Nicaraguans

 

Nicaragua in the 1930s was led by the Somoza family for 40 years. When the 1972 earthquake destroyed much of the capital, Nicaraguans were trying to reassemble their lives as millions of dollars of relief supplies were embezzled by the Somoza family.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front emerged from a group of revolutionaries who fought against this communist regime. Unknown to the United States that the Somozas were a communist regime, they built a contra army to fight against the Sandinista regime in order to protect US interest to build the Panama Canal as well as to halt the perceived spread of communism. (27)

After many years of fighting and polarized political regimes, Nicaraguans , primarily professionals, intellectuals, political dissidents, labor leaders, and university students, escaped the Somoza persecution and turn to America's shores in search of opportunity and economic reasons. On top of them leaving in search of more, they were allowed in the US on political asylum as a chance to come closer to ending communism.

The majority of Nicaraguans who fled now live in Miami and thrive in their own community known as Little Managua. They make up 5% of the 10% of Central Americans in Miami , who add to the 1,000,000 Latinos. As a perk for them, because they are supposedly smarter and more educated as well as since they fled a communist country, they actually hold well paying positions, for example owning a business, such as restaurants, repair shops, or money transfer agencies. (28)

There are also those Nicaraguans though that came here in order to flee the political unrest, but aren't able to obtain such educated positions. “Half of all domestic employees and men who work in construction are Nicaraguan, and they are the ones who are building Miami (29)”, says Mario Lovo, a Nicaraguan immigrant himself.

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