Complicating the 1960s: Sandinistas, Christian Democrats, and the Decline of Student Political Activism in 1960s Nicaragua

Many associate the 1960s with the global student protests that rocked the decade. In Latin America, youths inspired by the Cuban Revolution, U.S. interventions in the Caribbean and the counterculture movement took to the streets in record numbers. At least, that is the traditional narrative. In Nicaragua, home to Latin America’s only successful revolution after 1959, the story was quite different. There, student political activism and organizations actually declined in the early 1960s. Unexpectedly, this era coincided with an interlude in the Somoza dictatorship that had ruled Nicaragua since the 1930s. Under a new president, students enjoyed more freedom to criticize the government and its allies and consort with their radical counterparts abroad.

This paper analyzes the waxing and waning of Nicaragua’s student movement in the 1960s as a window into the diversity of the political strategies and visions emanating from the university. Thanks to newly protected civil liberties, student political groups proliferated, but absent the presence of their unifying enemy, the Somoza family, these young people found nothing to unite their actions and their political activism declined.  In this context, more moderate organizations like the Christian Democrats took root in the nation’s universities and dominated student politics. I argue that the rise of these less disruptive groups in Nicaragua illustrates the pragmatism of the student movement. Recognizing a newly opened window for democratic action, a majority of students hoped the traditional avenues for political action would be sufficient to create change, and the revolutionary option fell out of favor. It was only once Anastasio Somoza Debayle made his intention to return to power unavoidably clear that students began to organize aggressively. In exploring the youths’ competing political strategies, this paper complicates our vision of the sixties and student radicalism and sheds light on the contradictory effects of democratization.