A call to conscience : the anti/Contra War campaign / Roger Peace.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

U.S.-Nicaragua relations, the Sandinista Revolution, and the Contra War -- An overview of the Contra War debate -- Origins of the anti/contra war campaign -- Expansion of the anti/Contra War campaign, 1983/84 -- Organizational dynamics of a decentralized campaign -- The politics of transnational solidarity -- Meeting the political challenge, 1985/86 -- Sustaining the anti/Contra War campaign, 1987/90.

Unlike earlier U.S. interventions in Latin America, the Reagan administration's attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua during the 1980s was not allowed to proceed quietly. Tens of thousands of American citizens organized and agitated against U.S. aid to the counterrevolutionary guerrillas, known as "contras." Believing the Contra War to be unnecessary, immoral, and illegal, they challenged the administration's Cold War stereotypes, warned of "another Vietnam," and called on the United States to abide by international norms. A Call to Conscience offers the first comprehensive history of the anti-Contra War campaign and its Nicaragua connections. Roger Peace places this eight-year campaign in the context of previous American interventions in Latin America, the Cold War, and other grassroots oppositional movements. Based on interviews with American and Nicaraguan citizens and leaders, archival records of activist organizations, and official government documents, this book reveals activist motivations, analyzes the organizational dynamics of the anti-Contra War campaign, and contrasts perceptions of the campaign in Managua and Washington. Peace shows how a variety of civic groups and networks--religious, leftist, peace, veteran, labor, women's rights--worked together in a decentralized campaign that involved extensive transnational cooperation

Print version record.

English.

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