Abstract
Sandinista Narratives seeks to capture “the nature of revolutionary agency” that sustained the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution. Agency is defined by Reed as: “the subjective factors behind the belief, in the part of political actors, that it is possible to change their circumstances for the better through collective efforts” (p. 1). This starting point is forged into a rich theoretical tapestry that links agency to perceptive readings of the roles of culture, ideology, events, and emotions. The result is a book that functions both as a stimulating account of the 1979 revolution and, more widely, as a creative, insightful contribution to the history–theory loop.
Sandinista Narratives is the product of scrupulous scholarship. The narrative is drawn from both deep immersion in secondary literatures and highly original primary research, including interviews and other forms of first-hand testimonials, such as memoirs and oral histories. The result is a treasure trove of source material, which is used to construct a novel interpretation of the revolution. One arresting illustration is provided by the reimagining of liberation theology as a living, breathing revolutionary idiom. As one of the radical priests cited by Reed notes, “the God who's revealed … to us in the Bible isn't a neutral God, but a God who takes sides with the poor” (p. 59). Reed shows how theological texts, such as the widely circulated Gospel of Solentiname, applied Christian concepts, themes, and analyses to Nicaraguan contexts: poverty, inequality, state repression, and more. The result was a situated political ideology that resonated with a range of publics.
Rather than seeing ideology as a cohesive abstract system (such as Christianity or Marxism), Reed argues that it is drawn from situational logics and lived experiences, which he, following Anthony Giddens, calls “life-politics” (p. 5). This brings what are often seen as monolithic, ungrounded concepts down to earth, putting them to work in concrete explanations of how, substantively, they operated in particular revolutionary settings. In the process, flat synchronic idioms become mobile diachronic practices. Take as an example the way Sandanismo was mobilized during the 1970s. Key here was the refashioning of Augusto Sandino, a Nicaraguan nationalist from the early decades of the 20th century, into a revolutionary mythomoteur, and the reworking of the thought associated with him, Sandanismo, into a “revolutionary script” (p. 194). The result was a powerful revolutionary weapon.
Central to this process of reconstruction were figures like Carlos Fonseca, a socialist emboldened to take up armed struggle by the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Although Reed follows Fonseca to exile in Cuba, where he sought to evade Nicaraguan authorities, he spends little time on the transnational solidarities that Fonseca and others sought to cultivate. Nor does he probe more deeply into the generative nature of exile itself, something that has been central to so many revolutionaries, from Marx to Lenin, and Martí to Khomeini. This speaks to one minor concern that could be raised about Sandinista Narratives—it spends little time on international dynamics. The United States, for example, appears only fleetingly, despite the central role played by many of its agencies and personnel in both the revolution and subsequent counter-revolution. Transnational revolutionary ideas and practices also appear only in passing. Nor is there significant discussion of broader international dynamics, such as processes of uneven development. Reed avoids these dynamics in large measure because of their association with flat, structural accounts of revolution. That may be true. But it's also true that they, like liberation theology and Sandanismo, were activated in the scripts and practices of revolutionaries. This process of enactment, and the friction between different modes of revolutionary agency, might have been more centrally addressed.
I would also have liked to see Reed examine issues of contingency more closely. Although Sandinista Narratives highlights the centrality of events, which Reed sees as “moments of collective creativity” (p. 19), he is more concerned with the ways in which events act as “collective memory anchors” (p. 253) rather than as moments of uncertainty. The major events used to construct this part of the narrative are quite far apart: the repression carried out by the regime following fraudulent elections in 1967; the shake-up, both literal and political, caused by a major earthquake in 1972; and the protests sparked by the assassination of one of the dictatorship's main opponents, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, in 1978. This long-range analysis demonstrates well the build-up of moral outrage over time. But left untapped are the radical construction—and destruction—of revolution and revolutionaries during the midst of struggle itself. It is sometimes said of revolutions that they are impossible in the morning, possible by the afternoon, probable in the evening, and inevitable by midnight. It would have been interesting to see Reed engage further with this sense of short-term, open-ended, temporal revolutionary compression.
Despite these minor quibbles, the scholarly contribution of Sandinista Narratives comes through loud and clear: it is deeply researched, sophisticated in its argument, and highly readable. The book's fertile blend of granular detail and theoretical acumen make it essential reading for students and scholars of revolutions alike.