To Defend This Sunrise : Black Women’s Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua

__To Defend this Sunrise__ examines how black women on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua engage in regional, national, and transnational modes of activism to remap the nation’s racial order under conditions of increasing economic precarity and autocracy. The book considers how, since the 19th century, black women activists have resisted historical and contemporary patterns of racialized state violence, economic exclusion, territorial dispossession, and political repression. Specifically, it explores how the new Sandinista state under Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has utilized multicultural rhetoric as a mode of political, economic, and territorial dispossession. In the face of the Sandinista state’s co-optation of multicultural discourse and growing authoritarianism, black communities have had to recalibrate their activist strategies and modes of critique to resist these new forms of “multicultural dispossession.” This concept describes the ways that state actors and institutions drain multiculturalism of its radical, transformative potential by espousing the rhetoric of democratic recognition while simultaneously supporting illiberal practices and policies that undermine black political demands and weaken the legal frameworks that provide the basis for the claims of these activists against the state. "To Defend this Sunrise examines how black women on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua engage in regional, national, and transnational modes of activism to remap the nation's racial order under conditions of increasing economic precarity and autocracy. The book considers how, since the 19th century, black women activists have resisted historical and contemporary patterns of racialized state violence, economic exclusion, territorial dispossession, and political repression. Specifically, it explores how the new Sandinista state under Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has utilized multicultural rhetoric as a mode of political, economic, and territorial dispossession. In the face of the Sandinista state's co-optation of multicultural discourse and growing authoritarianism, black communities have had to recalibrate their activist strategies and modes of critique to resist these new forms of "multicultural dispossession." This concept describes the ways that state actors and institutions drain multiculturalism of its radical, transformative potential by espousing the rhetoric of democratic recognition while simultaneously supporting illiberal practices and policies that undermine black political demands and weaken the legal frameworks that provide the basis for the claims of these activists against the state"-- Provided by publisher CONTENTS PREFACE An Unexpected Uprising? INTRODUCTION Black Women’s Activism in Dangerous Times Part 1 GENEALOGIES 1 • GRAND DAMES, GARVEYITES, AND OBEAH WOMEN State Violence, Regional Radicalisms, and Unruly Femininities in the Mosquitia 2 • ENTRE EL ROJO Y NEGRO Black Women’s Social Memory and the Sandinista Revolution Part 2 MULTICULTURAL DISPOSSESSION 3 • CRUISE SHIPS, CALL CENTERS, AND CHAMBA Managing Autonomy and Multiculturalism in the Neoliberal Era 4 • DANGEROUS LOCATIONS Black Suffering, Mestizo Victimhood, and the Geography of Blame in the Struggle for Land Rights Part 3 RESISTING STATE VIOLENCE 5 • “SEE HOW DE BLOOD DEY RUN” Sexual Violence, Silence, and the Politics of Intimate Solidarity 6 • FROM AUTONOMY TO AUTOCRACY Development, Multicultural Dispossession, and the Authoritarian Turn CONCLUSION Transition in Saeculae Saeculorum ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES REFERENCES INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR To Defend this Sunrise: Black Women's Activism and the Geography of Race in Nicaragua examines how black women activists on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua have resisted historical and contemporary patterns of racialized state violence, economic exclusion, territorial dispossession, and political repression from the 19th century to the present.