GRANADA, Nicaragua—Far from the crushing poverty that has most Nicaraguans in its grip, living is easy at the Jockey Club outside this elegant colonial city.
Children swam in the pool, the parking lot was full of sport utility vehicles and ranchers in cowboy boots sipped rum and smoked cigars in the shade this past weekend as 200 purebred Spanish horses worth up to $30,000 each cantered through a competition.
After 16 years of conservative rule, Nicaragua's rich are again enjoying luxuries that were stripped away in the 1980s, when a revolutionary government seized lands and businesses while Washington imposed an economic embargo and directed Contra rebels in a brutal civil war.
But many fear it could all be taken away again with the return to power of Daniel Ortega, the former Sandinista guerrilla and Marxist who helped topple a dictator in a popular 1979 revolution and then led Nicaragua through the war years.
"This will be a government of crazies, He will want to look good with the people he made promises to. He'll put the country back in debt," said Ismael Reyes as one of his horses paraded before a judge on the Jockey Club's immaculate grounds.
Reyes, 62, says the Sandinista government confiscated his farm and horses, a clothing factory that employed more than 400 people and a cosmetics laboratory.
Ortega, who won last week's presidential election, says that this time he will respect private property and keep the economy stable even as he attacks poverty, although many former enemies don't believe him.
"With the bad experience we had, it's difficult," said Octavio Lacayo, another rancher who also lost properties under Sandinista rule.
Like many of Nicaragua's rich, Lacayo and Reyes fled and ended up in Miami. Some of them backed the Contra rebellion from exile until Ortega lost a 1990 election and the rebels turned in their weapons soon after.
Since then, most wealthy Nicaraguans who fled have come home again and either had their properties returned or received compensation. Three straight conservative governments have received U.S. backing and the hyperinflation and food shortages of the 1980s are long gone.
Supermarkets are fully stocked and shopping malls, car showrooms and expensive restaurants dot the capital Managua.
At the exclusive Club Terraza, which costs $12,500 to join, members take tennis and swimming lessons and the bar has a spectacular view out over Lake Managua and Momotombo volcano.
Extreme Poverty
But little has changed for peasant farmers, coffee farm laborers and residents of city slums ravaged by crack cocaine.
Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Americas, after Haiti, and 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Sixteen years of conservative rule failed to improve things and corruption scandals angered many voters.
"Some people have a lot of money but there is more poverty in the country," said Juan Ramon Ayala, who was crippled by polio as a child. He survives by making bamboo furniture and looking after parked cars for tips in Granada, a popular spot for wealthy U.S. retirees.
Ortega has promised to put Nicaragua's poor first when he takes office in January and is trying to win over the business leaders he once labeled as stooges of the U.S. government.
Most say they are giving him the benefit of the doubt, pointing to his offers of reconciliation and promises that he will not allow land seizures as good signs. So far, there have been no signs of investors pulling money out of the country.
Nicaragua has become more stable over the years, helped by democracy and an end to the Cold War. Although Ortega's friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has unsettled the United States, few here see any threat of a new armed conflict.
Ortega's Sandinista party fell well short of a majority in Congress so he will have to cut deals with conservative rivals to govern effectively.
Erwin Kruger, head of the leading business group Cosep, said many were worried by Ortega's return but that the hatred of the war years has eased.
"What we went through in the '80s was so terrible I don't think we want to go back to that kind of confrontation," he said.
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