It's been a while since Americans paid much attention to this country, whose name evokes a war most have forgotten. But Nicaragua is back in the news, along with ominous warnings that its troubled past is prologue.
President-elect Daniel Ortega is the longtime head of the Sandinista Front, which was backed by the Soviet Union in the proxy war against the Contras in the 1980s. His close ties to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez trouble US officials in Washington and Managua, where the embassy all but openly campaigned against Ortega.
At the end of his last stint as president, Ortega, who before last Sunday had lost three electoral bids since 1990, seized property worth hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it foreign owned.
But on the country's rapidly developing Pacific coast, there's another side of the story. Nicaragua, the hemisphere's second-poorest country, is changing in ways that will make it difficult, and self-destructive, for Ortega to turn back the clock, even if he wants to. Sunday's election came amid intense efforts to boost tourism and foreign investment, capitalizing on the same natural assets -- pristine beaches, soaring volcanoes -- that made Costa Rica a multibillion-dollar destination. With unemployment hovering above 15 percent, by some estimates, it may be Nicaragua's best hope. Article continues....
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