Nicaragua's Once and Future President

Latin American diplomacy has had its hands full. With illegal migrants streaming over borders, Colombia trying to close a contentious peace accord, and Venezuela's economy and society imploding, it's hard to know where to focus.

All the better for Daniel Ortega, the graying Marxist rebel-turned-supremo who has quietly transformed Nicaragua from a democratic promise to an almost intractable autocracy….

…Even without these hardline measures, almost no one expected Ortega to lose. That's because while tightening his grip, he also buoyed his ratings by keeping the economy humming, creating just enough jobs and boosting trade. Nicaraguan streets are largely safe from violent crime and free of the drug cartels that have ravaged other Central American cities.

Ortega's war on drugs also won him favor in Washington, and his fiscal parsimony, a nod from the International Monetary Fund. "Ortega knows the audience," Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, an advocacy group, told me. "He found a way to reduce democratic space in Nicaragua and still maintain strategic relations."

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