State Formation and Social Memory in Sandinista Politics

by Bradley Tatar

The 2006 Nicaraguan elections saw a victory for Daniel Ortega, who has con tinually been identified as an icon of the revolutionary era in which the Frente Sandinista de Liberacin Nacional (FSLN) destroyed the Somoza regime and formed a revolutionary government. Ortegas success can be better understood by viewing the Nicaraguan Revolution as a state formation process in which popular culture is a field of conflict between social groups. The conflict here is between party militants and Sandinista supporters who do not enjoy the privileges of membership. Exam ination of oral histories reveals that the conflict between militants and popular com batants began in the Insurrection of Monimb. The FSLN has appropriated and used the social memories of the combatants to produce its own history of that insurrection. Social memories reflect concrete processes of political subordination that result in the production of a dominant political language. Keywords: Sandinistas, Insurrection, State formation, Oral history, Popular culture, Social memory

When Daniel Ortega Saavedra was elected president of Nicaragua for the second time in 2006, Latin Americas leftist forces were fortified. At the inauguration ceremony he was flanked by presidents Hugo Chvez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia (La Prensa, January 10, 2007). Chvez presented him with a replica of the sword of Simn Bolvar, and Morales proclaimed, Death to U.S. imperialism! Returning to the presidency, Ortega is fulfilling a promise he made in 1990, when a decade of rule by the Sandinista revolutionary government was brought to an end. Ceding victory to the U.S.-favored president-elect Violeta Chamorro, Ortega promised to return to power: This is the Good Friday of Sandinismo, but we will be resurrected as was Christ (Gorostiaga, 1990). Nevertheless, it is not clear whether Ortegas new presidency represents a continuation of the Nicaraguan Revolution that brought the Sandinistas to power in 1979. In 1990, many who had supported the Sandinistas during the revolution were dissatisfied and considered the Sandinista government authoritarian and unresponsive to the needs of the people (Barnes, 1992; Tinoco, 1998; Vilas, 1990). After 1990, Ortegas political party, the Frente Sandinista de Liberacin Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front FSLN) became an opposition party that led protests against privatization and
Bradley Tatar teaches cultural anthropology and Spanish at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea. His research in Nicaragua was aided by support from the Christopher DeCormier Scholarship in Mesoamerican Studies.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 168, Vol. 36 No. 5, September 2009 158-177 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X09341981 2009 Latin American Perspectives

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other policies of neoliberal capitalism (OKane, 1996; Quandt, 1996), but many Sandinistas felt that Ortegas control of the party stifled democracy (Baltodano, 2006; Grigsby, 1999; Lpez Campos, 1999; Meja, 1999; Nez de Escorcia, 2000; Ramrez, 1996). Edelberto Torres Rivas (2007) argues that with Ortega as party secretary the FSLN has been transfigured into a right-wing party and that Ortega is impersonating his former self. Many social movement activists see the FSLN as shifting from left to right. For example, Nicaraguan feminists view Ortegas reelection in 2006 as a devastating blow to womens rights (Lpez Vigil, 2006). Nevertheless, even the Sandinistas who do not like Ortega may support him in certain situations because they identify with the revolutionary past of the FSLN. How has he continued to be a symbol of Nicaraguas revolution? How did the Sandinista movement change from a popular, democratic, and anti-imperialist revolution (Vilas, 1985) to a bastion of support for a single leader? Here it is argued that Ortegas long-term political ascendance is the product of a process of state formation. The history of the FSLN illustrates two important characteristics of state formation. First, the formation of a government apparatus involves the creation of social categories and the imposition of those categories on persons and social groups. This imposition is ideological, and it may be resisted. Secondly, because subordinate groups emerge as a result of inequalities of power and concomitant economic inequalities, state formation involves material as well as ideological domination. In the Nicaraguan Revolution, the party cadres of the FSLN became a ruling group calling itself the Vanguard of Nicaragua. Those who were not members of the party were classified as the massesa term denoting the lack of autonomous leadership and dependence. However, many persons who were not members of the FSLN nevertheless had been participants in the revolution, and these popular combatants and others felt that the revolution was also their accomplishment.1 As the popular combatants became resistant to FSLN rule, it became necessary for the FSLN to create ideological apparatuses of domination to overcome that resistance and unify the partys support base. STATE FORMATION AND THE CLEAVAGE OF THE FSLN Social scientists have proposed many theories of state formationliberal, liberal democratic, Marxist, and Weberian (Held, 1989). The Marxist theories raise critical questions about the role of ideology (Hall, 1996). The central debate for Marxists is whether the state is merely an instrument of the ruling classes or can exercise power autonomously (Held, 1989: 33). In this respect, Gramsci argued that the formation of a state produced conflict not between economic classes but between the members of the (would-be) ruling group and the numerous social groups they aspired to rule (Laclau, 1977: 108). Conceiving of political power as relatively autonomous from economic power, he portrayed nonclass groupings (religion, ethnicity, gender, nationality) as being equally significant as classes (Bocock, 1986: 16). The rulers, he argued, were faced with the dual task of unifying themselves and extending their dominion to all the other groups in the society through cultural, economic, social, and coercive means.

