This article examines the perception of threat in the creation of a discourse by the administration of President Ronald Reagan in relation to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It emphasizes the importance of a parallel with Cuba and the verifiable nature of Nicaraguan armed forces and concludes that, in order to construct its discourse, the Reagan administration made use of legitimate concerns that had previously been dismissed as fallacious by critics. / Graduate / 0336 / nburtonv@uvic.ca

This article examines the perception of threat in the creation of a discourse by the administration of President Ronald Reagan in relation to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It emphasizes the importance of a parallel with Cuba and the verifiable nature of Nicaraguan armed forces and concludes that, in order to construct its discourse, the Reagan administration made use of legitimate concerns that had previously been dismissed as fallacious by critics. / Graduate / 0336 / nburtonv@uvic.ca

The Sandinista Revolution is arguably the most significant event in Nicaraguan history. Because of its historical importance and distinctive socio-cultural context, the Sandinista Revolution offers significant opportunities for scholarly inquiry. The literature on the Sandinista Revolution is substantial. However, little is known about the organization Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and how it evolved into the leader of the movement which sought to overthrow the 45-year Somoza dictatorship. In revolutionary literature, the concept of revolutionary vanguard or vanguard party is common. However, the notion of vanguardism as a process and what constitutes a vanguardist organization is yet to be explored. This study aims to provide such an investigation, through an examination of the insurrectional period (1974-1979) leading up to the Sandinista Revolutionary Victory in 1979. Grounded in Scott's (2008) institutional framework, this study describes the evolution of the FSLN into the vanguard of the anti-Somoza movement, identifying relationships between institutional elements involved in the FSLN's institutionalization process and progression into "leader" of the movement. Data from interviews, newspaper articles, and video documentaries were scrutinized in search of answers to the question: How do mechanisms, carriers, and agency as elements of institutions explain vanguardism in the case study of the FSLN? This research reveals critical mechanisms, carriers and agency in the vanguardism of the FSLN, and explains how these elements supported this process. In this sense, this research reveals distinctive characteristics in vanguardism as an institutional process, which differentiate vanguardism from other processes. This research presents an opportunity to learn about the FSLN-a vastly unique politico-military organization. Additionally, there is an opportunity to broaden our observational lens, taking a neoinstitutional approach, to illustrate new ways in which organizations evolve, change and adapt to their environments. Lastly, this study hopes to pave the way for future studies in organizational vanguardism. / Ph. D.

This paper examines activists in the United States that supported the socialist Nicaraguan government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and opposed efforts by the Reagan Administration to militarily undermine Nicaragua’s new government during the 1980s. Such scholarship examines the rise of a leftist political coalition organized around supporting Nicaragua’s government and this solidarity movement’s eventual demise after the Sandinistas lost their country’s 1990 Presidential election. The work ultimately asks how did U.S. leftists and progressives of the late 1970s and 1980s perceive Nicaragua’s new government and how did these perceptions affect the ways in which these activists rallied to support the Sandinistas in the face of the Contra War? In answering this question, this paper consults a variety of primary sources including articles from socialist newspapers, the meeting minutes and notes of solidarity organizations, and oral histories with former activists. “I Have My Mind!” also consults cultural sources such as the protest and art benefit flyers and the lyrics to punk rock songs of the period to make its claims. This Masters Thesis argues that U.S. Americans’ solidarity with the Sandinistas relied upon a romanticization of Nicaraguan revolutionary reforms representative of movement participants’ own political aspirations. / History

In 1990, ten years after the Sandinista revolution's triumph, came its end. What followed were anti-Sandinistas' attempts to erase Nicaragua's revolutionary past and Sandinistas' defense of that project and the party that represents it, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). For most Sandinistas, to publicly remember the revolution was a form of defense. Their memories were considered counter-hegemonic ones that reminded people that the past and the revolution's propositions still had value. However, Sandinistas' revolutionary narratives of the past are not free of problems and contradictions. The FSLN has popularized a Sandinista collective memory that idealizes the revolution. This is an indulgent memory that avoids talking about mistakes and problems. It is also a sentimental memory that links sandinismo to high morals and goodness and, in doing so, inhibits questioning the past and the present. This collective memory hinders discussions about other Sandinista memories, but, most importantly, it legitimizes problematic continuities in the way power is exerted; continuities which are not unique to sandinismo. This dissertation analyses how Sandinista peasants from a region in the old agrarian frontier of the country remember the revolution. In analyzing their memories one can see the ways in which the revolution is felt, the meaning of sandinismo among that population, and the kinds of political compromises they have to make today. Their memories show that the strength of the FSLN lies not only in economical or political interests, but also in the way the narratives of the past reaffirm attachments built over thirty years or more. While remembering the revolution's political ideals continues to be an important political statement and source of inspiration, constant critiques should be part of any memory work. To start with, memory work needs to acknowledge the constructed character of any memory, be those personal or collective, and the omissions that constitute them. To do so entail recognizing that memories are made of exclusions, repetitions, and forgetting and that the political work of memory not only never ends but involves the difficult task of questioning itself. / text

Understanding how change occurs in lesser developed countries, particularly in Latin America has been the subject of a prolonged theoretical academic debate. That debate has emphasized economics more that politics in general and predictability over unpredictability in the Latin American region. This paper challenges these approaches. Explaining change requires an examination of the politics of public policy as much as its economic dimensions. Second, change in the Latin American region may be less predictable than it appears. Scholars maintain that change in Latin America occurs when contending elites negotiate it. Their power comes from the various resources they possess. Change, therefore, is not expected to occur as a function of regime change per se. This paper considers the treatment of education policy in Nicaragua during the regimes of the dynastic authoritarianism of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1967-1979), the revolutionary governments of the Sandinistas (1979-1990), and the democratic-centrist government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1996). The central research question is: When regimes change, do policies change? The methodology defines the independent variable as the regime and education policy as the dependent variable. It posits three hypotheses. The right-wing regime of Somoza was expected to restrict both the qualitative aspects and the financing of education; (2) the left-wing regimes of the Sandinistas were hypothesized to have expanded both; and (3) the democratic-centrist regime of Chamorro was expected to have both expanded and restricted certain aspects of education policy. Several chapters describe these regimes' expansive or restrictive education strategies. A comparative analysis of these 26 years demonstrates several variables' effect over time. An OLS regression and a times series analysis specifies the relationship between regime change and percent of GDP each regime devoted to education. Both the statistical and qualitative findings of this study confirm the hypotheses. The study reveals that, as regimes changed, education strategies and policies changed. Such findings challenge some current thought about political behavior with respect to Latin American development in particular and development theory in general.