His administration, egged on by US Senator Jesse Helms, has worked to return property and power to the wealthy Nicaraguans who fled to Miami after Somoza s fall. His administration, mired in corruption scandals, has signed structural adjustment plans with the International Monetary Fund and made the mandated deep social-spending cuts. When his financial comptroller attempted to investigate improprieties in his administration he jailed the official. For their part, the Sandinistas have failed to offer clear economic alternatives. Self-enrichment by some leaders as they left office in 1990 also seriously damaged the Front which had built up a relatively clean reputation in the 1980s.
Critics now see certain sectors of Nicaraguan business as the party s dominant force.
In 1998 the FSLN was devastated by still- unresolved accusations by the stepdaughter of twice presidential candidate Daniel Ortega that he had sexually molested her for years. Still, split into factions and out of power, many Sandinistas and ex-Sandinistas have maintained a sense of outrage at the injustices corroding Nicaraguan society. I mean American in the inclusive sense of North and South. As Latin Americans flow north and Canadian and US jobs go south, the fates of workers up and down the hemisphere have intertwined like bindweed in the thickets of transnational investment. Although the US still seems an island of prosperity, it is rapidly becoming a piece of a poor and turbulent continent.