The Role of Female Combatants in the Nicaraguan Revolution and Counter Revolutionary War

Martín Meráz García, Martha L. Cottam, Bruno M. Baltodano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429638305
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The revolution in Nicaragua was unique in that a large percentage of the combatants were women. The Role of Female Combatants in the Nicaraguan Revolution and Counter Revolutionary War is a study of these women and those who fought in the Contra counter revolution on the Atlantic Coast.

This book is a qualitative study based on 85 interviews with female ex-combatants in the revolution and counter revolution from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s, as well as field observations in Nicaragua and the autonomous regions of the Atlantic Coast. It explores the reasons why women fought, the sacrifices they made, their treatment by male combatants, and their insights into the impact of the revolution and counter-revolution on today's Nicaragua. The analytical approach draws from political psychology, social identity dynamics such as nationalism and indigenous identities, and the role of liberation theology in the willingness of the female revolutionaries to risk their lives.

Researchers and students of Gender Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Political History will find this an illuminating account of the Nicaraguan Revolution and counter revolution, which until now has been rarely shared.

1 Women as combatants in revolution

Introduction

Women are often considered victims of war-related violence: civilians killed as collateral damage, victims of war-rape, mothers and sisters losing male relatives to combat. But women do often participate in war in a variety of capacities including support or combat soldiers, clandestine operatives, and safe house keepers. This study looks at women combatants in the Nicaraguan Revolution and the counter revolution that followed. We begin with an overview of women in war through history, then present an analytical framework with which we will analyze female combatants in Nicaragua, and then present field-based data from interviews with women who fought with and worked for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) revolutionary front that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and women in the counter revolutionary forces that followed.

The concept of women participating in combat operations appeared to be a new phenomenon when media outlets in 2003 reported that Shoshana Johnson, an African American Army specialist, had been captured during the early stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Women’s participation in combat is often questioned on biological grounds. For example, some scholars argue that women’s body types (in terms of body mass, weight, strength, etc.) are simply not suited for the rigors of combat in which soldier have to carry loads of equipment and food for distances that would be impossible for women (Gat, 2000). Additionally, others have argued that the participation of women in combat operations is problematic because women are usually exposed in ways that men are not, including a higher danger of being captured by the enemy and subjected to non-traditional torture practices such as rape. Often women have been portrayed as hindering military operations because they have been perceived as either not physically able to keep up with male soldiers or as vulnerable and unable to protect themselves if attacked, hence the need to provide for their protection. For these reasons, the role of women in war and civilian conflicts has been portrayed traditionally as camp followers performing household duties such as gathering and cooking food for the men, mending uniforms, laundering clothing, performing services as prostitutes, or at the very best serving as nurses and providing comfort to military commanders during military campaigns far away from the danger of the battlefield (Creveld, 2000). Moreover, when women are portrayed as performing some of the roles traditionally assigned to male soldiers in civilian combat, it has been only as isolated incidents in which women have exhibited unusual skills, strength, agility, and valor, traits apparently not common among females and only attributed to males. For example, the isolated incidents cited by historians include the American Revolution in 1778, when Molly Pitcher took her husband’s place after he was wounded, “serving his artillery piece until the close of the battle” (Barnes, 2005).

Nevertheless, women have been participating in combat since ancient history. For example, participation by women in direct combat operations has been documented by archeologists, philosophers, and historians dating back to 800 bce–ce 300; these societies included the Scythian and Sarmatian pastoral societies whose gravesite excavations have uncovered up to 20% of women buried in full military gear (Gat, 2000). Women also played an important role in combat in the Soviet Red Army during World War II. The numbers are unclear, but it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women participated, possibly 800,000 in the Red Army and another 200,000 in irregular partisan forces (Goldstein, 2001).

Female participation in rebel groups has likewise been under-studied. What little is written about female revolutionaries tends to be journalistic and widely contradictory. The women of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia FARC guerrilla organization in Colombia, for example, are variously described as having “equal rights, similar tasks” as the men (Pravda, 2008) or as being sexual slaves to the men (Colombia Reports, 2011). On the more academic side, Timothy Wickham-Crowley (1992) does mention the interesting fact that the revolutions in Central America during the 1970s and 1980s saw an increase in the proportion of female guerrillas compared to revolutions in the 1960s. Rather than explaining this phenomenon, he chose to explain the continued minority status of female guerrillas instead as a result of greater aggressive behavior among men (p. 23).

