Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) propaganda poster in Nicaragua. Image Asset Management/World History Archive
Nicaragua is a living example of anti-imperialist resistance and people-centered development. The job of those in the U.S. is to fight the lies spread by the media and support this revolution through political education and material solidarity.
“If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do.” Carter G. Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro
In the wake of the US kidnapping of the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, first combatant, Cilia Flories, the extrajudicial killing of fishermen off the country's coast, and threats to do the same and more in Cuba, a delegation from the US recently visited Nicaragua as guests of Casa Ben Linder.
This group primarily consisted of educators, activists, and artists and came from states as diverse as Montana and California with the majority coming from Maryland. Four of those were members of the Black Alliance for Peace.
Our purpose was to see for ourselves what have been the results for the Nicaraguan people of the Socialist project led by the Sandinista government which originally came to power after the 1979 revolution ousting the brutal US-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza.
Thus, we note the importance of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua as well as possibly Colombia should leftist candidate Ivan Cepeda win election, in discussing the relevance of the Carter G. Woodson quote. When Socialist leaning governments come to power in these and other countries, the people of the US are subjected to a diabolically effective propaganda campaign aimed at ensuring that no other countries follow their lead. An example of such was the response of a delegation friend when he learned of our visit: “I would love to visit but wouldn’t want to be thrown in jail or killed for being a practicing Catholic.” Combating such false parroted narratives is our task.
The history of Nicaragua is one of anti-imperialist struggles dating back to the 1856 invasion by U.S. mercenary William Walker, who re-imposed slavery and declared himself president. US Marines invaded in 1912 and occupied the country until 1933. The resistance of Augusto Sandino in the 1920s and 1930s, inspired the founding of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) years later in 1961. This struggle would eventually lead to the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship.
President Daniel Ortega, addressing the nation from the square at the celebration of the 46th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution (July 19, 2025), reminded the crowd, “It is the principle that our General Sandino left us in our hearts… when he told the Yankees, ‘I am not for sale and I do not surrender!”
Sandino’s legacy, Ortega emphasized, lives on in the youth, in the workers, and in the peasants who continue to build socialism in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua has only had 46 years since the 1979 revolution to develop its infrastructure in the service of its own people. The country has set forth on a very different path of development than the one promoted by the U.S. during that same period. The first 10 years were partially interrupted by the U.S. sponsored Contra War, which slowed but did not stop Nicaragua’s progress. In the next 16 years, starting in 1990, Nicaragua was dominated by a right-wing neoliberal government that was ideologically committed to supporting U.S. domination in Latin America and opposed to providing quality public services. That government attempted to rescind the autonomy granted in the constitution to the Caribbean region which includes Bluefields and is home to a majority of indigenous and Afro-decedent peoples, including the Garifuna people who have a rich and largely unknown history of resistance.
In addition to learning about the more modern history that shaped the current Nicaragua, like Cuba, and Venezuela before the kidnapping of Maduro, it is clear that the country’s revolutionary inclination can be traced to the Haitian Revolution.
It is easy to see that not only has the US narrative about the country been patently false, US foreign policy is both duplicitous and imperial by design, meant to create spaces for capitalist interests, political control, and hegemonic values. The Nicaragua we are seeing is a work in progress, and progress is good, with the literacy rates of adults being over 80% and youth over 90%. More than 99% of Nicaraguans have access to electricity 95% have access to running water. Higher education is free, and healthcare is free. Not only is what we see here progress, it is also an example, a blueprint for other countries to emulate.
The majority of our group’s time was spent on the Caribbean Coast, specifically the Bluefields region. This region was economically and culturally cut off from the rest of the country until 1979. The region has six major ethnic groups, including indigenous and Afro-descended groups. These groups lacked legal recognition by the state until 1987 when Nicaragua adopted a new constitution that defined the nation as multi-ethnic. So strong was the Sandinista movement at the grassroots level that when a Neoliberal government won the presidency in 1990 and tried to undo the autonomy granted to this region, it was not able to muster enough votes to overturn the constitutional protection.
Nevertheless, in the past 19 years, since 2007, when the Sandinista Front came back into power, the country is seeing slow but steady progress toward infrastructure systems that serve the Nicaraguan people.
We have observed each level of education at work to ensure that indigenous culture is respected and included (from language to traditional medicine) in the educational curriculum. This is evident from the fact that students can give assigned presentations in their indigenous language rather than Spanish, the colonial language, if they so choose. Another indication of the country's commitment to defend its revolution is the required reading of Kwame Nkrumah’s “Neocolonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism.”
