Granada Nicaragua - Town Square
Photo: Shawn Millin, CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Did you know?
Nicaragua is bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean Sea of the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The country also shares maritime borders with El Salvador to the west and Colombia to the east. Nicaragua's largest city and national capital is Managua, which is also the fourth-largest city in Central America, with a population of 1,055,247 as of December 2020. Nicaragua is known as "the breadbasket of Central America" due to having the most fertile soil and arable land in all of Central America.
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FDN & ARDE Frente Sur Commandas, Nueva Guinea zone of southeast Nicaragua, 1987
Photo: Tiomono ( talk ), CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Photo: unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Etymology
The etymology of Nicaragua is Nicānāhuac, which was the name the Nicaraos, a Nawat-speaking people, gave to the Greater Nicoya region of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It means "here lies Anahuac" in Nahuatl and is a combination of the words "nican" (here), and "Ānāhuac", which is a combination of the words "atl" (water) and "nahuac", a locative meaning "surrounded".
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History
Paleo-Indians first inhabited what is now known as Nicaragua as far back as 12,000 BCE. In later pre-Columbian times, Nicaragua's indigenous people were part of the Intermediate Area, between the Mesoamerican and Andean cultural regions, and within the influence of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Nicaragua's central region and its Caribbean coast were inhabited by Macro-Chibchan language ethnic groups such as the Miskito, Rama, Mayangna, and Matagalpas. They had coalesced in Central America and migrated both to and from present-day northern Colombia and nearby areas. Their food came primarily from hunting and gathering, but also fishing and slash-and-burn agriculture.
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Geography
Nicaragua occupies a landmass of 130,967 km2 (50,567 sq mi), which makes it slightly larger than England. Nicaragua has three distinct geographical regions: the Pacific lowlands – fertile valleys which the Spanish colonists settled, the Amerrisque Mountains (North-central highlands), and the Mosquito Coast (Caribbean lowlands).
The low plains of the Caribbean Coast are 97 km (60 mi) wide in areas. They have long been exploited for their natural resources.
On the Pacific side of Nicaragua are the two largest freshwater lakes in Central America—Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua.
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Government and politics
Politics of Nicaragua takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Nicaragua is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the national assembly. The judiciary makes up the third branch of government.
Since Daniel Ortega's election in 2006, liberal democratic norms and individual rights in practice have deteriorated, a process known as democratic backsliding.
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Economy
Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the Americas, only ahead of Haiti in terms of nominal per capita GDP. Its gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2023 was estimated at US$56.7 billion. In 2020, agriculture represented 15.5% of GDP, the highest percentage in Central America. Remittances account for over 15% of its GDP. Almost one billion dollars are sent annually to the country by Nicaraguans living abroad. The economy grew at a rate of about 4% in 2011. By 2019, given restrictive taxes and a civil conflict, it recorded a negative annual growth rate of −3.9%.
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Demographics
According to a 2014 research published in the journal Genetics and Molecular Biology, European ancestry predominates in 69% of Nicaraguans, followed by African ancestry in 20%, and lastly indigenous ancestry in 11%. A Japanese research of "Genomic Components in America's demography" demonstrated that, on average, the ancestry of Nicaraguans is 58–62% European, 28% Native Nicaraguan, and 14% African, with a very small Near Eastern contribution.
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Culture
Nicaraguan culture has strong folklore, music and religious traditions, deeply influenced by European culture but also including Indigenous Nicaraguan sounds and flavors. Nicaraguan culture can further be defined in several distinct strands. The Pacific coast has strong folklore, music and religious traditions, deeply influenced by Iberian Peninsula Europeans. It was colonized by Spain and has a similar culture to other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. The indigenous groups that historically inhabited the Pacific coast have largely been assimilated into the mestizo culture.
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