ABSTRACT
In the fall of 2006, a former enemy of the United States, Daniel Ortega, was elected president of Nicaragua. Ortega had been the leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990. During the 1980s the United States had actively sought to overthrow Ortega’s Marxist government by supporting a rebel group called the contras. The U.S. also refused aid and trade with Nicaragua and engaged in directly confrontational acts such as mining Nicaragua’s harbors (for which the Nicaraguans won a case against the United States in the World Court). This was one of the more scandalous ideological battlegrounds of the Cold War, pitting members of the U.S. solidarity and peace movements, who initially viewed the Sandinistas as a welcome change for social justice in Nicaragua, against those in the Reagan administration, who viewed the Sandinistas as Communist cronies and the contras as freedom fighters. Several decades later, relations between the United States and Nicaragua have smoothed, a course even Ortega’s reelection did not upset. Yet, there has never been any acknowledgement of wrong by the United States government, and the contentious past of the two countries has more or less been swept under the rug.
