Can Nicaragua emerge from the storms of its past?  Article War
and Peace  The road from Chinandega to the Honduran Border comes
to an abrupt end in a hill rise over the largest of the flood
demolished bridges that line the eastwest highway out of
Managua. When you reach the Hato Grande River, a small power
launch carries travelers and relief supplies in an uncertain
diagonal across the river's flow to the other side and into
Honduras.  Thirty yards downstream a 20-foot-long-square remnant
of bridge pavement juts awkwardly from the river current,
resting on the rock and silt tossed up by floodwaters into a
torn and jumbled riverbank. Only the enormous mortar and rock
pillars of the bridge remain standing in the swift current.
Hurricane Mitch has washed away virtually every bridge between
Managua and this crossing about 15 miles from the border  The
countryside on either side of the highway is a dismal spectacle
of mud-washed fields and stormdug trenches. Children who
survived the storm and now line the crumbli