The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956

The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956 PDF Author: Knut Walter
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807866210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
To many observers, Anastasio Somoza, who ruled Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956, personified the worst features of a dictator. While not dismissing these characteristics, Knut Walter argues that the regime was in fact more notable for its achievement of stability, economic growth, and state building than for its personalistic and dictatorial features. Using a wide range of sources in Nicaraguan archives, Walter focuses on institutional and structural developments to explain how Somoza gained and consolidated power. According to Walter, Somoza preferred to resolve conflicts by political means rather than by outright coercion. Specifically, he built his government on agreements negotiated with the country's principal political actors, labor groups, and business organizations. Nicaragua's two traditional parties, one conservative and the other liberal, were included in elections, thus giving the appearance of political pluralism. Partly as a result, the opposition was forced to become increasingly radical, says Walter; eventually, in 1979, Nicaragua produced the only successful revolution in Central America and the first in all of Latin America since Cuba's.

The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956

The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956 PDF Author: Knut Walter
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807866210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
To many observers, Anastasio Somoza, who ruled Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956, personified the worst features of a dictator. While not dismissing these characteristics, Knut Walter argues that the regime was in fact more notable for its achievement of stability, economic growth, and state building than for its personalistic and dictatorial features. Using a wide range of sources in Nicaraguan archives, Walter focuses on institutional and structural developments to explain how Somoza gained and consolidated power. According to Walter, Somoza preferred to resolve conflicts by political means rather than by outright coercion. Specifically, he built his government on agreements negotiated with the country's principal political actors, labor groups, and business organizations. Nicaragua's two traditional parties, one conservative and the other liberal, were included in elections, thus giving the appearance of political pluralism. Partly as a result, the opposition was forced to become increasingly radical, says Walter; eventually, in 1979, Nicaragua produced the only successful revolution in Central America and the first in all of Latin America since Cuba's.

The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956

The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956 PDF Author: Knut Walter
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
To many observers, Anastasio Somoza, who ruled Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956, personified the worst features of a dictator. While not dismissing these characteristics, Knut Walter argues that the regime was in fact more notable for its achievement of stability, economic growth, and state building than for its personalistic and dictatorial features. Using a wide range of sources in Nicaraguan archives, Walter focuses on institutional and structural developments to explain how Somoza gained and consolidated power. According to Walter, Somoza preferred to resolve conflicts by political means rather than by outright coercion. Specifically, he built his government on agreements negotiated with the country's principal political actors, labor groups, and business organizations. Nicaragua's two traditional parties, one conservative and the other liberal, were included in elections, thus giving the appearance of political pluralism. Partly as a result, the opposition was forced to become increasingly radical, says Walter; eventually, in 1979, Nicaragua produced the only successful revolution in Central America and the first in all of Latin America since Cuba's.

Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua

Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua PDF Author: Michael D. Gambone
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 9780275959432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
During the Cold War era, the United States faced the prospect of expanding its power in Central America. But we miscalculated—grievously. After 1945, Central America teemed with leaders willing to alter the region's quasi-colonial status. Some, like Fidel Castro, sought out revolution to shatter the status quo. Others, like Anastasio Somoza Garcia, attempted to seek out new directions along more subtle paths. Nicaragua subsequently challenged American hegemony in a manner at once more deliberate and more dangerous than any other effort in the hemisphere. The Somoza regime, unlike its contemporaries, chose to utilize American institutions and American preferences to subvert the latter's power rather than reinforce it. American arrogance, combined with a complacent approach to policy in its global backyard, offered a myriad of political, military, and economic opportunities to a leader willing to take risks. In the years after 1945, Somoza was thus able to peel away layers of clientage until, at certain moments, he could act as a partner of his northern neighbor.

What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution

What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution PDF Author: Dan La Botz
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004291318
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
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.

