Dictating Democracy: Guatemala and the End of Violent Revolution (review)
as their pensions and other benefits granted by the previous administration were stopped. Early members had come to resent their role as Sandinista tokens, deployed as they saw it, in a “decorative” capacity. Their efforts turned to developing projects that assisted low-income women, opposing some of the post-Sandinista policies, and to demanding the reinstatement of their pensions and other lost benefits. While a more comparative perspective on the Sandinistas’ political instrumentalization of motherhood might have strengthened this book, in filling a gap in the literature on women and revolution it will add to the ongoing debates over motherist movements and female collective action. As Bayard de Volo notes, the Mothers of Heroes and Martrys may not have achieved much in terms of broader social and gender transformation, and indeed affirmed and dignified conventional gender roles. But as with motherist movements elsewhere, the achievements were in the realm of micropolitics. In helping each other bear the loss of their children, members developed self-confidence and solidarity and acquired experience of management and of leadership, while their activism challenged at least some prevailing views of motherhood. Such achievements, aptly summed up by Bayard de Volo in terms of “voice, agency, and identity,” are far from negligible.