The Ends of Modernization: Nicaragua and the United States in the Cold War Era by David Johnson Lee

Abstract

David Johnson Lee’s The Ends of Modernization is a tale of disappointment. Lee examines a variety of domestic and international actors seeking economic and political progress for Nicaragua, starting with the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s and continuing into the 21st century. These hopes were invariably dashed. The Kennedy administration intended for the Alliance to generate technocratic progress and promote democracy to undercut the appeal of Cuban-style revolution in Latin America. Nicaragua achieved economic gains that made it “a star of the Alliance,” but these gains occurred under Anastasio Somoza’s dictatorship, revealing that the Alliance had abandoned its “pretensions of democratization” (p. 10). After Managua’s devastating 1972 earthquake, efforts to rebuild the capital as a modern, planned city only heightened tensions that “helped bring about the last major social revolution of the Cold War” (p. 42). Lee writes that, after the Sandinista-led revolution in 1979, Nicaragua’s leaders “would try to convince the world that a new sort of revolutionary government might be possible, one that combined the models of liberal and social revolution and thus might transcend the Cold War divides” (p. 70). But what Lee finds instead is that the Reagan administration supported the overthrow of the new regime in Nicaragua and “took networks, individuals and ideas that Nicaraguans and their allies had used to make the revolution acceptable to international audiences and turned them to very different ends” (p. 122). After a decade of U.S.-backed guerrilla warfare against the Sandinistas, the ruling party’s electoral defeat in 1990 led to further disappointment during “neoliberal” attempts at economic modernization. Even the restoration of onetime Sandinista Commandante Daniel Ortega in the 2006 presidential election could not alter this tide. Lee’s story ends in 2018 with the collapse of attempts to promote modernization via a new transoceanic canal (funded by China) and with a surge of discontent among Nicaraguans over Ortega’s rule. Even though Lee recounts a long string of disappointments and failures, his book is not disappointing at all. It is thoroughly researched, draws on an impressive range of source material, and is clearly written and forcefully argued. Its compact size (188 pages of text) makes it perfect for classroom use. Its black-and-white illustrations are often startling and dramatic, helping to bring the subject to life. Lee’s emphasis on the intersection of internal Nicaraguan dynamics with the influence of outside actors underscores the challenge facing the people of a small country seeking to find their own path to progress and development and to overcome the obstacles posed by foreign powers, especially the United States and Cuba, both of which have tried to turn Nicaragua to their own purposes. This book recognizes Nicaragua and Nicaraguans as having long and distinctive national traditions in culture and politics; they are not reduced to a subset of East-West confrontation or of North-South negotiation and contestation.