Subtitle: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle
Author: Margaret Randall
Subject: Latin American Studies/History/Sociology
Paper ISBN 0-8135-2214-5
Pages: 224 pp.

"A book of extraordinary impact. Illustrated with striking portrait photos, it is the product of interviews with scores of women who fought and won in the Sandinista Liberation Front . . . the women speak for themselves. And they speak with compelling power. . . . Every story in this book is different, every woman memorable. . . . [This] is a book to remind us all of what the best in us can be."--The Calgary Herald

First published in 1981 in the wake of the Sandinist National Liberation Front (FSLN) revolution in Nicaragua, Sandino's Daughters can now be seen not as a triumph of revolutionary ideals, but as a triumph of the spirit. Through a series of interviews with participants at all levels in the resistance, Margaret Randall recounts the lives of ordinary women who became pillars of strength and perseverance during their decades-long involvement in the Sandinist struggle against the Somoza dictatorship.

Believing firmly that women's liberation was inextricably linked with national liberation, many of these women were in the vanguard of the movement inspired by Augusto Sandino. At the peak of revolutionary activity, women from all classes and backgrounds comprised 30% of the Sandinist army. For many of these women, politics became one with the personal.

Hindsight perhaps offers the greatest irony of the women's alliance with the FSLN in the fact that it was a woman, Violeta Chamorro, who challenged and defeated the Sandinistas in the free elections of 1990. Sandino's Daughters will always stand as a monument to all those who yearn to be free.

Margaret Randall is the author of more than fifty books, including Sandino's Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua (Rutgers University Press). She lives in New Mexico and teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in the Spring.