To Defend This Sunrise

Black Women's Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua

By Courtney Desiree Morris

Rutgers University Press

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.

This is a very important and well-written book that will be attractive for scholars and students of race, gender, political activism, and citizenship in Latin America. Courtney Morris' work is essential for understanding the politics of authoritarianism and resistance in present-day Nicaragua.'

Karen Kampwirth, author of Women and Guerrilla Movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba

Morris has written a profoundly brilliant, sophisticated, and nuanced critique of mestizo nationalism. This book is a gift for anyone who cares about feminist organizing, ending anti-Black racism, and understanding contemporary authoritarianism, state violence, and mestizo hegemony in Nicaragua. It is also anthropology at its best, seeking to right the wrongs in the historical record by centering Black women’s struggles for autonomy and self-determination on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.'
Victoria González-Rivera, author of Before the Revolution: Women's Rights and Right-Wing Politics in Nicaragua, 1821–1979

This is a very important and well-written book that will be attractive for scholars and students of race, gender, political activism, and citizenship in Latin America. Courtney Morris' work is essential for understanding the politics of authoritarianism and resistance in present-day Nicaragua.'

Karen Kampwirth, author of Women and Guerrilla Movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba

Morris has written a profoundly brilliant, sophisticated, and nuanced critique of mestizo nationalism. This book is a gift for anyone who cares about feminist organizing, ending anti-Black racism, and understanding contemporary authoritarianism, state violence, and mestizo hegemony in Nicaragua. It is also anthropology at its best, seeking to right the wrongs in the historical record by centering Black women’s struggles for autonomy and self-determination on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.'
Victoria González-Rivera, author of Before the Revolution: Women's Rights and Right-Wing Politics in Nicaragua, 1821–1979

COURTNEY DESIREE MORRIS is an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Preface: An Unexpected Uprising?
Introduction: Black Women’s Activism in Dangerous Times
Part I: 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 II: 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 III: 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

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