‘It stays with me.’ Mística, struggle and lifelong learning during the Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade

This article examines how four former brigadistas, who participated in the 1980 Nicaraguan National Literacy Crusade, retrospectively make sense of their participation in the Sandinista Revolution. Throughout their reflections, they confront la mística revolucionaria, the cultural framework that shaped their involvement during and after the Crusade and that gave rise to internal struggles that blended compliance and agency. Drawing from historical narrative inquiry, the findings show at least four internal struggles from which they make meaning: 1) becoming a revolutionary subject through compliance, 2) confronting political and methodological directives with the pedagogical realities of the countryside, 3) transitioning from commitment to disillusionment and 4) sustaining their agentic self beyond the revolution. These struggles became an enduring source of lifelong learning that shaped how individuals preserved ethical commitments to education and justice while distancing themselves from the Sandinista party’s transition into an autocratic organisation.