Sandinista National Liberation Front

Sandinista! is also the name of a popular music album by The Clash.

File:Sandinista flag.png

The Sandinista flag

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) is a leftist political party that ruled Nicaragua for roughly 12 years from 1979 to 1990. It is generally referred to by the initialism FSLN and its members are called, in both English and Spanish, Sandinistas.

For many decades it was the main opposition group against the dictatorship of the Somoza family. After emerging victorious from a brief civil war it formed the government of Nicaragua from 1979 until 1990, during which time it faced heavy opposition from the United States due to its Marxist ideology and its military alliance with communist bloc countries such as the Soviet Union and Cuba. It organized - and lost - the February 25, 1990 elections and peacefully surrendered power, though not before many high-ranking Sandinistas deeded themselves large homes the government had seized in Managua . The FSLN remains the country's leading political opposition to the current governing Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC).

Origins and (1961–1979)

The FSLN was formally organised in 1961 by recent KGB recruit Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge Martínez and Silvio Mayorga. The word "Sandinista" appeared two years later, when Amador inserted it into the name of then-nascent movement. It eventually became Marxist-Leninist based, and like many Communist groups began to present its struggle as a "movement for national liberation"; they pointed to the injustices committed by the kleptocratic government and how it was oppressing and exploiting the Nicaraguan people and violating their rights. The Sandinistas took their name from Augusto César Sandino (1895-1934), a leader in the country's nationalist rebellion against the United States military occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s and early 1930s until his assassination in 1934 by the U.S.-created Guardia Nacional (National Guard) enabled Somoza to seize control of the country.

As part of Aleksandr Shelepin’s grand strategy of using national liberation movements as a spearhead of the Soviet Unions foreign policy in the third world, in 1960 Shelepin organized funding and training in Moscow for twelve individuals that Fonseca handpicked. These were to be the core of the new Sandinistan organization and Fonseca specifically chose them because of their revolutionary zeal and sympathies to Moscow. In the following several years, the FSLN tried with little success to organise guerrilla warfare against Somoza’s government. 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 the core of the Sandinistan leadership in Honduras and Costa Rica in 1964 and monitored their training and progress from their Mexico City embassy.

During the following three years the KGB handpicked several dozen Sandinistas training in Honduras and Costa Rica for intelligence and sabotage operation in the United States. In 1966 this KGB controlled Sandinistan sabotage and intelligence group was sent to the US/Mexican border. Their primary targets were southern NORAD facilities the oil pipeline running from El Paso Texas to Costa Mesa California. A support group, codenamed SATURN, passed as migrant farm workers to conceal themselves and smuggle in arms caches. In 1967 the reconstituted Sandinistan forces suffered another major defeat during a major National Guard offensive. One of the Sandinista original founders, Rigoberto Cruz Arguello, was killed in this attack.

After a Cuban reorganization of the FSLN structure and tactics in the 1970s, it began to attract significant support from the country's increasingly politicised peasantry and from other sectors of the population in response to the U.S.-supported dictatorship's brutality and corruption, especially after the earthquake that levelled the capital city, Managua, on 23 December 1972. The earthquake killed 20,000 of the city's 400,000 residents and left another 250,000 homeless. Somoza'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 because they laid on top of active fault lines. This overt corruption caused even people who had previously supported the regime, such as business leaders, to turn against Somoza and call for his overthrow. It is important to note that Jimmy Carter requested Somoza to repay the U.S. aid for the 1972's earthquake because it was "a loan and not a gift." Somoza had given several millions of dollars to the "Group of Twelve" (los doce) to appease them politically during the "Triunvirate" years (1972-1975). The "Group of Twelve," a group of "indignated businessmen," funded the Sandinistas after Somoza asked them to give back the millions he gave them so he could pay back the United States. The "Twelve" threw the country into open warfare instead of giving back the money, which was originally intended to feed and to clothe the homeless.

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

• The guerra popular prolongada ("prolonged popular war"; GPP) 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 ("proletarian tendency"; PT), led by Jaime Wheelock, reflected an orthodox Marxist approach that sought to organise urban workers.
• The tercerista/insurrecctionista ("third way/insurrectionist"; TI) faction, led by Humberto and Daniel Ortega Saavedra, was ideologically eclectic, favouring 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 organising a group of prominent Nicaraguan professionals, business leaders, and clergymen (known as "the Twelve"), who called for Somoza's removal and sought to organise a provisional government from Costa Rica.

