Sandinista National Liberation Front

History

Origin of the term Sandinista

The Sandinistas took their name from Augusto César Sandino (1895–1934), the leader of Nicaragua's nationalist rebellion against the US occupation of the country during the early 20th century (ca. 1922–1934). The suffix "-ista" is the Spanish equivalent of "-ist".

Sandino was assassinated in 1934 by the Nicaraguan National Guard (Guardia Nacional), the US-equipped police force of Anastasio Somoza, whose family ruled the country from 1936 until they were overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979.

Precursor to Revolution (1933–1961)

The second U.S. intervention in Nicaragua ended when Juan Bautista Sacasa of the Liberal Party won the elections. By 1 January 1933 there wasn't a single US soldier left on Nicaraguan soil; however, in 1930, the US had formed a group for national security known as the National Guard. The National Guard remained after the exit of the U.S. under the leadership of Anastasio Somoza Garcia who was supported by the US. On 21 February 1934, Somoza, using the National Guard, assassinated Sandino, who opposed and fought against US intervention. This was the first act of a series that Somoza, with help from the US, would take, that would culminate in his election as president in 1936. The result of his election was the start of the US-sponsored dictatorship of the Somoza family.

During the 1960s, leftist ideas began spreading worldwide, sparking independence movements in different colonial territories. On 1 January 1959 in Havana, Cuban revolutionaries fought against dictator Fulgencio Batista. In Algeria the Algerian National Liberation Front was founded to fight against French colonial control. In Nicaragua, different movements that opposed the Somoza dynasty began to unite, forming the Nicaraguan National Liberation Front, which would later be renamed the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

The economic situation of Nicaragua in the mid-20th century had deteriorated as the prices of agricultural exports such as cotton and coffee dropped. Politically, the conservative party of Nicaragua split, and one of the factions, the Zancudos, began collaborating with the Somoza regime.

Anastasio Somoza Garcia was assassinated by poet Rigoberto Lopez Perez in 1956.

In 1957 Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, Tomás Borge, Oswaldo Madriz y Heriberto Carrillo formed the first cell of the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Committee who identified with the issues of the proletariat. Later that October, the Mexican cell was formed with members such as Edén Pastora Gómez, Juan José Ordóñez, Roger Hernández, Porfirio Molina y Pedro José Martínez Alvarado.

In October 1958 Ramon Raudales began his guerrilla war against the Somoza dynasty, beginning the armed conflict.

Founding (1961–1970)

The FSLN originated in the milieu of various oppositional organizations, youth and student groups in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The university of Léon, and the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) in Managua were two of the principal centers of activity. Inspired by the Revolution and the FLN in Algeria, the FSLN was founded in 1961 by Carlos Fonseca, Silvio Mayorga, Tomás Borge, Casimiro Sotelo and others as The National Liberation Front (FLN). Only Borge lived long enough to see the Sandinista victory in 1979.

A congress or assembly is not formed between all the prominent leaders of the various groups as the preparation would have required a prior theoretical process in order to create them. As a result, the FSLN was not prepared for its own formation. Different discussions took place within the group as they came to a consensus on political ideas. Even in 1963, while still under the name of FLN, there was a lack of internal coherence in political ideas (this can be seen in the publication of the newspaper Trinchera). The first few years were carried by some basic shared values of all the forces that were being integrated. Some of these basic shared ideas was to imitate the success of the Cuban Revolution, the ineffectiveness of the conventional opposition to the Somoza regime and the need to remain independent of them (referring to the conservative, liberal and communist parties), the need for a revolutionary movement that would use the armed struggle as opposition to the Somoza dictatorship, and after some discussion, identification with Sandino's struggle. It was not until 1969 that any programmatic document was published.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front was supposedly founded in a meeting in Tegucigalpa (Honduras) between Carlos Fonseca, Tomás Borge, and Silvio Mayorga. It's even been said that the meeting was held on July 19, 1961. In reality, there is no documentary reference that supports this affirmation, with the first news of this meeting and date surfacing after the revolutionary triumph of 1979.

The term "Sandinista" was adopted two years later, establishing continuity with Sandino's movement, and using his legacy to develop the newer movement's ideology and strategy. By the early 1970s, the FSLN was launching limited military initiatives.

Rise (1970–1976)

On December 23, 1972, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake leveled the capital city, Managua. The earthquake killed 10,000 of the city's 400,000 residents and left another 50,000 homeless. About 80% of Managua's commercial buildings were destroyed. President Anastasio Somoza Debayle's National Guard embezzled much of the international aid that flowed into the country to assist in reconstruction, and several parts of downtown Managua were never rebuilt. The president gave reconstruction contracts preferentially to family and friends, thereby profiting from the quake and increasing his control of the city's economy. By some estimates, his personal wealth rose to US$400 million in 1974.

In December 1974, a guerrilla group affiliated with FSLN directed by Eduardo Contreras and Germán Pomares seized government hostages at a party in the house of the Minister of Agriculture in the Managua suburb Los Robles, among them several leading Nicaraguan officials and Somoza relatives. The siege was carefully timed to take place after the departure of the US ambassador from the gathering. At 10:50 pm, a group of 15 young guerrillas and their commanders, Pomares and Contreras, entered the house. They killed the minister, who tried to shoot them, during the takeover. The guerrillas received US$2 million ransom, and had their official communiqué read on the radio and printed in the newspaper La Prensa.

Over the next year, the guerrillas got 14 Sandinista prisoners released from jail, and with them were flown to Cuba. One of the released prisoners was Daniel Ortega, who later became president of Nicaragua. The group also lobbied for an increase in wages for National Guard soldiers to 500 córdobas ($71 at the time). The Somoza government responded with further censorship, intimidation, torture, and murder.

In 1975, Somoza imposed a state of siege, censoring the press, and threatening all opponents with internment and torture. Somoza's National Guard also increased its violence against people and communities suspected of collaborating with the Sandinistas. Many of the FSLN guerrillas were killed, including its leader and founder Carlos Fonseca in 1976. Fonseca had returned to Nicaragua in 1975 from his exile in Cuba to try to reunite factions that existed in the FSLN. He and his group were betrayed by someone who informed the National Guard that they were in the area. The guerrilla group was ambushed, and Fonseca was wounded in the process. The next morning the National Guard executed Fonseca.

Split (1977–1978)

After the FSLN's defeat at the battle of Pancasán in 1967, it adopted the "Prolonged Popular War" (Guerra Popular Prolongada, GPP) theory as its strategic doctrine. The GPP was based on the "accumulation of forces in silence": while the urban organization recruited on the university campuses and robbed money from banks, the main cadres were to permanently settle in the north central mountain zone. There they would build a grassroots peasant support base in preparation for renewed rural guerrilla warfare.

As a consequence of the repressive campaign of the National Guard, in 1975 a group within the FSLN's urban mobilization arm began to question the GPP's viability. In the view of the young orthodox Marxist intellectuals, such as Jaime Wheelock, economic development had turned Nicaragua into a nation of factory workers and wage-earning farm laborers. Wheelock's faction was known as the "Proletarian Tendency".

