Nicaragua is remarkable for its recent experience (1979–90) under the revolutionary government of the Sandinistas, itself unique amongst Marxist-inspired states. This is now in the past, and evangelicals (who grew rapidly during the Sandinista period) have emerged as important players in politics in the 1990s.

Nicaragua became a large exporter of coffee in the late nineteenth century. Attempts to diversify foreign investment and develop a more national capitalism led to American interventions and occupations. For most of the period from 1912 to 1933, Nicaragua was occupied. The end of this period saw the famous guerrilla war of Augusto César Sandino, whom the marines were unable to crush. The creation of an American-trained National Guard Nicaraguanised the conflict, but it also created a new power in politics. In 1936 the head of the National Guard, Anastasio Somoza García, removed the president and established the Somoza ‘dynasty’ which ruled until 1979. The Somozas amassed a huge fortune by all possible means, the diversion of international humanitarian funds after the 1972 earthquake being just the most scandalous example.

This created the potential for popular revolt. But by the early 1970s the Somozas had begun to be a threat to other business elements as well. By the middle of the decade, the Catholic hierarchy and much of the commercial and industrial elite were opposed to the regime. But this bourgeois-led opposition failed to overturn Somoza.