Subjects of Aspirations

Populist Governance in Post-revolutionary Nicaragua

Bibliographic Data

ID4380260
AuthorsLuciana Chamorro (0000-0002-7914-0369, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume41
Issue1
Pages34-51
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Cambridge Journal of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-7674 • E-ISSN: 2047-7716
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/cja.2023.410104
OpenAlexW4324134721
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited17

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Gracias a Dios, an urban informal settlement in the Pacific region of Nicaragua, this article examines the mechanisms by which investments in Sandinista partisan politics are reproduced even as promises of redistribution made by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front are chronically deferred. Populist governance emerges as the administration of aspirations in the gap between the populist promise and its failure. The residents of Gracias a Dios, who are presumed to be invested in Sandinista politics either by ideological interpellation or pragmatic self-interest, are revealed to be neither deceived nor blindly hopeful. This article argues that the populist promise opens an ambivalent space that animates aspirations and preserves possibility even when experience suggests otherwise. The regime's capacity to foster possibility in lieu of probability is dependent on punctuating everyday life with irregularly timed interventions and on transforming partisan belonging into a stopgap between promise and outcome

Ambivalence · Corporate governance · Economics · Ethnography · Everyday life · Ideology · Political economy · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Gender Studies · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America · Psychology · Social Psychology

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