Nicaragua Must Survive tells the story of the Sandinistas' innovative diplomatic campaign, which captured the imaginations of people around the globe and transformed Nicaraguan history at the tail end of the Cold War. The Sandinistas' diplomacy 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 Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Leeds.
"Thanks to extraordinary multilingual, multicountry research, Eline van Ommen recasts the international story of the Sandinistas of the 1970s and 1980s by decentering the United States. It turns out that Western European diplomats and activists played outsized roles in keeping the leftist revolution legitimate and alive against a U.S.-led military and propaganda onslaught. Sandinistas, creative and pragmatic in using Europeans as leverage, emerge from this gripping narrative as full actors in their own diplomatic saga. Nicaragua Must Survive is a triumph of historical sleuthing and storytelling."—Alan McPherson, author of The Invaded: How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations
"Nicaragua Must Survive breaks new ground in the history of the Sandinista Revolution and the Cold War. By transcending the traditional divide between histories of Latin America and Europe, van Ommen has written one of the most innovative and important works of international and transnational scholarship in recent memory."—Renata Keller, author of Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution
"In this innovative and deeply researched account, van Ommen reveals revolutionary Nicaragua's little-known struggle to construct a new international order at a crucial juncture in the global Cold War. Deftly tracking the interplay between politicians, diplomats, and transnational solidarity activists, Nicaragua Must Survive convincingly illuminates the signal importance of Western Europe for the FSLN's revolutionary diplomacy."—William Michael Schmidli, author of Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War
312 pp.6 x 9Illus: 16 b/w illustrations
9780520390744$85.00|£71.00Hardcover
Dec 2023