Relations With The United States
The United States contributed to the 1990 election that brought Violeta Chamorro to power as they allocated $9 million to aid her party and created systems that monitored the electoral process. Additionally, when Chamorro was elected, George H. W. Bush removed the embargo that Ronald Reagan had imposed during Sandinista rule and promised economic aid to the country. Some people in Chamorro’s campaign team were hoping to get $1 billion worth of aid from the United States to help rebuild the country after years of civil war. However, the Bush administration instead gave $300 million to the country in the first year of Chamorro’s presidency, 1990, and $241 million the year after. Given the devastation that Nicaragua had faced, this amount of aid was not enough to make any serious improvement.
Chamorro’s presidency faced decreased US interest to the point that when Chamorro came to the US in April 1991 to ask Congress for more economic aid, few members even showed up to listen to her. Because the Sandinistas were defeated and peace talks were being established, U.S. foreign policy did not treat Nicaragua with as much importance anymore.
In 1992, Senator Jesse Helms worked to cut off financial aid to Nicaragua. Helms stated in his Senate report that the Sandinistas were still controlling much of the Nicaraguan government and suggested that the government replace all former Sandinista officers with ex-contras, replace all judges, and return all US property that was taken from US citizens during the revolution. Chamorro’s administration denied the allegations while still trying to meet Helms’ demands. Helms ended up winning and the US government denied Nicaragua the $104 million that they had been promised for that year. Predictably, the aid cut-off, subsequent freeze, and Helms' demands were put forward in October, the month after Chamorro withdrew the compensation claims associated with the Nicaragua vs. United States verdict.
Read more about this topic: Violeta Chamorro
Famous quotes containing the words united states, relations with, relations, united and/or states:
“You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity ... of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.”
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
“What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.”
—Clarissa Graves (1892–1985?)
“Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity—an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)