"We've had to look more carefully at our own work," says Terry Burke, a member of the board of directors of the local Nicaragua Solidarity Committee. "Just because Chamorro and UNO won doesn't mean that the progressives disappeared. There are still a lot of groups-women's groups, workers' groups, farmers-which are viable."

And there's plenty for these and other groups to do, she says. Unemployment in Nicaragua is at a skyrocketing 65 percent-higher than any time since 1945 and the worst of any nation in the Western Hemisphere except for Haiti. Besides the contra war, in recent years Nicaragua also has endured a devastating earthquake, a hurricane and a tidal wave.

For Burke and many others, the commitment to Nicaragua hasn't slackened in spite of the Sandinista defeat. "We spent most of the 1980s opposing the contra war, organizing demonstrations, working with the media," she says. "Now we're trying to link problems in Nicaragua with the problems of poor people here. We're not just concerned with Nicaragua, but with trying to engage a progressive movement here too."