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The Origins and Evolution of the Nicaraguan Insurgencies, 1979-1985
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11300 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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5 / 1986 |
7,237 Words |
| Author
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Michael Radu
Michael Radu, a research associate at the Foreign Policy
Research Institute in Philadelphia, specializes in African
and Latin American affairs. |
The involvement of the United States in Nicaragua's current civil war threatens to obscure the indigenous sources of that conflict, pushing its nature into the shadow of domestic ideological and partisan debates. Arguments over Washington's or Moscow's role in Nicaragua have wildly distorted and grossly oversimplified the very complex historical and sociological antecedents of this war. This essay is an attempt to provide a fuller picture both of what is behind and what is at stake in the Nicaraguan civil war.
Like most civil wars, Nicaragua's is far bloodier than a conventional conflict between two regular armies under the control of national governments pursuing their separate interests. Nicaragua is a society tearing itself to pieces. Families are torn by conflicting loyalties which supersede blood ties while former comrades are murderously divided. Neither class antagonisms nor political history satisfactorily explains the Nicaraguan civil war--the political culture of Nicaragua and the circumstances of the revolutionary victory of July 19, 1979, serve far better. Indeed, while claiming to represent "the people" or "the masses" of Nicaragua, the ruling Sandinista national Liberation Front (FSLN) comprises cadres whose origin is overwhelmingly middle or upper-middle class. Even a cursory examination of the background of the FSLN cadres demonstrates that "objectively, the Sandinismo of the FSLN proper…was never a lower-class phenomenon. It was, instead, the ideology of a group of young people, mostly middle- or upper-class in origin.' The insurgents' political leaders come from a similar background. On both sides in this conflict, most followers are from "the people," that is, from among the marginal urban youth in the case of the FSLN; from traditionalist peasantry in that of the largest insurgent group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Forces (FDN), or form the totality of the population in that of the ethnic insurgents of the Atlantic Coast. At first, then, the civil war represents an intra-elite leadership conflict and an urban-rural polarization among the rank and file.
Geographically, the membership of the insurgent forces is largely recruited among the peasantry of the north and northwest, in the departments of Nueva Segovia, Madriz, Esteli, Jinotega, Chinandega, and Matagalpa. The FSLN popular base lies in the more heavily urbanized departments of Managua, Leon, Granada, Masaya, and Carazo on the Pacific Coast. These are traditionally the most politicized areas of the country, historically divided between the Liberal center of Leon and the Conservative party's Granada stronghold. The central and eastern departments of Boaco and Chontales, and particularly Zelaya and Rio San Juan, with small
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