government because they were tired of losing so many of their children to the war. And feminists became even more active in the next era using a critical analysis of the revolutionary period: “The experiences lived by Nicaraguan feminists during the revolutionary decade (1979–1989) contributed to the recognition—although it was not fully conscious in its time—of how gender and class intersect and condition the lives of women, as an expression of the articulation of two systems of domination—the capitalist system and the patriarchal system.”^[51]

Sandinistas Hand Over Power

Nicaragua has had one of Latin America’s most violent political traditions, lengthy periods of dictatorial rule, and prior to 1990 had never experienced a peaceful interparty transfer of power following a free election.^[52]

In 1990, the FSLN lost to the UNO (Unión Nacional Opositora or National Opposition Union), and Violeta Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate, became the president. One of her major contributions was to broker peace with the Contras. She also created a social pact with the FSLN in order to maintain a healthy relationship: the Concertación accords of 1991, which sought to avoid “political gridlock” among the traditional elites (such as the Lacayos, Chamorros, and Pellas families, who founded the Banco de América in the 1950s) and Sandinistas in the face of re-privatization.^[53] In addition, she added several ex-Contras to her cabinet, along with retaining General Humberto Ortega from the previous administration, as a reflection of involving both sides in Nicaragua’s political future. During the Chamorro administration, the economy was adapted to the demands of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies—downsizing the public sector and military, cutting spending on social programs, attracting foreign investment, encouraging exports, and other structural adjustment policies. Francisco Mayoraga, the Minister of Finance, created the “Plan of 100 Days,” also known as the “Mayoraga Plan,” which sought to cut the national deficit and lower inflation, and attempted to pull Nicaragua into a free market economy. However, it ultimately damaged both the public and private sectors, who together put on nationwide strikes against the plan.

After sixteen years of neoliberal presidents, former president Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2006. “After 16 years out of power, Daniel Ortega, the historic candidate of the party of the [Sandinista] revolution . . . was reelected president in November 2006.”^[54]

Present Day

Having ignored the opposition’s abstention campaign, Ortega rules virtually unchallenged as his country continues its slide from competitive authoritarianism toward authoritarianism plain and simple. In the course of building his power since 2006, Ortega has raised numerous obstacles to any turn back toward democracy.^[55]

In 2006, Daniel Ortega, revolutionary FSLN president and leader of the Sandinistas in the 1980s, won the presidential election again. As of 2022, he still remains in power as the Nicaraguan president and his wife, Rosario Murillo, is the vice president; the political rhetoric of the duo continues to focus on leftist ideals and populist promises to the poorer sectors of the country. However, for multiple reasons many Nicaraguans question the sincerity of his claims; one of these reasons is the land grabs associated with a failed plan to resurrect the Nicaraguan inter-oceanic canal:

The canal project’s concessionaire, a shadowy Chinese company known as HKND, was to receive sovereign control over canal infrastructure and property for fifty years, with an option to extend these privileges for another fifty. The Nicaraguan government gained broad authority to expropriate both private property and constitutionally protected indigenous communal property along the planned canal route between Punta Gorda on the Caribbean and Brito on the Pacific, but also exposed the assets of the country’s central bank to claims by HKND in the event of disputes.^[56]

Ultimately, construction on the canal halted, but the proposal of this type of mega-development project without the necessary environmental viability studies raised the concerns of civil society organizations across the country and many scientists as well. This initiative has been accompanied by increased state control over all aspects of civil life, including the right to protest, the right to criticize the government publicly or online, and the right to academic integrity and university autonomy for students, professors, and university administrators.^[57]

Beginning in April 2018, campesinos, students, and other civil society activists started protesting. “This expansion of the environmental agenda is possible, especially in this century, thanks to the advances of communications and the internet.”^[58] The MAN (Movimiento Ambientalista Nicaragüense or Environmental Movement of Nicaragua) brings together diverse organizations including NGOs, networks, scientists, and other leaders. Initially in early 2018, protests focused on the government’s poor handling of a forest fire in the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve. Then, protests escalated against a Sandinista proposal to reform the country’s social security system that would reduce benefits to pensioners by 5 percent as well as increasing what people would have to pay into the system. Even though the government rescinded the proposed law, protests and government repression continued. “In both these protests, and even more in subsequent events, university students became highly visible protagonists in the ranks of the opposition” and paid the price as police and paramilitary youth targeted them for repression.^[59]

