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On the surface, it seems like the Nicaraguan government is doing quite a bit to fight the drug war and that Bluefields is a place of perdition. But reality is more complicated. Cocaine Trafficking Routes Through Nicaragua Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: "Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean" (September 2012) Credit: Alyson Hurt / NPR 'Cocaine Republics' Cocaine's Influence on Nicaragua's Miskito Coast Nicaragua — the largest country in Central America — has a lengthy coastline on the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. With its remote location, Bluefields is well placed to serve as a pit stop along the corridor where drugs travel from the South American producers to U.S. consumers. What's more, the cocaine moving through Nicaragua's territory represents a higher share of GDP than any other Central American country, which in the words of the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime, should give traffickers greater leverage to both sow more corruption and foment violence.

In 2011, The Global Commission on Drugs, a high-profile panel of world leaders – including former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — declared that the "global war on drugs has failed." And this September, the commission followed up with a report recommending policies that work, including some legalization and encouraging countries to try regulating instead of prohibiting some aspects of the drug trade.

, Ashe “gravely misrepresented the United Progressive Party government by implying that bribe money was necessary to gain an audience with me or my colleague ministers. That was never the case during the ten years of our administration.”

they have encountered a residue of corrupt practices from the former UPP regime, involving the abuse of public office and organized misappropriation of state resources.

We intend to have the best and most transparent governance structure in the Caribbean and beyond,” Browne said.

Browne noted that offences may also have been committed in Antigua under the Prevention of Corruption Act, which, he said, would be independently investigated by local law enforcement agencies.

that is their prerogative and there will be no political witch hunt by his government or the political party that he leads.

The Pacific coast of Nicaragua was settled as a Spanish colony from Panama in the early 16th century

The Pacific coast of Nicaragua was settled as a Spanish colony from Panama in the early 16th century

Central America, bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean, between Costa Rica and Honduras

Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America and the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere, has widespread underemployment and poverty. Textiles and agriculture combined account for nearly 50% of Nicaragua's exports.

6.1% (2015 est.)

destructive earthquakes; volcanoes; landslides; extremely susceptible to hurricanes volcanism: significant volcanic activity; Cerro Negro (elev. 728 m), which last erupted in 1999, is one of Nicaragua's most active volcanoes; its lava flows and ash have been known to cause significant damage to farmland and buildings; other historically active volcanoes include Concepcion, Cosiguina, Las Pilas, Masaya, Momotombo, San Cristobal, and Telica

2.98 million (2015 est.)

$31.33 billion (2015 est.) $29.98 billion (2014 est.) $28.64 billion (2013 est.)

the overwhelming majority of the population resides in the western half of the country, with much of the urban growth centered in the capital city of Managua; coastal areas also show large population clusters

9% of GDP (2014)

0.9 physicians/1,000 population (2014)

15 September 1821 (from Spain)

highest court(s): Supreme Court or Corte Suprema de Justicia (consists of 16 judges organized into administrative, civil, criminal, and constitutional chambers) judge selection and term of office: Supreme Court judges elected by the National Assembly to serve 5-year staggered terms subordinate courts: Appeals Court; first instance civil, criminal, and military courts

$12.22 billion (2015 est.)

$5,000 (2015 est.) $4,800 (2014 est.) $4,700 (2013 est.)

29.6% (2015 est.)

1 (2015)

transshipment point for cocaine destined for the US and transshipment point for arms-for-drugs dealing

children, running out of their homes to play in the streets.

This kind of tranquility is not something you'd see in the capital cities of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala or Belize, because over the past decade, Central America has been engulfed by bloodshed, becoming one of the most dangerous regions in the world.

Nicaragua, the poorest of the bunch and with just as bloody a history, is one of the safest countries in the hemisphere.

While Nicaragua's neighbors have embraced so-called "mano dura" or iron fist policies, Nicaragua has taken a softer approach.

The Nicaraguan police, for example, pacified the Dimitrov neighborhood by having the community patrol itself and by having police officers mediate talks between gang members often after soccer games.

El Salvador and Honduras legislated "mano dura" policies against youth crimes. Guatemala and Belize followed suit but in a more ad-hoc manner.

right now Nicaragua has just 70 juveniles in jail.

