What Went Wrong? the Nicaraguan Revolution

A Marxist Analysis
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-90-04-29130-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 127, 410 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 726 g

Reihe: Historical Materialism Book Series

This volume is a valuable re-assessment of the Nicaraguan Revolution by a Marxist historian of Latin American political history. It shows that the FSLN (‘the Sandinistas’), with politics principally shaped by Soviet and Cuban Communism, never had a commitment to genuine democracy either within the revolutionary movement or within society at large; that the FSLN’s lack of commitment to democracy was a key factor in the way that revolution was betrayed from the 1970s to the 1990s; and that the FSLN’s lack of rank-and-file democracy left all decision-making to the National Directorate and ultimately placed that power in the hands of Daniel Ortega. Pursuing his narrative into the present, La Botz shows that, once their would-be bureaucratic ruling class project was defeated, Ortega and the FSLN leadership turned to an alliance with the capitalist class.

Autoren/Hrsg.

La Botz, Dan

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Revolutionäre Gruppen und Bewegungen, Bewaffnete Konflikte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acronyms
Preface: A Marxist Analysis
Acknowledgements

Introduction: What Happened to the Nicaraguan Revolution?
1. Nicaragua: A Nation but Not a State (From the Beginning to 1893)
2. The Struggle to Construct a Sovereign State: Zelaya and Sandino (1893–1932)
3. The Somoza Dynastic Dictatorship (1932–61)
4. The Founding of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (1962–78)
5. The Sandinistas Revolution (1979)
6. The Sandinistas in Power (1979–84)
7. The Sandinistas and the Contra War (1985–90)
8. Violeta Chamorro: A New Ruling Class, a New State, a New Economy (1990–6)
9. Alemán and Bolaños: Corruption in Power (1995–2006)
10. The Ortega Government (2006–)

Epilogue: Results and Prospects
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dan La Botz is the author of ten books on labour unions, social movements and politics in the United States, Mexico, and Indonesia. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, was a Fulbright scholar in Mexico, and currently teaches in the colleges of the City University of New York and in the Labour Studies program of the Murphy Institute. He is a co-editor of New Politics and has been for more than twenty years the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.