In 2009, Nicaragua experienced the intensification of three tendencies that have defined the country’s politics since the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), led by Daniel Ortega, returned to power in January of 2007. These tendencies are: the erosion of the fragile democracy that emerged after the collapse of the revolutionary experiment conducted by the FSLN in the 1980s; the fragmentation and polarization of Nicaraguan society; and, the country’s increasing economic and political dependency on the government of Hugo Chavez and the regional integration project known as Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas (ALBA). These three tendencies share a common root: Daniel Ortega’s assumption that the electoral victory of the FSLN in November of 2006 represents the beginning a second phase of the Sandinista Revolution that captured power in 1979 and that came to an end with the electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1990.