family to run the operations of the Cabo Jewish Center, located in Los Cabos, Mexico, but providing Jewish services and assistance to Jews scattered throughout the Baja Sur region, including La Paz, Todos Santos and the East Cape. Nicaragua The first Jewish immigrants to arrive in Nicaragua came from Eastern Europe after 1929. The Jews in Nicaragua were a relatively small community, with most living in Managua. The Jews made significant contributions to Nicaragua's economic development while dedicating themselves to farming, manufacturing and retail sales. It was approximated that the highest number of Jews in Nicaragua reached a peak of 250 in 1972. Many left after a 1972 earthquake that devastated Managua. When the regime of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza fell in 1979, the community numbered 50 people, including many who had prospered under the Somoza and left when he lost power. Beginning in 1983, the Reagan administration in the U.S. made a concerted effort, supported by the Anti-Defamation League, to increase domestic support for their Nicaragua policy by persuading American Jews that the Sandinista government was anti-Semitic. According to Contra leader Edgar Chamorro, CIA officers told him of this plan in a 1983 meeting, justifying it with the anti-Semitic argument that Jews controlled the media and winning them over would be key to a public relations success. Investigations by New Jewish Agenda, Moment, the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, the Milwaukee Jewish Council, the American Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs all found that there was no evidence to support the U.S. charge of government anti-Semitism. Anthony Quainton, U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, also reported no evidence of government anti-Semitism after an investigation by embassy staff. While many Nicaraguan Jews who had left the country supported Reagan's charge of anti-Semitism, Jews who remained in Nicaragua denied their accuracy. After Daniel Ortega lost the 1990 presidential election, some of the Jewish emigrants returned. The current Jewish population is around 50 people, of which the majority live in Granada, Nicaragua. Prior to 1979 the Jewish community had no rabbi or mohel (circumcision practitioner). The Jewish community now includes 3 mohalim; however, as of 2005, the community does not have an ordained rabbi or synagogue. Panama For nearly five hundred years Panama has been a transit station. Long before the construction of the Panama Canal in the early twentieth century, merchants, missionaries, adventurers, and bandits crossed the swamps