ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Understanding the Sandinistas
ROGER MCKENZIE recommends a landmark study that emphasises the importance of grassroots organisation in the defence of a socialist, non-aligned nation
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME: Last September, Managua Mayor Reyna Rueda Alvarado officially presented the model flats of the housing programme Nuevas Victorias (New Victories) - 134 are to be built by December with the support of the Chinese Agency for International Development Cooperation. A total of 12,034 houses will be built in 84 municipalities, 15 departments and two autonomous regions of the country
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Nicaragua Must Survive: Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in the Global Cold War
Eline Van Ommen
University of California Press, £25
NICARAGUA Must Survive makes the important point that not all innovative organising or political strategies have to be designed and birthed by some North American all-knowing, slick-talking guru. In what is one of the best books I have read on organising, Eline Van Ommen, a lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Leeds, celebrates the role played by grassroots organisers in transforming history.
This is a point that is easily overlooked. It is all too easy to cite examples of how professional politicians are the ones who make history rather than the tens of thousands of people who share a common cause and are willing to put themselves on the line to bring about change or, as in Nicaragua, winning and securing a revolution.
The professional politicians obviously played a role in Nicaragua but the book shows how the strategies to transform this small country of just over six million people was largely driven from the grassroots.
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