FSLN (Nicaragua) logo
When I submitted my thesis in 2019, my supervisor gave me a mug that had been on his desk for years: It bore red and black silhouettes of people waving rifles, flags and placards in the air, and, in white cursive, read: “Nicaragua Must Survive.”
This is one of hundreds of mugs sold by the London-based Nicaragua Solidarity Movement in the 1980s to raise funds for left-wing Sandinista revolutionaries. In the highly polarized context of the late Cold War, these Sandinistas sought to usher in radical social and political change while fighting a brutal civil war against US-funded counter-revolutionaries. But after more than a decade of hardship, dreams of revolutionary change in Nicaragua faded and the Sandinista revolutionaries lost power in the elections of February 25, 1990. Today, this mug sits on my desk, next to the book it is based on.
Born in 1990, just weeks before the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)’s electoral defeat, I was astonished to discover just how ubiquitous revolutionaries were in the 1980s, especially in Europe and the Americas. While researching this book, I quickly discovered that thousands of international volunteers had traveled to Nicaragua to work on coffee plantations, national and local politicians were engaged in heated debates about the ideological character of the revolution, and pro-Sandinista posters adorned the walls of student dormitories, theaters, and community houses around the world. In the final decade of the Cold War, things were hot in Nicaragua.
In my new book, Nicaragua Must Survive: Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in the Global Cold War, I explain why the Sandinista Revolution, which triumphed on July 19, 1979, had such a profound impact on the world. 
Even grassroots activists in the UK felt the need to produce and sell mugs for the Nicaraguan cause. This was no coincidence, but rather a result of the Sandinistas’ revolutionary diplomacy, which demonstrated their conscious mobilization of people around the world for the FSLN’s cause. Sandinista ambassadors relied on a powerful combination of cultural appeals, pragmatic arguments, and romantic narratives to strengthen the revolution in the face of a strong anti-Communist campaign. As a result, Central America became, in the words of Ronald Reagan’s controversial diplomat Jeane Kirkpatrick, “the most important place in the world.”
The impact of Sandinista foreign policy was global, but it was ultimately designed to benefit the revolution. Was it? In many ways, it was. In the late 1970s, guerrilla diplomacy helped isolate dictator Anastasio Somoza and provided the FSLN with the legitimacy, weapons, and funds it needed to win the revolution. In the early 1980s, the Sandinistas could count on international support to fund ambitious domestic programs, including a successful literacy campaign. The Sandinista revolution also endured the Reagan Administration (1981-1989), despite Cold War hardliners’ commitment to “stopping Communism in Central America.”
In the end, it wasn’t enough. In the late 1980s, international interest in the revolutionary ideals waned and the Cold War ended, but Nicaragua’s civil war continued. The Sandinistas were unable to transform the country as they had envisioned in the late 1970s. Instead, they were forced to make internal reforms to meet the demands of their critics, including negotiating with counterrevolutionaries, cutting public spending, and holding elections that they would lose in 1990.
“But by then, much of the world had turned its attention away from the small Central American country and toward events in Eastern Europe and South Africa. After decades of violence, it was up to Nicaraguans to rebuild their country, and the legacy of the revolution continues to shape Nicaraguan society and politics to this day. With Nicaragua Must Survive, I hope to have recaptured some of the epic yet often forgotten international and transnational history of the Sandinista Revolution.
This post originally appeared on the University of California Press blog and is reprinted here with permission.
