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.

This explains the popularity of the Sandinistas that I witnessed first hand when I visited Nicaragua last year. The Sandinistas are not some remote political organisation sending out diktats on how to vote or behave, or simply interested in raking in your membership subscriptions. Rather, the people are heavily invested in the ongoing process of revolution.

Written with a clarity that does not leave the reader having to reach for a dictionary every half page, Nicaragua Must Survive inspires one to believe that similar grassroots organising strategies have a place even in the global North without the need to copy what the Sandinistas did step by step.

The book also serves to help in tackling those on the left in Britain and elsewhere who wrongly claim that somehow the revolution in Nicaragua has been betrayed.

Nicaragua Must Survive draws on extensive archival material to show how thousands of musicians, teachers, activists, priests, feminists, trade unionists, journalists as well as politicians worked to thwart US attempts to undermine their country and, more positively, to build their nation.

The organising did not end at some arbitrary date when the all knowing global North left believed the revolution was over. It is still going on today to support the Sandinistas’ commitments to key policy areas such as free universal education and healthcare — and it’s tough. Very tough.

At the local level the Nicaraguans have pioneered an innovative approach to organising in healthcare through an army of brigadistas, for example. These local people organise access to essential services such as pre-natal care for women in rural communities. Like every organising strategy the organisers need to have absolute clarity in what their roles are and what they can and can’t do. The Sandinistas prioritise this approach not because it was a strategy dreamt up in some conference but because this was what their grassroots said was required.

As the Sandinistas went global to win support, the book shows the importance of the Grupo de los Doce (Group of 12). This group of Nicaraguan intellectuals, priests (such as Fernando Cerdenal) and business leaders created a new face for the Sandinistas to meet governments, potentially influential political allies and journalists internationally.

The book shows how the Sandinistas figured out that a new “less frightening” face might sometimes need to be shown to those who were scared to meet guerilla revolutionaries.

Organising also happens by planning what will work in particular circumstances rather than through a template handed down by some “expert.” The Sandinistas clearly understood this and it is well explained and helps to explain why the international policy of the Nicaraguans has been widely recognised as one of their biggest successes.

It also describes the creative and bold approach to foreign affairs but, even so, does not attempt to gloss over the setbacks and the real difficulties that continue to face the people of Nicaragua — largely because of the pressure being applied by the big beast in the North: the brutal US-imposed sanctions against US goods entering Nicaragua and Nicaraguan products entering the US. The US also banned ships from the central American nation from landing at any of its ports or planes from landing on US soil. 

Other nations face sanctions from the US if they decide to trade with Nicaragua. This all because this tiny socialist nation is somehow considered a threat by the US.

The book is also a case study in the role of the global South during the Cold War as waged between the US and the Soviet Union. Nations across the globe were expected by both superpowers to pick a side. The attempts by Nicaragua to build its sovereign socialist nation while, at the same time, charting a non aligned geopolitical pathway is an important thread, and usefully discussed.

Ommen does not attempt to rewrite history. She simply and clearly tells the story of how the people of a mainly rural country have struggled to win global recognition for their right to stand as an independent nation capable of making their own decisions and building their own future regardless of what the US or anyone else thinks.