"The conflict in Nicaragua is one of the leastunderstood struggles of the Cold War. . . . This account clarifies the central issue and dispelsmany lingering myths." --Zbigniew Breinski,National Security Advisor during the Carter administration

An account of U.S. policy from the Sandinista revolution through the Iran-contra scandal and beyond. Sklar shows how the White House sabotaged peace negoatiations and sustained the deadly contra war despite public opposition, with secret U.S. special forces and an auxiliary arm of dictators, drug smugglers and death squad godfathers, and illuminates an alternative policy rooted in law and democracy.

Latin America has among the world's highest homicide rates. The author analyzes the illicit organizations, complicit and weak states, and territorial competition that generate today's violent homicidal ecologies.

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.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading "I will not abandon my resistance until the . . . pirate invaders . . . assassins of weak peoples . . are expelled from my country. ... I will make them realize that their crimes will cost them dear. . . . There will be bloody combat. . . Nicaragua shall not be the patrimony of Imperialists. I will fight for my cause as long as my heart beats. ... If through destiny I should lose, there are in my arsenal five tons of dynamite which I will explode with my own hand. The noise of the cataclysm will be heard 250 miles. All who hear will be witness that Sandino is dead. Let it not be permitted that the hands of traitors or invaders shall profane his remains." - Augusto César Sandino For much of the 20th century, Latin American governments in large part lived under a system of military junta governments. The mixture of indigenous peoples, foreign settlers and European colonial superpowers produced cultural and social imbalances into which military forces intervened as a stabilizing influence. The proactive personalities of military heads and the rigid structures of such a hierarchy guaranteed the "strong man" commanding officer an abiding presence in the form of executive dictator. Such leaders often bore the more collaborative title of "President," but the reality was, in most cases, identical. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor was often vast, and a disappearance of the middle class fed a frequent urge for revolution, reenergizing the military's intent to stop it. With no stabilizing center, the ideologies most prevalent in such conflicts alternated between a federal model of industrial and social nationalization and an equally conservative structure under privatized ownership and autocratic rule drawn from the head of a junta government. Whichever belief system was in play for the major industrial nations of Central and South America, a constant bombardment of foreign influence pushed the people of states such as Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and others toward overthrow, in one direction or the other. To the left came Stalinist influences from the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba, while the German World War II model and an anti-communist mindset from the United States worked behind the scenes to upset any movement toward extreme liberalism. The tacit acceptance of these right-wing dictators across South America was part of an overarching effort known as Operation Condor, consisting mostly of CIA operations that are as infamous and controversial as ever, with a lasting legacy that affects current events such as reactions to the ongoing unrest in Venezuela. Few examples remain as memorable as the conflict in Nicaragua, where the Frente Sandinista de Liberation Nacional (FSLN), a left-wing revolutionary party, seized power in the small Central American nation of Nicaragua in July 1979, toppling four decades of dictatorial rule perpetrated by the Somoza dynasty. A decade later, on February 25, 1990, in an election organized by the FSLN, one that the party was fully confident it would win, the FSLN suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of a coalition generally thought to be associated with the American-funded Contra movement. This was a sobering moment for the Latin American leftist revolution, and, as many were apt to see it, a triumph for American policy in the region. What happened in that critical decade in Nicaragua, what was the Sandinista movement that led Nicaragua into a leftist revolution, and why did the Americans vehemently oppose the Sandinistas with force? The Sandinistas: The Controversial History and Legacy of Socialist Resistance, Civil War, and Politics in Nicaragua looks at the turbulent 20th century in Nicaragua, and the various roles the Sandinistas have played. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about the Sandinistas like never before.

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.