After Revolution

While Nicaragua no longer seems to be in the public eye, these two books show why it still should be. The changes and transformations that the country has undergone over the last 25 years merit our attention.Florence Babb has written a thoughtful book examining the intersection between neoliberalism, postrevolutionary politics, and gender in Nicaragua. She does this with a multileveled analysis that adroitly “maps” the complexity of connections between the local and the international, the past and the present, and dominant discourses and cultural struggles.Babb’s study is based on ethnographic research conducted during the decade following the electoral loss of the Sandinistas in 1990. The loss signified the beginning of the “After Revolution”: a switch from the mixed economy and revolutionary politics of the Sandinistas to the neoliberal free-trade model of political economy, the altering of physical space to support this neoliberal project, and changes both in patterns of political mobilization and the relationship between the state and civil society.The seven main chapters are a series of freestanding essays. In chapter 2, Babb explains how neoliberalism has led to enormous economic hardships—both personal and collective—for Nicaraguan women, while also requiring changes and the growth of the women’s movement. Babb contends that the growth of an independent women’s movement in the post-Sandinista period is “likely the result of a questioning of top-down Sandinista Party politics, strong opposition to neoliberal government policy, [and] continued mobilization under a government that tolerates a degree of political dissent” (p. 27). She thus refuses to accept the general argument of Sandinista critics, that the growth of an autonomous movement is the result of post-Sandinista democratization. Neither does she concur with FSLN supporters that the movement is merely a continuation of the Sandinista support for political mobilization. Instead, she argues that current trends in social mobilization are related to both historical and current developments.In chapter 3, Babb outlines how neoliberalism is attempting to reshape discourses of gender. How are masculinity and femininity being redefined and what political ideologies are being used to justify these new definitions? She thus quotes an article in La Prensa that “hailed the Miss Nicaragua beauty pageant as the most important cultural event of the year, commenting that this is ‘possible only in a real democracy’” (p. 63). In another instance, the Nicaraguan vice president, speaking at an opening of a McDonald’s restaurant, remarked that “Nicaragua is taking off its loincloth” (p. 60). “Democratization” and “development” thus require and justify sexist and racist cultural reformulations.In chapters 4–7, Babb presents a well-balanced critique of the effects of neoliberalism on the Nicaraguan urban working class. In chapter 4, Babb provides the reader with an ethnographic look at one working-class neighborhood in Managua. While the neighborhood is politically and economically diverse, the study points to a growing dependence of the working poor on the informal economy in their continuous battle for survival. Chapter 5 is based on Babb’s decade-long study of four urban cooperatives, most of which are dominated by women. The dismantling of the Sandinista project and the implementation of neoliberal policies have devastated these cooperatives. Chapter 6 outlines attempts of Chamorro’s and Aleman’s governments, with the support of the international community, to refocus entrepreneurial attention away from cooperatives and toward microenterprises. While microenterprises have been praised by many as a way to assist poor women in Latin America and elsewhere, Babb’s careful analysis points out some critical problems with the microentrepreneurial model. Chapter 7 raises larger questions about the effects of development discourse on definitions of nation and gender and on state policymaking.Finally, chapter 8 turns attention to changes in—and in many cases the growth of—social mobilization in the context of the neoliberal reorientation towards the individual and the global. Babb looks particularly at the movements of indigenous peoples, neighborhood organizations, women’s groups, lesbian and gay activists, environmentalists, peace activists, and youth organizations.Katherine Isbester’s Still Fighting: The Nicaraguan Women’s Movement, 1977– 2000 covers slightly different ground than Babb. Relying on social movement theory—especially Alberto Melucci—Isbester maintains that the “primary components of a successful social movement are an autonomous identity, a complementary use of resources, and a focused goal” (p. 18). She uses these variables to try to explain changes in the Nicaraguan women’s movement from 1977 to 2000. Isbester has divided the book into two parts—“The Sandinista Women’s Movement 1977– 1990” and “The Post Sandinista Women’s Movement 1990–1996”; a subtheme of the text is to compare the two periods. Chapters are arranged chronologically to discuss the years in question.The book nicely contextualizes some of the rich materials that already exist on the Nicaraguan women’s movement. Chapter 2 traces the role that women played in the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, and the Sandinistas’ formation of the Association of Nicaraguan Women Confronting the National Problem (AMPRONAC). Isbester maintains that AMPRONAC was able to successfully organize women and accomplish its goals (which at that point coincided with the revolutionary goals of the FSLN) between 1977 and 1979, at least partially because it remained fairly autonomous from the FSLN and was allowed to form its “own identity” and uphold a horizontal organizational structure. Once the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, however, Isbester argues in chapter 3, AMPRONAC lost its independence and horizontalism, and was integrated into the Sandinista corporate structure under a new name, the Association of Nicaraguan Women “Luisa Amanda Espinoza” (AMNLAE). By 1984, Isbester argues, AMNLAE’s identity had become “confused” and the organization—under the direction of the Sandinista government—“was trying to respond to women’s needs without acknowledging that revolutionary Nicaragua remained patriarchal” (p. 85). The 1984–87 years saw the development of growing cleavages between the Sandinista government and various activist women over the control of public spaces and gender definitions. Ultimately, Isbester relates in chapter 5, a few women—primarily from the middle and upper classes and Sandinistas themselves—began to organize small, autonomous, identity-based women’s groups in the late 1980s. Their presence encouraged AMNLAE to pressure the Sandinistas for a more fulsome gendered state program. While the response of the Sandinista government was mixed, it mainly tried to rein in growing alternative visions of gender and women’s rights.In the second part of the book, Isbester analyzes the growth of the women’s movement under the Chamorro and Aleman governments. While neither government was particularly supportive of gender equity, Isbester maintains that the new political economy of the postrevolutionary years has encouraged the growth of the women’s movement because it has allowed for the formation of a collective identity and the creation of autonomous women’s groups. In chapter 6, Isbester discusses the gender vision of the Chamorro regime, which was heavily influenced by Catholic and neoconservative values that separate private and public spaces. Chapters 7 and 8 evaluate the resurgence of the independent women’s movement despite Sandinista attempts to keep it under party control. Isbester notes that women’s conferences during the early 1990s played a key role in helping to define a collective identity based on “Unity in Diversity,” a “utopian” vision, and an “ethos of care.”While Isbester’s book nicely traces the historical development of the women’s movement through important years of change, it is at times uneven. Her continual attempts to fit the Nicaraguan case into the Melucci framework is sometimes frustrating. It would have been helpful if she would have explored questions of identity and autonomy from more varied and critical perspectives. Are identity and autonomy necessarily inseparable? Is a social movement necessarily more “successful” if it is autonomous? Are multiple identities necessarily destructive to social movements? How is success to be defined?Both After Revolution and Still Fighting are solid contributions to the literature on Nicaragua and gender studies in Latin America. While the Babb book helps to concretize the effects of neoliberalism on urban workers, the Isbester book consolidates information in gender politics in revolutionary and postrevolutionary Nicaragua

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