History

Evidence of human life in Nicaragua dates back 8,000 years, in the form of shells collected by a tribe called Los Concheros on the Caribbean coast. In the 13th century, the Corotega and Nicarao tribes also settled in the country, when they fled south from Aztec Mexico and found refuge around the country's two great lakes. These same people gave the Spanish a taste of their fighting spirit when the Europeans first landed in 1519. The tribal leaders Nicaroa and Diriangén engaged the conquistador Gonzalez in a brief battle, after which the Spanish retreated.

The Spanish explorer Francisco Hernández de Córdoba first established a permanent colonial foothold in the country in 1524. The tribes were defeated and, despite the occasional rebellion over the next century or so, were eventually subdued and subjugated by the Europeans. Nicaragua became the domain of the Spanish Empire for the next 300 years, with Granada becoming a major merchant city because of its access to the Atlantic. As in other parts of the region, Nicaragua's prosperity led to frequent raids from British, French, and Dutch pirates sailing up the Río San Juan in search of loot and fortune, using the Atlantic coast as their base.

After a period of struggle, Nicaragua won independence from Spain in 1821 along with the rest of Central America. It was briefly a province of Mexico before becoming a part of the short-lived Central America Federation. It eventually emerged as an independent nation in 1838. The English still retained their presence in the Caribbean, however, controlling the San Juan estuary from the port of Greytown until 1860. In that year, the British signed a treaty surrendering the Caribbean territory to Nicaragua, though in fact the region remained largely autonomous until 1893.

Quick to fill this power gap was America, which influenced Nicaraguan history from the late 1800s on. Nicaragua was of particular interest to the U.S. because it seemed like a good candidate for building a water channel between the Atlantic and Pacific. Plans for such a canal are still being considered to this day. When the steamship magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt pioneered a land, river, and sea route that saw thousands of North Americans passing up the river San Juan as part of the Californian Gold Rush in the 1850s, the country gained even more importance in the eyes of America.

In addition to growing American influence, the 19th century was dominated by a vicious rivalry centered in the cities of Granada and León that continues in some way to this day. During this period, Granada emerged as the establishment capital, favored by landowners and merchants who had little desire to reform the feudal system that existed. León became the center for liberal bourgeoisie who were inspired by the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions. Such was their rivalry that a national government was not declared until 1845, and the country was rocked by a civil war that went on intermittently throughout the rest of the century.

The country's political landscape was transformed by another American when mercenary and filibuster William Walker was hired by the León liberals to help in their latest skirmish with Granada. His private army of 300 roughnecks won the battle but had no intention of going home. Walker declared himself president in 1855 (with the support of the U.S. government) and soon instituted policies such as reestablishing slavery and declaring English as the official language. These policies did not go down well with the locals, and the Leoneses soon united with the conservatives to defeat Walker at the battle of San Jacinto in 1856.

A disgraced liberal class then surrendered to 36 years of mediocre conservative rule. The fishing village of Managua was declared the country's capital as a compromise. A nationalist general, José Santos Zelaya, took power in 1893 and marched his troops to the Atlantic coast to finally lay claim to what until then was Nicaragua's on paper only. The liberal-leaning Zelaya antagonized the Americans by threatening to rival the planned Panama canal with a foreign-financed waterway of his own. He was ousted with the aid of American marines in 1909. Three years later, a rebellion led by Benjamin Zeledón was crushed by an invasion of American marines that basically took over the country. For the next 12 years, there were 10 such uprisings against American-backed, conservative governments. After U.S. interests acquired some of Nicaragua's main businesses, Nicaragua soon found itself in hock to the United States and locked into an agreement where no other country could finance a canal that would interfere with Washington's plans in Panama.

A glimmer of hope came in 1924 when the liberals and conservatives finally agreed to a form of power sharing and the Americans withdrew their military presence. But the pact collapsed when conservative Emilio Chamorro staged a coup d'état and the Constitutional War broke out. Fearing a liberal victory, the U.S. again stepped in and negotiated a settlement that was opposed by one liberal general called Augusto C. Sandino. He held out in the northern highlands despite an American offensive that included the first recorded bombing of a civilian town, Ocotal.

