Latin America: The Frustrations of Success

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By 9:07 p.m. on February 25 it was clear that 1990 would mark a sea change in U.S. policy toward Latin America. At that moment two U.N. computer experts in a windowless room in Managua, processing the earliest returns from Nicaragua's presidential elections, realized that the Sandinista National Liberation Front was heading irrevocably for defeat.

As partial vote tallies were radioed in from mobile U.N. field teams across Nicaragua, the statistical "quick count" initially gave the Sandinistas a wide lead. But as new reports began to fill out the graph on the technicians' computerized projection, the lines representing the contending parties began to waver, then crossed sharply, and finally flattened into an unmoving 13.9-point margin of victory for the anti-Sandinista candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

So unexpected was Chamorro's victory-defying the predictions of opinion polls, U.N. observers and even American officials who had sought to bring it about-that the projection was handled with the tense secrecy of a bomb in a crowded theater. As Sandinista crowds gathered in a lighted square just half a mile away for a lavish victory celebration, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the most senior member of the combined observer missions, requested an urgent, confidential meeting with President Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Regularly scheduled public announcements of the official government election returns suddenly fell silent. And only at dawn, when a stunned Daniel Ortega conceded defeat over national television, did the electrifying news finally race through Latin America: the Sandinistas had been voted out.