Managua

Once a small tropical fishing village, Managua is now the capital city of Nicaragua, hosting almost 1,5 million people or about a quarter of the countries population. But there has been a long way to go for this center of politics, economics and industries and although the city has been damaged, both by human and nature, its' people refuses to give up.

Evidence has been found that Managua was inhabited already 4000 B.C. and long time it remained an indigenous village, located between the two rivals, Granada y Leon. The concurrence between those two cities was also the main reason for Managua to be chosen as the capital of Nicaragua in the mid 19 th century.

In 1931 Managua was affected by an earthquake, which made a lot of damage and took the lives of more than 1000 people. The residents started rebuilding the city only to see it destroyed, this time by a fire, five years later.

In 1972 Managua was a city with a population of half a million people but an earthquake of 6,3 on the Richter Scale leveled a great part of the center, 10.000 people died and over 50.000 homes were destroyed. From this fatal disaster the city has yet not fully recovered and the ruins of the old city center is still visible. A lot of money and international aid were sent to the country although the supplies never reached the people but stayed in the hands of the corrupt president. Among other things, this generated a revolution seven years later. Tens of thousands of people died but the mission was successful and the dictatorship of president Anastasio Somoza Debayle was finally over.

The Hurricane Mitch, that occurred in 1998, did not affect Managua as much as it did in other parts of the country but provoked a flooding of the lakeside areas and the poorer population had to move to other parts of the city.

Nowadays Managua is constantly growing, mainly because of the rural population searching for a better life in the capital, and during the last 30 years it has tripled in size.