communities located between the cities of Matagalpa and Jinotega. On April 5, 1851, the city of Jinotega was elevated to the category of village by the government of Nicaragua. In July 1872, the scientist Thomas Belt left Santo Domingo de Chontales in search of miners for the Nueva Segovia gold mines near the Honduran border. On this trip he visited Jinotega and called it by its original name, and not by "Santas Rosas, San Juanes, Santos Tomases" and explained that the inhabitants "cling to their old names" and not to the ones imposed by the Spanish. In other words, the Spanish name is "San Juan" and the true name is "Jinotega". On February 11, 1883, the title of town was granted to Jinotega. According to historians, the first car in the city belonged to the German Enrique Heinrich Gülke and the first women's bicycle arrived in the city in 1933, as a gift from the German immigrant Luis Ludwig Frenzel to his daughter Hulda for her fifteenth birthday. Modern era The Jinotega region is perhaps the most war-torn region in Nicaragua's history. Its remote location as well as its proximity to the border with Honduras made it a haven for rebel forces throughout the last seven decades. The most intense battles took place in the Department of Jinotega between 1927 and 1934 under Augusto C. Sandino and his troops (popularly known as "los bandoleros") against the American occupation troops. Later, at the end of the 1970s, Jinotega was a key battleground in the bitter war between the troops of Anastasio Somoza Debayle and the civilian rebel population. Starting on May 19, 1979, the "Final Offensive" of the Sandinista National Liberation Front's Carlos Fonseca Amador Northern Front began against the Somoza Debayle regime. Somoza was defeated on July 19, 1979. After a short period of peace, civil war began again between government troops of the new Sandinista regime and the Contra rebels who felt betrayed by the Sandinistas and were funded by the United States. In 1981, the mountainous area of ​​the department was again the scene of a fratricidal war, this time between the Contras and carried out bloodily by the FSLN, emerging from anti-communist sentiment and dissatisfaction with the corruption of Sandino's government, continuing the Nicaraguan Revolution. Economy Jinotega is a major supplier of coffee for Nicaragua and for other countries. The basic grains (corn, beans, and wheat), vegetables