Mothers, Families, and Politics of Care in Late 20th-Century Nicaragua

In the late 1970s, Nicaragua witnessed the emergence of a movement comprised of mothers and families against the Somoza dictatorship (1936-1979). By the mid-1980s, the committee of mothers of Sandinista combatants had become a key figure within the Sandinista party in its quest to legitimize its government. During this decade, the figure of the revolutionary mother circulated as a synonym of a suffering nation under attack, with women assaulted by imperial forces or as “the loyal supporter of their brave sons.” But, as scholars Irene Agudelo and Lorraine Bayard de Volo have argued, women's political participation in the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements complicated this domestic image of maternal passivity.

This paper analyzes the political organizing of mothers, who created the Committee of Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs, and examines how they blurred the lines between private and public spheres while shaping national debates concerning the war and the transition to peace in Nicaragua. Situating this paper within the historiography of gender, motherhood, and the State in Latin America (Eugenia Rodríguez-Sáenz, Nara Milanich, Ann Blum) that has positioned notions of family and motherhood in contention with policies modernizing the nation and reinforcing gender roles, I interrogate the public nature of motherhood and the political dimensions of care work, performed by women in contexts of violence. This paper contextualizes and analyzes both the political imaginaries and care practices of these actors and explores the major limitations of the Sandinista political project in transforming gender relations.