Adriana Valeria Manzano
Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar
The Last Snapshots of the Latin American Revolution: Culture, Politics, and Nostalgia, 1979-1991
When, where, and how did the leftwing revolutionary projects and imaginations end? The central aim of this project is to answer this overarching question and, in doing so, shed new light into the history of the leftwing political culture, from the victory of the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979 until the critical biennium 1989-1991. In Latin America, that political culture brought together millions of people. Albeit with different modalities and intensities, they kept believing in revolutionary projects, seeking to reconcile longstanding struggles for socioeconomic equality and anti-imperialism with a renovated agenda centered on democracy and equality in the gender, sexual, and racial milieus. The support for the Sandinistas in other geographical settings signaled that these projects appealed to North American and Western European leftwing militants and sympathizers as well. The (would-be) last snapshots of the Latin American revolution collaborated with the persistence and transformation of a global leftwing political culture during the 1980s.
