In the Footsteps of Sandino: Geographies of Revolution and Political Violence in Northern Nicaragua, 1956-1979

Why is it that certain groups and individuals come to rebel against a dictatorship's authority and support insurgents while others remain loyal to the regime? This dissertation examines the geographical paradoxes of revolutionary upheaval and counterinsurgent repression in northern Nicaragua during the two decades leading up to the 1979 Sandinista Revolution. Taking a micro-historical approach, this project focuses on the Segovias region, documenting how it came to be bifurcated between zones overwhelmingly supportive of the Sandinista guerrillas and other areas which fought to preserve the Somoza dictatorship. Drawing on government and military archives, in conjunction with a large collection of oral histories, this dissertation finds traditional explanations for both the dictatorship and the popular upheaval highly insufficient. I argue instead that geographic locality remains the fundamental variable determining the configurations of political consciousness and collective action. To explain the formation of "regions" and their responses to revolutionary crisis, I document the inherently spatial processes undergirding three key historical transformations at the local level: socioeconomic structure, political cultures of the state, and experiences of revolutionary/counterinsurgent violence