Eline van Ommen - Nicaragua Must Survive
In her book Nicaragua Must Survive. Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in the Global Cold War, Eline van Ommen recasts the international story of the Sandinistas and their innovative diplomatic campaign, which captured the imaginations of people around the globe and transformed Nicaraguan history at the end of the Cold War.
The Sandinistas named themselves after Augusto César Sandino, a revolutionary who fought against the US occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s and 1930s. Inspired and supported by Cuba, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) initially fought a guerrilla war against the Somoza family dictatorship. In 1979, they managed to oust the last Somoza, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The Sandinistas took over a country in ruins.
The Sandinistas' diplomacy of the 1970s and 1980s went far beyond elite politics, as thousands of musicians, politicians, teachers, activists, priests, feminists, and journalists flocked to the country to experience the revolution firsthand. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, Eline van Ommen reveals the role that Western Europe played in Nicaragua's revolutionary diplomacy. Blending grassroots organizing and formal foreign policy, pragmatic guerrillas, creative diplomats, and ambitious activists from Europe and the Americas were able to create an international environment in which the Sandinista Revolution could survive despite the odds. Nicaragua Must Survive argues that this diplomacy was remarkably effective, propelling Nicaragua into the global limelight and allowing the revolutionaries to successfully challenge the United States' role in Central America.
Eline van Ommen is a historian of Latin America in the twentieth century, particularly interested in revolutions, transnational and grassroots activism, and foreign policy during the Cold War. She has published on the international and transnational history of Nicaragua’s revolutionary decade, European solidarity activism, and Central American-European relations.
Her latest book, entitled Nicaragua Must Survive traces the efforts of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN) in Nicaragua to gain external support in a rapidly changing global context. She is currently developing a new research project on the Central American peace process and the end of the Cold War.
