This indispensable guide offers a comprehensive, country-by-country look at the current state of affairs in the most explosive region of the hemisphere. Largely ignored by the American public and often exploited by Washington, Central America became a center of U.S. and world attention in 1979 with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the continuing guerrilla war in El Salvador. Over the next decade more than $8 billion in U.S. military and economic aid poured into the region as it became an ideological and social battleground.This indispensable guide offers a comprehensive, country-by-country look at the state of affairs in the most explosive region in the hemisphere. Digging from the inside out, Tom Barry provides a trenchant analysis of the region's internal dynamics and international relations, examining in detail each country's government and politics, military, economy, society, and environment, as well as the role played there by the United States.