i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

Somoza regime and U.S. economic and political intervention into Nicaraguan affairs.
Much of the Sandinista agrarian agenda was derived from Wheelock’s perspectives on
exploitation and marginalization.
“On July 19 th , 1981, Daniel Ortega, Junta coordinator, announced the new
Agrarian Reform law before 500,000 people who had gathered in the Plaza to celebrate
the revolution’s second anniversary” (Envio August 1981: 1). Decree #3 of the Sandinista
Government of National Reconstruction authorized the confiscation of all Somoza family
and Somocista assets. 28 Instantaneously, the FSLN government nationalized two million
acres of agricultural land, representing approximately 2000 farms and ranches. This
constituted twenty percent of the total arable land, or forty-three percent of Nicaragua’s
large estates of 850+ acres. Somoza had personally controlled about one-third of the
confiscated land. However, a large percentage of the agricultural elite was not at risk of
land confiscation by the revolutionary government. Moreover, the new policy depended
on collaboration with large, private landholders to maintain export production levels and
food security.
The FSLN government instituted low land rents facilitating access to the
redistributed land by landless peasants. They also increased agricultural subsidies and
credits to aid investment in productivity and employment. Ownership of the redistributed
land came with a condition: Tierra a quien lo trabaje (Land to whomever works it). Idle
land or abandoned properties – many private landholders fled to Miami or elsewhere –
were confiscated and redistributed to eager and motivated campesinos and owners of
small to medium-size farms.
28 Somocistas were the political supporters and allies of the Somoza family. They had
been rewarded with land and privileges because of their affiliation with the dictatorship.
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