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In essence, Gramscis conception of state formation is of a continuous struggle among social groups (Hall, 1986; Roseberry, 1994). In this framework, the state is not an apparatus or thing but a dynamic field of power in which social groups encounter each other and engage in struggle (Nugent and Joseph, 1994). These social groups are not formed as economic classes but constitute themselves in response to the historically constructed forms of domination specific to the society (Bocock, 1986: 88; Laclau, 1977: 108). As Roseberry (1994: 359) points out, Gramsci always wrote of classes and groups in the plural and drew our attention to the cultural and ideological issues that could either unite or divide them. By defining the state as the cultural and social terrain of political conflict, we are using a very broad definition that would not satisfy many political scientists (Hall, 1986: 22). However, it does permit us to examine the social forms of conflict outside of the institutions of government that are also part of the state formation process. This is the realm of popular culture, the cultural response of social groups to political domination (Hall, 1981: 235). The conception of state formation as a division of interests between the rulers and the ruled is useful for understanding qualitative changes in the political practices of the FSLN as it has changed from a clandestine guerrilla front to a governing party to an opposition party and finally, in 2007, to a governing party again. The FSLN has shifted its cultural and ideological emphases in an effort to win support from the citizenry. In each new period of its historical trajectory, it has sought to renegotiate its relationship with social groups in the wider society. Specifically, it has tried to persuade its supporters to accept socioeconomic inequalities as a necessary or unavoidable part of its pursuit of gains on behalf of the underprivileged majority. The FSLN was founded in 1961 by Carlos Fonseca, Toms Borge, and Silvio Mayorga. Its purpose was to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship and create a new kind of society based on the egalitarian ideals of Augusto C. Sandino and Karl Marx (Escobar, 1984). It was a small clandestine guerrilla front until the late 1970s, when massive social unrest gripped the country in response to Somozas efforts to retain control. During this period the FSLN was allied with various social movements that were agitating against the Somoza regime, among them the Christian base communities, the Association of Women Confronting the National Problem, the Secondary School Students Movement, and the Students Revolutionary Front.2 On July 19, 1979, Nicaragua and the FSLN celebrated the destruction of the repressive regime. The FSLN formed a new government to create a new state that would pursue the revolutionary goal of egalitarian social change. For this purpose, it needed to continue to mobilize active support. In 1980 the new Sandinista government mobilized young people all over Nicaragua in the National Literacy Crusade to teach reading and writing to the poor and underprivileged (Miller, 1985). Other Nicaraguans joined the mass organizations that were created so that civilians could collaborate with the government in pursuit of common goals (Ruchwarger, 1987). The FSLN encouraged people to identify with the new state. However, an ideological contradiction emerged. The FSLN had followed Sandinos ideal: Only the workers and peasants will remain in the end, their organized force will achieve the triumph (Escobar, 1984: 24). However, many

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of the economic policies of the new government were considered unfavorable by workers and peasants. First, a centralized, state-managed economy was planned (Medal Mendieta, 1998; Ryan, 1995). The agricultural estates confiscated from the Somozas and their associates were to be run as state enterprises; instead of receiving land to cultivate individually, poor peasants were directed to work on the state farms as employees (M. Ortega, 1990; BiondiMorra, 1993). Workers in state-owned manufacturing plants were prohibited from going on strike, and workers employed by private enterprises could strike only when the government permitted it (Harris, 1985; Vilas, 1985). The Sandinista government sought to mediate conflicts between workers and capitalists through the exercise of administrative power (Vilas, 1985; Spalding, 1994). It attempted to establish categories of persons (peasant, worker, capitalist) and regulate the relationships among them (Field, 1995; 1998). The Sandinista governments attempts to gain popular support tended to divide Nicaraguans who identified themselves as Sandinistas into two camps (Ramrez, 1996; Tinoco, 1998; Vilas, 1991). Emblematic of this division, Daniel Ortega came to symbolize the aspirations of those who supported the Sandinista state at all costs and above all criticism (Vilas, 1990). Others criticized the Sandinista state and the FSLN as a political party and argued that the state should serve the needs of the people first and the leaders second (Ramrez, 1996). Tinoco (1998: 89) describes how this bitterness and resentment was directed against government functionaries and party cadres of the FSLN:
Within this widespread . . . sentiment, the national and intermediate leadership of the FSLN is located in the group of haves, and the overwhelming mass of organic [politically organized] Sandinistas who are pauperized obviously are located among the havenots. This has generated a phenomenon of distrust and lack of identification [with the FSLN]. Someone who is poor tends to view the Sandinista leader who is not poor (although neither is he rich) as comfortable and much too likely to wind up making agreements with . . . political forces that do not favor the mass of poor people.

Tinoco argues that this conflict is indicative not of a class division based on differential access to the means of production but of the differential positioning of status groups with respect to the state and the FSLN party apparatus. The poor Sandinistas are have-nots in terms of lacking power and access to the state and the attendant economic benefits. After the FSLN lost the 1990 elections and became an opposition party, there was continued skepticism about the FSLN leaders willingness to challenge the structures of inequality. During the Sandinista period, the political effects of this resentment were concrete. First, unequal distribution of the costs of the revolution, especially the much resented program called Servicio Militar Patritico (Patriotic Military ServiceSMP), caused Ortega and the FSLN to lose the 1990 presidential election to the U.S.-supported candidate Violeta de Chamorro (Barnes, 1992; Vilas, 1991). Second, when the FSLN orchestrated a co-government with Chamorro, Sandinistas directed their resentment toward the FSLN itself. A group of Sandinista cadres accused Daniel Ortega of steering the FSLN toward collaboration with capitalist institutions of exploitation (Prevost, 1997: 160). In response to this attack, Ortega changed sides, supporting the labor unions and other organizations critical of the government but without

