A retrospective essay on Nicaragua ten years after the end of the Sandinista period.

Nicaragua: an American tragedy

The full-length original version.

An American tragedy - New Internationalist magazine

A shorter version of the essay published by New Internationalist, a UK-based magazine.

An international consortium is proposing to build a mega-project in Nicaragua: a "dry canal" comprising a high-speed railroad and two deep-water ports to move containers across the Central American isthmus. Originally produced for MSNBC News, now in an expanded version, these multimedia pieces are based on research in Nicaragua in October and November, 1996, and interviews with dry canal officials and sources in the international shipping industry in 1997. I believe I am the first journalist to have visited both proposed sites of the dry canal ports.

"Dry canal" across Nicaragua breathes new life into old dream

An expanded and updated version of the story that originally ran on MSNBC News

Slide/audio show: Shipping industry

The container shipping industry seeks new routes across the Americas.

Slide/audio show: Monkey Point

Monkey Point, the Caribbean terminus of the proposed dry canal, and Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast.

Building a new route between oceans

The MSNBC News version of this story that ran on http://www.msnbc.com in late August and early September

Nicaragua's Thermidorian reaction

An evaluation of the elections of October 1996, their results and their implications for Nicaragua's future, based on an article published by Sintonia, an online review of the University of Guadalajara, Mexico.

Missionaries and markets in Nicaragua

A pre-election analysis of the Nicaraguan political prospect, expanding on an op-ed piece that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Peter Costantini wrote about the 1996 Nicaraguan elections for MSNBC News. He previously co-led an observer delegation to the Nicaraguan elections of 1990 for Northwest-Nicaragua Electoral Watch and taught at the National Engineering University in Managua in 1986. He has also covered elections in Mexico and Haiti, and is Seattle correspondent for Inter Press Service, an international newswire based in Rome.