Nicaragua/History

Background: Settled as a colony of Spain in the 1520s, Nicaragua gained its independence in 1821. Violent opposition to governmental manipulation and corruption spread to all classes by 1978 and resulted in a short-lived civil war that brought the Sandinista? guerrillas to power in 1979. Nicaragua then aided leftist rebels in El Salvador.

The United States government supported the anti-Sandinista Contras? to re-take the country in the early 1980s. Support was cut to what the Reagan administration could manage illegally (see the Iran-Contra Affair) after The United States Congress ended such aid. Elections in 1990 and again in 1996 went to the Sandinistas. The country has slowly rebuilt its economy during the 1990s, but was hard hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.