Granada - History
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The
dark chapter of Nicaraguan history in which the U.S. filibuster William
Walker, ( the greatest of American filibusters, was another visionary adventurer, imbued with the desire of founding a colony in Mexico, near
the American border His aim, however, was to obtain the independence of Sonora and Baja California for
the ultimate annexation to the United States, and for the extension of slave territory so as to maintain the balance of power for the South.) ruled the country with an army of mercenaries was especially dismal for
Granada, since he used the city as his base for awhile. When the advance of a Central American army forced him to abandon Granada in 1856,
Walker set fire to the city, destroying most of its colonial architecture. |
Granada was founded by the conquistador Francisco Hernandez
de Cordoba in 1523, at the site of an indigenous village. He named the city after his home in Spain, and though Nicaragua's Granada has nothing
to rival the splendour of the Alhambra, the city has plenty of spectacular architecture. In 1849, when the discovery of California Gold Rush
marked the beginning of a massive migration from the east coast of the United States to the west. Since crossing the United States was a long
and dangerous trip, most people made the journey by ship down to the mouth of the San Juan, where smaller boats took them up the river and
across the lake, to where they boarded a Stage Coach to the Pacific coast, and took another ship to California. Granada's economy benefited
considerably from this traffic, but the country soon caught the attention of a new kind of pirate, which proved disastrous for the city. 
The Sandiness's formed a government
that at first included moderate conservatives, but moved rapidly to the political left in the early 1980s. In 1984, a Sandiness leader, Daniel
Ortega Saavedra, was elected president. The effects of land redistribution, literacy programs, and other reforms were nullified by costly
warfare between the Sandiness's and the contras, right-wing guerrillas based outside the country and supported by the U.S. In 1990 a
presidential election resulted in the unexpected defeat of Ortega by opposition candidate Violate Barrios de Chamorro, and the Sandiness
government and the contras agreed to a cease-fire. Under Chamorro, the army and police continued to be led by Sandiness's, but economic reforms
were instituted and inflation reduced. The economy remained stagnant and unemployment high, however, and tense relations between the Sandiness's
and their opponents threatened to undermine Chamorro's government.
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