Filmmaker Jenny Murray’s documentary is a captivating and ultimately shocking history of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (or FSLN), as told from the perspective of Nicaraguan women who abandoned domesticity in the 1970s to become insurgents and commanders in a popular war against the corrupt, repressive Somoza regime. Drawing on extensive archival footage, Murray reconstructs Nicaragua’s 20th-century history of U.S.-backed dictatorship in the Latin American nation, which led to extreme wealth inequality, starvation, illiteracy, and scant resources to survive. Interviewing a number of women who made the leap from student life or motherhood to spend years training to fight as soldiers, it becomes quite clear why an armed insurrection was the only tenable choice left for an abused citizenry. Women made up a third of the Sandinista fighting force, becoming highly-regarded officers, receiving training in Cuba, and leading many of the battles that were spread across Nicaragua. While the Sandinistas prevailed in 1979, not one of the brave women who fought the good fight was invited into President Daniel Ortega’s directorate for running the country. Worse, after Ortega lost re-election but was voted back into the presidency in 2006, an institutional hostility toward women and women’s rights took hold, including a ban on all abortions, a rise in rapes and murders of women, and a systematic eradication of the history of women’s participation in the revolution. None of the veteran Sandinista women here are represented in any official narrative or commemoration. A film that stokes more than a little outrage, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)
¡Las Sandinistas!
(2018) 96 min. In English & Spanish w/English subtitles. DVD: $29.95 ($349 w/PPR from www.kinolorberedu.com). DRA. Kino Lorber (avail. from most distributors). Closed captioned. Volume 34, Issue 3
¡Las Sandinistas!
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