Nicaraguan Revolution

The Nicaraguan Revolution spans three decades of conflict in Nicaragua: the guerrilla struggle against the Somoza family dictatorship from 1961, the popular insurrection that toppled it in July 1979, and the war between the new Sandinista government and the US-backed Contras through the 1980s. It made the small Central American country one of the sharpest proxy battlegrounds of the Cold War, and it ended with a negotiated peace and the Sandinistas' electoral defeat in 1990.

After the United States ended its occupation of Nicaragua in 1933, the Somoza family built a hereditary dictatorship that lasted from 1937 to 1979, passing from Anastasio Somoza García to his sons Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The period brought economic growth but also widening inequality, corruption, dependence on American firms and close American backing for the regime and its National Guard.

In 1961 Carlos Fonseca, Silvio Mayorga and Tomás Borge founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). For years it remained small, and its early rural campaigns in the 1960s ended in costly defeats. It drew help from Cuba and later from Panama and Venezuela. After Fonseca was killed in 1976 the movement divided into three tendencies; the "Tercerista" faction led by Daniel Ortega proved the most popular.

Kidnappings in the 1970s made the FSLN nationally known, and the Guard responded with torture and killings that drew international condemnation; in 1978 the United States cut off aid. The murder on 10 January 1978 of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor of the newspaper La Prensa and leader of a broad opposition alliance, triggered riots and a general strike. In August 1978 a Sandinista commando under Edén Pastora seized the National Palace with the legislature in session, winning a ransom and the release of prisoners. Talks mediated by the Organization of American States broke down, and by June 1979 the guerrillas controlled everything but the capital. Somoza resigned on 17 July and fled to Miami, and the FSLN entered Managua on 19 July.

The new government inherited a ruined country, with around 600,000 people homeless out of 2.8 million. It confiscated the Somozas' property, carried out a broad land reform, launched a literacy crusade that won a UNESCO award in 1980, and expanded health care with Cuban help. Human rights groups also documented serious abuses, including killings and forced relocation of Miskito people on the Caribbean coast, and the government faced criticism for curbing the press and for declaring at first that elections were unnecessary.

The Reagan administration cut aid in 1981 and in November authorised covert support for the Contras, rebels based largely in Honduras, many of them former Guardsmen, who also operated from Costa Rica. The CIA helped mine Nicaraguan harbours, and secret funding later surfaced in the Iran–Contra affair. More than half the Sandinista budget went on the military and conscription was introduced. Ortega won the 1984 election with 67 per cent of the vote, which international observers considered free and fair, though Washington dismissed it.

Regional diplomacy, culminating in the Esquipulas II agreement signed by five Central American presidents in August 1987, opened the way to the Sapoá accords of March 1988 and to Contra demobilisation under the Tela Accord of 1989. On 25 February 1990 the opposition coalition UNO, led by Violeta Chamorro, widow of the murdered editor, unexpectedly defeated Ortega. Estimates of the total dead range widely, from about 42,000 to 78,000.

Our 1960 map shows Nicaragua under the Somozas, the 1985 map shows it during the Contra war, and the 1994 map shows the country after the transition.