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Middle America,
bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean,
between Costa Rica and Honduras
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Guatemala and
Honduras
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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 Marxist Sandinista guerrillas to power in 1979.
Nicaraguan aid to leftist rebels in El Salvador caused the US to
sponsor anti-Sandinista contra guerrillas through much of the 1980s.
Free elections in 1990, 1996, and again in 2001 saw the Sandinistas
defeated. The country has slowly rebuilt its economy during the
1990s, but was hard hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
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slightly
smaller than the state of New York
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destructive earthquakes,
volcanoes, landslides; extremely susceptible to hurricanes
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Population:
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5,023,818 (July 2002 est.) |
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Religions:
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Roman Catolic 85%, Protestants 15% |
Hurricane Mitch
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