After the Cuban Revolution, armed movements across Latin America embraced violent struggle as a path to social transformation. Yet only one managed to seize power: Nicaragua’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). Their unlikely victory in July 1979 gripped the world’s attention and ignited a major hotspot in the late Cold War.

How did it happen? Drawing from his book The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History, Mateo Jarquín recounts the fall of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. The story unfolds not only inside Nicaragua and in Washington but across Latin America, where the rebel FSLN was embedded in a regional web of state and non‑state actors conspiring to isolate Somoza, challenge U.S. influence, and ultimately bring about the last major left‑wing revolution of the 20th century.

The talk is sponsored by the Center for Cold War Studies and International History and cosponsored by the UCSB Department of History and the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program.

Mateo Jarquín is Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Master’s Program in War, Diplomacy, and Society at Chapman University. His research explores the intersection of democracy, revolutions, and international relations in modern Latin America. He is the author of The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History (University of North Carolina Press, 2024), which received the 2025 Michael H. Hunt Prize in International History from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Articles from this research agenda have appeared in journals such as Cold War History and The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History. Alongside his historical work, he writes regularly about contemporary Central American politics. Originally from Nicaragua, Jarquín holds a PhD from Harvard University and a BA from Grinnell College.