Postcard: Managua

Forget civil war. The next big challenge here is how to get anywhere in a city without street names or addresses. Navigating the nameless roads of Nicaragua's capital

Mario Lopez / EFE for TIME

In Managua, residents find their way without official street names

A year after Irish Rocker Bono visited Nicaragua in 1986 to raise awareness about Central American war refugees, U2 released its smash-hit album The Joshua Tree, and Nicaraguans immediately recognized that one of the songs seemed to be written about their country. It wasn't, but 20 years later, most people here still hold as fact that Where the Streets Have No Name was written about Managua, a squat and sprawling capital city where, well, the streets are unnamed.

The Managua of today still has the feeling of a rural backwater that hopes one day to grow up to be a capital...

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