Summer is here and with it comes more time to blog. Between conferences and the end of the semester this poor little blog was ignored. However, I am back in the thick of it. I am currently working my way through a number of microfilm collections and I will be making a research trip to the Truman Presidential Library next week. I found the posters below in the humungous microfilm collection of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). NACLA has thousands of documents covering the Nicaraguan Revolution from 1976 to 1990. The posters below belong to the Partido Social Cristiano (PSC), which opposed both the Somoza regime and the Sandinistas. The PSC was one of Nicaragua’s more popular political parties, placing fourth in the 1990 presidential elections. As you might gather from its name the PSC was a Christian political party. They relied heavily on biblical imagery, hence the dove and the Ichthys. I am not very familiar with the PSC so I can not say with certainty that pacifism was a central tenet of the party, but the posters make a strong case for that. Ironically many of the European and North American religious groups that operated in Nicaragua worked with the Sandinistas and not the PSC. This was due largely to the fact that the FSLN held power and therefore had more resources.
I’m not sure exactly who the JRSC is but I can assume that it is probably the youth division of the PSC. The message in the top right corner translates as “Nonviolence. The only path to peace and democracy.”
Clearly the PSC advocated against the violence in Nicaragua, and Central America more broadly. The message at the top of this poster translates as “No to violent solutions.” The Ichthys with PSC within, found in the bottom right, was the official emblem of the party.
Andrew W. Wilson 