From Sandinismo to Orteguismo: the new-look FSLN and authoritarian regression in Nicaragua
Tuesday, January 30, 2018, 12:00pm to 2:00pm
Speaker: Mateo Jarquín, PhD Candidate, Department of History, Harvard University
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
Today most historic Sandinista leaders oppose current president Daniel Ortega. This talk shows how a much-changed FSLN in alliance with its former 'counterrevolutionary' foes in the Church and business elite has consolidated an authoritarian regime in Nicaragua. Originally from Nicaragua Mateo Jarquín received his BA in History from Grinnell College in Iowa. A PhD Candidate in the Department of History his research focuses on revolutionary movements international relations and the history of development agendas in Latin America during the Cold War; an example of his work is a recently-published article in the journal Cold War History which looks at Miskito indigenous Nicaraguans and origins of their armed opposition to the Sandinistas' revolutionary government in the 1980s. His dissertation based on archival and oral history research in several countries in Central America and the Caribbean provides a history of the Sandinista Revolution (1978-1990) from the perspective of its foreign relations in the region and assesses the impact that this landmark episode had on Latin American politics at the end of the Cold War.
See also: Cambridge, Central America & the Caribbean, Tuesday Seminar Series