'To Defend the Nicaraguan Revolution is to defend Mexico': Mexican solidarity with the Sandinista Revolution, 1974-82

In the 1970s, a broad range of leftist dissidents in Mexico, from labour organisers to communists to gay liberation activists, took inspiration from and expressed their support for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua. This essay examines Sandinista solidarity in Mexico City in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, to shed new light on the contested meanings of 'revolution' in Mexico's politics, society, and culture in the late Cold War period. Sandinismo resonated powerfully in Mexico for activists and politicians alike, for reasons having to do with Mexico's own revolutionary history, as well as domestic and diplomatic challenges it faced in the present.