Women of the Nicaraguan Revolution
During the second half of the 20th century, Nicaragua saw more than its fair share of guerilla movements, of both the Left and Right. Extreme conditions (dictatorship, vicious poverty, foreign intervention) often produced extreme solutions. And women were active participants in the search for solutions in Nicaragua. In the case of the Sandinista guerilla movement of the 1960s and 1970s that would eventually topple the Somoza dictatorship, the role of women is well known. During the course of the Somoza regime, Nicaragua was characterized by a progressively more unequal distribution of resources as peasants were pushed off their land to make room for agro-export production. So many poor farmers were pushed off their land that by 1978, shortly before the overthrow of Somoza, more than three quarters of the economically active population engaged in agriculture could be classified as landless and/or poor (Mason 68). This had the effect of putting downward pressure on wages, especially as the main cash crops (cotton and coffee) were not very labor intensive, except during harvest. Many who had formerly been middle class peasants found that they had become poor peasants, forced to compete for
Mason, T. David 1992. "Women's Participation in Central American Revolutions" associate feminism with Sandinismo and antifeminism with anti-Sandinismo. Ironically, limited but real feminist successes over the course of the previous decades left the Nicaraguan public open to an antifeminist campaign, which forced feminists into silent support for the Sandinistas, just at the time when many of them wanted to break away from the FSLN. h underwent some changes after the Sandinistas took power. AMPRONAC, the women's organization affiliated with the Sandinistas during the guerrilla struggle, changed its name to AMNLAE, and went public. State-movement relations represented a break with the past. Instead of the antagonism between AMPRONAC and the Somocista state, there was cooperation between AMNLAE and the Sandinista state. Enriquez, Laura J. 1997. Agrarian Reform and Class Consciousness in Nicaragua. Comparative Political Studies. Vol. 25, No. 1, (April). One of the ways that AMNLAE sought to put many government policies into practice was through Women's Houses that were built in all the regions of Nicaragua, fifty-two by the early 1990s. These houses served as intermediaries between the state and individuals by providing services in the areas of health, psychological counseling, and legal counseling, as well as workshops in areas such as sexuality, contraception, and job training (Mason 99). AMNLAE played a crucial role as a link between the state and the population in all of these endeavors. But in this link a contradiction arose, which became more acute over time. AMNLAE ended up devoting tremendous resources to preserving the power and legitimacy of the Sandinista-controlled state. Too often, AMNLAE played the role of the "submissive wife" of the FSLN (Mason 100).
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Approximate Word count = 1924
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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