Sandinistas Revisited / A quarter century after the promise of the revolution, Nicaragua is bitter and exhausted.

"That paradise, in a tiny country historically dominated by the United States, fell apart almost before its people had a chance to savor their victory. I watched the hopeful women and men of the FSLN -- untrained students, priests, soldiers and poets who had the business of running a government fall into their laps before most of them were 30 years old -- grapple with land reform, ambitious literacy and health campaigns and the staggering economic challenges facing the second-poorest country in the hemisphere. I watched as the contra war raged throughout the countryside, killing and terrorizing thousands, undoing the social programs of the revolution and undermining popular democracy in the name of anticommunism."