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modifying his negotiated agreement with the Chamorro administration (Prevost, 1997: 161). Thus, after 1990 Ortega continued to enjoy a pro-labor, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist image. From 1990 to 2007 the FSLN operated as an opposition party with Ortega as its leader. The conflict within the FSLN culminated in 1994 with the expulsion of FSLN members who had been calling for reforms, who subsequently formed a new political party called Movimiento de Renovacin Sandinista (Movement of Sandinista RenovationMRS). The conflict played out at the party congress, where Ortegas supporters became known as danielistas and the MRS Sandinistas were known as renovadores. The danielistas claimed to defend an orthodox or anticapitalist form of Sandinismo, and they accused the renovadores of being heterodox, capitalist and neoliberal (Ramrez, 1996; Jones, 2002; Smith, 1997). As a result of this conflict, Ortega has positioned himself in the Sandinista popular culture as the defender of the authentic revolutionary tradition. Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau, and others have argued that the construction of popular culture occurs through the dialectic of the states attempt to impose domination and the subordinate social groups attempts to resist it. Evidence of attempts to resist FSLN political domination may be found in the oral testimonies of persons who participated in the insurrection against Somoza. These oral testimonies clarify that feelings of resentment among Sandinista popular combatants had appeared even before the defeat of Somoza. Clearly, they cannot be viewed as unbiased evidence of the past, having been constructed in response to the Sandinista state.3 The ways in which Nicaraguans remembered the insurrection were colored by their experiences with the FSLN in power. HISTORY AS SANDINISTA IDEOLOGICAL APPARATUS The FSLN has relied on an ideological apparatus of domination the roots of which reach deep into the insurrection against Somoza. Even in 1978, when the rebellion was spreading across Nicaragua, the popular combatants were resisting FSLN rule. This becomes clear when examining the Insurrection of Monimb, a six-day rebellion of February 2026, 1978. First and foremost, the combatants of Monimb resisted the idea that they were merely spontaneous masses, dependent on the FSLN as national vanguard. Discursively, they were able to portray themselves as members of a politically organized community. This discourse was threatening to the FSLN, and the party intervened to reorganize the memories and representations of the insurrection. This intervention was elaborated around the three Ortega brothers, Daniel, Humberto, and Camilo, who emerged as heroes in the resulting national-popular narrative. Ideological discourse is crucial to the state formation process, according to Laclau (2005: 8), who argues that discourse is constitutive, not merely reflective, of social relationships. Laclau directs our attention to Althussers theory of the ideological state apparatus to conceptualize the process by which the state wins the allegiance of individual human beings. Althusser argued that the state uses symbols and language to create messages to which individuals respond. Individuals adopt social positions in relation to the state, perceiving

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themselves as subjects who choose these positions autonomously (Laclau, 1977: 100). By causing individuals to feel a moral/ethical obligation to support the state, ideological discourses function to maintain state power. Thus state formation is an ideological as well as an economic and material process. It is not important here to use Althussers terminology or accept the details of his theory. What is crucial is the idea that the ideological discourse serves to construct the person as a political subject (Laclau, 1977: 101). The state tries to impose its ideological domination through the discursive use of symbols, ideas, and mythology that produce a unified system of narra tion, but competing social groups can resist the state, each group with its own system of narration that disarticulates the ideological discourses of the opposing forces (Laclau, 1977: 103). While these ideological discourses do not directly express a pure class interest, they do combine class positioning with other kinds of identity discourses. An incipient ruling class will create a discourse to deny all interpellations but one . . . and transform it into a principle of the reconstruction of the entire ideological domain. The FSLN created an ideological apparatus that described its origins as a national-popular revolutionary movement. According to this description, the societies of Latin America were deformed by imperialist domination and could not reach the capitalist level of development. As a result, the peasant and proletarian classes were incapable of autonomous engagement in a revolution. A Sandinista bulletin written in January 1978 claimed that only a political vanguard could lead the masses to revolution (Boletn Nicaragense de Bibliografa y Documentacin, 1980: 296): The proletariat, weak and lacking a firm class consciousness, could not act independently, much less play the leading role that historically corresponded to it. The peasantry, at the margins of the political struggles, did not incorporate its immense reserves of combat, leaving the [revolutionary] movement limited to the urban zones. The solution to this impasse was to be the creation of a popular front; the FSLN sought to use national identity to bind together social groups previously isolated from one another. The militants believed that their goal was to incorporate the working class and the peasants into a national struggle that encompassed much more than class interests. However, the FSLN experienced a major setback when its leader Carlos Fonseca Amador was killed in action in 1976. It was still a small guerrilla organization with a few hundred militants, and Fonsecas death resulted in its splintering into three factions or tendencies that had different ideas about strategy (Gilbert, 1988: 8). The Prolonged Popular War tendency advocated close adherence to Che Guevaras foquismo, according to which the guerrilla column remains in the countryside and slowly wins the support of the peasantry. In contrast, the members of the Proletarian tendency believed that it was not the peasantry but the proletariat that would lead Nicaragua into revolution. Finally, a third tendency called the Terceristas advocated the inclusion of all social classes, even the patriotic members of the bourgeoisie. It preached mass insurrection and believed that it would take place in the cities. Given the division of the organization into three competing factions, the FSLNs state formation project seemed unlikely to succeed. Furthermore, there was other political opposition to the Somoza regime. The Unin Democrtica de Liberacin (Democratic Liberation UnionUDEL) was led by the

