158 Bradley Tatar teaches cultural anthropology and Spanish at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea. His research in Nicaragua was aided by sup- port from the Christopher DeCormier Scholarship in Mesoamerican Studies. LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 168, Vol. 36 No. 5, September 2009 158-177 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X09341981 © 2009 Latin American Perspectives State Formation and Social Memory in Sandinista Politics by Bradley Tatar The 2006 Nicaraguan elections saw a victory for Daniel Ortega, who has con- tinually been identified as an icon of the revolutionary era in which the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) destroyed the Somoza regime and formed a revolutionary government. Ortega’s success can be better understood by viewing the Nicaraguan Revolution as a state formation process in which popular culture is a field of conflict between social groups. The conflict here is between party militants and Sandinista supporters who do not enjoy the privileges of membership. Exam- ination of oral histories reveals that the conflict between militants and popular com- batants began in the Insurrection of Monimbó. The FSLN has appropriated and used the social memories of the combatants to produce its own history of that insurrection. Social memories reflect concrete processes of political subordination that result in the production of a dominant political language. Keywords: Sandinistas, Insurrection, State formation, Oral history, Popular culture, Social memory When Daniel Ortega Saavedra was elected president of Nicaragua for the second time in 2006, Latin America’s leftist forces were fortified. At the inau- guration ceremony he was flanked by presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia (La Prensa, January 10, 2007). Chávez presented him with a replica of the sword of Simón Bolívar, and Morales proclaimed, “Death to U.S. imperialism!” Returning to the presidency, Ortega is fulfilling a promise he made in 1990, when a decade of rule by the Sandinista revolu- tionary government was brought to an end. Ceding victory to the U.S.-favored president-elect Violeta Chamorro, Ortega promised to return to power: “This is the Good Friday of Sandinismo, but we will be resurrected as was Christ” (Gorostiaga, 1990). Nevertheless, it is not clear whether Ortega’s new presidency represents a continuation of the Nicaraguan Revolution that brought the Sandinistas to power in 1979. In 1990, many who had supported the Sandinistas during the revolution were dissatisfied and considered the Sandinista government authoritarian and unresponsive to the needs of the people (Barnes, 1992; Tinoco, 1998; Vilas, 1990). After 1990, Ortega’s political party, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front— FSLN) became an opposition party that led protests against privatization and