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ABSTRACT.When the Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua in 1979, one implicit goal was to redress the spatial inequalities of development. It was widely believed that the Sandinistas had an alternative model of development that emphasized a grass-roots approach. Although much blame for the economic failings of the Sandinistas has been placed on the United States-financed contra insurgency, the economic policies enacted by the Sandinistas did not incorporate a grass-roots approach and thus did not address the underlying factors that had originally produced spatial inequalities.
THE spatial distribution of the Nicaraguan people and economy has beenan explicit concern of geographers, economists, and planners since the earthquake of December 1972 that completely destroyed downtown Managua. The Nicaraguan population and economy are generally viewed as excessively concentrated in Managua, while the rest of the country is underdeveloped or even undeveloped. Before and after the overthrow of the forty-five-year-old Somoza family dictatorship by the Frente Sandinista de Liberaci6n Nacional (FSLN), or Sandinista Front for National Liberation, its political rhetoric emphasized three implicit and explicit spatial commitments. The goals were to diminish the overall importance of Managua, to equalize development among the three principal regions, and to reduce inequalities between urban and rural dwellers (Brundenius 1985(Brundenius , 1987Fonseca 1985;Slater 1986). This article examines the efforts of the Sandinista government to address spatial inequalities, through investments in the productive sector of the economy.It has been argued that Nicaragua represented a socialist revolution that differed from previous ones (Vilas 1984;Zwerling and Martin 1985). President Daniel Ortega in 1989 argued "that socialism should be applied and advanced in accordance with the specific conditions of each society" (Zamora and Garcia 1989, 2). The Sandinista leaders thus maintained that they were applying socialist principles in the light of Nicaraguan realities. To many observers the Sandinista revolution held out the possibility for exciting approaches to * DR. WALL is an assistant professor of geography at
