Der Staat Nicaragua liegt in Zentralamerika. Er grenzt im Norden an Honduras und im Süden an Costa Rica sowie im Westen an den Pazifik und im Osten an die Karibik. Nicaragua gehört zu den ärmsten Ländern der Welt.
Unabhängigkeit: Proklamation 15. 9. 1821 (ehem. spanische Kolonie), endgültig 30. 4. 1838 (Austritt aus der Zentralamerikanischen Konföderation)
Staatsgebiet:
CIA
Background-Info
The Pacific coast of Nicaragua was settled as a Spanish colony from Panama in the early 16th century. Independence from Spain was declared in 1821 and the country became an independent republic in 1838. Britain occupied the Caribbean Coast in the first half of the 19th century, but gradually ceded control of the region in subsequent decades. 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 2001, saw the Sandinistas defeated, but voting in 2006 announced the return of former Sandinista President Daniel ORTEGA Saavedra. Nicaragua's infrastructure and economy - hard hit by the earlier civil war and by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 - are slowly being rebuilt.
