Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua (David Rockefeller Center Series on Latin American Studies)

A great political history of Nicaragua, focusing intently on the Sandinista revolution that toppled the Somoza regime, fought the counter-revolution Contras, lost power in the first real democratic and free elections, and now has taken control again.

I like the Mr. Kinzer points out that the Sandinistas made three critical errors that lead to their losing the election of 1990: #1 "they believed they could build Nicaragua into a prosperous country without deferring to the principles of free enterprise"; #2 "they grossly underestimated the moral influence of Catholic bishops and, in particular, the esteem in which Nicaraguans held their spiritual leader, Cardinal Obando"; and #3 "they abused Miskito Indians and other ethnic minorities who had lived peaceably for centuries along the Atlantic coas, provoking a rebellion that attracted widespread sympathy both within Nicaragua and around the world."

After surprisingly losing the presidential election of 1990 to Violeta Chamorro, Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas are back in control of Nicaragua. I can only hope that they will govern more successfully this time.

Stephen Kinzer writes an engaging although sad and depressing narrative about Nicaragua during the U.S. backed Somoza dictatorship and the lengthy period of Sandinista rule. Drawing on interviews with government officials and local residents Kinzer paints a picture of a country in an unsettled state of war. Nicaraguans buried a whole generation of their young fighting to first remove the Somoza dictatorship from power and then a second civil war between the Sandinistas and the Contras. Kinzer also discusses the impact of the Sandinista and Samoza policies on the people of Nicaragua and why Nicaragua continues to be a place of intrigue.

