Sandinista National Liberation Front

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistance against the United States occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s.

The FSLN overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle in the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, ending the Somoza dynasty, and established a revolutionary government in its place. Having seized power, the Sandinistas ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as part of a Junta of National Reconstruction. Following the resignation of centrist members from this Junta, the FSLN took exclusive power in March 1981. They instituted literacy programs, nationalization, land reform, and devoted significant resources to healthcare, but came under international criticism for human rights abuses, including mass execution and oppression of indigenous peoples. They were also criticized for mismanaging the economy and overseeing runaway inflation.

A US-backed group, known as the Contras, was formed in 1981 to overthrow the Sandinista government and was funded and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. The United States sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinista government by imposing a full trade embargo and by planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's ports. In 1984, free and fair elections were held, but were boycotted by opposition parties. The FSLN won the majority of the votes, and those who opposed the Sandinistas won approximately a third of the seats. The civil war between the Contras and the government continued until 1989. After revising the constitution in 1987, and after years of fighting the Contras, the FSLN lost the 1990 election to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in an election marked by US interference, but retained a plurality of seats in the legislature.

The FSLN is now Nicaragua's dominant party. Since the 2006 Nicaraguan general election when Daniel Ortega was reelected President of Nicaragua, Ortega and the FSLN have centralized power and overseen democratic backsliding in Nicaragua. In October 2009, the Supreme Court, which has a majority of Sandinista judges, overturned presidential term limits that were set by the constitution. Ortega and the FSLN were reelected in the presidential elections of 2011, 2016, and 2021, although these elections have been denounced entirely by international observers. The party is firmly controlled by Ortega. Provided by Wikipedia