On 10 January 1978, the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor of the anti-Somoza newspaper La Prensa, sparked a broad uprising against the regime. The Sandinistas lead a combination of general strikes, urban uprisings and rural guerrilla attacks that increasingly demoralised the National Guard. With the moral and material aid of many Latin American countries, the Sandinistas launched a liberation war from Costa Rican territory. Despite an overwhelming superiority in arms and ruthless tactics that included the aerial bombardment of Nicaraguan cities, Somoza's army disintegrated; he fled the country on 17 July 1979, and was later assassinated in Paraguay. Two days after Somoza's departure, the Sandinistas entered Managua and were greeted by huge crowds as national liberators.

Cuban assistance

Beginning in 1967 the Cuban General Intelligence Directorate, or DGI, had begun to establish ties with various Nicaraguan revolutionary organisations. By 1970 the DGI had managed to train hundreds of Sandinista guerrilla leaders and had vast influence over the organisation. In 1969 the DGI had financed and organised an operation to free the jailed Sandinista leader Carlos Fonseca from his prison in Costa Rica. Fonseca was re-captured shortly after the jail break, but after a plane carrying executives from the United Fruit Company was hijacked by the FSLN, he was freed and allowed to travel to Cuba.

DGI chief Manuel "Redbeard" Piñeiro commented that "of all the countries in Latin America, the most active work being carried out by us is in Nicaragua." However, one should keep in mind that there were many other Cuban operations throughout the world [1].

The DGI, with Fidel Castro's personal blessing, also collaborated with the FSLN on the botched assassination attempt of Turner Shelton, the U.S. ambassador in Managua and a close friend to the Somoza family. The FSLN managed to secure several hostages exchanging them for safe passage to Cuba and a one million dollar ransom.

After the successful ouster 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. Sandinista defector Álvaro Baldizón alleged that Cuban influence in Nicaragua's Interior Ministry (MINT) was more extensive than was widely believed at the time and Cuban "advice" and "observations" were treated as though they were orders.

While the Cubans would like to have helped more in the development of Nicaragua towards socialism, they realized that they were no match for the United States' pressure on Latin America. Following the invasion of Grenada, countries previously looking for support from Cuba saw that they had little power to fight the United States when it chose to take action. [Banana Republic, Roy Gutman, 1988]

Sandinista rule (1979–1990)

The Sandinistas inherited a country in ruins, with a debt of 1.6 billion dollars (US), an estimated 50,000 war dead, 600,000 homeless, and a devastated economic infrastructure. To begin the task of establishing a new government, they created a Council (or junta) of National Reconstruction, made up of five members – Sandinista militants Daniel Ortega and Moises Hassan, novelist Sergio Ramírez Mercado (a member of "the Twelve"), businessman Alfonso Robelo Callejas, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro). The preponderance of power, however, remained with the Sandinistas and their mass organisations, including the Sandinista Workers' Federation (Central Sandinista de Trabajadores), the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan Women's Association (Asociación de Mujeres Nicaragüenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza), and the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos).

While prominent rebel leaders such as Daniel Ortega were strongly Marxist, the new junta initially contained a broad spectrum of ideology. Upon assuming power, its political platform included the following:

• Nationalization of property owned by the Somozas and their collaborators.
• Land reform.
• Improved rural and urban working conditions.
• Free unionisation for all workers, both urban and rural.
• Control of living costs, especially basic necessities (food, clothing, and medicine).
• Improved public services, housing conditions, education (mandatory, free through high school; schools available to the whole national population; national literacy campaign).
• Nationalization and protection of natural resources, including mines.
• Abolition of torture, political assassination and the death penalty.
• Protection of democratic liberties (freedom of expression, political organisation and association, and religion; return of political exiles).
• Equality for women.
• Free, non-aligned foreign policy and relations.
• Formation of a new, democratic, and popular army under the leadership of the FSLN.
• Pesticide controls
• Rain forest conservation
• Wildlife conservation
• Alternative energy programs

Political graffiti in León, 1980. It reads "If the Gringos intervene (i.e. invade), the militias will stop them!!!"

One of the most notable successes of the revolution was the literacy campaign, which saw teachers flood the countryside. Within six months, half a million people had been taught to read, bringing the national illiteracy rate down from over 50 per cent to just under 13 per cent. Over 100,000 Nicaraguans participated as literacy teachers. One of the stated aims of the literacy campaign was to create a literate electorate which would be able to make informed choices at the promised elections. The great success of the literacy campaign was recognised by UNESCO with the award of a Nadezhda Krupskaya International Prize.

