Sandinista ideology

[1] The ideology and movement acquired its name, image and its military style from Augusto César Sandino, a Nicaraguan revolutionary leader who waged a guerrilla war against the United States Marines and the conservative Somoza National Guards in the early twentieth century.

One of these main philosophies involved the institution of an educational system that would free the population from the perceived historical fallacies spread by the ruling Somoza family.

By awakening political thought among the people, proponents of Sandinista ideology believed that human resources would be available to not only execute a guerrilla war against the Somoza regime but also build a society resistant to economic and military intervention imposed by foreign entities.

Prior to the 1970s, the FSLN competed for peasant and worker support with other Somoza opposition groups such as the Partido Socialista de Nicaragua (PSN).

The PSN claimed to be a pure Marxist group, committed to fostering mass support of the proletariat and participating in elections before agreeing to any type of revolution.

While many FSLN members were exterminated, the decade Fonseca spent underground allowed him to research Sandino and come up with a more concrete ideological framework and an appropriate time to resurface on the Nicaraguan scene.

This opportunity emerged in the 1970s, when the Somoza government confiscated relief funds for personal gain instead of giving aid to individuals and families after the 1972 Managua earthquake.

Instead, Fonseca drew from the success of the Cuban Revolution and the life of Sandino to persuade students, workers, and peasants to gain power through the revolutionary force of the FSLN.

Just as Guevara had implemented his guerrilla foco in the Sierra Maestra mountains of the Oriente province, Fonseca believed Nicaragua's Revolution would begin with mass insurgency in the Nicaraguan countryside.

[3] Many aspects of Sandinismo are similar to tendencies in other forms of political thought in Latin America like its appeal to the largest mass of the population and its anti-imperialist rhetoric.

In Sandinismo, there is an emphasis that revolution begins in rural regions among Nicaragua's oppressed peasantry, Sandinista ideas are rooted in the symbols of Augusto César Sandino and there is an effort to develop conscious growth through education.

"[11] Fonseca's Sandinistas were bent on "freeing the minds" of the peasantry by instilling an 'official' understanding of history that places struggle against imperialism and the abundance of the national heroes the peasants at the center of a Marxist historical interpretation of Nicaragua.

The sometimes mythic tales of Sandino tapped into the artistic imaginations of the peasants who needed to be convinced, and political passion was given a more concrete form.

Their appeals for tactical and temporary broad alliances were victorious within the party's National Directorate, however, not without controversy over the preservation of pure Marxist analysis.

In the 1970s, Fonseca brought a new interpretation of Sandino to the Sandinista party members wishing to dispense upon the masses: his quest to attain the sovereign-independence of Nicaragua had not been accomplished generations after his assassination.

Sandino wished to remove the foreign influences that were dominant in the country, and prevented the government from conducting business for the well-being of the Nicaraguan people.

Fonseca wished to use his newly developed history of Nicaragua to unite the rural peasants to instill a greater sense of pride, to encourage men to take part in the anti-imperial struggle and to increase revolutionary solidarity.

[19] The Sandinista political thought was so deeply enshrined in the peasants that the Somoza forces could not bring an end to the revolt by simply killing any revolutionary leaders.