Nicaragua Government

Struggling to regroup after two resounding rejections by voters that left them with shrinking influence in the country they once ruled, the leftists of the Sandinista National Liberation Front this weekend clung to their top leaders while trying to make their party less threatening to Nicaragua's emerging entrepreneurs.

Barely 100 days into his right-wing administration, President Arnoldo Aleman has been forced to do exactly what he criticized his moderate predecessor for doing: cede privileges to the far left. All week, about 5,000 demonstrators heeded the call of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, the largest opposition political party, to block highways across the country in protest of Aleman's free-market economic policies.

Conservatives took power here Friday as Arnoldo Aleman became president hours after his party won its first congressional clash with the leftist Sandinistas. Aleman's inauguration marked the first time in nearly a century that a freely elected civilian president turned over power to another freely elected civilian in Nicaragua.

The young police officer slowly read aloud the dozen names etched on a stone tomb marking their common grave. "There are cemeteries like this all over Pantasmas, where state security killed hundreds of peasants and dumped their bodies," he said angrily. He spoke softly, changing the subject any time a passerby wandered along the rutted, muddy road past the graveyard.