Shortly after, a third faction arose within the FSLN. The "Insurrectional Tendency", also known as the "Third Way" or Terceristas, led by Daniel Ortega, his brother Humberto Ortega, and Mexican-born Victor Tirado Lopez, was more pragmatic and called for tactical, temporary alliances with non-communists, including the right-wing opposition, in a popular front against the Somoza regime. By attacking the Guard directly, the Terceristas would demonstrate the regime's weakness and encourage others to take up arms.

In October 1977, a group of prominent Nicaraguan professionals, business leaders, and clergymen allied with the Terceristas to form "El Grupo de los Doce" (The Group of Twelve) in Costa Rica. The group's main idea was to organize a provisional government in Costa Rica. The Terceristas' new strategy also included unarmed strikes and rioting by labor and student groups coordinated by the FSLN's "United People's Movement" (Movimiento Pueblo Unido – MPU).

Insurrection (1978)

On January 10, 1978, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa and leader of the "Democratic Union of Liberation" (Unión Democrática de Liberación – UDEL), was assassinated. His assassins were not identified at the time, but evidence implicated Somoza's son and other members of the National Guard. Spontaneous riots followed in several cities, while the business community organized a general strike demanding Somoza's resignation.

The Terceristas carried out attacks in early February in several Nicaraguan cities. The National Guard responded by further increasing repression and using force to contain and intimidate all government opposition. The nationwide strike that paralyzed the country for ten days weakened private enterprises and most of them decided to suspend their participation in less than two weeks. Meanwhile, Somoza asserted his intention to stay in power until the end of his presidential term in 1981. The United States government showed its displeasure with Somoza by suspending all military assistance to the regime, but continued to approve economic assistance to the country for humanitarian reasons.

In August, the Terceristas took hostages. Twenty-three Tercerista commandos led by Edén Pastora seized the entire Nicaraguan congress and took nearly 1,000 hostages, including Somoza's nephew José Somoza Abrego and cousin Luis Pallais Debayle. Somoza gave in to their demands and paid a $500,000 ransom, released 59 political prisoners (including GPP chief Tomás Borge), broadcast a communiqué with FSLN's call for general insurrection and gave the guerrillas safe passage to Panama.

A few days later six Nicaraguan cities rose in revolt. Armed youths took over the highland city of Matagalpa. Tercerista cadres attacked Guard posts in Managua, Masaya, León, Chinandega and Estelí. Large numbers of semi-armed civilians joined the revolt and put the Guard garrisons of the latter four cities under siege. The September Insurrection of 1978 was subdued at the cost of several thousand, mostly civilian, casualties. Members of all three factions fought in these uprisings, which began to blur the divisions and prepare the way for unified action.

Reunification (1979)

In early 1979, President Jimmy Carter and the United States ended support for the Somoza government, but did not want a left-wing government to take power in Nicaragua. This was a crucial moment for what many historians call "Latin America's Cold War", as the Somoza regime fell apart without assistance from the United States. The moderate "Broad Opposition Front" (Frente Amplio Opositor – FAO), which opposed Somoza, was made up of a conglomeration of dissidents within the government as well as the "Democratic Union of Liberation" (UDEL) and the "Twelve", representatives of the Terceristas (whose founding members included Casimiro A. Sotelo, later to become Ambassador to the U.S. and Canada representing the FSLN). The FAO and Carter came up with a plan to remove Somoza from office but give the FSLN no government power. The FAO's efforts lost political legitimacy, as the grassroots support of the FSLN wanted more structural changes and was opposed to "Somocism without Somoza".

The "Twelve" abandoned the coalition in protest and formed the "National Patriotic Front" (Frente Patriotico Nacional – FPN) together with the "United People's Movement" (MPU). This strengthened the revolutionary organizations as tens of thousands of youths joined the FSLN and the fight against Somoza. A direct consequence of the spread of the armed struggle in Nicaragua was the official reunification of the FSLN that took place March 7, 1979. Nine men, three from each tendency, formed the National Directorate that led the reunited FSLN: Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega and Víctor Tirado (Terceristas); Tomás Borge, Bayardo Arce Castaño, and Henry Ruiz (GPP faction); and Jaime Wheelock, Luis Carrión and Carlos Núñez.

Nicaraguan Revolution

The FSLN evolved from one of many opposition groups to a leadership role in the overthrow of the Somoza regime. By mid-April 1979, five guerrilla fronts opened under the FSLN's joint command, including an internal front in Managua. Young guerrilla cadres and the National Guardsmen were clashing almost daily in cities throughout the country. The Final Offensive's strategic goal was the division of the enemy's forces. Urban insurrection was the crucial element because the FSLN could never hope to outnumber or outgun the National Guard.

On June 4, the FSLN called a general strike, to last until Somoza fell and an uprising was launched in Managua. On June 16, the formation of a provisional Nicaraguan government in exile, consisting of a five-member Junta of National Reconstruction, was announced and organized in Costa Rica. The members of the new junta were Daniel Ortega (FSLN), Moisés Hassán (FPN), Sergio Ramírez (the "Twelve"), Alfonso Robelo (MDN) and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of La Prensa's director Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. By the end of that month, with the exception of the capital, most of Nicaragua was under FSLN control, including León and Matagalpa, Nicaragua's two largest cities after Managua.

On July 9, the provisional government in exile released a government program in which it pledged to organize an effective democratic regime, promote political pluralism and universal suffrage, and ban ideological discrimination, except for those promoting the "return of Somoza's rule". On July 17, Somoza resigned, handed over power to Francisco Urcuyo, and fled to Miami. While initially seeking to remain in power to serve out Somoza's presidential term, Urcuyo ceded his position to the junta and fled to Guatemala two days later.

On July 19, the 18th anniversary of the foundation of the FSLN, the FSLN army entered Managua, culminating the first goal of the revolution. The war left 30,000–50,000 dead and 150,000 Nicaraguans in exile. The five-member junta entered Managua the next day and assumed power, reiterating its pledge to work for political pluralism, a mixed economic system, and a nonaligned foreign policy.

Sandinista rule (1979–1990)

The Sandinistas inherited a country with a debt of US$1.6 billion, an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 war dead, 600,000 homeless, and a devastated economic infrastructure. To begin establishing a new government, they created a Council (or junta) of National Reconstruction, made up of five appointed members. Three of the appointed members—Sandinista militants Daniel Ortega, Moisés Hassán, and novelist Sergio Ramírez (a member of Los Doce "the Twelve")—belonged to the FSLN. Two opposition members, businessman Alfonso Robelo, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro), were also appointed. Only three votes were needed to pass law.

The FSLN also established a Council of State, subordinate to the junta, which was composed of representative bodies. But the Council of State gave political parties only 12 of 47 seats; the rest were given to Sandinista organizations. Of the 12 seats reserved for political parties, only three were not allied with the FSLN. Due to the rules governing the Council of State, in 1980 both non-FSLN junta members resigned. Nevertheless, as of the 1982 State of Emergency, opposition parties were no longer given representation in the council. The preponderance of power also remained with the Sandinistas through their mass organizations, including the Sandinista Workers' Federation (Central Sandinista de Trabajadores), the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan Women's Association (Asociación de Mujeres Nicaragüenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza), the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos), and most importantly the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS). The Sandinista-controlled mass organizations were extremely influential over civil society and saw their power and popularity peak in the mid-1980s.

