Field Notes from Nicaragua

I arrived in Nicaragua in the 1990s during a period of profound political transition, not at the height of the revolutionary moment itself, but in its aftermath. The Sandinista Revolution had inspired enormous hope, both inside and outside the country, and many of those hopes were genuine. For many Nicaraguans, especially peasants, women, workers, students, and marginalized communities, the revolution promised not only the end of the Anastasio Somoza Debayle dictatorship but also the possibility of a more just society. There was widespread optimism that the revolutionary government could reduce extreme inequality, expand access to education and healthcare, redistribute land, and create greater political participation for ordinary people who had long been excluded from power. International supporters likewise viewed Nicaragua as an experiment in social justice and popular democracy, believing that the country might chart an alternative path to development rooted in literacy campaigns, agrarian reform, public health initiatives, and grassroots mobilization.

By the time I arrived, however, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) had already lost the 1990 national elections, and the country was entering a new era shaped by postwar exhaustion, economic crisis, and the transition toward a U.S.-backed liberal democratic order. The Nicaragua I encountered was therefore not the triumphant revolutionary state imagined in international solidarity movements but a society negotiating the uncertain aftermath of revolution, counterrevolution, and war. Revolutionary ideals still circulated powerfully in public memory and political discourse, yet they coexisted with disillusionment, austerity, privatization, and growing political fragmentation.

On the Atlantic Coast, where Miskitu, Sumu, Rama, Creole, and Garífuna communities had long histories distinct from the Spanish-speaking Pacific regions, these tensions had unfolded in particularly complex ways. Questions of regional autonomy, identity, land, and political authority complicated the revolutionary narrative of national unity. For many coastal communities, the revolution represented both new possibilities and new forms of state intervention, producing relationships with the Sandinista government that were often ambivalent, contested, and historically layered.

This book is not a work of fiction. The events described here occurred, and the individuals portrayed are real people whom I encountered during my time in Nicaragua. I have changed the names of my host families and private individuals to protect their privacy, but the substance of the narrative remains faithful to my experiences and recollections.

Over the years, I came to realize that the dissertation I had written captured only part of what I had lived through. Portions of this memoir draw directly from that earlier academic work, including some of its research, observations, and historical analysis. The dissertation itself was shaped by the conventions of scholarly writing, which demanded distance, structure, and theoretical coherence. Much of daily life—the uncertainty, humor, fear, hospitality, and emotional complexity of living through political conflict—remained outside its pages. The language of scholarship often flattened experiences that, in memory, remained intensely human.

This memoir is, in part, an effort to revisit and expand upon those earlier writings by recovering some of the texture that academic prose could not fully convey. These pages are therefore both reflective narrative and field notes in a broader sense: observations made while moving through unfamiliar political and cultural terrain, often without fully understanding at the time what I was witnessing. Memory is never perfect. Some conversations have been reconstructed to the best of my recollection, and certain scenes have been compressed or rearranged for narrative clarity. Nevertheless, I have tried throughout to remain faithful to the emotional and historical truth of the experiences described.

What began as research eventually became something more personal: an encounter with the limits of ideology, the complexity of solidarity, and the ways revolutions can both inspire and fracture the societies they seek to transform. This book is offered in that spirit.

ALPROMISU: Alliance for the Progress of Miskitus. Founded in 1974 during the Somoza regime, this non-governmental organization was established collaboratively by Capuchin priests, Moravian pastors, and U.S. Peace Corps volunteers.

ARDE: Alianza Revolucionaria Democrática [Democratic Revolutionary Alliance]. This was a coalition of six different anti-Sandinista rebel groups that operated from Costa Rica, led by Edén Pastora, Alfonso Robelo, and Brooklyn Rivera.

BOSAWAS: The name is a portmanteau of three geographic features in northern Nicaragua: the Bocay River, Cerro Saslaya, and the Waspuk River. The biosphere reserve covers about 15 percent of Nicaragua’s land area. It is the second-largest tropical rainforest in the Western Hemisphere after the Amazon. Its remarkably diverse landscape encompasses multiple ecosystems, including tropical rainforests and cloud forests.

CIDCA: Centro de Investigación y Documentación de la Costa Atlántica. The Sandinistas established this autonomous research institute with offices in Managua, Bilwi, and Bluefields. In 1982, CICDA replaced Innica (Nicaraguan Institute for the Atlantic Coast).

FDN: Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense [Nicaraguan Democratic Force]. This was the most prominent U.S.-backed “Contra” group that operated from Honduras, organized by former members of Somoza’s National Guard, under the leadership of Adolfo Calero Portocarrero. MISURA, led by Steadman Fagoth, worked closely with the FDN and was supported by funds from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).