Nicaragua : Living in the Shadow of the Eagle [Paperback]

Thomas W. Walker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813338824 | ISBN-13: 978-0813338828 | Publication Date: January 10, 2003 | Edition: 4th

This new and thoroughly revised edition of Nicaragua details the country’s unique history, culture, social reality, economics, foreign relations, and politics. Its historical coverage considers Nicaragua from before independence as well as during the nationalist liberal era, the US marine occupation, the Somoza dictatorship, the Sandinista regime, and the conservative restoration following 1990. The Fourth Edition documents how the more enduring reality of this Central American country may not be the Sandinista Revolution but the historical and ongoing interventions by which the United States — the “eagle” to the north — continues to shape Nicaraguan political, economic, and social life. The new edition also includes a fully updated annotated bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The book is beautifully written, the treatment comprehensive, the author's position clear and unequivocal." -- Martin C. Needler, Dean, School of International Studies, University of the Pacific

"This is the best available single source on the history, particularly the recent history, of that tortured country." -- Robert J. Alexander, Rutgers University

About the Author

Thomas W. Walker is professor of political science and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Ohio University. He is the author of Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle, Fourth Edition (2003, Westview).

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press; 4th edition (January 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813338824
• ISBN-13: 978-0813338828
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #483,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > History > Americas > Central America > Nicaragua

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best concise history of Nicaragua, November 1, 2007

By 

Elizabeth "Love that Texas weather!" (THE WOODLANDS, TX, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nicaragua : Living in the Shadow of the Eagle (Paperback)

This is written in a remarkably even-handed register when you consider the outrageous (imperial?) actions of the US over the years, regarding Nicaragua. I also found the explanation of dependent economies (where most of the effort goes into goods for export rather than goods for the common good!) very enlightening. It challenged my basic beliefs of what government does and should do for, with, and by its citizenry. If you want a concise history of Nicaragua that includes treatment of all the factions involved over the years, this is it! The author has appended an extensive bibliography of English-language sources and additional reading materials that appears very thorough and helpful to going deeper into this country.

25 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accessible, well written overview of Nicaragua's history and failed attempts to free itself from U.S. imperialism, August 1, 2006

By 

Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nicaragua : Living in the Shadow of the Eagle (Paperback)

The leader of the U.S. trained and equipped National Guard Anastasio Somoza Garcia seized power in Nicaragua in 1936. He was an S.O.B., but he was our S.O.B. as Franklin Roosevelt immortally said privately in 1939 when Somoza visited him in Washington D.C. Somoza wanted the National Guard officers and enlisted men to enrich themselves in mafia-style rackets such as prostitution, according to Walker, so they would be dependent on him for their self-enrichment and would thus constitute a force immune from popular discontent. Somoza Garcia's son Luis succeeded him after his assassination in 1956. Luis set up a lot of bureaucracies supposedly devoted to social services and economic planning, but these were in reality mainly used as a vehicle to funnel U.S. aid money to the Somoza family and its cronies. Walker cites the particularly blatant case of how the government used U.S. aid money after an earthquake in December 1972 completely destroyed Managua.

Anastasio Somoza Debayle Jr. took over as president from his brother in 1967. Anastasio Jr. reinstated a "state of siege" and sent the National Guard into the Countryside, where the (FSLN) Sandinistas were involved in stimulating peasant activism, after a December 1974 successful hostage taking operation by the Sandinistas. The Guard proceeded to rape and kill and pillage thousands. Many American Catholic clerical and lay workers witnessed these actions and the U.S. congress was moved to hold hearings.

In 1977, President Carter suspended military aid to Somoza in order to force him to relax somewhat his censorship of the press, thinking that the U.S. could afford for Somoza to do so without the status quo in Nicaragua being disrupted. However, in early 1978, after increasing massacres of civilians in the tens of thousands by the National Guard Carter resumed economic and military aid to Somoza. The uprising had begun in early 1978 after the assassination of newspaper editor Pedro Joaquin Chamarro. The Carter administration, in conjunction with the Organization of American States, eventually tried to enforce its policy of "Somocismo sin Somoza"....

Walker describes how the Carter administration refused to send arms to the Sandinistas and looked the other way as the military oligarchy in Honduras allowed remnants of the National Guard, helped by trainers from the Argentine neonazi military regime, to organize the force which would become the Contras. ....