Upon assuming power, the FSLN's official political platform included nationalization of property owned by the Somozas and their supporters; land reform; improved rural and urban working conditions; free unionization for all workers, both urban and rural; price fixing for commodities of basic necessity; improved public services, housing conditions, education; abolition of torture, political assassination and the death penalty; protection of democratic liberties; equality for women; non-aligned foreign policy; and formation of a "popular army" under the leadership of the FSLN and Humberto Ortega.

The FSLN's literacy campaign sent teachers into the countryside; within six months, half a million people had been taught rudimentary reading, bringing the national illiteracy rate down from over 50% to just under 12%. Over 100,000 Nicaraguans participated as literacy teachers. One of the literacy campaign's aims was to create a literate electorate that could make informed choices in the promised elections. The success of the literacy campaign was recognized by UNESCO with a Nadezhda Krupskaya International Prize, although the actual success of this literary campaign, and its long-term impact, have been called into question.

Sandinistas vs. Contras

Upon assuming office in 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan condemned the FSLN for joining with Cuba in supporting "Marxist" revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries such as El Salvador. His administration authorized the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels, most of whom were the remnants of Somoza's National Guard, as anti-Sandinista guerrillas that were branded "counter-revolutionary" by leftists (contrarrevolucionarios in Spanish). This was shortened to Contras, a label the force chose to embrace. Edén Pastora and many of the indigenous guerrilla forces, who were not associated with the "Somocistas", also resisted the Sandinistas.

The Contras operated out of camps in the neighboring countries of Honduras to the north and Costa Rica (see Edén Pastora cited below) to the south. As was typical in guerrilla warfare, they were engaged in a campaign of economic sabotage in an attempt to combat the Sandinista government and disrupted shipping by planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's Corinto harbour, an action condemned by the International Court of Justice as illegal. The U.S. also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinistas, and, as with Cuba, the Reagan administration imposed a full trade embargo.

The Contras also carried out a systematic campaign to disrupt the social reform programs of the government. This campaign included attacks on schools, health centers and the majority of the rural population that was sympathetic to the Sandinistas. Widespread murder, rape, and torture were also used as tools to destabilize the government and to "terrorize" the population into collaborating with the Contras. Throughout this campaign, the Contras received military and financial support from the CIA and the Reagan Administration. This campaign has been condemned internationally for its many human rights violations. Contra supporters have often tried to downplay these violations, or countered that the Sandinista government carried out much more. In particular, the Reagan administration engaged in a campaign to alter public opinion on the Contras that has been termed "white propaganda". In 1984, the International Court of Justice judged that the United States Government had been in violation of International law when it supported the Contras.

After the U.S. Congress prohibited federal funding of the Contras through the Boland Amendment in 1983, the Reagan administration continued to back the Contras by raising money from foreign allies and covertly selling arms to Iran (then engaged in a war with Iraq), and channelling the proceeds to the Contras (see the Iran–Contra affair). When this scheme was revealed, Reagan admitted that he knew about Iranian "arms for hostages" dealings but professed ignorance about the proceeds funding the Contras; for this, National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver North took much of the blame.

Elections

While the Sandinistas encouraged grassroots pluralism, they were perhaps less enthusiastic about national elections. They argued that popular support was expressed in the insurrection and that further appeals to popular support would be a waste of scarce resources. International pressure and domestic opposition eventually pressed the government toward a national election. Tomás Borge warned that the elections were a concession, an act of generosity and of political necessity. On the other hand, the Sandinistas had little to fear from the election given the advantages of incumbency and the restrictions on the opposition, and they hoped to discredit the armed efforts to overthrow them.

A broad range of political parties, ranging in political orientation from far-left to far-right, competed for power. Following promulgation of a new populist constitution, Nicaragua held national elections in 1984. Independent electoral observers from around the world—including groups from the UN as well as observers from Western Europe—claimed that the elections had been fair. Several groups, however, disputed this, including UNO, a broad coalition of anti-Sandinista activists, COSEP, an organization of business leaders, the Contra group "FDN", organized by former Somozan-era National Guardsmen, landowners, businessmen, peasant highlanders, and what some claimed as their patron, the U.S. government.

Although initially willing to stand in the 1984 elections, the UNO, headed by Arturo Cruz (a former Sandinista), declined participation in the elections based on their own objections to the restrictions placed on the electoral process by the State of Emergency and the official advisement of President Ronald Reagan's State Department, who wanted to de-legitimize the election process. Among other parties that abstained was COSEP, who had warned the FSLN that they would decline participation unless freedom of the press was reinstituted. Coordinadora Democrática (CD) also refused to file candidates and urged Nicaraguans not to take part in the election. The Independent Liberal Party (PLI), headed by Virgilio Godoy Reyes, announced its refusal to participate in October. Consequently, when the elections went ahead the U.S. raised objections based upon political restrictions instituted by the State of Emergency (e.g., censorship of the press, cancellation of habeas corpus, and the curtailing of free assembly).

Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramírez were elected president and vice-president, and the FSLN won an overwhelming 61 out of 96 seats in the new National Assembly, having taken 67% of the vote on a turnout of 75%. Despite international validation of the elections by multiple political and independent observers (virtually all from among U.S. allies), the United States refused to recognize the elections, with President Ronald Reagan denouncing the elections as a sham. Daniel Ortega began his six-year presidential term on January 10, 1985. After the United States Congress turned down continued funding of the Contras in April 1985, the Reagan administration ordered a total embargo on United States trade with Nicaragua the following month, accusing the Sandinista government of threatening United States security in the region.

Opposition (1990–2006)

In 1987, due to a stalemate with the Contras, the Esquipulas II treaty was brokered by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez. The treaty's provisions included a call for a cease-fire, freedom of expression, and national elections. After the February 26, 1990 elections, the Sandinistas lost and peacefully passed power to the National Opposition Union (UNO), an alliance of 14 opposition parties ranging from the conservative business organization COSEP to Nicaraguan communists. UNO's candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, replaced Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua.

Reasons for the Sandinista loss in 1990 are disputed. Defenders of the defeated government assert that Nicaraguans voted for the opposition due to the continuing U.S. economic embargo and potential Contra threat. Others have alleged that the United States threatened to continue to support the Contras and continue the civil war if the regime was not voted out of power.

After their loss, the Sandinista leaders held most of the private property and businesses that had been confiscated and nationalized by the FSLN government. This process became known as the "piñata" and was tolerated by the new Chamorro government. Ortega also claimed to "rule from below" through groups he controls such as labor unions and student groups.

