Abstract
There is evidence of settlement by Paleo-Indians in the region around 4000 BC. Spanish explorers, led by Gil González de Ávila, arrived in the west of present-day Nicaragua in 1523. They made contact with the Niquirano and the Chorotegano tribes, thought to have been linked to the Aztec civilization in Mexico, and the Chontal, who shared cultural traits with the Honduran Maya people. Government up to this point was through tribal monarchies and each grouping had distinct customs. In 1524 Francisco Hernández de Córdoba established Granada on Lake Nicaragua and León on Lake Managua. Many indigenous Indians were killed, died of introduced diseases or were enslaved. Estimates suggest the population fell from lm. to less than 100,000.
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Further Reading
Baracco, Luciano, Nicaragua: The Imagining of a Nation
—From Nineteenth-Century Liberals to Twentieth-Century Sandinistas. 2005
Cruz, Consuelo, Political Culture and Institutional Development in Costa Rica and Nicaragua: World-making in the Tropics. 2005.
Dijkstra, G., Industrialization in Sandinista Nicaragua: Policy and Party in a Mixed Economy. 1992.
Horton, Lynn, Peasants in Arms: War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979–94. 1998.
Jones, Adam, Beyond the Barricades: Nicaragua and the Struggle for the Sandinista Press, 1979–1998. 2002.
National Statistical Office: Dirección General de Estadistica y Censos, Managua.
Website (Spanish only): http://www.inide.gob.ni
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© 2012 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Turner, B. (2012). Nicaragua. In: Turner, B. (eds) The Statesman’s Yearbook. The Statesman’s Yearbook. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-59541-9_285
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-59541-9_285
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