Nicaragua Emerges From the Jungle, Carrying Gold

Online, June 9, 2011 (Newswire.com) - COMMENTARY-Prospectingjournal.com-Nicaragua, with its colourful history of foreign domination, civil strife and prosperous mining, is once again a hot zone in the race for Latin American gold.

I say "once again" because the search for gold is nothing new to Nicaragua. The Spanish, who first arrived in 1522, were reportedly so impressed with the country's civilization and gold deposits that they quickly destroyed everything through religious conversions and gold plundering. The "War of the Captains," as these Spanish conquests came to be called, devastated the indigenous populations, while exciting European markets. Fast-forward to the early 1900s-same situation, but now with US marines instead of conquistadors, followed by the predictable American foreign policy of full-scale civil wars, guerilla leaders and then, ironically, booming modern tourism . . . really, it's the classic Latin American "success" story.

But from a modern-day miner's perspective, these former conquerors didn't even scratch the country's wealth. Nicaragua's mining-friendly jurisdiction is situated in the Central American Gold Belt, from Costa Rica to Guatemala, with a total of more than 20 million ounces of historic gold production. Post-2008 saw the exit of a large number of mining companies, as budgets disappeared and fear permeated through the global resource markets. On top of this exit, recent (and ongoing) hotspots such as Colombia and Peru have continued to draw much of the foreign interest, with exploration potential in Nicaragua put on the backburner. Yet now, with the mining vacuum in place, companies are rushing in, and investors are once again turning their gaze . . .

Read the full article here:
http://prospectingjournal.com/nicaragua-emerges-from-the-jungle-carrying-gold/