In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The story I tell in this book is a heartbreaker. I document the rise of firstwave feminism in Nicaragua during the first decades of the twentieth century and the movement’s co-optation by a U.S.–backed dictator. I then address the reasons why so many working- and middle-class women in this small and poor country felt compelled to support a right-wing dictatorship over the course of almost half a century. I tell how, believing itself to be the rebel child of the leftist Sandinista patriarchs, second-wave feminism developed in Nicaragua in the early 1990s completely unaware of its foremothers’ existence. And how, in 1996, with the heirs of the Liberal right-wing dictatorship back in power, a new Liberal women’s movement emerged, with no memory of women ever organizing on behalf of the Somozas. I couldn’t have made this story up even if I’d tried. The interpretation put forth in this book seeks to replace the previous one, which held that Nicaraguan women were not active in politics until the late 1970s, when they mobilized, often as mothers, to support the Sandinista revolution, which brought an end to the Somoza dictatorship. Previous scholars had also held that Nicaraguan women first embraced feminism in the early 1990s, and that, before then, they had simply suffered at the hands of their men as sufridas. Before the Revolution tells an entirely di¤erent story. Many of the arguments it presents, which constitute my particular take on Nicaraguan women’s history, are now, thirty years after the Somozas’ defeat, largely accepted as “what happened” by scholars and activists in the United States and Nicaragua alike.1 Indeed, the story I tell has become a somewhat familiar one. I have published (in English and Spanish) many of my general arguments in several di¤erent articles and book chapters and have presented my work at over a dozen conferences throughout the world. But fifteen years ago, when I first started to publicly share my conclusions on the history of Nicaraguan women, they were considered P R E FA C E We cannot live without stories. Our need for stories of our lives is so huge, so intense, so fundamental, that we would lose our humanity if we stopped trying to tell stories of who we think we are. And even more important, if we stopped wanting to listen to each other’s stories. —Ruth Behar, Translated Woman sheer heresy, “counterintuitive” at best. In the next few pages, I outline some of the ways in which my research findings were first received, both in Nicaragua and the United States. I pay particular attention to the reasons why my audiences were dissatisfied with what they heard in my presentations. Reactions to My Research Although today it is much in vogue among feminists and the leftist intelligentsia to criticize the Sandinistas, back in 1994, it was still taboo in many circles. It was even worse to humanize anyone who had ties to the Somozas. Thus my conclusions at first elicited some highly negative reactions, particularly among nonfeminist Sandinista women and men. Some Nicaraguans were upset with me because I was arguing that feminism was not a foreign import. Others were upset because I was taking credit away from the Sandinistas for “awakening” women to their inner power. Still others were outraged that I was making the Somoza dictatorship palatable by ignoring the “fact” that working-class Somocista women had either been duped or coerced into Somocismo. And some were both confused and saddened: they conceded that many women had supported the Somozas, but could not understand why that was important. Wasn’t their story as Sandinista revolutionaries more meaningful? What kind of scholar would choose to write about evil people? My father, in fact a devout anti-Somocista activist, died without ever fully understanding why, among all the topics I could have picked to study, I picked this one. Some additional issues were at play, especially—though not only—in the United States. It seemed to me that some U.S. activists and scholars could not get beyond the stereotypes of the mujer sufrida and the macho man, stereotypes that are often embraced by Nicaraguans themselves even today. According to these stereotypes, Nicaraguan men are and traditionally have been more sexist than other (white) men. Therefore, it follows that Nicaraguan women are and traditionally have been more oppressed than other (white) women, that they are and were, indeed, mujeres sufridas...

Share