However, its triumph was cut short with the election of Ronald Reagan, whose presidency came to be defined by its support of the Contras, counterrevolutionaries intent on destabilizing and overthrowing the Sandinista government. The tension between the Reagan administration & American communities as each sought to redefine its role in international affairs and implement their own respective foreign policies is the subject of this paper. I argue that sister cities, specifically its people-to-people exchanges, or what I call “grassroots diplomacy” was one of the most subversive and effective strategies that the transnational solidarity movement employed to break down American apathy and ignorance and instead win the hearts and minds of the American public as they fought to respect Nicaraguan autonomy. Sister cities contributed significantly to the spatial formation of oppositional politics where solidarity activists could articulate their frustration about American foreign policies and confront the Reagan administration by offering local communities a means to create and implement their own localized forms of foreign policy, one that underscored their worldview and priorities. Through sister cities, activists democratized foreign policy by authorizing local forms of governance to shape global affairs that challenged Reagan’s national foreign policy objectives.
