Leopoldo Salazar Amador acquired the Santa María de Ostuma property in the 1920s, growing coffee there even as Augusto César Sandino's guerrilla bands raided through the area.
"This may be the only place on our continent where, in one day, you can shoot a wild boar, land a 20-pound lake trout, unearth a priceless pre-Christian ceramic and watch the brilliantly plumed quetzals mate," one observer wrote.
[10] Bianca Jagger would reminisce that vacations with her mother in the Santa María de Ostuma region were among her "happiest memories.
[12] During the Somoza regime's collapse, Jorge began organizing fellow coffee farmers in the region into a cooperative, which provided him with an initial political base as he increasingly protested against the policies of the new Sandinista government.
As with many Sandinista-confiscated properties, Santa María de Ostuma was the scene of turmoil in the years after Violeta Chamorro defeated them in 1990 elections.
According to Jorge Salazar's daughter Lucía, although the land was officially returned to the family, Sandinista general Joaquín Cuadra, who had misappropriated various farms in the area that had been arbitrarily confiscated by the Sandinistas, turned it over only reluctantly, there were incursions by machete-armed men, and vandalism had ruined the property.