Introduction

Abstract

Like a distant region in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Central America is often seen as an area bypassed by history — a backwater dominated by the production of bananas and coffee. And until recently, Nicaragua was seen as one of the most traditional of the Central American states. It was a land where macho dictators and their mercenary guard ruled over an unsophisticated populace who were little able to initiate change.