Modern Women Intellectuals and the Sandino Rebellion: Carmen Sobalvarro and Aura Rostand

Abstract

Achieving global fame in 1927, Nicaragua’s General Augusto César Sandino came to symbolize and unite international solidarity movements against US imperialism by cultivating a sophisticated transnational intellectual network that encompassed communications, public relations, intelligence, provisions, volunteers, and fundraising. The participation of male public intellectuals in Sandino’s strategic communications is well documented, but the roles of intellectual women in the rebellion have not been appreciably explored to date. Bringing to light new archival research on the Nicaraguan poets and journalists Carmen Sobalvarro and Aura Rostand, this article examines how their gendered writing and public personae propagated both Sandino’s war and his legacy after his 1934 assassination. As part of an informal network of women intellectuals, Sobalvarro and Rostand played integral roles in Sandino’s public relations in Nicaragua and abroad. As Sandino has once again become a contested figure in light of Nicaragua’s oppressive Ortega-Murillo government, this recuperative cultural study also bears on present-day Nicaraguan political discourse.