The FSLN also created neighbourhood groups, similar to the Cuban Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, called Sandinista Defence Committees (Comités de Defensa Sandinista or CDS). Especially in the early days following the overthrow of Somoza, the CDSs served as de facto units of local governance, distributing food rations, organising neighbourhood cleanup and recreational activities, and policing to control looting and apprehend remnants of the National Guard. During the subsequent Contra war, they also organised civilian defence efforts against Contra attacks. Critics of the Sandinistas decried the CDS as a system of local spy networks for the government, and a means of political control.

By 1980, conflicts began to emerge between the Sandinista and non-Sandinista members of the governing junta. Violeta Chamorro and Alfonso Robelo resigned from the governing junta in 1980, and the governing role of the Sandinistas became obvious as Ortega and his allies consolidated power. Allegations spread among critics that the Ortega clique were planning to turn Nicaragua into a Communist state like Cuba. In 1981, the U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan began organising remnants of Somoza's National Guard into guerrilla bands known as "Contras" (short for "contrarrevolucionarios", or counter-revolutionaries) that conducted attacks on economic, military, and civilian targets. During the Contra war, the Sandinistas arrested suspected Contras and censored La Prensa as well as other publications that they accused of collaborating with the U.S. and the Contras to destabilise the country.

In contrast to the Cuban revolution, the Sandinista government practiced political pluralism throughout its time in power although this was primaraily to appeases its external critics. A broad range of new political parties emerged that had not been allowed under Somoza. Following promulgation of a new constitution, Nicaragua held national elections in 1984. Independent electoral observers from around the world, including the UN, stated that the elections had been free and fair, although many groups, including the Nicaraguan political opposition and the Reagan administration, disputed this, objecting to political restrictions placed on the opposition by the government. The FSLN had, in fact, been actively suppressing opposition parties while leaving moderate parties alone with Ortega claiming that the moderates "presented no danger and served as a convenient facade to the outside world"

Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramírez were elected president and vice-president, and the FSLN won 61 out of 90 seats in the new National Assembly, having taken 63 per cent of the vote on a turnout of 74%. The United States refused to recognise them, with President Ronald Reagan denounced the elections as a sham.

Sandinistas vs. Contras

Main articles: Contras and Iran-Contra affair

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 authorised the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels, some 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 inevitably shortened to Contras, a label the anti-Communist forces chose to embrace. Eden Pastora and many of the indigenous guerrilla forces, who were not associated with the "Somozistas," also resisted the Sandinistas.

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

The armed resistance to the Sandinistas in Costa Rica initially called itself the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) and was known as the 15th of September Legion. It later formed an alliance, called the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), which comprised other groups including MISURASATA and the Nicaraguan Democratic Union. Together, the members of these groups were generally called Contras. The Sandinistas condemned them as terrorists, and human rights organisations expressed serious concerns over reports of Contra attacks on civilians. In 1982, under pressure from Congress, the U.S. State Department declared Contra activities terrorism. The Congressional intelligence committee confirmed reports of Contra atrocities such as rape, torture, summary executions, and indiscriminate killings.

After the U.S. Congress prohibited federal funding of the Contras in 1983, the Reagan administration continued to back the Contras by covertly selling arms to Iran and channelling the proceeds to the Contras (The Iran-Contra affair.) When this scheme was revealed, Reagan admitted that he knew about the 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.

Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra-drug links concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." [2] According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, Panama's drug-lord.

The Reagan administration's support for the Contras continued to stir controversy well into the 1990s. In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published a series titled Dark Alliance, linking the origins of crack cocaine in California to the contras. Freedom of Information Act inquiries by the National Security Archive and other investigators unearthed a number of documents showing that White House officials, including Oliver North, knew about and supported using money raised via drug trafficking to fund the contras. Sen. John Kerry's report in 1988 led to the same conclusions, however, major media outlets and the Justice Department denied the allegations.

The Contra war unfolded differently in the northern and southern zones of Nicaragua. Contras based in Costa Rica operated in Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, which is sparsely populated by indigenous groups including the Miskito, Sumu, Rama, Garifuno, and Mestizo. Unlike Spanish-speaking western Nicaragua, the Atlantic Coast is predominantly English-speaking and was largely ignored by the Somoza regime. The costeños did not participate in the uprising against Somoza and viewed Sandinismo with suspicion from the outset.