It's always interesting to me how so many people want to understand Nicaragua but this is a country that is akin to having a body with a heart that beats but no pulse to show that it is alive. Nicaragua's social paradigms are too complex to understand from an outsider's perception but upon further examination they seem almost too simplistic to anyone who tried to figure it out before ( and is now beating themselves over the head because of it). Simply put: You either are or you aren't. Plain and simple. End of story. Black and White. Rich and Poor. Affluent or Powerless, Accepted or Shunned. Nicaragua's social identity is akin to the old plantation mentality that was prevalent in the Old South prior to the end of the Civil War when the North forced the South into submission and ended the Southerner's way of life and broke their pride, except that in Nicaragua the FSLN raised the ire of the Nicaraguan people to rise up against an admittingly corrupt, despotic, brutal and typically unfair Latin American regime based on old family dynasties, a ruling class mentality that Americans can never understand because it as a mindset that is not democratic in the least but rather oligharchic and exclusive, and only those who are have something are afforded something in Nicaragua, and it's always surprising to me how Americans in their feigned benevolent, well-meaning intentions look at Nicaragua and say to themselves " look at all those poor people we should help them, they're starving... look at all the children who are in hospitals who are dying... look at all the misery and suffering " and take a step back to think how they can help in and in a typical American response to the situation they give a little bit of money, a little bit of medicine, foreign aid, support and prop up whichever regime is convenient for them to support at the time and are still flabberghasted when everything they have tried to fix the problem doesn't seem to work. America is the bright, shining light in a world full of darkness, misery, pain and suffering and feels it has an obligation to help the world fix it's problems through democracy, diplomacy, military intervention, and just general brute force and bullying when it is convenient but the world cannot be changed by America, America can only be itself and not fix every little thing that goes wrong.
It seems to me that the journalist who wrote this book is a bright, intelligent, educated and socially responsibly ethical individual who wants to make a difference and show the world through words the images of a country that is afflicted with very deep, very raw open wounds and scars because of the status Nicaragua achieved in the 1980's as a pet cause of the Conservative establishment and another tool in the Reagan Administration's Cold War not so Cold War on the Soviet Union and " Communism " around the world. Having immigrated with my parents and most of my family from Nicaragua in 1980, Nicaragua is what I am, and through all it's phases it has paralleled my existence and that of my family's as well.
As a child I remember the dirty, dingy streets that my brother and I would play in outside of my Grandmother's house in a barrio that has since become the main hospitality sector of Managua, and I remember the starving dogs on the street, home-cooked chicken soup my grandmother would make ( made with a chicken she had slaughtered right before my very eyes ), the unpaved streets full of potholes and traps that caused accidents 24/7, the fragrant smell of flowers, plants and fruits that Americans and people around the world will never see unless they travel to Latin America, my immediate family consisting of my Father, Mother and brother, and then my extended family where all of us ( 2 Uncles, 3 Aunts, grandmother, great-grandmother ) lived in a 3 bedroom house and the bar my family ran adjacent to our property, the barfights between overly drunk men who harasssed women, the brutal treatment of women and children, kids on the street begging for food, people with broken limbs, broken spirits, broken souls. Then I would take a ride and go uptown to the OTHER Nicaragua, the tiny strip of affluence that the upper class could only afford. The children of rich parents who had all the creature comforts of any middle-class and upper-class Americans, lived in modest yet lavish mansions with servants everywhere who only did what they were told and NEVER, EVER complained or could complain ( for fear of losing their only source of employment, and therefore means of sustanance for their families ), the way the truly rich Nicaraguans acted out towards the poor and defenseless, the callous and harsh punishments meted out to a poor Nicaraguan if he had committed a crime against an important one. In Nicaragua race isn't as important as class, but it stands to reason that if you're White, descended of any European stock at all you're better than the darker peoples in the country and the same is true for the rest of Latin America, and throughout the world. In Latin America there is only one place you aspire to be in your life, and one place of going: up. Marrying up, trying to achieve any sort of upward mobility the situation you were born into affords you to. The wealth and power of the upper classes is concentrated and is vertically and horizontally integrated ( to use a business term ), you marry as best as you can and hopefully have means to do so, it's not uncommon for the rich to intermarry and almost be inbred, like the royal families of Europe are. And that is where Nicaragua's problem lies: It is a country that is stuck in the 21st century but has an 18th century mentality. The rest of the world is slowly creeping it's way forward, or backwards if you're a Conservative because of the forced egalitarianism that the world is fostering now, but Nicaragua is stuck in the past and has yet to move. Anywhere. AT ALL. If you do visit Nicaragua, be prepared to see dirty, unpaved streets, people poorer than you ever thought existed and in worse conditions than ANY U.S. city, even any city in MEXICO, animals on the verge of extinction being sold for less than you would buy a compact disc, women being forced into prostitution because of the dire situation, child labor, assaults, murder, robberies, and social unrest that is only held together by whichever current iron-fisted government is ruling at the time. The sitation never changes for the vast majority of Nicaraguans, the Somocistas where thrown out of power and accused of theft and corruption, the Sandinistas have done the same thing, and the cycle has continued unabated for decades and WILL NEVER CEASE. Right now their is a lot of foreign investment oppurtunities in Nicaragua where Americans, Europeans, and others are buying up land and establishing themselves in a country that is seen as a burgeoning tourist attraction and the Sandinista government is encouraging this foreign investment but the situation is precarious as ever. Nicaragua is never stable politically, geophysically, or socially, and to be Nicaraguan is to be a proud citizen of a country that has a fighting spirit equal to any nation in the world but cannot move forward because of it's lack of a discernable identity and therefore has an uncertain future. Enjoy Nicaragua for what it is, not for what you think it should be.

Like others around during the 1980s, I absorbed a decent amount of reporting on Nicaragua, but never really understood it beyond Cold War caricature. This book really helps put what occurred in perspective. The author makes an effort not to take sides, but also doesn't shy from opining on how different parties and individuals could have handled events better. Keep in mind that since the author was a New York Times writer and not a political official or other Nicaraguan, the book never feels like a "insider's" perspective. But given how emotionally charged people can get over the topic, perhaps that's a good thing.

This book was really hard to put down. As a person familiar with Nicaragua since I grew-up there in the 1960s, I have been watching the saga of this nation unfold since then. The ingrained caste and feudal system is difficult to shake. It doesn't seem to matter what political spectrum takes power, they do nothing to break the vicious cycles of poverty and oppression that plagues the people there. Each generation has no better promise than the previous to break out of the quagmire. Seems like the international aid over the years just makes it easier for the system to perpetuate. How can those that have suffered under a given regime make it to the top and then grind-on their people in the same fashion that they were initially subjected to? Perpetual pathological sickness prevails. There are many lessons to be aware of as to how easily it is to be stuck in this mud - and how relatively blessed the USA is that we are not.