ABSTRACT
By the early 1990s, a revival of broad-based movements in the United States seems possible, especially among women and minority communities. In principle, the end of the Cold War has created space for demanding a "peace dividend" for communities ridden with poverty, joblessness, homelessness, and drugs—problems of particular concern to people of color and women. Particularly in the wake of the February 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the future of Central America has appeared overwhelmingly negative. For Central America, at least in the short run, these changes reduce the margins of maneuver or "relative autonomy" vis-à-vis the major external power, the US, and leave uncertain prospects for peace. In Nicaragua, the people carried out a revolution and survived nine years of unrelenting US attack. Eventually, through its devastating military and economic war, the US was able to raise the cost to an intolerable level, and thus to achieve its goal of ousting the Sandinistas from state power.
