The Nicaraguan Revolution and the Cold War: Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in Western Europe, 1977-1990

We are proud to announce that on the 18th of March, the Cold War Research Network will be hosting Dr Eline van Ommen’s lecture on The Nicaraguan Revolution and the Cold War: Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in Western Europe, 1977-1990. 

Through the lens of Nicaraguan and Western European relations during the final decade of the Cold War, this talk traces the efforts of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional [Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN] to gain and maintain external support as it sought to usher forth revolutionary change in a rapidly changing global and regional context. The Sandinistas’ ambitious diplomatic campaign captured the imaginations of people around the globe and resulted in a dense web of interactions and contacts between Nicaragua and the outside world. These interactions went far beyond elite politics, as thousands of musicians, activists, priests, feminists, and journalists from the Americas, Europe and the Global South flocked to Nicaragua to experience first-hand how this revolutionary process evolved. Starting with the tumultuous period leading up to the overthrow of the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza on 19 July 1979 and ending with the unforeseen electoral loss of the 25 February 1990, the lecture will discuss the opportunities and limitations that the international environment offered to a small state in Central America, a region traditionally seen as dominated by the United States.

Dr Eline van Ommen is a Lecturer in the History of International Relations at the Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University. Her research interests are Latin American history, the Cold War, revolutions, transnational activism, and European foreign policy. She is currently working on a monograph which studies the Nicaraguan Revolution (1977-1990) through the lenses of Western European and Nicaraguan relations. Eline studied History at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG) and at the London School of Economics (LSE). She completed her PhD in International History at the LSE in 2019.

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Keywords: The Nicaraguan Revolution, Sandinista National Liberation Front, Diplomacy, Latin America, Western Europe.