Mateo Jarquin

Discusses how, in December 1981, Nicaragua's Sandinista government forcibly resettled some 8,500 Miskito Indians, killing dozens and displacing thousands in a controversy known as la Navidad Roja- the Red Christmas. Describes the two starkly contrasting narratives that exist around this episode: one which viewed the affair as a domestic one driven by longstanding ethnic tensions, and another which saw a CIA plot behind the violence. Explores the chasm between those narratives and traces the breakdown in the FSLN-Miskito relations in 1981, ultimately showing how both indigenous action and Latin American state interventions played an understudied role at the onset of the Nicaraguan Civil War.

Discusses how the 1979 overthrow of Nicaragua's U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship was contingent on the participation of a network of transnational Latin American actors.  Describes how a region-wide consensus emerged around the multi-class coalition because of the opportunity to democratize Nicaragua, block a potential U.S. intervention, and enhance the region's autonomy, which propped the left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front to power. Explores this history to chart changing winds in the region during the late-Cold War, and draws insights from the 1979 revolution for the contemporary crisis of the authoritarian Ortega regime (2007-present).