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anti-Somoza crusader Pedro Joaqun Chamorro, who also published the news daily La Prensa. The Frente Amplio Opositor (Broad Opposition FrontFAO) and the UDEL organized massive workers strikes and boycotts to demand a change of regime (Castillo, 1979). In order to become the single most viable political option, the FSLN was forced to intervene ideologically in the field of social protest. The opportunity came on January 10, 1978, when the political crisis culminated in the murder of Chamorro.4 In response, 30,000 people rioted in the streets of Managua, and peaceful demonstrations took place throughout the country. In the city of Masaya, the people of the indigenous Monimb neighborhood reacted against the troops of the National Guard who arrived to suppress the protest, building barricades to block entry to their neighborhood and devising homemade weapons. Although the insurrection was crushed, the six-day battle triggered similar uprisings in other cities. The Insurrection of Monimb was the first time that popular combatants had mobilized in large numbers in support of the Sandinista cause (H. Ortega, 1984). At this point, Sandinismo became a social movement, and its military strategy altered substantially (Booth, 1982: 144). The FSLN began organizing uprisings in other Nicaraguan cities involving poorly armed civilians in military actions with tactical support from a handful of Sandinista militants. Although the ranks of the FSLN swelled rapidly, the majority of combatants continued to be people who were not FSLN members but had only received three-hour militia classes (Booth, 1982: 145). The events at Monimb demonstrated the feasibility of the Tercerista strategy of insurrection and resolved the conflict between the three tendencies of the FSLN.5 The FSLN announced its reunification in 1978 with the creation of a national directorate of nine members, three from each faction. Having adopted the Insurrection of Monimb as the basis for a historical narrative that would control and regulate Sandinista political identity, the FSLN found itself required to intervene in the production of memories of the insurrection. First, it was necessary to write the history of the insurrection in a way that would demonstrate that the FSLN as political vanguard was capable of bringing the masses into the revolutionary movement. It was therefore incumbent upon the Sandinistas to explain how the revolt had begun without their direction. The Tercerista strategist and military historian Humberto Ortega (1984: 33) developed a detailed explanation of the relationship between the FSLN and the Insurrection of Monimb: The vanguard, conscious of its limitations, puts itself at the head of the general decision of the masses. Determination and willingness that in turn was taken from Monimb, which in their turn the Indians of Monimb had taken from the vanguard. . . . The masses followed for the first time in organized form in Monimb. He claimed that the FSLN put itself at the head of the Monimb insurrection, assuming the leadership once it was in progress. This claim appears credible, since the leaders of the Monimb insurrection were inducted into the FSLN after the insurrection and the status of militants was bestowed upon them.6 Second, there was a need to justify the ascendance of the Tercerista over the other two factions, and for this the FSLN created a history in which the protagonist was Camilo Ortega. Camilo was captured and killed by the National Guard during the insurrection, and in the official FSLN narrative he was

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accepted by the Monimboseos as their leader. The FSLN portrayed him as the savior of Monimb, a Christlike martyr who died trying to transform the Monimb insurrection from a spontaneous and undisciplined act of resistance into a revolutionary war. Credited with reunifying the three tendencies of the FSLN, he received the honorific title The Apostle of Unity (IES, 1982b). However, as the emissary of the FSLN accepted by the Monimboseos as their leader, he became the symbol of unity of the FSLN and the Nicaraguan people. A well-known example is Carlos Meja Godoys song Vivirs Monimb, which describes the death of Camilo Ortega in the insurrection as an act of martyrdom. When Meja sang, Your pure blood, Camilo, grows in the pitahaya trees and in the smiles of the children of my beloved Nicaragua, he portrayed Camilos death as a redeeming sacrifice of blood similar to Christs. The song also claims that Camilos blood spilled over my country during her violent birth, clearly an attempt to link the resurrection of the FSLN as a vanguard party with the resurrection of the Nicaraguan nation. The Insurrection of Monimb is seen as the birth of an indissoluble alliance between a mobilized nation and its vanguard party. The official FSLN narrative of the Insurrection of Monimb makes Camilo Ortega the leader and hero of the insurrection. The Monimboseos were acutely aware of the official narrative after the 1979 triumph over Somoza; as a result, in 1980 some of the combatants from Monimb expressed their resistance to FSLN rule by giving testimonies that contradicted the FSLNs story of Camilos heroism. NARRATIVES OF SUBORDINATION AND RESISTANCE IN MONIMB The multiple meanings of the Insurrection of Monimb are apparent in the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs in the Masaya City Hall,7 which includes photos and biographical sketches of the people who died in the insurrection and the personal belongings and homemade weapons of the fallen combatants. In the center of the exhibit is a large section dedicated to Camilo Ortega. At the time of my visit in 1997, Nicaraguas president was Arnoldo Alemn, who was famous for his anti-Sandinista political views and his efforts to destroy monuments and representations of the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution. When I asked a visitor to the gallery why Alemn had not dismantled this exhibit, he said, The government cannot remove this. This history of the revolution is not the property of the FSLN; it belongs to the people of Monimb. This response surprised me, because the exhibit was installed in the years of the Sandinista government and portrays the struggle against Somoza as an achievement of the FSLN. Nevertheless, by asserting that the history portrayed in the gallery does not belong exclusively to the FSLN, Monimboseos appropriate the official party-centered narrative and give it a different meaning that of the communitys independent and autonomous struggle against the Somoza regime. The Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs was constructed on the basis of testimonies collected by the Sandinista government in 1980. Testimonies about political conflict are built upon socially constructed claims about truth, claims that express the aspirations, grievances, and goals of social groups (Beverley and

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Zimmerman, 1990). Testimony about historical events is a key practice in producing social memorythe normalized social practices by which groups of people preserve collective memories of their past (Burke, 1997: 44). Historians who work with oral testimonies often find evidence that people produce and maintain histories of their own little collectivities and resist the construction of more universal historical compositions (Cohen, 1989: 10). Nevertheless, the community-centered meaning of the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs is implicit in the official FSLN history that silences it. The procedures by which some accounts are accepted as truth and others are marginalized appear as silences in the record of the past, privileging the truth of the dominant social group over that of the subordinate social groups (Sider, 1996; Gould, 1998; Trouillot, 1997). Johnson and Dawson (1982: 207) argue that the state apparatus intervenes decisively in the field of social memorythat these are real processes of domination and subordination. To examine the construction of a social framework within which the public (or a public) perceives that the truth is being told, it is necessary to go beyond what is said to the social production of testimony . . . the procedures and maneuvers through which testimony was solicited, verified, challenged, and equivocated (Lynch and Bogen, 1996: 5). After the Somoza regime fell, the newly installed Sandinista government created the Instituto para el Estudio del Sandinismo (Institute for the Study of SandinismoIES), which sent a team of researchers to interview people who had participated in the Monimb insurrection. The interviews were recorded and transcribed in a volume called Y se arm la runga! (IES, 1982a).8 Although the testimonies have been reduced to fragments and juxtaposed to create a narrative progression, their content has not been edited. In the introduction to the volume the historians write: These testimonies faithfully describe the emotional, moral, and physical situation of the people of Masaya. . . . At the same time, they make manifest the [peoples] level of political awareness and their capacity for analysis and interpretation of the historical events they experienced (IES, 1982a: 19). Thus publication of these testimonies served the purpose of making a claim about the political awareness of the people or the nation. However, to create a sense of authenticity, the events of the insurrection are reported in terms of personal narratives that reflect various subject positions. In spite of this heterogeneity, the IES oral histories of the Insurrection of Monimb were also used in the production of an official history. The director of the IES was Humberto Ortega himself (Guevara, 2001), and the institute created two synthetic accounts of the insurrection (IES, 1982b; 1982c) written in the language of what Laclau terms a unified narrative system, which imposes only one or two possible subject positions. Those persons identified as allies of the Somoza regime were consistently referred to as beasts (bestias) or scum (esbirros), not merely as insults but as indications of a total absence of human subjectivity. In contrast, the heroes of the Sandinista cause were assigned subjectivity according to their class origin. For example, the biography of Sandinista militant Miriam de Asuncin Tinoco Pastrana begins as follows: The class extraction of Miriam was proletarian, [her father] don Ricardo, [an] electrical technician and her mother a seamstress. From her earliest infancy, Miriam acquired the foundation of what later developed as her