In Latin American conflicts such as the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the roles women played in these conflicts have been portrayed in similar negative terms to other conflicts. For example, films describing the participation of women in the Mexican Revolution usually depict them in roles ranging from docile mules carrying ammunition and cooking utensils, gathering wood, and making tortillas for the hungry revolucionarios. Other portrayals of women include as prostitutes in saloons willingly submitting to men who want to satisfy their animal instincts after long military campaigns in which soldiers or revolucionarios have been deprived of the caresses of women (Bolanos, 1967). In other instances, women of the Mexican Revolution are portrayed as trouble makers and evil doers because their actions and beauty incite passions and conflict among the men, hence distracting them from the ultimate goal of fighting to win the revolution. Often, women who do not follow these traditional roles are portrayed in ways that discourage other women from venturing out of their traditional roles. These portrayals include becoming pregnant and being left abandoned to raise children on their own after the father leaves with another woman or gets killed in battle (Rodriguez, 1958). Any time women are portrayed as tough enough to sustain the rigors of combat operations and the harassment of men who continuously question their abilities to fight and lead men into battle, they are depicted as vulnerable individuals whose reasons for surviving in this treacherous environment are largely attributed to other male leaders who have sacrificed their lives at critical junctures during these battles to save them (Zacarias, 1961).

In conflicts such as the Cuban revolution in the 1930s, even though women are portrayed in films as members of the aristocracy, they are sympathizer and supporters of the revolution who are nevertheless vulnerable to falling in love with informants who extort information and use it to sabotage revolutionary efforts, causing irreparable damage to the revolution. In films depicting the Cuban revolution of the 1960s, women are portrayed in more equal terms, frowning upon male chauvinism, machismo, and illustrating the struggles women usually face to be recognized as equal members of their communities as they attempt to exercise the simple task of working outside the home (Solas, 1968). In the United States, the participation of women in WWII has been recognized not as combatants, but as workers on the home front taking their places in factories producing goods and services in support of military operations abroad. In other instances, roles women played in WWII include nurses aiding the wounded far removed from the dangers of combat. Additionally, in other civilian conflicts in Latin America, including the Nicaraguan Revolution of the 1970s, women have also been portrayed as playing minor roles despite the fact that 30% served in combat operations (Santos and Alpern Engel, 1983).

Despite these depictions of women rebels, other depictions examine the extensive role women play in revolutions in both combatant and support roles. Women have composed important components of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LTTE Black Tigers (30%–40%), the Communist Party of Nepal (30%–50%), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (30%–45%), and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador (30%) (Henshaw, 2017). In the case of concern here, the Nicaragua Sandinistas’ FSLN and the Contras were composed of 30% and 7%–15% women, respectively (Henshaw, 2017).¹

Explanations of why women (and men) do or do not join rebel groups vary from positivist to Marxist to feminist theorizing. Classic studies of rebellion, such as Gurr (1970 [ironically titled Why Men Rebel]), focus on people’s “hopes and grievances” (2015, p. 9) based on political, economic, and social expectations and failures to achieve those expectations. Ethnic and religious community conflicts are included in this explanation as a form of group inequality that produces grievances. Much of this literature is based upon psychological findings regarding the origins of human aggression. Marxist feminist scholars tend to look at women in terms of their struggles for women as a class as well as a gender. The position of women in bourgeois families is regarded as oppressive (Tetreault, 1994), and Marxist feminist thinkers believe this system of patriarchy will fall with the end of capitalism. Women, therefore, “should be motivated to fight alongside men because of a shared interest in overcoming class struggle” (Henshaw, 2017, p. 41). In reviewing the feminist approaches, Henshaw distinguishes between liberal feminism, which maintains that equality for women should extend to military service; multicultural and transnational feminist writers, who examine cultural and racial differences among women that influence the important issues in their lives; and human security feminist writing wherein women are seen to mobilize to get both access to state power and safety from state power in order to affect their communities and families (2017).

Henshaw’s (2017) study is one of very few quantitative approaches to study female revolutionaries. Using data from 72 rebel movements, she found that 100% of the six movements examined in Latin America had female participants, and 80% of them had female combatants (2017, p. 99); 83% of the Latin American movements had women in leadership positions (p. 100). She hypothesizes that women are more likely to be combatants and leaders in revolutionary groups that express political grievances and promote women’s rights and those that voice economic redistribution (usually socialist or Marxist in ideology). She argues that women are less likely to participate in combatant and/or leadership roles in rebel groups that focus on human security issues (“communal security”) or ethno-religious groups (2017, p. 78). Upon analysis of data from 72 rebel groups, however, she finds that few rebel movements actually have platforms on women’s rights and that there is little support for this hypothesis. The data show that women are less likely to participate in combat for human security groups but that economic grievances are strongly related to female participation. Finally, “[w]hile women are significantly less likely to participate in Islamist movements in a noncombat role, women are more likely to play a supporting role in all other movements motivated by ethnic or religious grievances” (2017, p. 93). In these conflicts women generally do not participate in combat roles but “in a manner circumscribed by gender roles” (p. 93). In the chapters that follow it will be seen that the women who fought in the FSLN and the Contra war do not support Henshaw’s analysis. There was definitely no promise of equal rights or economic gain for Contra or Sandinista women as a motivational factor to encourage them to join the armed struggle. The Sandinista propaganda did include some level of gender equality, but none of the participants we interviewed cited this as a primary motivational factor for joining the armed struggle. Their feminism developed after the revolution. In addition, the Contra female combatants fought for the perceived survival of their ethnic/indigenous community.