The Reaganites refused to sell arms to the Sandinistas, cut off all aid, and successfully pressured the French to end an arms deal with the Sandinistas in 1981. Increasingly, the Sandinistas were forced to rely on Soviet block arms. Walker notes that the rifles, AK-47's and tanks that the Nicaraguans received from the Soviet block were small in number and often old and decrepit. Clearly the Sandinistas were seeking military aid from the Soviet Block because the Reaganites had launched a full scale proxy terrorist war against them. The Contras deliberately attacked civilian infrastructure and murdered teachers, doctors and engineers. The attacks on oil storage and port facilities by the Contras in 1983 and 84' caused Venezuela and Mexico to suspend oil shipments--Nicaragua was then forced to turn to the Soviet block for its petroleum needs. The FSLN managed to maintain fairly extensive economic and political relations with Western Europe and capitalist countries in the third world but the U.S. media preferred to ignore this.

In the early 80's, Walker notes the Sandinistas achieved some remarkable successes. Nicaragua's infant mortality rate was reduced from 121 per 1000 in 1978 to 90 per 1000 in 1983. The Kissinger Commission report of 1984 blamed the Sandinistas because it said that Nicaragua's GDP was reduced by 38 percent from 1977 to 1983. This was deceptive, Walker notes, because that statistic had in it the last two and a half years of the rule of Somoza when the country was largely destroyed. In the years 1980-83, Walker notes, the Nicaraguan economy actually grew by an average of 7 percent, while the rest of Central America's economies declined by 14 percent.

In spite of some mild repression (not comparable to U.S. backed terror in Guatemala and El Salvador) in response to the country being under U.S. backed terrorist attack, reactionary newspapers like La Prensa were allowed to violently attack the government and receive funding from the CIA. The CIA instigated protests by the Nicaraguan opposition which attempted to provoke the Sandinistas into repressive actions, Walker quotes House Speaker Jim Wright revealing in January 1988. Meanwhile, in U.S. client states Guatemala and El Salvador newspaper offices were being blown up by the military backed death squads, and newspaper editors were left disemboweled by the side of the road. In 1984, the Sandinistas had an election which was judged free and fair by a wide variety observer delegations, including from the British parliament and House of Lords, Danish and Irish Parliaments, etc. Disruption of opposition rallies by Sandinista "turbas" only occurred about 5 times out of 250 instances according to election analysts. Walker quotes a statistic to the effect that 46 of the 48 top Contra officers had been officers in Somoza's National Guard--I think he got this from Edgar Chamarro, the former Contra spokesman.

The U.S. escalated its economic strangulation and terror attacks on Nicaragua and the latter was eventually forced to devote the majority of its budget to defense. In 1990, the Sandinistas held an election, as the 1987 constitution had mandated them to do and the Nicaraguan electorate, under the threat of continued U.S. funding of Contra terrorists if the Sandinistas won, voted in the UNO. The U.S. had achieved its goal of restoring the old Somoza era social order within Nicaragua. Walker gives an extensive discussion of the post-1990 social order. Nicaragua ranked 61st on the UN Human Development Index in 1990; it ranked 116th by 2000.
Walker gives an instructive look at how the miserable rural proletariat of Nicaragua was created by the late 19th century.

5.0 out of 5 stars The real history of the US, June 12, 2011

By 

C. Bush "Cecil" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nicaragua : Living in the Shadow of the Eagle (Paperback)

I bought this book so as to read up on Nicaragua before I actually travelled there, and boy am I glad I did. Not only did I understand current politics better, but cultural things, and most importantly, who I am as a US citizen there. What the US has done to Nicaragua is pretty messed up, and reading this book made me angry at all of the past injustices we have committed. It is also sad to realize that Nicaragua is only one of the many countries where US foreign policy has had a heavy hand is royally messing up their economy. Furthermore, this is the history you do not get in your high school history class, which is surprising since I would judge it as much US history as Nicaraguan since we are/were so deeply involved. Finally, even though the US is responsible for so much heartbreak in Nicaragua, the Nicaraguans still continue to welcome US citizens to their country, but it doesn't mean that we as US citizens shouldn't understand what our presence means, and what we represent when we travel abroad.