Robert J. Sierakowski offers a needed glimpse into the ethical foundations of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), entering into dialogue with the Nicaraguan past and present. The only significant shortcoming is that the work focuses on the Segovias, a region located in the northwest part of the country. Although it is true that the provinces of Estelí and Madriz are “considered the country's most quintessentially ‘revolutionary’ zone and the veritable heartland of the Sandinista movement” (4), any analysis of a Sandinista moral Weltanschauung would benefit immensely from including Managua, Masaya, and other regions important to the revolutionary ideology. If the scope of the monograph is, understandably, limited by thematic or geographic concerns, this should be reflected in the title of the volume.

The book is organized into an introduction, six chapters (each divided into a variety of subsections), and an epilogue. In the introduction, Sierakowski justifies the focus on Estelí and Madriz and writes that the volume “offers a reinterpretation of the origins of the Nicaraguan revolution from the perspective of popular mobilization and the personal experiences of the countless women and men who helped construct its ideals” (3). This leads us to perhaps the most valuable aspect of the work: for his research, the author consulted the recordings made during the Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización during 1980, available at the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica (IHNCA) at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Managua, and “reviewed more than 300 of the interviews from across the Segovias” (19). He also conducted a number of interviews over a period spanning several years.

These first-hand testimonies continually inform and illustrate Sierakowski's examination of Sandinista morality as constructed by revolutionary programs and the actions of the soldiers and the military and political leaders. The first chapter, “State of Disorder,” for example, examines the legacy of the Somoza dictatorship, particularly the rampant presence of prostitution and political corruption in both rural and urban areas. Eulogio Hernández, a member of the indigenous community in Cusmapa (Estelí), speaks at length about the manipulations of the Somoza administration as it attempted to polarize residents during elections and obligate them to choose between two allegedly different candidates who were, in the end, the same: “They had us so blindfolded that they were able to trick us. And as we didn't know any better and didn't know how to read, they told us: Camilo López is in favor of whites; Victor Manuel Talavera is in favor of the indigenous. And they were the same shit” (40).

The author makes a number of observations throughout the work that, while not necessarily novel, serve to construct the “moral history” of the Sandinistas: the repeated references to “family and kinship” and politics, the detailed examples of moral corruption during the Somoza regime, the “ethical standard” established by Augusto Sandino in the late 1920s, the relationship between more contemporary Sandinistas such as Leonel Rugama and Carlos Fonseca and the legacy of Sandino, the significance of the Cursillos de Cristiandad seminars offered by Jesuits in the Estelí region, the challenges to Somocista authority based on political, economic, and moral principles, the role of Comunidades Eclesiales de Base in contructing a new moral code, and the treatment of traitors (known as orejas) who were loyal to the Somocista cause, among many others. The epilogue, titled “Whither the Revolution,” examines “Nicaragua and the Sandinistas since 1979” and brings the reader up to the presidency of Daniel Ortega and the protests that erupted across the nation on April 18, 2018, describing the current violence against these protestors and questioning the moral high ground taken by the Sandinistas decades ago: “Though pro-Ortega forces still laid claim to the imagery and slogans of the revolution, the youth raising the blue-and-white Nicaraguan flag in the face of police gunfire perhaps embodied its essence of moral regeneration to a far greater extent than those who now wave the red-and-black [Sandinista] banner” (239).

Although there are a few shortcomings, these may be attributed to the limited geographical focus of the work, the Segovias. The repeated reference to alcoholism as a moral (rather than a physiological) condition and the lack of attention to the diversity of moral regeneration after the revolution (the lack of references to the Atlantic Coast communities, the islands in Lake Nicaragua, or the area along the southern border with Costa Rica, among others) are significant. Although two volumes are included in the bibliography, the absence in the study of the vast four-volume collection Memorias de la lucha sandinista (2010-12) by Mónica Baltodano, an ex-revolutionary comandante, is particularly disconcerting, especially considering that this watershed work brings together interviews conducted by Baltodano on her radio program Entre Todos on Radio Primerísima between 1999 and 2002 and that Volume 2 focuses in part on the insurrection in the Segovias. Despite these shortcomings, this book is a valuable contribution to the field that offers a unique vantage point from which to consider the Somoza dictatorship, the subsequent revolution, and the construction of a moral substrata on which the new Sandinista nation would be erected.