It's a system that was developed in the '70s, when Nicaraguans were preparing for war against the dictatorship

Some were instructed to develop emergency treatment centers at their homes, while others were given small, but important tasks like collecting water.

Cuadra and other human rights groups have expressed concern that the police and even the community volunteers have begun to take on those security roles again.

Correspondents say President Santos has risked his political future on the success of the peace deal.

But after 50 years of war, many Colombians still aren't ready to forgive. As President Santos put it, the hard work of building peace now lies ahead.

President Santos said this historic moment was a message from Colombia to the world: no more war. "No more war," the crowd chanted in return.

However, only hours before the signing, the EU announced it would suspend the Farc from its list.

1964: Set up as armed wing of Communist Party2002: At its height, it had an army of 20,000 fighters controlling up to a third of the country. Senator Ingrid Betancourt kidnapped and held for six years along with 14 other hostages2008: The Farc suffers a series of defeats in its worst year2012: Start of peace talks in Havana2016: Definitive ceasefire

Now the Ortegas and their allies control fuel companies, television stations and public construction projects.

She went public with rape accusations in 1998. But her mother, who has had seven children with Mr. Ortega as well, stood by him.Joined by Mr. Ortega and their adult children, Ms. Murillo held a news conference calling her eldest daughter a liar who suffered from psychological problems.

her loyalty to Mr. Ortega and her public defense of him were rewarded in the influence she has gained across the country.

war raged in Nicaragua as the victorious Sandinista revolutionaries fought insurgents known as the contras, who were backed by the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Ortega officially became president in 1984 and left office in 1990, when Nicaragua took steps toward peace.

The National Assembly and the courts were stacked with allies. The law was changed so that Mr. Ortega could run indefinitely.

Supreme Court banished a leading opposition figure from his own party, the Liberal Independent Party, preventing him from becoming an opponent in the November election.

even more power will be consolidated in the Ortega family.

“If a private company does not allow a married couple to work together, how is that allowed for a nation?”

“This is a movie we already saw, and we know how it ends,” said Mr. Ramírez, the former vice president. “It ends badly.”

"the Colombianization of the country,"

various residual groups of ex-combatants, some of whom are known by the government to be involved with international weapons and drug smuggling cartels, have started to take control of parts of the socially and economically isolated Caribbean region of Nicaragua.

The legacy of war and violence in Nicaragua is both heart-breaking and angering. In the recent history of the country, violence has always been answered with more violence.

According to testimonies from local sources, the rearmados are well-armed, expertly trained, equipped with modern methods of communication

In response to increased rebel activity in a gold and silver mining area called the "Mining Triangle" (Siuna, Bonanza and La Rosita), the Nicaraguan Army declared a military offensive

Initially dismissed by the government as "hotheads," "groups of delinquents" or "dogs of war" left over from the 1980s, the rebel groups appear to be anything but a rag-tag army.

During the U.S.-backed Somoza dynasty the state-sponsored repression of the poor by the National Guard was answered by the violence of the Sandinista Revolution, the triumph of which led to the violence of an eight-year-long, U.S.-funded war

Once again, Nicaragua finds itself in a nefarious cycle in which advocates of change must depend on external pressure to compensate for an inability of the country to find domestic solutions to its problems of governance. The only piece of good news seems to be that Mr. Ortega’s apparent strength rises from clay feet. As Somoza’s experience demonstrated, in a one-person regime that aspires to be a one-family dictatorship, the inevitable corruption and repression that it cultivates eventually make the regime unsustainable.

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possession, possession with intent to supply, and transfer of the illegal substance.

Two firearms with matching ammunition, and large sums of Eastern Caribbean and United States currency were sized in the operation.

motor van and a speedboat believed to be involved in the incident.

laundering charges,

The police in their quest to stem the flow of illegal drugs in and out of the country, as well as to rid the country of illegal firearms and ammunition, have to date seized millions of dollars’

2,500 cannabis plants,

The big issues that divide the United States (and let's not forget, Canada) from its Latin American allies are Cuba, drugs, and immigration. On a trip to Latin America last year, in fact, Obama promised Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes that he would push immigration reform through Congress -- an effort he later abandoned. But for all their recent maturation, Latin American countries are affected by U.S. domestic issues in a way that no other region could be. Latin America therefore suffers from the paralysis of U.S. domestic politics as Europe or Asia does not.

