Word: sandinista
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...Waving orange-and-yellow flags adorned with the famous outline of Sandino's iconic headgear - the most recognizable silhouette in Nicaragua - a group of left-wing protesters has taken to the streets, chanting old Sandinista slogans from the 1970s to rally others against what they claim is a return to dictatorship under Ortega. While the protest movement has grown quickly in recent weeks, fueled mostly by concerns over Nicaragua's deteriorating political and economic situation, it has also rekindled nostalgia for the old revolutionary symbols and songs that have since become propaganda tools for an unpopular government...
...Sandino's name was first invoked by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the 1960s, when it was a clandestine guerrilla movement. Its purpose was to establish a continuity with the popular nationalist revolutionary movement of the 1920s. While President Ortega may still imagine himself to be Sandino's heir, many of his former comrades say today's FSLN is nothing more than a vehicle for Ortega's personal ambitions, and has little claim to the ideals of its revolutionary past...
...Sandinismo is something that is much more profound than what the Sandinista Front represents today," says former Sandinista Vice President and movement intellectual, Sergio Ramirez, who defected from the FSLN in 1995 to start the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). "The Sandinismo that led to the triumph of the revolution has dispersed into distinct movements and many forms of expression...
...ruling Sandinistas, however, are having none of it. Earlier this month, the government cancelled the electoral status of the MRS, charging that it hadn't complied with all the technical requirements to register for upcoming municipal elections. The MRS claims the decision was a political move to eliminate challenges to Ortega. Excluded from the polls, the dissident Sandinistas have taken their challenge to the streets - Ortega's traditional territory - and challenge him for the historical memory and mystica of the Sandinista revolution...
...what can't be won on the streets will be fought in the realm of intellectual property: Famed revolutionary singer-songwriter Carlos Mejia Godoy, who wrote the soundtrack to the Sandinista revolution in the 1970s and '80s, told the government last week it can no longer play his music at official events. Mejia, who has had all his 200-plus songs copyrighted in Spain, told TIME that the Sandinista Front that had inspired his music 30 years ago no longer exists. "There aren't even any ashes left of that political organization, which has sent all of its values...