On July 19, 1979, the Sandinistas took control of the capital city of Managua in Nicaragua during their successful overthrow of the brutal US-backed Anastasio Somoza regime. This event is of course a cause of jubilant celebration and pride in Nicaragua, as well as among socialists worldwide. It should also be a moment to understand that marginalized people in the US are connected to the socialist revolution in that country, and to all people in the Americas, because we were the victims of a war the US government waged upon us all as it sought to undermine Nicaraguan self-determination, as . . .
Sandinistas
I Witnessed the Truth about Nicaragua
Entering adulthood alongside the dwindling of 2020 uprisings for Black liberation (that I had naively seen as the beginning of the end), I felt very stuck. Understanding I am a poor queer Black woman, I saw myself facing a world where the options presented for survival were dehumanizing at best, and the innate dream of living as a free person essentially destroyed. I wanted to fight the liberal tendency of American youth to begin with strong spirits of resistance, before colleging, working and/or drugging, and ultimately, laying down into the nuzzle of the . . .
Día de la Alegría: Celebrating Revolution in Nicaragua
Holidays in the United States celebrate awful events such as the settler colonists declaring independence from Britain so that they might take indigenous lands and protect slavery. There is also Thanksgiving, the commemoration of genocide turned into a day when Americans should think grateful thoughts before spending more than they can afford in order to celebrate Christmas. Christmas is ostensibly a religious holiday but is rarely treated as such. Labor Day was created to prevent acknowledgement of May 1, May Day, which commemorates just one example of U.S. state repression which took place in Chicago in 1886. But this columnist . . .
Why Black Revolutionaries Must Stand with the People of Nicaragua
On November 7th, the people of Nicaragua will go to the polls to reaffirm the commitment to their revolutionary democratic project, a project that began in 1979 when the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) defeated a vicious, neocolonial, gangster regime of Anastasio Somoza that was put in power by the United States. Under the leadership of the FSLN, the people of Nicaragua were able to finally control their own history and destiny. However, U.S. imperialism was not going to respect the wishes of the people. Under the neofascist president Ronald Reagan, the U.S. launched a brutal war of aggression, part . . .
Nicaragua at a Revolutionary Crossroads and in Imperialist Crosshairs
U.S. attack on Nicaragua targets its Black community. There is a page in the playbook for U.S. imperialist regime change in Latin America that includes exploiting the identity politics of Blackness. A recent example was the unrest in Cuba a month ago that included a sophisticated attempt to paint the Cuban revolution, its government, and anyone in solidarity with it, as ignoring the interests of Afro-Cubans. The legitimacy of neoliberalism or late-stage capitalism is so wounded that the socialist examples in the Latin American “Axis of Decolonization” (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua) have to be regarded as even greater threats. . . .