Politics in Sandanista Land.

Poor Nicaragua. It seems like those two words belong together: as with New and York or North and Carolina. I can't think of Nicaragua without thinking Poor Nicaragua. Just like Mexico, more than 20% of its people live in a different country, earning money to send back to relatives in P.N.
Nicaragua's neighbor, Costa Rica, had the chance to develop small fincas, or ranches, over the centuries. These independent-minded businessmen-ranch owners were able to establish a relatively stable representative government early on. In the long run, this paid off handsomely. Costa Rica has a relatively stable government, a relatively sound economy, and seems to walk a rather narrow road between the excesses of neo-liberalism and socialism.
That was not Poor Nicaragua's fate. For centuries, they had cotton plantations, which, like cotton plantations everywhere, from the American south to the Caribbean, wreaked havoc with the social structure and the economic future of the country. During the mid-20th century, the country was ruled by 3 different members of the Somoza family who bled the country dry. The result was the Sandanista revolution in the late 1970's. Ronald Reagan was not going to stand for that. As a result, the US began waging war, through the straw-men Contras, against the Sandanista socialist regime. Reagan's not-so-secret war was funded by arms sales with Iran. At any rate, the bottom line was that the US government imposed economic sanctions on Nicaragua. The theory is that economic sanctions will cause a government to fall. We've been doing it for over 50 years now in Cuba. At what point do we get the picture that economic sanctions don't work? What they are effective in doing is denying the common people access to basic imported products like toothpaste, etc. For a decade our sanctions further screwed the poor people of Poor Nicaragua.
At this point the government is irremediably corrupt; the infrastructure is a shambles; unemployment is said to run at about 40%; the people are incredibly poor. It will take something pretty close to an economic miracle to revive this poor country. There are lots of volunteer organizations here from the states and Europe trying to help. But the amount of help needed is so great compared to the relief being offered.
There are so many differences between Nicaragua and Mexico, it would take a very long time to begin to list them. However, one thing that stands out for me is that in Mexico, people are making plans for the future. They're adding an addition to their house, or planning on expanding their business in some small fashion. They are relatively optimistic about their good fortunes for next month, next year, etc. Just like in Nicaragua, a significant percentage of Mexicans are working outside of the country. Just like in Nicaragua, there is governmental corruption on a large scale. However, the difference is that here, the people exude a kind of fatalistic resignation to forces they can't control. Their time horizon is tomorrow. If they have food on the table for dinner tonight, then things are okay. They have so little money, they can't make plans for anything past tomorrow. Reading the paper here is an ongoing exercise in trying not to feel depressed.
Alas, Poor Nicaragua.