Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface to the third edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- Map 1 Latin America
- Map 2 Per capita gross domestic products 1987, measured in 1986 U.S. dollars. (Source: Inter-American Development Bank, Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, 1988, p. 540.)
- Part I Understanding Latin American politics
- Part II The political games played in Latin America
- 6 Mexico: Whose game is it?
- 7 Chile: democracy destroyed
- 8 Venezuela: democracy preserved
- 9 Brazil: populists, authoritarians, and democrats
- 10 Argentina: populists, authoritarians, and democrats
- 11 Cuba: a communist revolution
- 12 Nicaragua: revolution the Sandinista way
- Appendix: Tables
- Index
12 - Nicaragua: revolution the Sandinista way
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface to the third edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- Map 1 Latin America
- Map 2 Per capita gross domestic products 1987, measured in 1986 U.S. dollars. (Source: Inter-American Development Bank, Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, 1988, p. 540.)
- Part I Understanding Latin American politics
- Part II The political games played in Latin America
- 6 Mexico: Whose game is it?
- 7 Chile: democracy destroyed
- 8 Venezuela: democracy preserved
- 9 Brazil: populists, authoritarians, and democrats
- 10 Argentina: populists, authoritarians, and democrats
- 11 Cuba: a communist revolution
- 12 Nicaragua: revolution the Sandinista way
- Appendix: Tables
- Index
Summary
When access to authorities is callously denied a people, as it was in Nicaragua by the Somoza family and its National Guard, they can either acquiesce to dictatorial rule, resist it nonviolently, or take up arms against it. Acquiescence was a way of life in Nicaragua until 1978, when people turned to strikes and boycotts to protest their abuse by authorities. Then, under the leadership of well-armed guerrillas, they went to war against the Somoza tyranny and won at the cost of 50,000 lives. Twenty years after Fidel Castro and the Cuban guerrillas had won their war with Batista, the Nicaraguan people evicted dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the youngest of the three Somozas who had ruled over Nicaragua for four decades. In July 1979, one of the hemisphere's poorest and most repressed peoples celebrated an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild their nation.
The rebellion
The Somoza dynasty was launched in 1938, when Anastasio Somoza García, head of the Nicaraguan National Guard, became president. He ruled the nation without interruption until he was assassinated in 1956. His eldest son, Luis, succeeded him only to die of a heart attack a decade later, leaving the reins of government to his younger brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who, some years before, had assumed the leadership of the National Guard after completing his education at West Point in the United States. He ruled until the revolution in 1979.
From the beginning the Somozas were supported by the United States government.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Latin American Development , pp. 309 - 334Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990