Stephen Kinzer Nicaragua Quotations

The two largest oil-producing countries in Latin America, Mexico and Venezuela, sold petroleum to Nicaragua at concessional rates for several years beginning in 1980. The program was curtailed because Nicaragua could not make even reduced payments.

During the Reagan Administration, so much attention was devoted to fighting Marxism in Nicaragua and El Salvador that Washington lost sight of longer-term challenges in other countries.

No one will ever be able to say what the comandantes would have done with their historic opportunity in Nicaragua if they had not been confronted with civil war.