Community Organizing and Mechanisms of Social Control among Sandinista Militants

• In Event: Teasing Apart the 2018 Nicaraguan Insurrection: Policy, the State, and the Opposition

Abstract

Since the return of Daniel Ortega to the presidency of Nicaragua in 2007, the regime has sought to suppress any emergent social demand, social movement or NGO that challenges the regime’s claim to be the sole representative of popular interests in Nicaragua. Most visibly, mechanisms of repression have been directed at campesinos organizing against the concession for the construction of the “Nicaraguan Grand Canal”, peasant workers on sugarcane plantations demanding better working conditions, communities organizing against open-ceiling mining projects, or feminists organizing to demand state action to protect women from gender-based violence. Lesser known are the everyday mechanisms of social control directed at historical Sandinista social movements like the Nicaraguan Communal Movement and at Sandinista local leaders attempting to organize within their neighborhoods. Based on field research in the city of Leon, a traditional Sandinista stronghold, I trace Sandinistas’ struggle to take up demands that were historically defended by the party, such as access to urban land titles and basic services, but that are now deemed illegitimate. This paper analyzes the disaffections that their organizing experiences generated and the mechanisms of social control implemented by the party to demobilize, coopt and control them. The research anticipates the discontents and resentments harbored among an important sector of Sandinista militants against the Ortega regime, leading many of them to participate in the 2018 uprisings.

Author

• Luciana Chamorro, Columbia University