There are few studies of the women in the Nicaraguan Revolution. Margaret Randall’s Sandino’s Daughters (1979) and Sandino’s Daughters Revisited (1994) are valuable first-person interviews with many of the leading FSLN women, but there is no analysis or theoretical approach. One study that directly examines the reasons women joined these revolutions is Karen Kampwirth’s (2002) study of women in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chiapas, Mexico. First and foremost Kampwirth argues that women participate in revolutions for the same reasons men do: to end the injustice and overthrow the dictatorship (2002, p. 6). Kampwirth notes, as did we, that the women who participated in the revolutions she studied were surprisingly young. Some joined as a result of their participation in student activism at university, but some were as young as grade school. The women experienced push and pull forces, with heads of household being more pushed than pulled while younger women were pulled by perceived opportunities offered by becoming part of a guerrilla movement (2002, p. 9). Younger people were also motivated to join the revolution for sheer survival because of the brutality of the regime toward young people. As one of our interviewees put it, “I was witness to the atrocities of the genocidal Guard against our youth, without consideration of color, size, or age… . It was a crime to be young in those times” (Interview, August 2015).

In addition to examining the traditional factors of economic dislocations caused by unequal distribution of land, which made single female heads of household particularly susceptible to economic problems, and ideological factors such as the rise of liberation theology, Kampwirth also focuses on the personal factors that caused women to join up. These factors include family background (coming from activist families), social networks (belonging to groups that eventually became politicized), education levels, and age at the time of critical national events. She does not, however, present these factors in the context of a coherent theoretical framework. Moreover, she only interviewed mid-level female guerrillas, neglecting both the top female leaders and those in lower level support roles. There are also a number of memoirs written by Sandinista women, such as Gioconda Belli’s The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War (2003) and Mónica Baltodano’s four volume Memorias de la Lucha Sandinista (2010–2012), which have interesting personal accounts of the revolution. As for the Contra women, very little analysis is available. In her memoir, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2005) recalls her interactions with the Contras, including Contra women. Her discussion of the relationships between different groups within the Contras is very insightful, but not theoretically based.

Theoretical framework

Unlike other approaches to revolution and women’s participation, the theoretical framework used in this study of the Sandinista women is based in political psychology (different from the psychology employed by Gurr). Specifically, the variables we focus on are identities (ethnic, racial, and national), stereotypes and images, and socialization to Christianity, particularly liberation theology.

Social identity themes

Social identity theory is one theory from political psychology that will be used to explain the participation by women in the revolution and the counter revolution. Social identity studies assert four central propositions (Tajfel, 1970, 1978, 1982, Tajfel and Billig, 1974, Tajfel and Turner, 1979, 1986). First, people strive to maintain positive self-images. This means that people want to see themselves in a positive light when they are comparing themselves to others. Second, membership in groups contributes to the individual’s identity and self-image. Social psychologists define groups “as a collection of people who are perceived to belong together and are dependent on one another” for survival, fulfilling critical social benefits including “affiliation, inclusion, affection and the need for power” (Meráz García, 2006, p. 211). Individuals have a tendency to be attracted to others whose characteristics are similar regarding ethnicity, race, sex, attitudes, beliefs, socioeconomic status, and physical appearance, among others. According to our Contra participants, this dynamic was certainly present among the Miskítu and other indigenous groups of the North Atlantic Coast as they made a decision to join the Contra revolutionary forces when their leaders were being imprisoned, exiled, and persecuted by a Sandinista government that at first appeared benevolent but later became the enemy as it brutally and indiscriminately suppressed uprisings in the region by burning down entire villages and destroying crops to deprive the enemy of a livelihood (Interviews, Yatama and Miskítu leaders, June 2016). However, as the group gets larger and more diverse, the more conflict and less cooperation and conformity its members exhibit toward the group (Meráz García, 2006, p. 212). Belonging to groups is important to people because they are social animals. People need groups for survival, for security, and for companionship.

A third central tenant of social identity theory is that individuals evaluate their own groups (the in-groups) by comparing them with other groups (the out-groups). Finally, positive individual social identity is contingent upon a positive comparison of one’s own with other groups. The link between the self and in-groups is quite complex. While people derive positive self-evaluations from group membership, they also use positive information about the self to form positive expectations for the groups they belong to. People compare their own group to other groups, but the important comparison is to other relevant groups. People want to be equal or superior to those relevant groups, but people will accept inferiority and disadvantage when the comparison group is not seen as similar – that is, when the comparison is not relevant. Generally, because people want to see their group(s) in a positive light compared to others, conflict can occur over scarce resources, territory, political power, and other unmet needs. So powerful are ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Women as combatants in revolution
• 2 Historical overview of the Nicaraguan Revolution and FSLN women
• 3 Women in the FSLN
• 4 The Contra war
• 5 Women in the Contra revolutionary war
• 6 Conclusion
• References
• Index