The Sandinistas are blamed by some for using poor tactics to combat the Contras, resulting in the death of thousands of young Nicaraguan conscripts. The Sandinistas used their battalions consisting of 600 conscripts in three waves of 200 to attack Contra positions. These battalions would be ordered to attack machine-gun nests in the hope that by the third wave the Contras would run out of bullets and be overrun. Nicaragua, a country with just about 3 million inhabitants, could not afford the luxury of losses in ratios of 20-to-1 as Russia did with the Germans in WWII and the North Vietnameses against the Americans.

Sandinista human rights abuses

Lacking support from the population in that part of the country, Sandinista troops committed their most controversial activities (as far as human rights are concerned) on the Atlantic Coast, including the forcible relocation of 8,500 Miskitos from their land and the destruction of up to 100 villages, activities which led to charges of genocide at the time. They also killed and imprisoned several indigenous people suspected of Contra collaboration. On two separate occasions in 1981 and 1982, Sandinista troops committed massacres in which approximately (UNHCR Report) 34 Miskito Indians died. However, Sandinista supporters claim this pales in comparison to the deaths attributed to the Contras. [3]

Another tactic used by the Sandinistas was the indiscriminate shelling of towns recently captured by the Contras, an action which was viewed by many as "punishment." This Sandinista practice resulted in the Reagan Administration issuing orders to the Contra to stop further capture of cities and to concentrate on a "wasting" war while the U.S. was outspending the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, effectively curtailing the military support to the Sandinistas.

During the war Amnesty International and other groups reported that political prisoners in Sandinista prisons, such as in Las Tejas, were allegedly beaten, deprived of sleep and tortured with electric shocks. They were denied food and water and kept in dark cubicles that had a surface of less than one square metre, known as chiquitas ("little ones.") These cubicles were too small to sit up in and had no sanitation and almost no ventilation.

In the mid-1980s, under pressure from human rights organizations and widespread international condemnation, the Sandinista government acknowledged errors in its dealings with the Atlantic Coast and successfully negotiated an end to the southern front of the Contra war. In fulfillment of the terms of that negotiation, the National Assembly unanimously passed an Autonomy Law in 1987 that made Nicaragua the first Latin American nation to recognise its multiethnic nature, guaranteeing the economic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights demanded by the indigenous groups of the Atlantic Coast.

The Reagan administration remained opposed to the Sandinistas, and continued to support the Contras. The administration also funneled USD $11 million in support of an opposition party, and refused aid to the country after it was devastated by Hurricane Joan in October 1988.

Relationship with the Catholic Church

The Sandinistas' relationship with the Roman Catholic Church deteriorated as the Contra War dragged on. State media accused the Catholic Church of being reactionary and supporting the Contras. According to former President Ortega, "The conflict with the church was strong, and it costs us, but I don't think it was our fault... ...There were so many people being wounded every day, so many people dying, and it was hard for us to understand the position of the church hierarchy in refusing to condemn the contras." Hostility to the Catholic Church became so great that at one point, "...FSLN militants shouted down Pope John Paul II as he tried to say Mass." [4]

Opposition (since 1990)

In 1987, due to a stalemate with the Contras, the Esquipulas II treaty was brokered by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez, between the FSLN and the Contras. The treaty's provisions included a call for a cease-fire, freedom of expression (which the FSLN violated several times since the signing), and national elections. After the February 26, 1990 elections, the Sandinistas lost them and peacefully passed power to the National Opposition Union, an alliance of 14 opposition parties ranging from the conservative business organisation COSEP to Nicaraguan communists (see Nicaraguan Socialist Party. 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. Opponents claim that Contra warfare had largely died down, and that the Sandinistas had grown increasingly unpopular, particularly due to forced conscription and crackdowns on political freedoms. An important reason, regardless of perspective, was that after a decade of the U.S. backed war and embargo, Nicaragua's economy and infrastructure were badly damaged and the United States promised aid only if the Sandinistas lost. The U.S. also helped keep the rightist factions united so there would not be two strong rightist candidates.

At the personal level, most Nicaraguans voted against the Sandinistas due to the thousands of deaths of 16-year-old conscripts in the Contra War, food shortages, and mishandling of the economy.

After their loss, most of 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, which he has demonstrated by paralyzing the country with numerous strikes to achieve his ends. Prominent Sandinistas also created a number of nongovernmental organizations to promote their ideas and social goals, such as the Augusto César Sandino Foundation (FACS).

Daniel 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 a number of 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 Movement for the Renovation of Sandinismo (MRS); his faction came to be known as the renovistas, who favor a more social democratic approach than the orthodoxos, 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 percent of the vote while Arnoldo Alemán of the Constitutional Liberal Party received 51 percent.

