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

Conclusion

The twentieth century was marked by four major women’s movements in Nicaragua: first-wave feminism, a Somocista women’s movement, a Sandinista women’s movement, and second-wave feminism. Before the Revolution deals with the first two—and most misunderstood—of these movements. First-wave feminism had its origins in the nineteenth century. After independence, some elite men and women became interested in ending women’s subordination, particularly in the educational arena. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century, however, that there were significant changes in women’s status. Feminists like Josefa Toledo de Aguerri (1866–1962) began actively working toward girls’ and women’s secular public education at the primary and secondary or normal levels, expanding their demands as the years progressed. By 1893, the arguments for women’s su¤rage had become commonplace within progressive circles; by 1913, the Nationalist Liberal Party (PLN) had promised to endorse the vote for women. Education and su¤rage were the two primary feminist demands during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In support of these goals, feminists gathered in a wide range of organizations between the 1910s and the 1940s: the Nicaraguan Feminist League, the International CONCLUSION League of Iberian and Hispanic American Women and Nicaraguan Women’s Crusade (LIMDI y Cruzada), the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW), the Workingwomen’s Cultural Center, the First PanAmerican Women’s Education League, the Nicaraguan chapter of the International League for Peace and Freedom (WILFP), and female teacher organizations, among others. These groups were independent of the state, political parties, and the Catholic Church, although many had structural ties to international feminist organizations (such as the WILPF and IACW), ideological links to Liberalism and socialism, or both. In the 1940s, a new generation of women’s rights activists arose in Nicaragua. This group actively mobilized on behalf of women’s suffrage as part of a Central Women’s Committee. Although the committee was nonpartisan, many of its members, often former pupils of Toledo de Aguerri, were aªliated with partisan women’s groups. Su¤ragists’ embrace of partisan politics signaled the end of first-wave feminism in Nicaragua. The transition from feminism to Somocismo was not a smooth one, controlled from above by the Somoza family. It was a complicated process in which women of di¤erent political persuasions actively participated. The Somozas did not pull all the strings, although they did have the coercive power of the state at their disposal. Contemporary Nicaraguans generally understand that the Somozas governed by terror. As historian Je¤rey L. Gould notes, scholars and laypeople tend to “agree that the . . . regime ruled through repression and to a lesser degree, co-optation.”1 Gould’s study goes beyond these views, however, to suggest a more complex interpretation of the period. My research results support his contention that during the early and middle years of the dictatorship, the Somozas experimented with populism. For a time, independent nonpartisan feminists were able to participate in the populist project. By 1955, however, the year women won the vote, they were no longer admitted as players within the dictatorship. Once women’s su¤rage was achieved, the Somozas ushered in a new era of women’s involvement in politics. The Somozas’ male-dominated Nationalist Liberal Party sought direct control over women’s political participation through its partisan, nonfeminist women’s organization, the Ala Femenina. The Ala’s existence significantly altered the decadesold relationship between autonomous Liberal-leaning feminists and the PLN. For almost one hundred years, feminists had tended to agree with Liberals ideologically but had retained their organizational autonomy. After women won the vote, however, the Nationalist Liberal Party, under 1 7 2 B E F O R E T H E R E V O L U T I O N the guidance of the Somoza dictatorship, moved to exert ideological as well as organizational control over women who espoused Liberal ideas. Through the Ala Femenina, the PLN succeeded in shutting independent feminists out of the political process. Originally made up of the nation’s first generation of university-educated Liberal women, the Ala expanded its membership to include urban working-class women from di¤erent walks of life, bringing hundreds of thousands of women to the polls over the years. By voting for the Somozas between 1957 and 1979, these women sought to retain the rights Toledo de Aguerri and...