Nicaragua Must Survive

"Thanks to extraordinary multilingual, multicountry research, Eline van Ommen recasts the international story of the Sandinistas of the 1970s and 1980s by decentering the United States. It turns out that Western European diplomats and activists played outsized roles in keeping the leftist revolution legitimate and alive against a U.S.-led military and propaganda onslaught. Sandinistas, creative and pragmatic in using Europeans as leverage, emerge from this gripping narrative as full actors in their own diplomatic saga. Nicaragua Must Survive is a triumph of historical sleuthing and storytelling."—Alan McPherson, author of The Invaded: How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations

"Nicaragua Must Survive breaks new ground in the history of the Sandinista Revolution and the Cold War. By transcending the traditional divide between histories of Latin America and Europe, van Ommen has written one of the most innovative and important works of international and transnational scholarship in recent memory."—Renata Keller, author of Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution

"In this innovative and deeply researched account, van Ommen reveals revolutionary Nicaragua's little-known struggle to construct a new international order at a crucial juncture in the global Cold War. Deftly tracking the interplay between politicians, diplomats, and transnational solidarity activists, Nicaragua Must Survive convincingly illuminates the signal importance of Western Europe for the FSLN's revolutionary diplomacy."—William Michael Schmidli, author of Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War