In 1933, the American-trained National Guard was created, led by Anastasio Somoza Garcia. The Americans withdrew, handing power to Juan Bautista Sacasa. Sandino accepted the government's invitation to negotiate but instead was assassinated by the National Guard in 1934 in Managua. The murder was followed by a vicious clampdown by Somoza, who eventually took complete control in 1937.

What followed was 42 years of iron rule by a family dynasty that in the end owned everything worth owning in Nicaragua. The Somoza family became fabulously wealthy and all-powerful. They installed the occasional puppet president for appearance's sake and, with the help of the National Guard, rigged elections. When Anastasio Somoza Garcia was assassinated by the poet Rigoberto López Pérez in 1956, he was swiftly replaced by his son Luís "Tacho" Somoza Debayle and the regime continued as usual. The only good things to come out of such ravenous, profit-driven rule were huge public works such as the Pan-American Highway (Carretera Panamericana) and the Lake Apanás hydroelectric plant. There were several attempts on Somoza's life, including a Cuban-style insurrection in 1959 that petered out after 2 weeks.

The Somoza regime showed its gratitude for American patronage in 1961 by allowing its Atlantic coast to be used as the launching pad for the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation. In 1963, a new organization called the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) made its presence be known by staging an uprising in the North. Led by the Marxist Carlos Fonseca Amador, the Sandinistas were to prove a thorn in the side of an increasingly repressive regime. Tacho lost an election in 1963 and retired from politics. The new president Renée Schick was soon ousted by Anastasio "Tachito" Somoza in 1967. This younger brother of Tacho proved to be the cruelest and greediest of all the Somozas. He plundered reconstruction funds for the 1972 earthquake disaster and arranged the murder of newspaper editor and critic of the regime, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, in 1978. Based on his orders, the national guard massacred hundreds in Masaya and pitched battles broke out in the capital in which the air force bombed its own people. Despite the killing of their leader, Fonseca, in 1976, the Sandinistas gained the upper hand. The northern town of Matagalpa fell to the FSLN, followed by Estelí, and eventually the capital on July 19, 1979. Somoza fled to Paraguay, where he was eventually killed by a rocket attack in 1980.

The Sandinista revolution brought radical land reform and interventionist economics, policies that made the elite flee to Miami. While the economy collapsed, the poor became educated in hugely popular literacy drives. The new Reagan administration watched with dread what it perceived as a new front in the Cold War. Aid was halted in 1981 and an economic embargo was imposed in 1985, putting the economy into free-fall. A new insurgency appeared in the north, this time by a right-wing group called the Contras, financed and trained by the CIA. The Sandinista government had to divert badly needed money toward this new war, as well as impose unpopular policies such as a draft and rationing.

By the end of the 1980s, both sides of this battle were exhausted. The Iran-Contra scandal had dried up support for the counterinsurgents and the collapse of the Soviet Union was a serious blow to the revolution. A peace accord was proposed by Nicaragua's Central American neighbors (though opposed by the U.S.) and the Sandinistas accepted. Elections were held in 1990, and to the surprise of many, the government lost. A further surprise was a peaceful handover of power with the Sandinistas relinquishing control, but not before a shameful last grab of property and assets.

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro became the president of this new Nicaragua. The widow of the slain editor and leader of a loose coalition known as UNO, Doña Violeta introduced policies aimed at ending the war, reconciling all sides, and kick-starting the economy, with limited success. Meanwhile the Sandinistas embraced democracy and became the main opposition party, led by veteran Daniel Ortega. Despite strong support, Ortega lost the 1996 election to a corrupt, right-wing politician called Arnoldo Alemán, leader of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC). Alemán's tenure was rocked by endless kickback scandals and further tarnished by a disgraceful political pact with Ortega that basically divided power, pushed smaller parties out, and guaranteed immunity from prosecution for both leaders.

When Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, wreaking havoc across the country and killing thousands, Alemán's appallingly slow reaction sealed his fate as a one-term president. His vice president, Enrique Geyer Bolaños, came to power in 2002, trouncing Ortega with 56% of the vote.