Word: sandinistas
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...When the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was voted out of power in 1990 after a decade of battling U.S.-backed contra insurgents, many of its supporters from the United States and Europe packed up their bandanas and Birkenstocks and went home with a good story. The Nicaraguan revolution was over, and most of the "Sandalistas" (the nickname that combined their preferences in politics and footwear) saw no point in staying on: There was nothing sexy about helping out a centrist transition government led by a grandmotherly widow when you'd been drawn here by the allure of a regime...
...internationalists who stayed behind continued to work on the issues that embodied the finest aims of the Sandinista revolution - bringing healthcare and education to remote corners of the country, empowering women and peasants, providing micro-credit loans to farmers, and delivering drinking water and latrines to the rural poor. Today, many live simple lives eating rice and beans for breakfast, speaking a Spanish that drops the s at the end of words, a signature of a Nicaraguan accent. A group of several dozen of them gather each week to discuss social justice issues at the Casa Ben Linder, the Managua...
...cosmovision." Their politics are unabashedly leftist, their preference is for the poor, and their footwear is varied. In fact, at a time when even Ortega is courting transnational investors for free-trade zones and negotiating agreements with the IMF, the group at Casa Bin Linder seems more traditionally Sandinista than today's Sandinistas are themselves...
...government of the '80s," said veteran public health activist Maria Hamlin, who first moved to Nicaragua in 1968. Hamlin said many activists have a hard time supporting a government that recently banned life-saving therapeutic abortions for women. But instead of hearing those criticisms, the current Sandinista government has shut the door on civil society. "It was easier for us to work with the Ministry of Health under previous [conservative] governments than it is now; and that's very sad for me to say," Hamlin lamented...
...activist who runs service projects in rural Nicaragua says the Sandinista government she had been willing to die for 20 years ago is now one she fears to criticize. When asked to comment for this article, she answered, "I do not want to be deported. I would not want to say anything that might offend the present government...