How Nicaragua’s Comeback Started to Fall Apart
Business leaders appreciated the stability brought by a strongman president, until protests and crackdowns rocked the economy.
Bad for business. But maybe good for democracy.
Photographer: Carlos Herrera/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images
Like many of their neighbors, Nicaraguans each year fondly recall past insurrections. July 19 is Liberation Day, when the Sandinista Revolution seized power in 1979. Oct. 12 is not Columbus Day but the date to celebrate indigenous resistance. So how will April 18 be remembered?
That’s when students, civic groups and political discontents took to the streets this year in Managua and cities other across the country to defy the increasingly despotic rule of revolutionary-turned-strongman Daniel Ortega. The ensuing turmoil has already claimed at least 212 lives, and shows no signs of flagging. Less dramatically, but every bit as dire, the uprising also has thrown one of the region’s most dynamic economies into unprecedented crisis, from which the hemisphere’s marquee strongman may find it hard to escape.