This book is a carefully argued study of peasants and labor during
the Somoza regime, focusing on popular movements in the
economically strategic department of Chinandega in western
Nicaragua. Jeffrey Gould traces the evolution of group
consciousness among peasants and workers as they moved away from
extreme dependency on the patron to achieve an autonomous social
and political ideology. In doing so, he makes important
contributions to peasant studies and theories of revolution, as
well as our understanding of Nicaraguan history.
According to Gould, when Anastasio Somoza first came to power in
1936, workers and peasants took the Somocista reform program
seriously. Their initial acceptance of Somocismo and its early
promises of labor rights and later ones of land redistribution
accounts for one of the most peculiar features of the
pre-Sandinista political landscape: the wide gulf separating
popular movements and middle-class opposition to the government.
Only the alliance of the Frente Sandinista (FSLN) and the peasant
movement would knock down the wall of silence between the two
forces.