Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Mesoamerica and has one of the largest foreign debt burdens in the region. Nearly half the population lives below the poverty line and rural Nicaraguans are the poorest segment of society.  

Subject to periodic U.S. intervention dating back to the mid-1800s, the most notorious recent period of U.S. interference in Nicaragua was the U.S.-sponsored war against the Sandinista government during the 1980’s. This Contra War led to the Iran-Contragate scandals inside the U.S. government.  

Nicaragua suffered from the authoritarian reign of the Somoza family, backed by the U.S., from 1936-1979. The family amassed staggering wealth, including vast holdings of land, and monopolies in key industries. The Somoza family’s reign ended in 1979 with the Sandinista-led Nicaraguan revolution.  

Among the first actions of the Sandinistas was the Agrarian Reform Law, which transferred nearly a third of the total land under cultivation to campesinos. Land expropriations began with the former dictator’s properties, constituting about a fifth of all farmland, and continued under agrarian reform laws passed in 1981 and 1986.

Most of the affected land belonged to the richest 5 percent of landowners, who, at the end of the Somoza period, controlled more than half of the land under cultivation. Under pressure from Grassroots partner the Association of Farmworkers (ATC) and their allies, by 1988 the agrarian reform had benefited 60 percent of Nicaraguan peasant families: 43 percent received land, typically as members of government cooperatives, and another 17 percent received the land on which they had been squatters or laborers.

In subsequent years, this reform program has suffered many significant setbacks, not least of which is a global food system that leaves small farmers out in the cold. The ATC and its allies remain a powerful voice for fair distribution of land and support for small farmers. This work has become more urgent as thousands upon thousands of Nicaraguan farmers migrate out of the countryside in search of scarce work.