Word: nicaragua
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...Last month, 56 U.S. softball players traveled to Cuba for a series of goodwill games that probably did more for America's public image on the island than any single political effort over the past 50 years. And in Nicaragua, where political relations with the U.S. have frayed ever since former revolutionary Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007, U.S. ambassador Robert Callahan has discovered he can do some of his best work wearing a baseball mitt. (See TIME's top 10 sporting moments...
...think the State Department is coming to realize, belatedly, that [baseball] can be a very effective tool in public diplomacy," Callahan told TIME. In the case of the U.S. and Nicaragua, he said, "of all the things that unite us, I think the great sport of baseball is the most important...
...That's the same type of SAM they used to shoot down Eugene Hasenfus," a bystander remarks, referring to the CIA contractor pilot whose cargo plane was downed by Sandinista soldiers in 1986, while making a supply drop for "contra" insurgents. More recently, the U.S. has tried to get Nicaragua to destroy its remaining stockpile of surface-to-air missiles, allegedly out of fear they'll fall into terrorist hands. But Nicaragua has insisted it will hold on to its 400 SAM-7s for strategic defense purposes - and amusement park photo ops. (Read "Nicaragua: Where Every Day is Christmas...
...other end of the fairground, beyond the bumper cars, circus tents and spinning tea cups, children line up outside Nicaragua's first public ice-skating rink, built inside a climate-controlled plastic tent that defies the scorching 95 degree heat outside. Wearing loosely laced second-hand skates with dull blades and inadequate ankle support, the excited children - most of whom have never seen ice outside of a drinking glass - giggle, flop and crash their way across the Zamboni-starved ice. (Read a story about Nicaragua's vampire problem...
...Read: "Nicaragua: Where Every Day is Christmas...