In line with the country's Indigenous heritage, Nicaragua understands and surveys the ecosystem and the people's relationship to the environment. In floodplain areas, the government provides adapted housing rather than displacing residents. In other words, the community was not gentrified as are similar neighborhoods in the US. Housing is designed to withstand rising water levels. Nicaragua also has diversified its energy and power grid over the past 20 years with renewables such as geothermal, solar, bio fuels, and wind. Renewables now supply up to 80% of Nicaragua’s electricity.
In spite of the tremendous success and its bottom-up governmental structure, Nicaragua has been hit hard by US illegal unilateral coercive measures which now includes a literal blockade and tightening sanctions. It has skillfully managed to avoid the International Monetary Fund (IMF) debt traps more commonly referred to as “Structural Adjustment Programs” to stay afloat with a people-first economic strategy.
On June 8th, the US State Department unleashed another round of sanctions on Ortega as well his family members and others in his inner circle this past week. Despite such relentless U.S. unilateral coercive economic measures, war propaganda, and coup attempts, Nicaragua has continued to build a sovereign, dignified society focused on the needs of its people.
In spite of the progress, or should we say because of the progress, a US backed coup with the collaboration of the Catholic church was attempted in 2018. The armed opposition formed road blocks terrorizing the people which led to about 270 deaths. The narrative given by US corporate media blamed the Sandinista government.. But independent journalist investigations have validated the findings of the Nicaraguan Truth Justice and Peace Commission which showed that the US government was funding the violence through the usual suspects: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and International Republican Institute (IRI), all vehicles of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The investigations and eye witness accounts also implicate the Catholic church in the coup attempt and instigations of violence.
In the wake of the Sandinistas' return to the presidency in 2007, the US has funded a disinformation campaign aimed at both Nicaraguans and the US population. US corporate media parrots such propaganda and serve as stenographers for the empire.
The US also funded NGOs and think tanks which literally paid opposition figures, and enabled propaganda programs for Nicaraguan youth under NED. Its head, Kenneth Wollack, boasted to Congress that they had funded and trained 8,000 youth to take part in the uprising.
In the same year, the US passed a first round of sanctions called the Nica Act. Then under President Biden, more sanctions were passed showing the bipartisan nature of US imperialist regime change efforts.
Since 2021, a number of Catholic priests have been arrested. For example Bishop Rolando Alvarez, was charged and convicted of treason and money laundering. In the Alvarez case, his numerous private media outlets were closed after having been used to launder money to pay for street violence to feed destabilization attempts in 2018 and after. In 2023, Nicaraguan police investigators found $500,000 in cash in sacks in several church dioceses. It is believed that these funds were intended to finance further attempts at overthrowing the elected Sandinista government. The priests were eventually released into the custody of the Vatican.
Nicaragua is an example to the world of how to defend human rights without resorting to the destruction of war or sanctions. Nicaragua doesn’t just talk about the international rule of law, it makes use of the structures that exist for the purpose of holding countries accountable for their actions. Nicaragua not only won its case against the U.S. in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1986 and has used the World Court more recently to resolve maritime border disputes with Colombia. It was also the first country to join South Africa’s case at the ICJ in support of holding the government of Israel to account for its violations of the Genocide Convention in Gaza. On March 1, 2024, Nicaragua filed suit against Germany in the ICJ for sponsoring genocide in Gaza.
Nicaragua is developing new relationships of respect with many other countries: in particular, China, Russia and Iran. Russia has helped Nicaragua develop vaccine production such as the influenza vaccine now produced locally. Cooperation with China began in December 2021 when Nicaragua recognized that there is only one China. Nicaragua and China have signed a free trade agreement which entered into effect in January 2024. China has donated more than 500 buses to Nicaragua.
In July, the country will celebrate the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution which emerged victorious on July 19, 1979. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans will fill the streets of Managua and many other cities around the country to celebrate. They will reaffirm their support for this living revolution, an ongoing process of national liberation, anti-imperialist resistance and social transformation that began with the triumph in 1979 over the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship.
Going forward, four of the delegation members are on the faculty of Montgomery College in Maryland. They have committed to building faculty and eventually student exchange alliances with universities in Nicaragua.
Based on our observations and consultations with the people of Nicaragua, our conclusion is that the best way to show solidarity with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua would look a lot like what such would look like for what the US thwarted in Venezuela and in Cuba. That is to say, intensify our anti-Imperialist, anti-Colonialist, anti-Capitalist and anti-White- Supremacist efforts in the political education of the US public as well the providing of organized material assistance as best as we can.
In addition to refuting the false propaganda about the Sandinista movement, our task is to reveal its accomplishments in spite of being in the crosshairs of US Imperialism both internationally and from within the “US empire.
VIVA Nicaragua and long live the Sandinista Revolution!!!!!
2026 Casa Ben Linder Bluefields Delegation
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