Ortega remained the head of the FSLN, but his brother Humberto resigned from the party and remained at the head of the Sandinista Army, becoming a close confidante and supporter of Chamorro. The party also experienced internal divisions, with prominent Sandinistas such as Ernesto Cardenal and Sergio Ramírez resigning to protest what they described as heavy-handed domination of the party by Daniel Ortega. Ramírez also founded a separate political party, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS); his faction came to be known as the renovistas, who favor a more social democratic approach than the ortodoxos, or hardliners. In the 1996 Nicaraguan election, Ortega and Ramírez both campaigned unsuccessfully as presidential candidates on behalf of their respective parties, with Ortega receiving 43% of the vote while Arnoldo Alemán of the Constitutional Liberal Party received 51%. The Sandinistas won second place in the congressional elections, with 36 of 93 seats.

Ortega was re-elected as leader of the FSLN in 1998. Municipal elections in November 2000 saw a strong Sandinista vote, especially in urban areas, and former Tourism Minister Herty Lewites was elected mayor of Managua. This result led to expectations of a close race in the presidential elections scheduled for November 2001. Daniel Ortega and Enrique Bolaños of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) ran neck-and-neck in the polls for much of the campaign, but in the end the PLC won a clear victory. The results of these elections were that the FSLN won 42.6% of the vote for parliament (versus 52.6% for the PLC), giving them 41 out of the 92 seats in the National Assembly (versus 48 for the PLC). In the presidential race, Ortega lost to Bolaños 46.3% to 53.6%.

Return to government

In 2006, Daniel Ortega was elected president with 38% of the vote (see 2006 Nicaraguan general election). This occurred despite the fact that the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement continued to oppose the FSLN, running former Mayor of Managua Herty Lewites as its candidate for president. However, Lewites died several months before the elections.

The FSLN also won 38 seats in the congressional elections, becoming the party with the largest representation in parliament. The split in the Constitutionalist Liberal Party helped to allow the FSLN to become the largest party in Congress. The Sandinista vote was also split between the FSLN and MRS, but the split was more uneven, with limited support for the MRS. The vote for the two liberal parties combined was larger than the vote for the two Sandinista parties. In 2010, several liberal congressmen raised accusations about the FSLN presumably attempting to buy votes in order to pass constitutional reforms that would allow Ortega to run for office for the 6th time since 1984. In 2011, Ortega was re-elected as president.

Ortega was allowed by Nicaraguan Supreme Court to run again as president, despite having already served two mandates, in a move which was strongly criticized by the opposition. The Supreme Court also banned the leader of the Independent Liberal Party Eduardo Montealegre from running in the election. Ortega was re-elected as president, amid claims of electoral fraud; data about turnout were unclear: while the Supreme Electoral Council claimed a turnout of 66% of voters, the opposition claimed only 30% of voters actually went to the polls.

The year 2018 was marked by particular unrest in Nicaragua that had not been seen in the country in three decades. It came in two different phases, with initial unrest in the context of a fire at the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve in the Río San Juan department (which came to an end when rain abruptly put the fire out), leading on to an outbreak of violence a few weeks later after social security reforms were announced by the government.

During this unrest there were many deaths linked to the violence, as well as many instances of torture, sexual assaults, death threats, ransacking and burning of buildings and violence against journalists. Opposition figures argued that the government was responsible for the violence, a view supported by some press outlets and NGOs such as Amnesty International. Many opposition figures and independent journalists have been arrested and police raids of opposition forces and independent media have occurred frequently.

Ideology

Through the media and the works of FSLN leaders such as Carlos Fonseca, the life and times of Augusto César Sandino became its unique symbol in Nicaragua. The ideology of Sandinismo gained momentum in 1974, when a Sandinista-initiated hostage situation resulted in the Somoza government adhering to FSLN demands and publicly printing and airing work on Sandino in well known newspapers and media outlets.

During the struggle against Somoza, the FSLN leaders' internal disagreements over strategy and tactics were reflected in three main factions:

The guerra popular prolongada (GPP, "protracted people's war") faction was rural-based and sought long-term "silent accumulation of forces" within the country's large peasant population, which it saw as the main social base for the revolution.

The tendencia proletaria (TP, "proletarian tendency"), led by Jaime Wheelock, reflected an orthodox Marxist approach that sought to organize urban workers.

The tercerista/insurreccionista (TI, "third way/insurrectionist") faction, led by Humberto, Casimiro A. Sotelo, and Daniel Ortega, was ideologically eclectic, favoring a more rapid insurrectional strategy in alliance with diverse sectors of the country, including business owners, churches, students, the middle class, unemployed youth and the inhabitants of shantytowns. The terceristas also helped attract popular and international support by organizing a group of prominent Nicaraguan professionals, business leaders, and clergymen (known as "the Twelve"), who called for Somoza's removal and sought to organize a provisional government from Costa Rica.

Nevertheless, while ideologies varied between FSLN leaders, all leaders essentially agreed that Sandino provided a path for the Nicaragua masses to take charge, and the FSLN would act as the legitimate vanguard. The extreme end of the ideology links Sandino to Roman Catholicism and portrays him as descending from the mountains in Nicaragua knowing he would be betrayed and killed. Generally however, most Sandinistas associated Sandino on a more practical level, as a heroic and honest person who tried to combat the evil forces of imperialist national and international governments that existed in Nicaragua's history.

Principles of government

For purposes of making sense of how to govern, the FSLN drew four fundamental principles from the work of Carlos Fonseca and his understanding of the lessons of Sandino. According to Bruce E. Wright, "the Governing Junta of National Reconstruction agreed, under Sandinista leadership, that these principles had guided it in putting into practice a form of government that was characterized by those principles." It is generally accepted that these following principles have evolved the "ideology of Sandinismo". Three of these (excluding popular participation, which was presumably contained in Article 2 of the Constitution of Nicaragua) were to ultimately be guaranteed by Article 5 of the Constitution of Nicaragua. They are as follows:

Political Pluralism – The ultimate success of the Sandinista Front in guiding the insurrection and in obtaining the leading fore within it was based on the fact that the FSLN, through the tercerista guidance, had worked with many sectors of the population in defeating the Somoza dictatorship. The FSLN and all those who would constitute the new provisional government were called diverse; "they were plural in virtually all senses".

Mixed Economy – Fonseca's understanding that Nicaragua was not, in spite of Browderist interpretations, simply a feudal country and that it had also never really developed its own capitalism made it clear that a simple feudalism-capitalism-socialism path was not a rational way to think about the future development of Nicaragua. The FSLN was not necessarily seen simply as the vanguard of the proletariat revolution. The proletariat was but a minor fraction of the population. A complex class structure in a revolution based on unity among people from various class positions suggested more that it made sense to see the FSLN as the "vanguard of the people".

Popular Participation and Mobilization – This calls for more than simple representative democracy. The inclusion of the mass organizations in the Council of State clearly manifested this conception. In Article 2 of the Constitution this is spelled out as follows: "The people exercise democracy, freely participating and deciding in the construction of the economic, political and social system what is most appropriate to their interest. The people exercise power directly and by their means of their representatives, freely elected in accord with universal, equal, direct, free, and secret suffrage."

