Search

This article examines the formation of the Nicaraguan National Guard before and during the period of the Sandino rebellion, U.S. military intervention, and its aftermath (1925-1936). Focusing on the radically abrupt, upward displacement of coercive capacities in these eleven years of war, we emphasize the agency of Nicaraguans in shaping the kind of institution the Guard became. We argue that the process of war against a homegrown nationalist insurgency most profoundly shaped Guard identity and that the Somocista state represented a masked and modernized form of caudillismo, as a political system within which political authority and power resided in personal and patronage relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carmen Sobalvarro (Nicaragua, 1908-194D, widely known during the 1930s as General Augusto Sandino's "platonic" girlfriend, was the only female poet officially admitted into the Nicaraguan vanguard movement. Despite her significance to Nicaraguan politics and letters, until recently she has been virtually forgotten. In crafting her public persona, Sobalvarro combined traditional and modern stereotypes of womanhood, thus providing Central Americans with a viable model of women in literature and politics. Through her poetry and image, she also shored up the romantic notion of Sandino as a valiant general deserving of international respect and adoration, especially among female followers. In these ways, the poet serves as a significant case study of the cultural anxieties surrounding changing gender roles upon the arrival of the "modern" woman and a growing women's movement in Nicaragua. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the political and economic practices that characterized the dollar diplomacy in Nicaragua. It illustrates how the novel U.S. economic project, intended to modernize the Latin American States, turned out to be a feudal, anti-modern project, from the point of view of Nicaraguan upper classes. Some of the unforeseen effects of this imperialist policy let the author show that the analysis of economic and social conditions carried out by a privileged section of society may conceal or misrepresented the economic and social conditions of other groups. Doing this the privileged sectors of society present their own experience as a generalized experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the organized political violence in north-central Nicaragua from 1926 to 1934 highlighting the Conservative gang leader Anastacio Hernandez and on Sandino's rebels. Outline of the contexts of the weak state and local-regional caudillismo; Ritualized violence caused by Hernandez and others in the service of their patrons; Characteristics of organized violence.