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revolutionary convictions because of the material conditions of poverty and misery that were inflicted on the neighborhood where she lived (IES, 1982b: 213). The Sandinista martyr Ren Cisneros is introduced as having been born from the womb of the working class (Nez Tllez, 1987: 48) and his comrade Adolfo Aguirre as of bourgeois origin, but [having] renounced the interests of his class to make the sacred interests of the workers and peasants his own (49). In Laclaus terminology, the purpose of this discourse of state formation is to constrict the range of possible subject identifications. In his introduction to Y se arm la runga!, Daniel Ortega writes: Only in this way can we explain the Indians tenacious resistance against subjugation, that there would be real possibilities for them to advance, no longer as an exploited race, but rather as an exploited class to the extent that the economic contradictions permit it (IES, 1982a: 15). Les Field (1995) has described in detail how the first Sandinista government forced indigenous artisans in Nicaragua to accept a discourse that reduced their culture to a matter of class. Thus the states artificial constriction of discursive subject positions can be seen as truncating or sanitizing the historical narrative by concealing or silencing the heterogeneity of personal subjectivities. In contrast, the oral testimonies that appear in Y se arm la runga! express a panoply of subject positions in heterogeneous language that reflects the local culture. Although class origins and livelihoods are indicated, they are not expressed in terms of state-approved categorizations. The people who figure in the testimonies are often remembered only by their first names or with epithets such as the drunkard Altamirano (IES, 1982a: 67) or the lady who sells meat in the marketplace (69). Alan Bolt remembered his earliest involvement with the FSLN as follows: The solid contact that there was in 74 was with the compaero Ramn, I dont remember his last name, I think it was Gutirrez; he was the logistic support. His mother sold tiste and fresco9 in the marketplace, and she converted their house into a safe house.10 These narratives are of the type that Lynch and Bogen (1996: 12) call locally organized and biographically relevant. This characteristic of oral testimony allows the personal subjectivities of the narrators to intrude into the narratives. As a result, these testimonies express support for the FSLN and hatred of the Somoza regime, but they also indicate resentment of the FSLN and resistance to the FSLN state-building project.11 Three main forms of resistance to FSLN rule surface in the testimonies on the Insurrection of Monimb. First, the Monimboseos disagreed with the idea that the FSLN had inspired their resistance to the Somoza regime. They claimed that their rebelliousness was ancient and predated the FSLNs existence. For example, according to Daniel Martnez, It was Monimb that mobilized, that rose up in arms first. Perhaps it is because of our idiosyncrasy, or for our warrior culture that weve had since ancient times, because we did not come into existence just now with the dictatorship (IES, 1982a: 94). Secondly, the Monimboseos vehemently disagreed with the FSLNs portrayal of their rebellion as spontaneous or disorganized. Instead, they emphasized their civic obligations to the community and their democratic form of community action. A war council met daily in the Plaza of San Sebastin, apparently formulating decisions only after opinions had been heard. A popular combatant named Armengol Mercado Castillo (IES, 1982a: 120) explained:

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At that time, when we were free, all of the local people would get together, and a compaero would present a fine oratory. The people heard him out, and they listened carefully. For us, it was a commitment to arrive there [at the Plaza] punctually, after work, and nobody had to come around to summon us. There we planned: We will attack in this manner, and in this location.

The Monimboseos remembered that the insurrection was a time when deliberations and decision making took place in view of the entire community, a time remembered as when we were free. This phrasing suggests that communal decision making occurred because the neighborhood was freed from rule by the Somoza regime but not yet subjugated to the Sandinista regime that was soon to follow. Finally, the Monimboseos objected to the idea that the FSLN had led their insurrection. On March 2, 1978, participants in the Monimb insurrection sent a letter to the archbishop of Nicaragua, quickly reprinted in La Prensa, asserting that there do not exist nor have there existed professional agitators in our case; and . . . no political current has participated directly in our confrontation [with the Somoza regime] (CRISOL, 1979: 41). The testimonies given in 1980 were colored by the resentment that the popular combatants already felt toward the Sandinista militants. For example, Mercado (IES, 1982a: 118) criticized the FSLNs attempt to intervene in the insurrection:
When we began . . . when the revolution began, here we were killing ourselves in Monimb, throwing bombs, the soldiers machine-gunning us, and the bourgeois people were having their grand banquets, sipping their whisky. Thats why I began to hate them, because they did not contribute as much as we did in the revolution. They had their own way of thinking. There were some who played two roles: with the Sandinistas and with Somoza.

