Speaker: Jorn Verschuere (Ghent University)
Series: TAPAS Seminars
Date and Time: 3 February 2023, 12.30 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.
Location: Vergaderzaal Malpertuis in the UFO building (third floor; turn right when you exit the lift), Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35, 9000 Ghent. If you wish to join the event in person, please contact tapas@ugent.be. Further information on how to join the event online can be found here.

Abstract: In 2018, a nationwide wave of anti-government protests took place in Nicaragua that quickly escalated into a spiral of violence, resulting in more than 300 deaths. Suddenly, the country’s reputation as ‘an oasis of peace’ located next to the violent Northern Triangle of Central America was shattered, despite earlier growing authoritarian tendencies. Although the protests were initially directed against austerity measures in the social security system, the legacy of Sandinismo eventually came to be at stake.

In this presentation, I revisit the nature of the regime of President Daniel Ortega and the events that transpired during 2018. Drawing on the work of Antonio Gramsci, special attention will be given to the role, and the interplay between, memory and space that made the presumed hegemony of Ortega and the FSLN paradoxically both present and yet absent. At the same time, I make an argument that the posthegemonic concept of ‘the multitude’, which emphasizes diversity and heterogeneity, can help to understand and analyse the popular protest movement better, instead of the concept of ‘the people’, which emphasizes oneness and homogeneity. This multitude offers a framework in which distinct memories or interpretations of past events can be understood and grasped within a seemingly united popular protest movement. In addition, I explore examples of the constant interaction between past and present in the shaping of Nicaragua’s past as conceived by the Sandinistas, and I show how even oppositional historical narratives are mediated through them. This analysis forms the basis for further research on the role of space and memory within cross-generational resistance against autocracy in Nicaragua.

Bio: Jorn Verschuere is a PhD student in the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at Ghent University. His research focuses on the role of memory and space within cross-generational resistance against autocracy in Nicaragua.

* Image from https://www.laprensani.com/2019/02/21/caricaturas/2526302-caricatura-21-02-2019