Policies and programs

Foreign policy

Beginning in 1967, the Cuban General Intelligence Directorate, or DGI, had begun to establish ties with Nicaraguan revolutionary organizations. By 1970 the DGI had managed to train hundreds of Sandinista guerrilla leaders and had vast influence over the organization. After the successful ousting of Somoza, DGI involvement in the new Sandinista government expanded rapidly. An early indication of the central role that the DGI would play in the Cuban-Nicaraguan relationship is a meeting in Havana on July 27, 1979, at which diplomatic ties between the two countries were re-established after more than 25 years. Julián López Díaz, a prominent DGI agent, was named Ambassador to Nicaragua. Cuban military and DGI advisors, initially brought in during the Sandinista insurgency, would swell to over 2,500 and operated at all levels of the new Nicaraguan government.

The Cubans would like to have helped more in the development of Nicaragua towards socialism. Following the US invasion of Grenada, countries previously looking for support from Cuba saw that the United States was likely to take violent action to discourage this.

The early years of the Nicaraguan revolution had strong ties to Cuba. The Sandinista leaders acknowledged that the FSLN owed a great debt to the socialist island. Once the Sandinistas assumed power, Cuba gave Nicaragua military advice, as well as aid in education, health care, vocational training and industry building for the impoverished Nicaraguan economy. In return, Nicaragua provided Cuba with grains and other foodstuffs to help Cuba overcome the effects of the US embargo.

According to Cambridge University historian Christopher Andrew, who undertook the task of processing the Mitrokhin Archive, Carlos Fonseca Amador, one of the original three founding members of the FSLN had been recruited by the KGB in 1959 while on a trip to Moscow. This was one part of Aleksandr Shelepin's 'grand strategy' of using national liberation movements as a spearhead of the Soviet Union's foreign policy in the Third World, and in 1960 the KGB organized funding and training for twelve individuals that Fonseca handpicked. These individuals were to be the core of the new Sandinista organization. In the following several years, the FSLN tried with little success to organize guerrilla warfare against the government of Luis Somoza Debayle. After several failed attempts to attack government strongholds and little initial support from the local population, the National Guard nearly annihilated the Sandinistas in a series of attacks in 1963. Disappointed with the performance of Shelepin's new Latin American "revolutionary vanguard", the KGB reconstituted its core of the Sandinista leadership into the ISKRA group and used them for other activities in Latin America.

Educational assistance

Cuba was instrumental in the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign. Nicaragua was a country with a very high rate of illiteracy, but the campaign succeeded in lowering the rate from 50% to 12%. The revolution in Cuban education since the ousting of the US-backed Batista regime not only served as a model for Nicaragua but also provided technical assistance and advice. Cuba played an important part in the Campaign, providing teachers on a yearly basis after the revolution. Prevost states that "Teachers were not the only ones studying in Cuba, about 2,000 primary and secondary students were studying on the Isle of Youth and the cost was covered by the host country (Cuba)".

The goals of the 1980 Literacy Campaign were socio-political, strategic as well as educational. It was the most prominent campaign with regards to the new education system. Illiteracy in Nicaragua was reduced, and it has been claimed that overall illiteracy went down from 50% to 13%, although this figure has been called into question. One of the government's major concerns was the previous education system under the Somoza regime which did not see education as a major factor on the development of the country. As mentioned in the Historical Program of the FSLN of 1969, education was seen as a right and the pressure to stay committed to the promises made in the program was even stronger. 1980 was declared the "Year of Literacy" and the major goals of the campaign that started only 8 months after the FSLN took over. This included the eradication of illiteracy and the integration of different classes, races, gender and age. Political awareness and the strengthening of political and economic participation of the Nicaraguan people was also a central goal of the Literacy Campaign. The campaign was a key component of the FSLN's cultural transformation agenda.

The basic reader which was disseminated and used by teacher was called "Dawn of the People" based on the themes of Sandino, Carlos Fonseca, and the Sandinista struggle against imperialism and defending the revolution. Political education was aimed at creating a new social values based on the principles of Sandinista socialism, such as social solidarity, worker's democracy, egalitarianism, and anti-imperialism.

Health care

Health conditions in Somoza era Nicaragua were abysmal according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Vaccine coverage of babies under a year old was 88% immunised against polio and 78% against measles in 1983. Despite the turmoil caused by the Contra War under-fire mortality was reduced by approximately half during this period.

In this area Cuba played a role by again offering expertise to Nicaragua. Over 1,500 Cuban doctors worked in Nicaragua and provided more than five million consultations. Cuban personnel were essential in the elimination of polio, the decrease in whooping cough, rubella, measles and the lowering of the infant mortality rate. Gary Prevost states that Cuban personnel made it possible for Nicaragua to have a national health care system that reached the majority of its citizens.

Vocational assistance

Cuba has participated in the training of Nicaraguan workers in the use of new machinery imported to Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan revolution caused the United States to oppose the country's government; therefore the Sandinistas would not receive any aid from the United States. The United States embargo against Nicaragua, imposed by the Reagan administration in May 1985, made it impossible for Nicaragua to receive spare parts for US-made machines, so this led Nicaragua to look to other countries for help. Cuba was the best choice because of the shared language and proximity and also because it had imported similar machinery over the years. Nicaraguans went to Cuba for short periods of three to six months and this training involved close to 3,000 workers. Countries such as the UK, sent farm equipment to Nicaragua.

Industry and infrastructure

Cuba helped Nicaragua in large projects such as building roads, power plants and sugar mills. Cuba also attempted to help Nicaragua build the first overland route linking Nicaragua's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The road was meant to traverse 420 kilometres (260 mi) of jungle, but completion of the road and usage was hindered by the Contra war, and it was never completed.

Another significant feat was the building of the Tipitapa-Malacatoya sugar mill. It was completed and inaugurated during a visit by Fidel Castro in January 1985. The plant used the newest technology available and was built by workers trained in Cuba. Also during this visit Castro announced that all debts incurred on this project were absolved. Cuba provided assistance in the rejuvenation of different industries - such as the sugar industry and livestock breeding. Aid was provided through training from technicians, technology, spare parts, as well as building schools and similar projects.

Ministry of Culture

After the Nicaraguan revolution, the Sandinista government established a Ministry of Culture in 1980. The ministry was spearheaded by Ernesto Cardenal, a poet and priest. The ministry was established in order to socialize the modes of cultural production. This extended to art forms including dance, music, art, theatre and poetry. The project was created to democratize culture on a national level. The aim of the ministry was to "democratize art" by making it accessible to all social classes as well as protecting the right of the oppressed to produce, distribute and receive art. In particular, the ministry was devoted to the development of working class and campesino, or peasant culture. Therefore, the ministry sponsored cultural workshops throughout the country until October 1988 when the Ministry of Culture was integrated into the Ministry of Education because of financial troubles.

