First published in 1986, Nicaragua, written from an insider's point of view breaks the barrier of disinformation which has surrounded the Sandinista revolution. To accomplish this task the author discusses the major forces that have shaped Nicaragua’s development during the past decade as well as all pertinent events leading to and following the revolution. It is the author's contention that the Sandinista revolution is an unusual combination of armed struggle to reach power and democratic procedures to build a new society. This makes the revolution a very dangerous example for the stability of a hegemonic state that tries to pacify the needs of the masses by means of repression and spurious applications of democratic principles. This book's main thesis is that socialism and democracy are not contradictory but are part of the same process. Thus, any attempt to think in terms of necessary stages is misreading the classics of Marx and Lenin. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of political science, Latin American studies, Latin American history and politics.

This volume is a valuable re-assessment of the Nicaraguan Revolution by a Marxist historian of Latin American political history. It shows that the FSLN (‘the Sandinistas’), with politics principally shaped by Soviet and Cuban Communism, never had a commitment to genuine democracy either within the revolutionary movement or within society at large; that the FSLN’s lack of commitment to democracy was a key factor in the way that revolution was betrayed from the 1970s to the 1990s; and that the FSLN’s lack of rank-and-file democracy left all decision-making to the National Directorate and ultimately placed that power in the hands of Daniel Ortega. Pursuing his narrative into the present, La Botz shows that, once their would-be bureaucratic ruling class project was defeated, Ortega and the FSLN leadership turned to an alliance with the capitalist class.

Together with his brother Humberto, Daniel Ortega Saavedra masterminded the only victorious Latin American revolution since Fidel Castro's in Cuba. Following the triumphant 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, Ortega was named coordinator of the governing junta, and then in 1984 was elected president by a landslide in the country's first free presidential election. The future was full of promise. Yet the United States was soon training, equipping, and financing a counterrevolutionary force inside Nicaragua while sabotaging its crippled economy. The result was a decade-long civil war. By 1990, Nicaraguans dutifully voted Ortega out and the preferred candidate of the United States in. And Nicaraguans grew poorer and sicker. Then, in 2006, Daniel Ortega was reelected president. He was still defiantly left-wing and deeply committed to reclaiming the lost promise of the Revolution. Only time will tell if he succeeds, but he has positioned himself as an ally of Castro and Hugo Ch&ávez, while life for many Nicaraguans is finally improving. Unfinished Revolution is the first full-length biography of Daniel Ortega in any language. Drawing from a wealth of untapped sources, it tells the story of Nicaragua's continuing struggle for liberation through the prism of the Revolution's most emblematic yet enigmatic hero.

Since the revolution in 1979, Nicaragua has faced economic dislocation, a growing debt, chronic hard currency shortages, a counter-revolutionary war, economic and diplomatic pressure from the US, and regional isolation. In spite of these challenging problems, the Sandinista leadership, maintaining a broad array of international contacts, continues