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Nicaragua The Society and Its Environment
![[GIF]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/nicaragua/ni02_00a.gif)
Roman Catholic church in Managua
A GROUP OF DEDICATED REVOLUTIONARIES, THE
SANDINISTAS (see Glossary)
came to power in 1979 determined to transform
Nicaraguan society. How well they succeeded in their goal
was
still being debated in 1993. during their years in power,
the
Sandinistas nationalized the country's largest fortunes,
redistributed much of the rural land, revamped the
national
education and health care systems to better serve the poor
majority, rewrote the laws pertaining to family life, and
challenged the ideological authority of the Roman Catholic
bishops. But although the Sandinistas were confronting a
society
that was subject to powerful forces of secular change,
this
society also had deeply ingrained characteristics. Before
and
after the Sandinista decade, Nicaraguan society was shaped
by the
strength of family ties and the relative weakness of other
institutions; by rapid population growth and rising
urbanization;
by male dominance, high fertility rates, and large numbers
of
female-headed households; by the predominance of nominal
Roman
Catholicism existing alongside the dynamism of evangelical
Protestantism; by steep urban-rural and class
inequalities; and
by sweeping cultural differences between the
Hispanic-mestizo
west and the multiethnic society of the Caribbean
lowlands.
In 1993 the permanence of the changes made by the
Sandinistas' was unclear. The relevant social scientific
literature was slim, and many basic statistics were
unavailable.
Furthermore, the forces set in motion by the Sandinista
revolution might take decades to play themselves out.
Data as of December 1993
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