The objective of the workshops was to recognize and celebrate neglected forms of artistic expression. The ministry created a program of cultural workshops known as, Casas de Cultura and Centros Populares de Cultura. The workshops were set up in poor neighbourhoods and rural areas and advocated universal access and consumption of art in Nicaragua. The ministry assisted in the creation of theatre groups, folklore and artisanal production, song groups, new journals of creation and cultural criticism, and training programs for cultural workers. The ministry created a Sandinista daily newspaper named Barricada and its weekly cultural addition named Ventana along with the Television Sandino, Radio Sandino and the Nicaraguan film production unit called the INCINE. There were existing papers which splintered after the revolution and produced other independent, pro-Sandinista newspapers, such as El Nuevo Diario and its literary addition Nuevo Amanecer Cultural. Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, a state publishing house for literature, was also created. The ministry collected and published political poetry of the revolutionary period, known as testimonial narrative, a form of literary genre that recorded the experiences of individuals in the course of the revolution.

The ministry developed a new anthology of Rubén Darío, a Nicaraguan poet and writer, established a Rubén Darío prize for Latin American writers, the Leonel Rugama prize for young Nicaraguan writers, as well as public poetry readings and contests, cultural festivals and concerts. The Sandinista regime tried to keep the revolutionary spirit alive by empowering its citizens artistically. At the time of its inception, the Ministry of Culture needed, according to Cardenal, "to bring a culture to the people who were marginalized from it. We want a culture that is not the culture of an elite, of a group that is considered 'cultivated', but rather of an entire people." Nevertheless, the success of the Ministry of Culture had mixed results and by 1985 criticism arose over artistic freedom in the poetry workshops. The poetry workshops became a matter for criticism and debate. Critics argued that the ministry imposed too many principles and guidelines for young writers in the workshop, such as, asking them to avoid metaphors in their poetry and advising them to write about events in their everyday life. Critical voices came from established poets and writers represented by the Asociacion Sandinista de Trabajadores de la Cultura (ASTC) and from the Ventana both of which were headed by Rosario Murillo. They argued that young writers should be exposed to different poetic styles of writing and resources developed in Nicaragua and elsewhere. Furthermore, they argued that the ministry exhibited a tendency that favored and fostered political and testimonial literature in post-revolutionary Nicaragua.

Economy

The new government, formed in 1979 and dominated by the Sandinistas, resulted in a socialist model of economic development. The new leadership was conscious of the social inequities produced during the previous thirty years of unrestricted economic growth and was determined to make the country's workers and peasants, the "economically underprivileged", the prime beneficiaries of the new society. Consequently, in 1980 and 1981, unbridled incentives to private investment gave way to institutions designed to redistribute wealth and income. Private property would continue to be allowed, but all land belonging to the Somozas was confiscated. By 1990 the agrarian reform had affected half of the country's arable land benefiting some 60% of rural families.

However, the ideology of the Sandinistas put the future of the private sector and of private ownership of the means of production in doubt. Although under the new government both public and private ownership were accepted, government spokespersons occasionally referred to a reconstruction phase in the country's development, in which property owners and the professional class would be tapped for their managerial and technical expertise. After reconstruction and recovery, the private sector would give way to expanded public ownership in most areas of the economy. Despite such ideas, which represented the point of view of a faction of the government, the Sandinista government remained officially committed to a mixed economy.

The Sandinista government also significantly expanded workers rights in particular the right to form a union and collective bargaining. Some trade union rights however, like the right to strike were suspended during the Contra War, but strikes still occurred throughout the 1980s, most labour strikes were settled through dialogue with the FSLN.

Economic growth was uneven in the 1980s. Restructuring of the economy and the rebuilding immediately following the end of the civil war caused the GDP to rise about 5 percent in 1980 and 1981. Each year from 1984 to 1990, however, showed a drop in the GDP. Reasons for the contraction included the reluctance of foreign banks to offer new loans, the diversion of funds to fight the new insurrection against the government, and, after 1985, the total embargo on trade with the United States, formerly Nicaragua's largest trading partner. After 1985 the government chose to fill the gap between decreasing revenues and mushrooming military expenditures by printing large amounts of paper money. Inflation rose rapidly, peaking in 1988 at more than 14,000 percent annually.

Women in revolutionary Nicaragua

The women of Nicaragua prior to, during and after the revolution played a prominent role within the nation's society as they have commonly been recognized, throughout history and across all Latin American states, as its backbone. Nicaraguan women were therefore directly affected by all of the positive and negative events that took place during this revolutionary period. The victory of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1979 brought about major changes and gains for women, mainly in legislation, broad educational opportunities, training programs for working women, childcare programs to help women enter the work force and greatly increased participation and leadership positions in a range of political activities. This, in turn, reduced the burdens that the women of Nicaragua were faced with prior to the revolution. During the Sandinista government, women were more active politically. The large majority of members of the neighborhood committees (Comités de Defensa Sandinista) were women. By 1987, 31% of the executive positions in the Sandinista government, 27% of the leadership positions of the FSLN, and 25% of the FSLN's active membership were women.

Supporters of the Sandinistas see their era as characterized by the creation and implementation of successful social programs which were free and made widely available to the entire nation. Some of the more successful programs for women that were implemented by the Sandinistas were in the areas of education (see: Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign), health, and housing. Providing subsidies for basic foodstuffs and the introduction of mass employment were also contributions of the FSLN. The Sandinistas were particularly advantageous for the women of Nicaraguan as they promoted progressive views on gender as early as 1969 claiming that the revolution would "abolish the detestable discrimination that women have suffered with regard to men and establish economic, political and cultural equality between men and women". This was evident as the FSLN began integrating women into their ranks by 1967, unlike other left-wing guerilla groups in the region. This goal was not fully reached because the roots of gender inequality were not explicitly challenged. Women's participation within the public sphere was also substantial, as many took part in the armed struggle as part of the FSLN or as part of counter-revolutionary forces.

Nicaraguan women organized independently in support of the revolution and their cause, such as

Relationship with the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church's relationship with the Sandinistas was extremely complex. Initially, the Church was supportive of the Somoza regime as it broke with the liberal tradition of anti-clericalism. Anti-clerical laws of the Estado Liberal established by the Liberal Party of Nicaragua were repealed, and Somoza granted the Church tax exemptions and assigned it a central role in state education, allowing Catholic, state-funded schools to flourish. However, relations with the Catholic clergy gradually deteriorated as the regime grew more oppressive and Somoza committed atrocities against his political opponents with help of Guardia Nacional. Open conflict between the Church and the regime emerged in the wake of Vatican II.

Vatican II had a profound effect on the Catholic Church, leading to the beginning of liberation theology, Catholic-Marxist dialogue, and empowering already existing left-wing currents within the Catholic clergy such as the worker-priests. Many Nicagaruan priests would join this trend and radicalize their parishioners into either supporting or even joining the Sandinistas. Priest Ernesto Cardenal encouraged his parishioners to reflect on their living conditions in relation to the religious message; in his teachings, Cardenal concluded that the realization of the Gospel would be taking up arms against the Somoza regime to oppose "un-Christian" conditions. Cardenal's brand of revolutionary Catholicism attracted the local working class, allowing the FSLN to successfully recruit them. Eventually the Sandinistas managed to recruit Cardenal himself, turning his local church into a potent source of new recruits. Cardenal was even reported to have said that "Jesus Christ is the Sandinistas" during Mass. Other priests such as José de la Jara promoted a sense of Catholic community in poor squatter neighbourhoods, promoting the portrayal of Jesus Christ as a poor worker in image of local inhabitants, and instituted a number of Catholic programs to help the community, such as road repairs, literacy programs and founded the Christian Youth Movement. Such actions united hitherto dispersed communities and fostered mutual support and trust. When encouraged by local priests to consider struggling for better living conditions as the realization of Catholic social teachings, parishioners spoke out forcefully against poor living conditions and unaffordable prices, eventually turning their discontent into open support for the FSLN. Even the priests who did not join the revolution would turn their churches into safe houses for the insurrectionists, gathering food and medicine for Sandinista combatants.