Here the leaders of the FSLN are portrayed as unscrupulous rich persons who used the poor as cannon fodder. In particular, the popular combatants objected to the idea that Camilo Ortega had been a leader of their insurrection. However, these discourses of resistance to FSLN rule did not ultimately coalesce to become a unified system of narration capable of disarticulating the FSLNs historical narrative. Instead, they remained embedded within the FSLNs dominant narrative, which appropriated the narratives of resistance. This is most evident in the case of the story of Camilo Ortega, an official FSLN narrative that was resisted when testimonies were recorded in 1980. However, the FSLN was able to appropriate these discourses of resistance and reincorporate them into the narrative of Camilo Ortegas heroism. This act of appropriation indicates a process of ideological domination in which the popular combatants were ultimately unable to contest the political dominance of party militants. THE APOSTLE OF UNITY Rebellion broke out in Monimb on February 20, 1978. A mass was celebrated on that day, the fortieth day after Chamorros death, and a plaza was renamed in his honor (IES, 1982c: 61). When the National Guard arrived to suppress the demonstrations, the Monimboseos declared the neighborhood free territory and formed militias to patrol the streets and repel attacks

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(CRISOL, 1979; IES, 1982a: 8992). The FSLN tried to establish contact with the rebels by sending the Sandinista militants Camilo Ortega and Hilario Snchez (IES, 1982a; 1982b: 161, 190). However, distrust of outsiders led some Monimboseos to reject them. The militants were apprehended by a Monimboseo patrol on suspicion of being plainclothes agents of the Somoza regime because they were carrying guns and money. In the official FSLN accounts, Ortega and his companions were able to calm the crowd (IES, 1982c: 66). Other eyewitnesses reported that the militants were treated as interlopers and interrogated roughly. The latter narratives express the Monimboseos suspicion of the FSLN and its attempt to gain command of the insurrection, which had been autonomously carried out by the people of Monimb. A main point of disagreement in the testimonies is the number of FSLN militants encountered by the Monimboseos on the evening of February 25. Some Monimboseos reported that the group of Sandinista emissaries included not only Ortega and Snchez (whose nom de guerre was Claudio) but also Moiss Rivera. A Monimboseo identified as Federico Mndez Palacios testified that when patrolling the highway he had discovered three men whose identity he was to learn much later: There was Camilo seated on the ground and reclining against a wall, reading a book; the other, Hilario Snchez, Claudio, was reclining against the wire [fence], with one knee in the air. There was also another, I dont remember him clearly, but I believe that he was Moiss (IES, 1982a: 129). Mndezs report differs slightly from an account provided by Martn Garca:12 When the [National] Guard managed to enter Monimb, it was also when the first members of the FSLN appeared, Camilo Ortega, Moiss Rivera, Arnoldo Quant, and Claudio. They were taken prisoner. Although they identified themselves as members of the FSLN, the people did not believe them because there had been many infiltrators(IES, 1982a: 131). Snchez gave his own testimony in 1980: We came to Monimb to direct the insurrection after a fashion, to give it a direction, and greater content (IES, 1982a: 133). Those who resented this presumption by the FSLN reported that Camilo behaved in an arrogant manner when the Monimboseos questioned him. Mndez (IES, 1982a: 131) explained:
I questioned one of them, Camilo, because he looked so serious and obstinate, and I had to say: this guy is [a member of the National] Guard, he doesnt respond to questions, we ask and he says nothing.13 Because the only one of them who talked was Claudio. The people said, These are [National] Guardsmen, we have to take them prisoner.

Another Monimboseo who feared that the strangers were in fact Somocista spies was a shoemaker named Justo Gonzlez Gmez. He reported that when Camilo Ortega did finally speak, he said, It amazes me a great deal to see a community so combative but so disorganized. This community has enormous courage and combat-readiness but lacks organization (IES, 1982a: 131).14 The bemused and condescending tone of this remark was not lost on the Monimboseos. It expresses the Sandinistas Leninist distinction between community consciousness and revolutionary consciousness and emphasizes that Camilo was a professional revolutionary who did not share the cultural

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outlook of the Monimboseos. Although the Monimboseos finally determined that the strangers were in fact Sandinista militants, some were not impressed. For example, Gonzlez agreed that the Sandinistas were set free but reiterated the suspicion the community felt toward the outsiders: Here, everyone in the neighborhood said, If unknown people come and you dont know who they are, you have to throw bombs at them and finish them off, otherwise they may kill us (IES, 1982a: 131). Thus this set of testimonies advances the claim that Camilo Ortega was captured by the Monimboseos, who almost killed him. This claim expresses the idea that the FSLN was trying to exploit the Monimb insurrection for political purposes. These narratives highlight the social class difference between the FSLN militants and the Monimboseos in order to claim that the Nicaraguan Revolution was the achievement of the popular combatants, not of the professional revolutionaries. In contrast, other testimonies from 1980 advance the opposite claimthat Camilo unified the FSLN and the Monimboseos. In these narratives, Camilo was never captured, manhandled, or treated with suspicion. It would be awkward to admit that the younger brother of Daniel and Humberto Ortega was beaten by the Monimboseos. Camilo is absent from the event as remembered by Jos Poveda, head of the Monimboseo militia that discovered the FSLN militants. In Povedas version, only two members of the FSLN, Hilario Snchez and Moiss Rivera, were taken prisoner (IES, 1982a: 133136).15 This is a story corroborated by Hilario Snchez himself (IES, 1982a: 133). This version appears in the official history of the insurrection (IES, 1982c: 6668). Thus Povedas and Snchezs testimonies were given privileged status in the official history, which claims that although the Monimboseos were suspicious, Snchez and Rivera soon calmed them and won their respect because they spoke with the voice of the vanguard [demonstrating] maturity and self-control (IES, 1982c: 66). The accounts of the Insurrection of Monimb of popular combatants and FSLN militants clearly differ and in fact contradict each other. These stories are indicative of a social conflict between the two groups. During the final offensive, the militias of popular combatants bitterly resented the FSLN militants, who had better weapons and enjoyed other privileges (Nez Tllez, 1987: 50). After the overthrow of the Somoza regime, the militants continued to enjoy privileges as members of the FSLN, newly installed in power. This was considered unfair by the popular combatants, who had borne many of the costs of the revolution. Whether Camilo Ortega was accepted or rejected by the Monimboseos, it is well documented that on February 26 he was discovered hiding in a safe house in Los Sabogales, near Monimb, where he was captured and killed by Somozas National Guard. Although he did not live to see the July 19 triumph, he is remembered as the Apostle of Unity who unified the FSLNs three factions and unified the people of Nicaragua with their vanguard party. APPROPRIATION OF DISSIDENT NARRATIVES The stories told in 1980 about the Insurrection of Monimb indicate a state formation process in which a new ruling class (the militants of the FSLN)

