Besides the natural disasters and civil wars typical of Central America, Nicaragua has also been cursed with a spectacularly corrupt succession of leaders. From Anastasio Somoza senior, of whom Franklin Roosevelt reputedly said that "he may be a son of bitch, but he's our son of a bitch", to his eponymous son, who pocketed most of the foreign aid that arrived after an earthquake flattened the capital in 1972-the city centre is still largely grass-land-to Arnoldo Aleman (pictured above left), who was sentenced last year to 20 years in jail for corruption and money-laundering, the country's caudillos, or strongmen, have contributed to making Nicaragua the poorest country in the isthmus. Its GDP per head, according to the IMF, is barely a quarter that of El Salvador, which suffered an even bloodier civil war between leftist revolutionaries and Ameri-.can-backed right-wing insurgents than Nicaragua did, but has done well since.
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