Research Catalog

Sandinistas : a moral history

Title: Sandinistas : a moral history / Robert J. Sierakowski.
Author: Sierakowski, Robert J., 1983-
Publication: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2020]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 20-3092	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

xvii, 320 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm

Summary

"Robert J. Sierakowski's Sandinistas: A Moral History offers a bold new perspective on the liberation movement that brought the Sandinista National Liberation Front to power in Nicaragua in 1979, overthrowing the longest-running dictatorship in Latin America. Unique sources, from trial transcripts to archival collections and oral histories, offer a new vantage point beyond geopolitics and ideologies to understand the central role that was played by everyday Nicaraguans. Focusing on the country's rural north, Sierakowski explores how a diverse coalition of labor unionists, student activists, housewives, and peasants inspired by Catholic liberation theology came to successfully challenge the legitimacy of the Somoza dictatorship and its entrenched networks of power. Mobilizing communities against the ubiquitous cantinas, gambling halls, and brothels, grassroots organizers exposed the regime's complicity in promoting social ills, disorder, and quotidian violence while helping to construct radical new visions of moral uplift and social renewal. Sierakowski similarly recasts our understanding of the Nicaraguan National Guard, grounding his study of the Somozas' army in the social and cultural world of the ordinary soldiers who enlisted and fought in defense of the dictatorship. As the military responded to growing opposition with heightened state terror and human rights violations, repression culminated in widespread civilian massacres, stories that are unearthed for the first time in this work. These atrocities further exposed the regime's moral breakdown in the eyes of the public, pushing thousands of previously unaligned Nicaraguans into the ranks of the guerrilla insurgency by the late 1970s. Sierakowski's innovative reinterpretation of the Sandinista Revolution will be of interest to students, scholars, and activists concerned with Latin American social movements, the Cold War, and human rights."--

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

State of disorder : vice, corruption, and the Somoza dictatorship -- Burning down the brothels : moral regeneration and the emergence of Sandinismo, 1956-1970 -- Persecuting the living Christ : Guerrillas, Catholics, and repression, 1968-1976 -- "They planted corn and harvested Guardias" : Somoza's National Guard and Secret Police at the grassroots -- "A crime to be young" : Families in insurrection, September 1976-September 1978 -- "How costly is freedom!" : massacres, community, and sacrifice, October 1978-July 1979 -- Epilogue : whither the revolution? Nicaragua and the Sandinistas since 1979.

Call Number

JFE 20-3092

ISBN

9780268106898
0268106894

LCCN

2019037145
40029682730

OCLC

1090749599

Author

Sierakowski, Robert J., 1983- author.

Title

Sandinistas : a moral history / Robert J. Sierakowski.

Publisher

Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2020]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

Since 1937

Other Form:

Online version: Sierakowski, Robert James, 1983- Sandinistas Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2019] 9780268106928 (DLC) 2019037146

Other Standard Identifier

40029682730

Research Call Number

JFE 20-3092

View in Legacy Catalog