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struggled to dominate subordinate classes, particularly popular combatants. During the 11 years in which the FSLN ruled Nicaragua, it employed the narrative of the Monimb insurrection to marginalize the discontent of the popular combatants, some of whom had difficulty obtaining employment, housing, or other necessities during the period. Divided between haves and have-nots, the FSLN used the narrative to communicate the unity of Nicaragua and the FSLN. Monimboseos who were dissatisfied with the FSLN expressed their ambivalence by telling their own versions of the insurrection. However, these dissident oral narratives of the Insurrection of Monimb did not coalesce into a single system of narration. Thus we can identify an official narrative and instances in which it is contradicted by dissident social memory but not a coherent unofficial narrative. In the effort to win acceptance of its dominant position, the rulers of a state must accommodate and allow partial expression of the culture and values of oppositional groups. Therefore the relationships of social subordination are negotiated through shifting alliances and conflicts that obligate the ruling class to incorporate and transform dissident values and beliefs (Bennett, 1986: xv). This became more important after the FSLN lost power in 1990, when the party sought the support of the popular combatants in an effort to return to power. In order to marginalize the combatants discontent and win their support, it became necessary for the FSLN to appropriate their stories and reincorporate them into the partys official narrative. Consequently, 22 years after the oral histories of the Monimb insurrection were recorded, a new narrative appeared. This narrative was published in Visin Sandinista, a journal on the official FSLN web site (FSLN, 2002).16 The new narrative preserves the idea that Camilo Ortega was the savior of Monimb and of the Nicaraguan people, but it claims that he and Moiss Rivera were captured and interrogated by the Monimboseos on the night of February 25. Thus the article directly contradicts the testimony of Jos Poveda and Hilario Snchez (IES, 1982a: 133136) as well as the official history (IES, 1982c: 6668). This is an appropriation of the stories that were told in 1980 to resist or contradict the official FSLN history of the insurrection. Interestingly, the Visin Sandinista article was based on testimonies not included in the earlier compilation. In the new version, the Monimboseos now freely admit that Camilo and Moiss were beaten. If we had known who they were, we never would have handled them so roughly, explained Fernando Lpez. I personally struck one of them so that they would tell us who they were . . . but we could not extract a word from them (FSLN, 2002). One woman wept, saying that she had heard Camilo say, I love the struggle, I have come to join your fight (FSLN, 2002). When someone in the crowd finally corroborated Camilos assertion that he was a Sandinista, not an agent of Somoza, he was set free. Following the release of the prisoners, the Monimboseos did not ultimately reject Camilo but accepted him as their true leader: Camilo remained in Monimb, organizing the insurrection of the indgenas, establishing himself in a safe house located near the crossroads known as Los Sabogales (FSLN, 2002). In contrast with the original FSLN history, in this version he is captured and not recognized; the Monimboseos did not realize that he was their leader until they had already mistreated him. Therefore this revised story creates a

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more powerful representation of his martyrdom. The Monimb rebels sin of failing to recognize their savior is forgiven when they finally recognize him and accept his leadership. This clearly represents an attempt by the FSLN to convince the popular combatants of the need for reconciliation. The message is that in spite of conflicts between the vanguard of FSLN militants and the rank and file, there is hope for resolution if the rank and file will simply recognize their leaders. The revised story of Camilo illustrates how popular discourses of resistance may be appropriated by a political class with aspirations to rule. When Visin Sandinista published the revised story of Camilos encounter with the Monimboseos in 2002, the FSLN was an opposition party seeking to return to power through elections. It needed the support and votes of the popular combatants. Yet, the FSLN was internally divided between haves and the have-nots because the party militants were perceived by rank-and-file Sandinistas as enjoying more wealth and privileges (Tinoco, 1998: 89). In order to address this discontent, the militants tried to renegotiate their relationship with the rank and file by using the anti-FSLN discourses of the popular combatants in the Monimb insurrection. These stories gave voice to long-standing dissatisfactions. However, appropriated into the Visin Sandinista version, they reasserted the irrevocability of the relationship between the vanguard party and the people. Inevitably, according to this story, the popular combatants had to see the error of their recalcitrance and accept the authority and leadership of the FSLN. CONCLUSION The oral histories of the Insurrection of Monimb illustrate the usefulness of a Gramscian theory of popular culture in studying state formation processes. Ideology binds social groups together or divides them as they contend for power and for autonomy. It is important because classes can only compete at the ideological level if there is a common framework of meaning shared by all forces in struggle (Laclau, 1977: 161). Indeed, Gramscis notion of hegemony may be described as the struggle to create a language of contention (Roseberry, 1994). In the Nicaraguan Revolution, social memory has been a crucial site of struggle for the formation of a political language. The Sandinista popular combatants seem to have failed to create a unified system of narration capable of disarticulating the official FSLN discourse. Did they also fail to achieve political influence within the FSLN? Roseberry (1994: 360) reminds us that Gramsci does not assume that subaltern groups are captured or immobilized by some sort of ideological consensus. In the absence of an alternative form of political language, the popular combatants have been forced to frame their demands in terms of the official FSLN categories. The deciphering of the oral histories of the revolution is useful for demystifying the perennial power and authority of Daniel Ortega. During my research in Masaya in 1997 and 1998, I often heard from the rank-and-file Sandinistas that they felt abandoned by the FSLN. Many complained of self-serving party militants who did not attend to the needs of the people. My