Sandinista

Sandinista PDF Author: Matilde Zimmermann
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822380994
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
“A must-read for anyone interested in Nicaragua—or in the overall issue of social change.”—Margaret Randall, author of SANDINO'S DAUGHTERS and SANDINO'S DAUGHTERS REVISITED Sandinista is the first English-language biography of Carlos Fonseca Amador, the legendary leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (the FSLN) and the most important and influential figure of the post–1959 revolutionary generation in Latin America. Fonseca, killed in battle in 1976, was the undisputed intellectual and strategic leader of the FSLN. In a groundbreaking and fast-paced narrative that draws on a rich archive of previously unpublished Fonseca writings, Matilde Zimmermann sheds new light on central themes in his ideology as well as on internal disputes, ideological shifts, and personalities of the FSLN. The first researcher ever to be allowed access to Fonseca’s unpublished writings (collected by the Institute for the Study of Sandinism in the early 1980s and now in the hands of the Nicaraguan Army), Zimmermann also obtained personal interviews with Fonseca’s friends, family members, fellow combatants, and political enemies. Unlike previous scholars, Zimmermann sees the Cuban revolution as the crucial turning point in Fonseca’s political evolution. Furthermore, while others have argued that he rejected Marxism in favor of a more pragmatic nationalism, Zimmermann shows how Fonseca’s political writings remained committed to both socialist revolution and national liberation from U.S. imperialism and followed the ideas of both Che Guevara and the earlier Nicaraguan leader Augusto César Sandino. She further argues that his philosophy embracing the experiences of the nation’s workers and peasants was central to the FSLN’s initial platform and charismatic appeal.

Sultanistic Regimes

Sultanistic Regimes PDF Author: Houchang E. Chehabi
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801856945
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Authoritarian governments are often based on raw power sustained by fear of punishment and hope of reward. This text identifies common characteristics of such regimes, comparing them to totalitarian and authoritarian forms of government, and tracing common patterns for their genesis and demise.

Somoza and Roosevelt

Somoza and Roosevelt PDF Author: Andrew Crawley
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191526525
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Franklin Roosevelt's good neighbour policy, coming in the wake of decades of US intervention in Central America, and following a lengthy US military occupation of Nicaragua, marked a significant shift in US policy towards Latin America. Its basic tenets were non-intervention and non-interference. The period was exceptionally significant for Nicaragua, as it witnessed the creation and consolidation of the Somoza government - one of Latin America's most enduring authoritarian regimes, which endured from 1936 to the sandinista revolution in 1979. Addressing the political, diplomatic, military, commercial, financial, and intelligence components of US policy, Andrew Crawley analyses the background to the US military withdrawal from Nicaragua in the early 1930s. He assesses the motivations for Washington's policy of disengagement from international affairs, and the creation of the Nicaraguan National Guard, as well as debating US accountability for what the Guard became under Somoza. Crawley effectively challenges the conventional theory that Somoza's regime was a creature of Washington. It was US non-intervention, not interference, he argues, that enhanced the prospects of tyranny.

Nicaragua Betrayed

Nicaragua Betrayed PDF Author: Anastasio Somoza
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Tells how Somoza's government in Nicaragua fell.

In the Shadow of the United States

In the Shadow of the United States PDF Author: Giancarlo Soler Torrijos
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 1599424398
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
How is the process of democratization different in those countries influenced by the United States? Being so close to this world power, the Latin Caribbean should have been one of the first regions, and not one of the last, to become democratic. An intersection between Comparative Politics and International Relations, the book portrays democratization not as a purely domestic process but as a regional one. It also shows the limits of US influence; US power distorted regime trajectories, without being sufficient to determine their outcomes. This book is central to understanding the impact of US efforts to promote democracy and the international dimension of regime transitions. It is also useful to grasp the configuration of the Latin Caribbean as a distinct sub-region.

Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements 1929-1983

Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements 1929-1983 PDF Author: Heather A Vrana
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474403700
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Collects more than sixty foundational documents from student protest from the frontlines of revolutionFew people know that student protest emerged in Latin America decades before the infamous student movements of Western Europe and the U.S. in the 1960s. Even fewer people know that Central American university students authored colonial agendas and anti-colonial critiques. In fact, Central American students were key actors in shaping ideas of nation, empire, and global exchange. Bridging a half-century of student protest from 1929 to 1983, this source reader contains more than sixty texts from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, including editorials, speeches, manifestos, letters, and pamphlets. Available for the first time in English, these rich texts help scholars and popular audiences alike to rethink their preconceptions of student protest and revolution. The texts also illuminate key issues confronting social movements today: global capitalism, dispossession, privatization, development, and state violence.Key FeaturesMakes available for the first time to English-language readers a diverse archive of more than sixty foundational documents and ephemera accompanied by an introduction, section introductions and further readingExpands the geographic scope of anti-colonial movement scholarship by presenting anti-colonial thought in the most contentious decades of the 20th century from a region peripheral even within anti-colonial and postcolonial studiesAdvances anti-colonial and postcolonial studies by taking urban students as critical actors and so recasting thematics of the peasantry, the rural/urban divide, and religionSuggests a new social movement chronology beyond the so-called Global 1968,"e; or the common notion that student movements peaked in May 1968 in Paris, New York City, Berkeley, and Mexico City"e;