These images of the 1928 elections in puerto cabezas & bluefields are part of a series of 179 official photographs of the November 1928 elections produced by the US Electoral Mission to Nicaragua.  Twelve of these 179 are devoted to the Atlantic Coast.  They were probably the brainchild of Gen. Frank McCoy (the election's czar) and intended to illustrate the "free and fair" nature of the electoral process in different parts of the country.  And in fact these were widely recognized as the freest & fairest elections in Nicaraguan history to that time.  As the East Coast documents for this period make plain, there were no significant electoral disturbances anywhere in the Atlantic Coast, where the franchise was prized and the prospect of legally & peaceably booting out the Conservatives appealed to the vast majority of voters.  Photos are housed in the State Department records at Archives II in College Park MD (RG 84, dec. series 817.00, Box 8114).  The entire collection will be housed here in USDS-PHOTOS.  Thumbnails to high-resolution images accompany each photograph.

     There are some wonderful photos here.