Summer research and the Partido Social Cristiano

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.

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English Food Cooperatives and Nicaraguan Solidarity

Today as I was reading David Feathersone’s Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism I came across a reference to two cookbooks detailing the relationship between a food cooperative in Newcastle, England and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Food Out of Chile: Recipes and Stories from Maria Figueroa  and Cordon Rouge: Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes from the Red Herring detail the history and cuisine of the Red Herring Worker’s Cooperative which ran “a cafe and shop in Newcastle upon Tyne that sold wonderful vegan and Vegetarian food.”  The cooperative was also a nexus for political action, due in part to Maria and Victor FIgueroa.  In 1976 the Figueroas fled to Newcastle after the U.S. backed coup in Chile, which ousted democratically elected president Salvador Allende and installed authoritarian general Augusto Pinochet. In Newcastle, Maria and Victor joined the Red Herring cooperative and became active members of the Central American Solidarity movement. They spoke out in solidarity with and advocated for the revolution, handing out leaflets and participating in demonstrations at the nearby university. In the end, the example of Chilean exiles living in northern England, working at a food cooperative, and demonstrating in solidarity with the people of Nicaragua is an excellent example of the revolution’s truly international character