Abstract
In 1904, President Roosevelt, who aimed at maintaining the order defined by the 1823 Monroe doctrine, declared: “We would interfere with [Latin America] only in last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.” On the 19th of July of 1979, the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua collapsed, and the Junta de Reconstrucción Nacional came to power.
Supported by an important part of the populace and by some regional governments, the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) succeeded in implementing a revolutionary government, inspired by socialism. The socialist government won the 1984 democratic and fair elections, and this kept power until 1990. This seemed to mark the end of the American political influence in that country, since the Somozist government had been highly sustained by the United States. However, the financing of rebel forces opposed to Sandinistas, the Contras, by the United States, and the high tension that characterises the US-Nicaragua during the 1980's leads us to wonder about the causes of such an interest. Did Communist adventurism really threaten the stability of Central America? On the contrary, were US-Nicaragua relations based on excessive twitching? Our analysis will focus on the Reaganian foreign policy towards Nicaragua during the 1980's. We will try to understand if Nicaragua exemplifies the whole US-Central America relations, or if the particular attention that the Reagan administration devoted to that country distinguishes it from the rest of the continent.
