| This dissertation examines the gendered construction of loss, in particular, the cultural significance of the grieving mother in recent Nicaraguan history, focusing on The Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs and The Mothers of the Disappeared. Suffering and grief are subjective experiences informed by specific socio-cultural systems and material conditions.; The last forty years produced enormous losses of Nicaraguan lives, beginning with widespread state-sponsored violence under dictator Anastasio Somoza and compounded by the devastating 1972 Managua earthquake. A protracted insurrectionary struggle culminated in the overthrow of Somoza: but an estimated forty to fifty thousand Nicaraguans died between 1977 and the 1979 Triumph of the Sandinista Front. The Contra War of the 1980s cost an additional thirty thousand Nicaraguans lives. Thousands more disappeared.; It is Nicaraguan mothers, not widows, sisters, fathers or brothers, who symbolize this nation's anguish. This study analyzes mourning rituals in shifting political contexts to compare and contrast the ways that mothers understand their loved ones' deaths and disappearances. The furtive mourning necessitated by dictatorial repression is contrasted to revolutionary public rituals developed to commemorate fallen Sandinista combatants, relocating grief from private space to the communal and national arenas. Notably, the missing bodies of the disappeared and their absence in public discourse, ritual, and popular culture marginalized those mothers within their communities and the body politic. Mindful that in societies with low literacy, songs, poems, murals and monuments contest written histories, particular attention is paid to oral and visual remembering embodied in popular culture.; The gendered tropes of sacrifice and martyrdom, drawing on traditional Catholic imagery, continued to shape reactions to loss, death, and personal hardship throughout the 1990s. As communities became increasingly polarized, mourning and commemorative rituals crafted by mothers reflected their political ideologies and social alliances. In the fractious political environment following the Sandinistas' 1990 electoral defeat, history, memory, identity and meanings of suffering were hotly contested. How the revolution was remembered, by whom, and why were questions central to these disputes. However, maternal discourses of death, sacrifice, and suffering became gendered discussions about resistance, power, and social justice. |
