Nicaragua

Two great lakes and a line of volcanoes dominate western Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua, the largest in Central America, holds the twin-volcano island of Ometepe and drains to the Caribbean through the San Juan River, up which bull sharks swim from the sea. Momotombo, Masaya and the black cone of Cerro Negro rise along the Pacific side. The northern highlands are cool coffee country, and the Caribbean lowlands of the Mosquito Coast are rainforest and pine savannah.

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba founded Granada and León in 1524, and a feud between liberal León and conservative Granada outlasted independence in 1821. In 1856 William Walker, a filibuster from Tennessee, made himself president and had Granada burned before he was driven out. The Miskito kingdom of the Caribbean coast, long under British protection, was absorbed in 1894. United States Marines occupied the country for most of 1912–33, opposed by Augusto Sandino. The Somoza family ruled from 1937 until a revolution overthrew it in 1979.

Rubén Darío led the Spanish-language poetic movement called modernismo. In Diriamba, El Güegüense, a satirical colonial play in which a trickster outwits Spanish officials, is performed in masks at the January festival of San Sebastián. Baseball, not football, is the great sport, and gallo pinto, rice fried with red beans, starts the day. Coffee from Matagalpa and Jinotega, beef and gold lead exports, with rum distilled at Chichigalpa, cigars rolled in Estelí, and clothing and car wiring from free-trade zones.