Esmeralda, a Sandinista rebel during the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1978-1979, describes what the country was like during the time when the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was trying to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship. The overthrow of the Somoza regime was a bloody and violent affair, but Esmeralda justifies the revolution because she says that “the system under Somoza completely suppressed” the Nicaraguan people. She describes the Somoza regime taking people from their homes and killing them and says that the Nicaraguan people “lived in a system of terror.” The FSLN eventually ousted the Somoza dictatorship from power and then consequently struggled to govern the country from 1979 to 1990 while at the same time, fighting against the U.S.-backed Contras. The war with the Contras was considered to be a proxy war of the Cold War with the United States supporting the Contras and the Soviet Union backing the Sandinistas.
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