Human rights violations by the Sandinistas

Time magazine in 1983 published reports of human rights violations in an article which stated that "According to Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights, the regime detains several hundred people a month; about half of them are eventually released, but the rest simply disappear." Time also interviewed a former deputy chief of Nicaraguan military counterintelligence, who stated that he had fled Nicaragua after being ordered to kill 800 Miskito prisoners and make it look like they had died in combat. Another article described Sandinista neighbourhood "Defense Committees", modeled on similar Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which according to critics were used to unleash mobs on anyone who was labeled a counterrevolutionary. Nicaragua's only opposition newspaper, La Prensa, was subject to strict censorship. The newspaper's editors were forbidden to print anything negative about the Sandinistas either at home or abroad.

Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights reported 2,000 murders in the first six months and 3,000 disappearances in the first few years. It has since documented 14,000 cases of torture, rape, kidnapping, mutilation and murder.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in a 1981 report found evidence for mass executions in the period following the revolution. It stated: "In the Commission's view, while the government of Nicaragua clearly intended to respect the lives of all those defeated in the civil war, during the weeks immediately subsequent to the Revolutionary triumph, when the government was not in effective control, illegal executions took place which violated the right to life, and these acts have not been investigated and the persons responsible have not been punished." The IACHR also stated that: "The Commission is of the view that the new regime did not have, and does not now have, a policy of violating the right to life of political enemies, including among the latter the former guardsmen of the Government of General Somoza, whom a large sector of the population of Nicaragua held responsible for serious human rights violations during the former regime; proof of the foregoing is the abolition of the death penalty and the high number of former guardsmen who were prisoners and brought to trial for crimes that constituted violations of human rights."

A 1983 IACHR report documented allegations of human rights violations against the Miskito Indians, which were alleged to have taken place after opposition forces (the Contras) infiltrated a Miskito village in order to launch attacks against government soldiers, and as part of a subsequent forced relocation program. Allegations included arbitrary imprisonment without trial, "disappearances" of such prisoners, forced relocation, and destruction of property. A 1984 IACHR report accused the Sandinistas of having "repeatedly violated the basic rights of Miskito Indians living there, including instances of "illegal killings" and torture". The report accused them of executing 35 to 40 Miskitos in Leimus in December 1981. The U.S. government accused Nicaragua of genocide. The U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig pointed to a photo published in Le Figaro alleged to show Miskito bodies being burned by Sandinista troops as evidence; however, the photo was actually of people killed by Somoza's National Guard in 1978.

Politicization of human rights

The issue of human rights also became highly politicized at this time as human rights is claimed to be a key component of propaganda created by the Reagan administration to help legitimize its policies in the region. The Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA) in its Newsletter stated in 1985 that: "The hostility with which the Nicaraguan government is viewed by the Reagan administration is an unfortunate development. Even more unfortunate is the expression of that hostility in the destabilization campaign developed by the US administration. ... An important aspect of this campaign is misinformation and frequent allegations of serious human rights violations by the Nicaraguan authorities." Among the accusations in The Heritage Foundation report and the Demokratizatsiya article are references to alleged policies of religious persecution, particularly antisemitism. The ICCHRLA in its newsletter stated that: "From time to time the current U.S. administration, and private organizations sympathetic to it, have made serious and extensive allegations of religious persecution in Nicaragua. Colleague churches in the United States undertook onsite investigation of these charges in 1984. In their report, the delegation organized by the Division of Overseas Ministries of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States concluded that there is 'no basis for the charge of systematic religious persecution'. The delegation 'considers this issue to be a device being used to justify aggressive opposition to the present Nicaraguan government.'" On the other hand, some elements of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, among them Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo, strongly criticized the Sandinistas. The Archbishop stated "The government wants a church that is aligned with the Marxist–Leninist regime." The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights states that: "Although it is true that much of the friction between the Government and the churches arises from positions that are directly or indirectly linked to the political situation of the country, it is also true that statements by high government officials, official press statements, and the actions of groups under the control of the Government have gone beyond the limits within which political discussions should take place and have become obstacles to certain specifically religious activities."

Human Rights Watch also stated in its 1989 report on Nicaragua that: "Under the Reagan administration, U.S. policy toward Nicaragua's Sandinista government was marked by constant hostility. This hostility yielded, among other things, an inordinate amount of publicity about human rights issues. Almost invariably, U.S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U.S.-supported insurgents, known as the contras."

United States government allegations of support for foreign rebels

The United States State Department accused the Sandinistas of many cases of illegal foreign intervention.

The first allegation was supporting the FMLN rebels in El Salvador with safe haven, training, command-and-control headquarters, advice, weapons, ammunition, and other vital supplies. Captured documents, testimonials of former rebels and Sandinistas, aerial photographs, the tracing of captured weapons back to Nicaragua, and captured vehicles from Nicaragua smuggling weapons were cited as evidence. El Salvador was in a civil war in the period in question and the US was heavily supporting the Salvadoran government against the FMLN guerrillas.

There were also accusations of subversive activities in Honduras, Costa Rica, and Colombia, and in the case of Honduras and Costa Rica outright military operations by Nicaraguan troops.

In 2015, Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell claimed during an interview with CNN that John Kerry, then Secretary of State, had visited Nicaragua and met Daniel Ortega and denounced the Reagan Administration's support for the Contras as supporting terrorism during Kerry's tenure as a United States senator.

During the Nicaraguan Revolution in the 1980s, American Democratic politician and then mayor Bernie Sanders expressed support for the Sandinistas and condemned US support for the Contras, he wrote letters to the group denouncing the US media portrayal of the conflict, and also visited Nicaragua during the war where he attended a Sandinista rally where anti-American chants were reportedly being done.

Symbols

The flag of the FSLN consists of an upper half in red, a lower half in black, and the letters F S L N in white. It is a modified version of the flag Sandino used in the 1930s, during the war against the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua which consisted of two vertical stripes, equally in size, one red and the other black with a skull (like the traditional Jolly Roger flag). These colors came from the Mexican anarchist movements that Sandino was involved with during his stay in Mexico in the early 1920s. (The traditional flag of anarcho-syndicalism, which joins diagonally the red color of the labour movement and the black color of anarchism, as in the flag of the CNT, is a negation of nationalism and reaffirmation of internationalism.)

In recent times, there has been a dispute between the FSLN and the dissident Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) about the use of the red and black flag in public activities. Although the MRS has its own flag (orange with a silhouette of Sandino's hat in black), they also use the red-and-black flag in honor of Sandino's legacy. They state that the red-and-black flag is a symbol of Sandinismo as a whole, not only of the FSLN party.

