Central America

Forty years after the Sandinista revolution that brought excitement and hope to young people all over the world, Nicaragua is ruled, ruthlessly, by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, an elderly married couple who seem destined to die in power. Chapter 8 discusses the evolution of Ortega from rebel to dictator and the realities facing Nicaragua.

The murder in El Salvador of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero in 1980, now canonized as Saint Romero by the Catholic Church, is remembered in this chapter, along with his political stand in defense of the poor and oppressed, which made him a target.

This chapter reveals today’s El Salvador—destroyed by violence during a civil war that lasted through the 1980s—where teenage street gangs impose new forms of terror.