Last June 15th, Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua, held a ceremony in Managua to announce his newest and most audacious plan to help the country’s poor: a transoceanic canal, stretching from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific, a few hundred miles north of the Panama Canal. “This is a project,” he promised, “that will bring well-being, prosperity, and happiness to the Nicaraguan people.” The last time Ortega attracted the world’s attention, it was as Ronald Reagan’s great adversary in the Contra war of the eighties: a fighter “against the domination of the capitalists of our country, in collusion with the U.S. government—i.e., imperialism.” In those days, Salman Rushdie described him as looking like “a bookworm who has done a body-building course.” Now his face has thickened and roughened, and his hair is thinner. His politics have changed, too. A former Marxist, he presides over an economy in which nearly anything goes. But he keeps up his anti-imperialist credentials, with fiery rhetoric about “los yankis” and “la revolución” and “el pueblo.” Last summer, when the National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden was pondering his options during an extended stay at the Moscow airport, Nicaragua’s government offered him asylum.