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The revolution revealed the country as one of the major proxy war battlegrounds of the Cold War. The initial overthrow of the Somoza dictatorial regime in 1978–79 cost many lives, and the Contra War of the 1980s took tens of thousands more and was the subject of fierce international debate.
The war left approximately 50,000 dead and 150,000 Nicaraguans in exile. The five-member junta entered the Nicaraguan capital the next day and assumed power, reiterating its pledge to work for political pluralism, a mixed economic system, and a nonaligned foreign policy.
Beginning of the Cold War; Anastasio Somoza García: Costa Rican Civil War (1948) Costa Rica Calderón Forces People's Vanguard Party Nicaragua: National Liberation Movement Ulatistas: Defeat. Teodoro Picado Michalski toppled, José Figueres Ferrer becomes President of Costa Rica; Víctor Manuel Román: Invasion of Costa Rica (1955) Calderón ...
In 1941, during World War II, Nicaragua declared war on Germany. Somoza sent no troops to the battlefronts, but used the crisis to seize attractive properties held by German-Nicaraguans, the best known of which was the Montelimar estate. (Today it operates as a privately owned luxury resort and casino. [59])
In 1912, during the Banana Wars period, the U.S. occupied Nicaragua as a means of protecting American business interests and protecting the rights that Nicaragua granted to the United States to construct a canal there. [57] At the same time, the United States and Mexican governments competed for political influence in Central America.
The United States occupation of Nicaragua from August 4, 1912, to January 2, 1933, was part of the Banana Wars, when the U.S. military invaded various Latin American countries from 1898 to 1934. The formal occupation began on August 4, 1912, even though there were various other assaults by the United States in Nicaragua throughout this period.
While the Cold War itself never escalated into direct confrontation, there were a number of conflicts and revolutions related to the Cold War around the globe, spanning the entirety of the period usually prescribed to it (March 12, 1947 to December 26, 1991, a total of 44 years, 9 months, and 2 weeks). [1] [2]
The US government knew that the Nicaraguans had been exhausted from the war, which had cost 30,865 lives, and that voters usually vote the incumbents out during economic decline. By the late 1980s Nicaragua's internal conditions had changed so radically that the US approach to the 1990 elections differed greatly from 1984.