even Washington's closest allies in the region have lost patience with U.S. politics

This year, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, a former general elected as a hard-liner, dramatically reversed course and spoke up in favor of drug legalization. This earned him extraordinary visits from both U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. According to Eduardo Stein, the former vice president of Guatemala, Biden said that the United States was eager to discuss drug reform, just not at the summit, while Napolitano reportedly plainly said, "Don't think of raising the issue at the summit." Pérez then went ahead and called a meeting of regional leaders, who could not agree on an alternative set of policies but decided to raise the issue in Cartagena. Pérez later said that drug policy was the only issue discussed at the summit's final closed-door session.

His empire also fell victim to the sudden end of both the global commodities boom and a wild exuberance for emerging markets - two forces that attracted investors to Batista's vision.

A former Brazilian finance minister, a former energy minister and a former chief justice of Brazil's supreme court joined the OGX board, bolstering the credibility of the polyglot, European-educated "Brazilianaire".

When Batista raised $4.11 billion in OGX's initial public offering in June 2008, interest in Brazil was feverish. Petrobras had just made giant offshore oil discoveries and Brazil was expected to become one of the world's top five oil producers by 2020.

Record demand from China drove up the price of Brazilian soybeans, iron ore, coffee, sugar and other commodities. Oil rose to an all-time high. EBX had also just sold most of its first listed company, iron ore producer MMX Mineração e Metálicos SA, to Anglo American Plc for $6.65 billion, enriching Batista and his investors.

A lot of the people who invested with Batista were not fools, and his rise and fall has followed that of Brazil.

DeGolyer & MacNaughton (D&G), a Dallas-based certification company, estimated OGX's potential resources at 10.8 billion barrels of oil and natural gas equivalent. That would have been enough - if OGX could figure out how to get it out of the ground - to supply all U.S. oil needs for more than a year and a half.

OGX estimated it would produce 1.4 million barrels a day by 2019, equivalent to 70 percent of Brazil's output, or about half of the output of Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC.

Already Brazil's richest man, Batista bragged he would surpass Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mexico's Carlos Slim to become the world's wealthiest person. Today he does not even make Forbes' top 100 list.

The consequences of Tubarão Azul's failure quickly spread because of the close links between EBX Group companies. EBX shipbuilder OSX Brazil SA was formed to build and lease a fleet of offshore oil vessels for OGX. Power producer MPX Energia SA is developing gas fields with OGX in Brazil's northeast. Port operator LLX Logística SA is home to OSX's shipyard, a place to store and process OGX oil and to ship Anglo American's iron ore.

Batista may also have been hurt by Brazil's efforts to help his and other companies weather the 2008 U.S. financial crisis and the world economic slowdown that followed. As Brazilian stocks, currency and bonds plunged, EBX stocks briefly fell to levels that were only broken this year.

EBX was one of the main beneficiaries of cheap capital that Brazil's government pumped into the economy to fight the downturn.

In Batista, the government was pursuing its then-fashionable strategy of creating "national champions" while making up for delays in its own infrastructure projects. It encouraged Batista to speed up just as Brazil's boom was about to end.

Batista and Brazil, though, have struggled since. As China slows, commodity prices are falling. In the last year Brazil's Bovespa stock index was the worst performer among the world's 28 largest indexes and the only one to fall in the period.

Buoyed by China trade, nationalist-minded politicians launched a foreign policy meant to reduce the role of the U.S. in Latin America. Brazil blocked a U.S. free-trade initiative for the Americas. They teamed with Venezuela to create a regional security council to supplant one that included the U.S. The foreign minister worked from an office with a huge map of the world upside down, offering the message that the era of emerging markets was at hand. But the world wasn’t upside down. While Brazil tied itself more closely to anti-American governments like Venezuela, Argentina and Iran, some regional neighbors—Chile, Colombia and Peru—went around Brazil and cut individual free-trade deals with the U.S.

Anticipating commodity sales, the government spent increasingly heavily. Government banks supplied Brazilians with easy credit. Brazil subsidized energy bills, issued cheap loans to big companies with government ties and built stadiums to host global events such as the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

Meantime, Brazil produced far less oil than predicted. Production actually shrank in some years, as Petróleo Brasileiro SA, PBR 12.80 % known as Petrobras, struggled with the enormous task of developing oil fields in extremely deep water.

