The abolition of Costa Rica's military 75 years ago has been highly celebrated at home and abroad. Yet the story is more complicated than the myth lets on.
Under the Shadow looks back on Chomsky’s 1983 lecture at the University of Colorado, as some of the worst aspects of the Reagan administration’s Cold War-era foreign policy ravaged Central America.
British director Alex Cox’s 1987 film Walker, starring Ed Harris, laid an uncompromising critique of U.S. imperialism in Nicaragua. For his “a revolutionary film in a revolutionary context," Cox was blacklisted from the industry.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration illegally funded counter-revolutionary warfare in Nicaragua. As scandal engulfed Washington, the solidarity movement pushed back against intervention.
The 1979 Sandinista victory over the Somoza dictatorship sparked hope across Central America and beyond. Nicaragua quickly became ground zero of a violent U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary war.
Augusto Sandino is celebrated as a Nicaraguan revolutionary and liberator. The U.S invasion he resisted set the stage for dictatorship and, later, revolution.
In the 19th century, U.S. filibusters invaded and annexed Latin American territories in the name of Manifest Destiny. One man’s quest to conquer Nicaragua shows the deep roots of U.S. efforts to “spread democracy” abroad.