Daniel Ortega was re-elected as leader of the Sandinistas 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 significant 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. At these elections, 4 November 2001, the party won 42.1 % of the popular vote and 43 out of 90 seats. The same day, José Daniel Ortega Saavedra was defeated by the Enrique Bolaños Geyer of the Constitutional Liberal Party, winning only 42.3 %.

Daniel Ortega, who still enjoys the use of confiscated estates, was once again re-elected as leader of the Sandinistas in March 2002. Ortega's recent alliance with the partisans of Alemán (now in jail for corruption) to attempt to unseat democratically elected Bolaños, seems to have come apart.

Symbols

The flag of the FSLN consists of an upper half in red, the lower half in black and the letters F S L N in white.

Prominent Sandinistas

• Bayardo Arce, hard-line National Directorate member in the 1980s
• Patrick Arguello, a Sandinista involved with the Dawson's Field hijackings
• Monica Baltodano
• Tomás Borge, one of the FSLN's founders, leader of the explicitly Marxist Prolonged Popular War tendency in the 1970s, Minister of Interior in the 1980s
• Omar Cabezas
• Ernesto Cardenal, poet and Catholic priest, Minister of Culture in the 1980s
• Luis Carrion, National Directorate member in the 1980s
• Miguel d'Escoto, a Maryknoll Catholic priest, served as Nicaragua's foreign minister
• Carlos Fonseca, a KGB agent and one of the FSLN's principal founders and leading ideologist in the 1960s
• Herty Lewites, former mayor of Managua, opponent of Daniel Ortega in 2005
• Vilma Núñez
• Daniel Ortega, post-revolution junta head, then President from 1985, lost presidential elections in 1990, 1996, and 2001, but continues to control the FSLN party
• Humberto Ortega, leader of the FSLN Insurrectional Tendency (Tercerista) in the 1970s, chief strategist of the anti-Somoza urban insurrection, Minister of Defense in the 1980s during the Contra war
• Edén Pastora, "Comandante Cero," social democratic guerrilla leader who joined the Terceristas during the anti-Somoza insurrection, broke with FSLN to lead center-left ARDE contra group based in Costa Rica during the early 1980s
• Sergio Ramirez, novelist and civilian Sandinista, architect of alliance with moderates in 1970s, Vice President in 1980s, opponent of Daniel Ortega in 1990s
• Henry Ruíz, "Comandante Modesto," FSLN rural guerrilla commander in the 1970s, member of the National Directorate in the 1980s
• Dora María Téllez
• Jaime Wheelock, leader of the FSLN Proletarian Tendency, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development

See also

• Iran-Contra Affair
• Nicaragua v. United States
• Nicaraguan Sign Language - language that was born as a result of Sandinistas bringing deaf children together in schools for the deaf
• Carlos Mejía Godoy

References

• Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. Basic Books (2005)
• Arias, Pilar. Nicaragua Revolucion Relatos De Combatientes Del Frente Sandinista. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1980.
• Belli, Humberto. Breaking Faith: The Sandinista Revolution and Its Impact on Freedom and Christian Faith in Nicaragua. Crossway Books/The Puebla Institute, 1985.
• Christian, Shirley. Nicaragua, Revolution In the Family. New York: Vintage Books, 1986.
• Cox, Jack. Requiem in the Tropics: Inside Central America. UCA Books, 1987.
• Gilbert, Dennis. Sandinistas: The Party And The Revolution. Blackwell Publishers, 1988.
• Hodges, Donald C. Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
• Stephen Kinzer. Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, Putnam Pub Group, ISBN 0399135944, 1991.
• Kirkpatrick, Jean. Dictatorships and Double Standards. Touchstone, 1982.
• Miranda, Roger, and William Ratliff. The Civil War in Nicaragua: Inside the Sandinistas. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993.
• Moore, John Norton, The Secret War in Central America: Sandinista Assault on World Order. university Publications of America, 1987.
• Nolan, David. The Ideology of the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1984.
• Smith, Hazel. Nicaragua: Self-determination and Survival. Pluto Press, 1991. ISBN 0745304753
• Zimmermann, Matilde. Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Duke University Press, 2001.

External links

• www.fsln-nicaragua.com Official Sandinista web page (in Spanish)
• 25th Anniversary Celebration of the Sandinista Revolution at NicaNet
• Nobel Lecture - Harold Pinter delivers Nobel Prize in Literature lecture in which he explains the Sandanista conflict and condemns the U.S.