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question to them was always, Why dont you abandon the FSLN and support another political party like the MRS?17 At the time, I could not understand their answer: Its just Sergio Ramrez and a few intellectuals, a small group that wont be supported by most Sandinistas. In contrast to the Sandinista militants who left the FSLN to found the MRS, the rank-and-file Sandinistas cannot easily leave the FSLN for a new Sandinista party because the FSLN is central to the social memory of the revolution. The issue acquired new relevance in 2006 when the popular MRS candidate Herty Lewites challenged Ortegas lead in the polls, but Ortega and the FSLN ultimately won the election. While commentators cite many reasons for this (Perales, 2006; Rocha, 2006; Torres Rivas, 2007), one of them is that Ortega continues to be identified with the Sandinista revolutionary tradition. In this sense, the oral histories of the insurrection illustrate the concrete processes of domination and resistance to his rule inscribed in social memory. Thus reencountering the past reveals how political rule is contested and renegotiated in the present. NOTES
1. Many who had been too young to participate in the insurrection nevertheless worked under the Sandinista government as literacy or medical brigade volunteers or as soldiers fighting the incursions of the Contras. They also felt that they had invested much of their lives in the revolution and considered it their own. 2. Along with a number of prominent intellectual and cultural figures calling themselves the Group of 12, the FSLN was supported by a number of protest organizations organized under the umbrella group known as the Movimiento del Pueblo Unido (Booth, 1982: 102113). 3. Johnson and Dawson (1982: 241243) argue that in providing oral testimonies, interviewees reflect on their political relationships in the present. 4. Some critics of the FSLN have accused the Sandinistas of murdering Chamorro because of the political opportunity it afforded. However, his widow, Violeta Chamorro (1996), an FSLN adversary, has given an account of her husbands murder in which she accuses certain associates of Somoza. 5. Humberto Ortega (1984) explained how the insurrection stimulated the three factions to reunite around the Tercerista strategy. This interview was originally published in 1989 in Narahuac, but it has been republished many times by the FSLN: as a political pamphlet (H. Ortega, 1981), in a history textbook (H. Ortega, 1980), and as hypertext displayed on the partys web site from 2002 until 2005 (H. Ortega, 2002). This suggests that it was not a casual statement but an official narrative. 6. Although Asuncin Armengol Ortiz organized and led the February 1978 Insurrection of Monimb, he did this independently of the FSLN. In March 1978 he became an FSLN commander: The first military experience in which he [Armengol] participated directly with the Vanguard was in March, when he became part of a hand-picked combat unit that he himself trained and organized (IES, 1982b: 161). 7. The gallery can now be visited via the Internet, thanks to manfut.org, which has posted images of the exhibit together with narratives: http:/ /www.manfut.org/museos/masaya.html. In fact, the web site has posted a large number of exhibits and photo galleries pertaining to Nicaraguan history, all of which can be accessed at http:/ /www.manfut.org/museos/index .html. 8. An English translation of selected passages from this volume can be read on the web site of Revista Envo, http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2722. However, for the purpose of consistency all of the quotations in this article are my own translations from the original Spanish. 9. Tiste is a beverage containing powdered maize and other grains mixed with sugar and cocoa. Fresco (refresco) is fruit juice sweetened with added sugar. 10. In the period of the Somoza dictatorship, Sandinistas used the term casa de seguridad to refer to a house where revolutionary activities could be clandestinely practiced.

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11. Ortegas introduction to Y se arm la runga! indicates that he may not have been aware of the heterogeneity of these narratives. In it he claims that the testimonies produce a narrative in three scenes, representing the total unity of the FSLN and the Monimboseos: In the first scene is the vanguard risen from the masses, using the armed struggle as the principal way to organize and mobilize the nation in the city, in the countryside and in the wilderness. Later and without any planning or coordination . . . the Monimb uprising. And finally, definitively, the unity of MonimbFSLN, Masaya-FSLN: nation-vanguard, which makes possible the participation of the people of Masaya in the final offensive and the defeat of Somocista tyranny and of Yankee imperialism. 12. Garcas account is prominently displayed in the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs of Masaya but anonymously. 13. The phrasing Mndez used was Ese maje es guardia, no le contesta a uno, le preguntamos y no habla nada. The word maje is a slang term which means something like dude, imparting a more vulgar connotation than chap or fellow. The term is common in Costa Rica but not in Nicaragua, so its appearance in this Monimboseos testimony is unusual. 14. The words that Gonzlez attributed to Camilo Ortega were Me asombra mucho ver un pueblo tan combativo pero sin organizacin. Este pueblo tiene un coraje y una combatividad enorme, pero le falta la organizacin. I have here translated pueblo as community, in the sense of a village or town, although it also shows the attitude of the FSLN toward the Nicaraguan people as a whole. 15. Poveda suggests that the two captives were not treated gently: When we arrived, they were questioning them. They had one below, the other on top of the curb [of the street]. When I interviewed him on December 18, 1998, he told me that Camilo Ortega was not captured by the Monimboseos at any point during the insurrection. At the time, I had not yet read Y se arm la runga! so I did not ask him why some testimonies contradicted his claim. 16. The official web site of the FSLN existed for many years as http:/ /fsln-nicaragua.org and included important party documents such as statutes, historical materials, biographies of Sandinista martyrs, and proceedings of party congresses. The site disappeared in 2007 without any warning and in 2008 was mysteriously replaced by a new site providing some brief texts in English and in German. 17. See Steven Kent Smiths (1997) account of the origins of the MRS. Additional, up-to-date information in English is available through the articles published on the web site of Revista Envo, http:/ /www.envio.org.ni/.

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