Sandinista Revolution Day is a national holiday, celebrated on July 19 each year.

In popular culture

In films

In the gay cult classic film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Vida (Patrick Swayze) was trying to convince Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) to take a young drag queen, Chi-Chi Rodriguez, to Hollywood to compete in a drag competition. Noxeema was totally against the idea and quotes this line: "Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, not on your young queer life—you and your causes. That child is Latin, you does not wanna get mixed up in all that Latin mess ... she might turn out to be a Sandinista or something."

The film Last Plane Out (1983), about journalist Jack Cox's experiences in Nicaragua, portrayed the Sandinistas as crazed communist psychopaths while making Anastasio Somoza Debayle look sympathetic by comparison.

The 1983 American political thriller Under Fire, starring Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy, is set during the last days of the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution that ended the Somoza regime.

Scenes covering the war were featured in the 1987 feature film Broadcast News.

In games

The video game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010) includes a group of FSLN Revolutionaries forced into Costa Rica as an important group of supporting characters, including Amanda. The Anti-Somoza revolution itself figures prominently into the plot of the game as well, being described within the game's narrative as being started by KGB agent Vladimir Zadornov in order to make Nicaragua a communist state so the Soviet Union could force the United States out of Central America entirely.

In language

Since the conflict with Nicaragua in the 1980s, variations of the term "Sandinista" are now sometimes used in the United States to refer to fanatical supporters of a certain cause. In the Spanish language, the suffix "-ista" is used to indicate a predilection towards the root and is the equivalent of "-ist" in English.

In literature

Roger Ebert, in his review of Into the Wild (2007), likened the film's subject – the American hiker and itinerant traveler Christopher McCandless – to his childhood friend, Joseph David "Joe" Sanderson, a nature-loving Illinois native and adventurer, who died in combat, fighting in Morazán, El Salvador as a Sandinista freedom fighter (in April 1982, one of only two Americans known to have died while in the ranks of that country's leftist guerrilla movement in the 1980s and 1990s). Ebert wrote:

I grew up in Urbana three houses down from the Sanderson family – Milton and Virginia and their boys Steve and Joe. My close friend was Joe. His bedroom was filled with aquariums, terrariums, snakes, hamsters, spiders, and butterfly and beetle collections. I envied him like crazy. After college he hit the road. He never made a break from his parents, but they rarely knew where he was. Sometimes he came home and his mother would have to sew $100 bills into the seams of his blue jeans. He disappeared in Nicaragua. His body was later identified as a dead Sandinista freedom fighter. From a nice little house surrounded by evergreens at the other end of Washington Street, he left to look for something he needed to find. I believe in Sean Penn's Christopher McCandless. I grew up with him.

In music

The popular Puerto Rican Reggaeton–rap band Calle 13 mentioned the Sandinista movement in their song "Llegale a mi guarida" (2007). The lyrics claimed: "Respeto a Nicaragua y a la lucha sandinista" ("I respect Nicaragua and the Sandinista struggle").

The English anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba recorded the song "An Interlude: Beginning To Take It Back" on their album Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (1986). The song chronicles the history of the Sandinistas, as well as their conflict with the Contras, and reflects an optimistic hope for the future of Nicaragua.

The Chilean new wave group Los Prisioneros mention the Sandinistas in their song "¿Quién mató a Marilyn?", in a passage asking, "Who killed Marilyn Monroe?" The song was released on the 1984 album La voz de los '80 (Spanish for The Voice of the 80s).

As a reaction to an anti-Sandinista statement by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her proposal to ban the use of the word itself, punk rock group The Clash used the title Sandinista! (1980) for their fourth studio album. The triple album contains the song "Washington Bullets", which references the Sandinistas and other events and groups involved in Latin American history, starting from 1959.

In the song titled "Highwomen" by the US-based country music group The Highwomen, the first verse states "I was a Highwoman, And a mother from my youth, For my children I did what I had to do, My family left Honduras when they killed the Sandinistas, We followed a coyote through the dust of Mexico, Every one of them except for me survived, And I am still alive."

The Irish rebel song "Croppies who will not lie down" references numerous revolutionary groups around the world and includes the lines "In Central America there they do strive, to rid themselves free of those Washington clowns; Freedom's the game, Sandinista's the name, of the Croppies who will not lie down".

The Brazilian musician Chico Science, founder of the 'Manguebeat' movement, in his song "Monólogo ao pé do ouvido", makes reference to Augusto César Sandino and other personalities who resisted the status quo in their respective realities. The verse states: "Viva Zapata! Viva Sandino! Viva Zumbi! Antônio Conselheiro! Todos os Panteras Negras. Lampião, sua imagem e semelhança."

In television

In the pilot episode of Fear the Walking Dead, Salvadoran refugee Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades) is working as a Los Angeles barber, but in season 1, episode 5 ("Cobalt"), "we learn Salazar's true past: No, this simple barber wasn't so simple at all. As a younger man [in El Salvador], he was given the choice between torturer and victim, and he chose the path that kept him alive."

In the 1990 episode "Mary Has a Little Lamb" of the American sitcom The Golden Girls, Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose return home to find Sophia bound, gagged, and tied to a chair. When Dorothy removes the gag and asks who has done this to her, Sophia sarcastically replies: "the Sandinistas!" (It was really a released prisoner named Merrill, who was searching for Blanche.)

In Snowfall, mainly set in Los Angeles, California during the early-eighties, one of the main characters is an undercover CIA agent selling cocaine to local drug dealers with the intent of using the money to fund the Contras in their fight against the Sandinistas.

In the second season of The Americans, the Jennings' learn of a covert effort by the US government to train the Contras' on American soil, and are aided by a fiery Sandinista operative in attempting to disrupt the training camp by killing the leadership and leaking the evidence of the camp

Presidents of the Executive

Daniel Ortega has been the only Sandinista President of the Republic, from 1985 to 1990 and from 2007 to the present day.

Prominent Sandinistas

Bayardo Arce Castaño, hard-line National Directorate member in the 1980s

Rita Arauz, lesbian and gay rights activist in Nicaragua

Patrick Argüello, Sandinista involved with the Dawson's Field hijackings

Nora Astorga, Sandinista UN ambassador

Monica Baltodano, former guerrilla commander and Minister of Regional Affairs from 1982 to 1990

Gioconda Belli, novelist and poet, handled media relations for the FSLN government

Tomás Borge, one of the FSLN's founders, leader of the Prolonged People's War tendency in the 1970s, Minister of Interior in the 1980s

Omar Cabezas, Sandinista leader; also an author and politician

Ernesto Cardenal, poet and priest; Minister of Culture in the 1980s

Fernando Cardenal, a Jesuit priest and brother of Ernesto, directed the literacy campaign as Minister of Education

Luis Carrión, 1980s National Directorate member

Rigoberto Cruz (aka Pablo Ubeda), early FSLN member

Joaquín Cuadra, internal front leader, later chief of staff of the army

Miguel D'Escoto, a Maryknoll Roman Catholic priest; served as Nicaragua's foreign minister

Electoral history