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Defiant Land
No Latin American nation has had a more troubled relationship with the United States than has Nicaragua. As with the case of Puerto Rico, U.S. interest in Nicaragua has been more strategic than economic. During much of the 1800s, Nicaragua was viewed as a potential site for an inter-oceanic canal of the sort eventually constructed in Panama. During those years, the British exerted considerable influence on the country's Caribbean coast and competed with the United States for influence in Nicaragua as a whole. The British presence had a lasting influence, making English a common language around the Caribbean port of Bluefields. In the 1850s, U.S. adventurer William Walker briefly seized control of Nicaragua. Then in 1912, U.S. marines began two decades of intermittent presence in the country, culminating in the anti-U.S. guerrilla war led by Augusto César Sandino. From the 1930s through the 1970s, the United States maintained a powerful political presence in Nicaragua through its close alliance with the ruling Somoza family. Then came the strongly anti-U.S. revolutionary movement of the second-wave Sandinistas, who ousted the Somozas and ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s—under constant attack, for much of that time, by the U.S.-supported Contra guerrillas.
Topics:
Questions for Analysis and Further Reflection:
- What made Nicaragua a place of strategic interest for Spain, and later the United States and Britain?
- How do the ties between the United States and the Somoza family fit into the larger context of U.S.—Central American relations?
- One of the goals of the revolutionary movement of the 1970s and 80s was to spread literacy throughout Nicaragua. What were some of the other goals and hopes of the movement, how were they manifested (in official programs, in poetry), and to what degree were they achieved?
Country Bibliography: (Titles with ** are good starting places. As is the case with the historiography of other Central American countries, there is a lack of recent, general histories of Nicaragua in English.)
Bethell, Leslie, ed. Central America since Independence. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991.
Chapter 7 deals specifically with Nicaragua since 1930. Particular attention is given to U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. An index and a bibliographical essay for each chapter follow the text.
Burns, E. Bradford. Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798—1858.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
This look at Nicaragua's early national history is clearly written and focuses on themes that readers of Born in Blood and Fire will recognize: patriarchal structure of society, patron-client relations, and the idea of the nation. Notes, a chronology, and an index are included.
Crawley, Eduardo. Nicaragua in Perspective, rev. ed. of Dictators Never Die. New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1984.
A journalistic account (i.e., accessible but not deep) of Nicaraguan history. Only the first four of its twenty-two chapters cover the colonial years and the nineteenth century. The rest deal with the twentieth century. A bibliography, a few maps, and an index are included.
** Foster, Lynn V. A Brief History of Central America. New York: Facts On File, 2000.
An accessible historical overview of Central America as a whole from the pre-Columbian era to the dawn of the present century. The book includes illustrations, tables and maps, a bibliography and index, a list of suggested readings, and appendices with basic facts for each country (including Panama and Belize) and a chronology.
**Pérez-Brignoli, Héctor. A Brief History of Central America. Translated by Ricardo B.
Sawrey A. and Susana Stettri de Sawrey. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989.
This slightly older book presents an overview of the region's history, beginning with the land and the people and ending with the political and social crises faced by many Central American nations at the end of the 1980s. Maps, a chronology, notes, a bibliography, and an index are included.
Walker, Thomas W. Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino, 3rd ed. rev. and updated. Westview
Profiles, Nations of Contemporary Latin America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1991.
________. Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle, 4th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 2003.
A political history that is concerned above all with the twentieth century, most appropriate for undergraduates interested in U.S.-Nicaraguan relations. A list of sources in English is provided, and numerous illustrations and an index are included.
** Woodward, Ralph Lee, Jr. Central America: A Nation Divided, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
A solid and well-told overview with an extensive guide to further reading, a set of charts and tables with statistical information, and a political chronology.
Maps:
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