Commodities’ support of the economy allowed Brazilian leaders to put off addressing certain problems that had long bedeviled the nation, such as a political system that tended to breed corruption and a bureaucracy that stymied business innovation. “Brazil became complacent because of the intoxicating effects of China trade,”

When Newsweek ranked the “world’s best countries” based on measures of health, education and politics, the United States ranked 11th. In the 2011 Quality of Life Index by Nation Ranking, the United States was 31st. Similarly, in recent rankings of the world’s most livable cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit has the top American entry at No. 29, Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey has the first United States entry at No. 31 and Monocle magazine showed only 3 United States cities in the top 25.

On each of these lists, the top performers were heavily concentrated in Northern Europe, Australia and Canada with strong showings in East Asian countries from Japan to Singapore. It is no accident that there is a heavy overlap between the top performing countries and those that also outperform the United States in terms of educational performance

Nearly all the world’s quality-of-life leaders are also countries that spend more on infrastructure than the United States does. In addition, almost all are more environmentally conscious and offer more comprehensive social safety nets and national health care to their citizens.

providing the basics to ensure a high quality of life is not a formula for excess or the kind of economic calamities befalling parts of Europe today. For example, many of the countries that top quality-of-life lists, like Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, all rank high in lists of fiscally responsible nations — well ahead of the United States, which ranks 28th on the Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index.

Mr. Zuluaga has charged that Mr. Santos is liable to concede too much to achieve peace, including allowing guerrilla leaders to skip serious punishment. He has said, however, that he would consider continuing the talks if the FARC stopped all criminal activity.Mr. Zuluaga’s closeness to Mr. Uribe has been a central element of his campaign. Mr. Uribe, a polarizing figure with a strong political base, backed Mr. Santos when he ran for president in 2010. But they later became fierce enemies, splitting over the peace talks, which Mr. Uribe opposed.

Spearheading the "no" vote in Colombia was former president and current senator Alvaro Uribe, whose father was killed by FARC rebels.

It has thrived as a stable democracy amid neighbors governed by leftist leaders.

After being elected by only 38 percent of voters to a term that many expected to end in economic disaster, he was re-elected with more than 62 percent of the vote in 2011.

He owes his popularity to the success of popular social programs and improvements to the economy

his political opponents and some outside observers are highly critical of Ortega and the FSLN’s domination of Nicaragua’s political institutions.

corruption allegations in the 2008 municipal elections resulted in the loss of U.S. and European aid.

Opponents liken Ortega to Anastasio Somoza, calling him a corrupt dictator.

The resulting political imbalance has left the opposition with virtually no leverage in the legislature with regard to either policy or appointments.

Many presume that either Ortega will run for—and win—a fourth term, or that he will be succeeded by his wife, Rosario Murillo, or their son Laureano.

All of this has made for a particularly polarized political environment, much of it revolving around Ortega himsel

But in what one UK pollster called “one of the biggest polling fails of all time,” the peace deal was narrowly rejected, with 50.2 percent voting against it. That means the peace agreement can’t be implemented — and is effectively dead.

he FARC is the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). It’s a Marxist rebel group that since 1964 has waged a bloody rebellion against the Colombian government — and it’s the longest-running armed insurgency in the Western Hemisphere.

Starting in 2000, the United States began providing the Colombian government with billions of dollars in mostly military aid to help interrupt the country’s massive drug trade and fight the FARC and other smaller rebel groups. The hope was that social and economic conditions in Colombia’s “historically marginalized” rural areas in which the armed groups thrive would also be improved.

Under the agreement, called Plan Colombia, the US pledged nearly $10 billion in assistance. As reported by the Washington Post’s Dana Priest, this was paired with “a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders.”

The deal would also have allowed rebels to avoid jail time if they confessed to their crimes. Per the BBC, the agreement would have created “a special legal framework” intended “to try those who committed crimes during the armed conflict, including Farc fighters, government soldiers and members of right-wing paramilitary groups.”

The peace agreement as written cannot be implemented without an approval by referendum, so it will have to be renegotiated. President Santos has promised to “continue the search for peace until the last moment of my mandate, because that's the way to leave a better country to our children ... I won't give up,” he said.