came to a moment in my life when I realized that I didn't really know much about Nicaragua in the 's, and I decided that I wanted to rectify that.
Unlike my previous disastrous attempt to learn about labor relations in the post office tried really hard to finish just couldn't do it, this was a quite readable and easy to follow account of the thorny business of overthrowing a dictatorship and setting up a collective.
The research includes many interviews and specifically uses one rural village as its test point an account of the citybound Sandinista/antiSandinista existence would make for a far different book, and covers details of the overthrow of Samoza, the subsequent Sandinista government, MILPA and, later, contra, counterattacks, all with a focus on the opinions of the rural poor, whose allegiances shifted all over the spectrum.
Although the writer clearly favors one side over the other a bit, it comes out that every side made mistakes, or, more often, didn't forsee big things that changed the course of public opinion.
I got what I wanted a fuller picture of the decade and the struggles without having to go fullmetal researcher for months on end.
I'm sure there's a million details I haven't read I definitely went into skim mode any time they started discussing land redistribution and/or farm cooperative minutiae, but I feel like I have at least a skeleton of information that I could later augment with further meat and muscle anecdotes.
Recommended as a nonthreatening, modestsized introduction, and wellresearched enough to be useful for a grad student, I'm guessing, A well balanced inside in the conflict that split a lot of people and families in Nicaragua but as well outside that country, Drawing on testimonies from contra collaborators and excombatants, as well as proSandinista peasants, this book presents a dynamic account of the growing divisions between peasants from the area of Quilalí who took up arms in defense of revolutionary programs and ideals such as land reform and equality and those who opposed the FSLN.
Peasants in Arms details the role of local elites in organizing the first antiSandinista uprising inand their subsequent rise to positions of field command in the contras.
Lynn Horton explores the internal factors that led a majority of peasants to turn against the revolution and the ways in which the military draft, and family and community pressures reinforced conflict and undermined middecade FSLN policy shifts that attempted to win back peasant support.
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