Before the Revolution: Women's Rights and Right-Wing Politics in Nicaragua, 1821–1979

Introduction

In 1979, Nicaraguans overwhelmingly supported the overthrow of the repressive and corrupt Somoza family, who—backed by the United States— had been in power for forty-three years. Nicaraguans’ support for the leftist Sandinista guerrillas who toppled the dictatorship, however, waned over the course of a prolonged counterrevolutionary war waged against the Sandinistas throughout the 1980s. In 1990, the U.S.–backed antiSandinista candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, won the presidential election. The Sandinistas, who had come to power through violent means, relinquished power peacefully after their defeat at the polls. The Sandinista revolution lasted only eleven years. Nonetheless, it radically altered Nicaragua’s political and cultural landscape. After 1979, revolutionaries proclaimed that Somocismo was dead, and everyone agreed that a new era of Nicaraguan political history had begun. Yet Somocismo proved to be more resilient than its enemies had thought, a fact that has complicated Nicaraguan politics enormously. In a 2006 political survey of 490 Nicaraguans in the colonial city of Granada, 64 percent proclaimed that they would support an authoritarian government “if it resolved the country’s economic problems.”1 And more than half (54 percent) believed that the Somocista years (1943– 79) were the best Nicaragua had ever experienced.2 These results were INTRODUCTION startling and unexpected, particularly for Sandinistas who had wholeheartedly believed that, indeed, Somocismo was truly dead. Somocistas found the results less surprising. The authors of the Granada study concluded that, over the course of almost three decades since the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) ousted the right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Somocismo had been “transformed into a positive historical point of reference” and that the undemocratic Somoza years had been “whitewashed” in the Nicaraguan imaginary.3 They reasoned that economics factored into this shift. The study stressed the impact of financial diªculties on Nicaraguans ’ political choices, given the nation’s status as the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after only Haiti.4 And it suggested that the economic development of the 1950s and 1960s, and the increase in the standard of living that accompanied it, looked good to many when compared to the war of the 1980s and the corruption, partisanship, and economic misery that have enveloped Nicaragua since 1990.5 It is important to note that those respondents who spoke favorably of the Somozas often began their statements with “I’ve heard that . . . ,” “My parents say that . . . ,” and “According to my mom. . . .”6 In other words, many did not live through the Somoza years as adults but were nonetheless molded by their elders’ memories, which in turn were shaped by recent events. The study’s authors urged readers not to become prisoners of this whitewashed Somocista past, forged in the depths of economic anguish. Instead, they suggested that Nicaraguans look past the bleakness of the present with renewed hope to the future. I agree that the ongoing economic crisis in Nicaragua has helped to whitewash Somocismo. On the other hand, Somocismo is quite complex , and it is important not to dismiss or underestimate Nicaraguans’ embrace of right-wing politics. Before the Revolution seeks to shed light on the Somoza years and on the decades that preceded them so that we may gain a more nuanced understanding of Nicaraguan history, one not necessarily based on the political and economic desperation of the present. It also seeks to provide historical contextualization for yet another finding of the Granada study, that, despite Nicaragua’s high electoral participation rates in presidential elections (higher than the world average since 1967; 73.5 percent in 2006), 58 percent of those surveyed who said they were not interested in politics were women.7 This book thus o¤ers a backdrop against which to understand contemporary women’s participation (or supposed lack of participation) in politics. The study contended that the relatively low level of interest in politics on the part of contemporary Nicaraguans (both men and women) 2 B E F O R E T H E R E V O L U T I O N reflected their disillusionment with contemporary politics and political parties, a narrow definition of politics. Indeed, that 27 percent of all those surveyed said they were interested in politics, despite the extreme levels of political corruption seen in the last decades, o¤ers a sign of hope for democratic forces in Nicaragua.8 The pages that follow document women’s political participation in Nicaragua between...