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When on February 25, 1990, Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua, it seemed that an end had finally come to the travail which had beset her country for the previous ten years. It was in the late 1970's that a popular revolution against the Somoza dictatorship was hijacked at the last moment by the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberation Nacional). Though the Sandinistas organized what appeared to be a coalition government, all power within it was concentrated in their hands; the non-Sandinistas—who included Violeta Chamorro herself, widow of a crusading newspaper editor murdered by Somoza—resigned one by one. During the 1980's the Marxist policies followed by the Sandinistas wrecked Nicaragua's economy. Real wages fell by perhaps 90 percent; a debt of over $10 billion was incurred; and the Soviet Union became the largest creditor of a country sunk in ever greater depths of penury.

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