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Nicaragua Pre-Columbian and Colonial Era
The first Spanish explorers of Nicaragua found a welldeveloped agrarian society in the central highlands and
Pacific
lowlands. The rich volcanic soils produced a wide array of
products, including beans, peppers, corn, cocoa, and
cassava
(manioc). Agricultural land was held communally, and each
community had a central marketplace for trading and
distributing
food.
The arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s
destroyed, for
all intents and purposes, the indigenous agricultural
system. The
early conquistadors were interested primarily in gold;
European
diseases and forced work in the gold mines decimated the
native
population. Some small areas continued to be cultivated at
the
end of the 1500s, but most previously tilled land reverted
to
jungle. By the early 1600s, cattle raising, along with
small
areas of corn and cocoa cultivation and forestry, had
become the
primary function of Nicaragua's land. Beef, hides, and
tallow
were the colony's principal exports for the next two and a
half
centuries.
Data as of December 1993
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