1. Introduction¶
Core Argument¶
The introduction frames the Nicaraguan revolution of July 1979 as the most thorough-going democratic revolution in Latin America since Cuba’s 1959 victory, positioning it within a global wave of anti-imperialist advances. The chapter argues that the insurrection, which overthrew Anastasio Somoza’s despotic regime, involved all sections of Nicaragua’s three million population—workers, peasants, youth, women, and the middle class—and was an event of enormous worldwide importance. It offset the defeats suffered in Chile six years earlier, where a US-sponsored coup overthrew Salvador Allende, and the 1976 Argentine coup that ‘disappeared’ 30,000 people. The revolution drew strength from and contributed to a rising revolutionary wave: the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in early 1979, the New Jewel Movement’s seizure of power in Grenada in March 1979, the defeat of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique and Angola (1974–75), the US defeat in Vietnam (1975), the repulsion of the South African invasion of Angola (1976), and the Soweto uprising (1976). Victory in Nicaragua spurred further struggles, particularly in El Salvador and Guatemala.
The chapter emphasises the inspirational character of the Sandinista revolution, which captured the imagination of workers and youth worldwide, recalling the impact of the Cuban guerrillas led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. However, it notes that Cuba’s experience created high expectations, making the subsequent restoration of reactionary rule a decade later all the more disappointing. Today, Nicaragua is again the poorest country in Latin America and the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti. The introduction poses the central questions the book will address: how did the reaction triumph? By what process did it regain governmental and state power? Was the revolution doomed from the start? What lessons can be drawn, and what course of action should revolutionaries have taken to maximise the chances of success?
The chapter establishes common ground among socialists and democrats that imperialism’s attempts to crush the Nicaraguan revolution had to be resisted at every level. It signals that criticisms of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)—its structure, programme, and policies—will be advanced, but insists that the revolution itself was a great advance, demonstrating how a seemingly invincible military dictator backed by US imperialism could be defeated. The polemical thrust is against those who would dismiss the revolution as doomed or who fail to draw the necessary strategic lessons from its ultimate reversal.