Universities were closed for six months as they were unable to open their doors because they couldn’t guarantee students’ safety given the repressive actions of the police and pro-government paramilitary forces. Tourism dropped drastically. As the Ortega regime assumed more dictatorial powers and rule of law weakened, civil society protests were harshly repressed. Politicized and/or minoritized groups such as women, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendant Creoles face higher levels of exclusion; and many Nicaraguans have left their country seeking asylum in Costa Rica.^[60] The repression has affected multiple groups that have been organized for decades, including students, campesinos in northern Nicaragua as well as Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples on the Caribbean coast, and women. “On November 23, 2018, [Vice President] Murillo and other women government officials denounced the Nicaraguan feminist movement for sowing terror.… Police blocked feminists from marching in Managua and Matagalpa on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and the feminist leader Ana Quiros was arrested and deported the following day.”^[61] On the Caribbean coast where Indigenous communities and Afro-descendant groups had made progress in gaining legal ownership of their ancestral lands, which was incorporated in the 1987 constitution of Nicaragua, there is encroachment on Indigenous lands and many forms of violence are being deployed against these communities.^[62] These populations are being targeted by settlers, mining companies, and agro-export interests intent on taking over their land. Between 2011 and 2020, according to the Center for Justice and Human Rights of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, at least 49 Miskito were killed, 49 were injured, 46 were kidnapped, 4 were disappeared, and 1,000 were forced to flee to Honduras. These crimes were carried out with the help of soldiers and paramilitaries known as “colonos” or settlers, people hired by the government or by landowners to dispossess the Indigenous people of their lands.^[63] “The suffering and violence faced by the communities is not just due to the government’s failure to implement the law . . . the government actually plays an active role in encouraging the colonization of the protected lands by outsiders.”^[64]

By the end of 2018, the repression had sown so much fear that an eerie quiet fell over the country like a dense fog. During 2019, the environment of repression involved the “criminalization of demonstrators,” in which representatives of the Nicaraguan judicial system prosecuted protesters for exercising their civil rights of free speech and association, and incarcerated them, punishing them as traitors or “golpistas” for attempting to overthrow the government.^[65] Many youth activists have either been killed, jailed, or have fled (mainly to Costa Rica). Others have gone to study at universities in Central America and beyond, or remain hiding in safe houses across the country. Today, this is the “new” normal of Nicaragua: scaring people into silence or exile through the use of selective violence and sustained harassment of activists, including many of the college students involved in the April 2018 protests. Former Sandinista and internationally recognized Nicaraguan author, Sergio Ramirez, says, “All of this brings a certain feeling of déjà vu when it comes to the entire history of Nicaragua . . . the abuses of power and the way power gathers—and structures itself—always repeat themselves. It’s a kind of circular constant in Nicaragua’s history throughout the whole 20th century to the present day.”^[66]

In 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported the following statistics about the repression since the April 2018 uprising: “328 fatalities in the context of the crisis and 1,614 people who were deprived of liberty; in addition, more than 136 people remain deprived of liberty; 150 students expelled; more than 405 health professionals laid off; and more than 103,600 Nicaraguan exiles.”^[67] The exodus of people keeps increasing. “Driven by hunger and fear thousands of Nicaraguans have left. They changed countries because they lost hope in being able to change their own country.”^[68]

Recommended Reading

Alegria, Claribel, and Darwin J Flakoll. Death of Somoza. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996.

Babb, Florence E. After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Bellanger, Wendi, Serena Cosgrove, and Irina Carlota Silber, editors. Higher Education at the Crossroads of State Repression and Neoliberal Reform in Nicaragua: Reflections from a University under Fire. New York: Routledge, 2022.

Belli, Gioconda. The Country under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War. New York: Anchor Press, 2003.

Chavez, Daniel. Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia: Development and Culture in the Modern State. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015.

Cosgrove, Serena, José Idiáquez, Leonard Joseph Bent, and Andrew Gorvetzian. Surviving the Americas: Garifuna Persistence from Nicaragua to New York City. Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press, 2021.

Darío, Rubén. Stories and Poems/Cuentos y poesías: A Dual Language Book. Translated and edited by Stanley Appelbaum. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002.

Dix, Paul, and Pamela Fitzpatrick. Nicaragua: Surviving the Legacy of U.S. Policy. Eugene, OR: Just Sharing Press, 2011.

Gobat, Michael. Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

Goett, Jennifer. Black Autonomy: Race, Gender, and Afro-Nicaraguan Activism. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016.

Gordon, Edmund T. Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African Nicaraguan Community. Austin: University of Texas Press, Austin, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998.

Hale, Charles R. Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Jones, Sam. “Nicaragua, ‘A feeling of déjà vu’: Author Sergio Ramirez on ex-comrade Ortega and Nicaraguan history repeating.” The Guardian, September 18 2021, accessed December 2, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/18/sergio-ramirez-interview-nicaragua-ortega-novel

Kinzer, Stephen. Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua. New York: Putnam, 1991.

Lancaster, Richard. Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Montoya, Rosario. Gendered Scenarios of Revolution: Making New Men and New Women in Nicaragua, 1975–2000. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012.

Morelli, Marco, trans. and ed. Rubén’s Orphans: Anthology of Contemporary Nicaraguan Poetry. New Hyde Park, NY: Painted Rooster Press, 2001.

Ramirez, Sergio. A Thousand Deaths Plus One. Translated by Leland H. Chambers. Kingston, NY: McPherson, 2009.

Rocha, José Luis. Provocation and Protest: University Students in Nicaragua’s Uprising. Chicago: LACASA Chicago Press, 2019.

Rushdie, Salman. The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey. New York: Random House, 2008.

White, Steven. Poets of Nicaragua: A Bilingual Anthology 1918–1979. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1982.