For 20 students concerned with the state of democracy in Latin America, spring break will be something more than a vacation.

Members of the Harvard Association Cultivating Inter-American Democracy (HACIA) will leave for Nicaragua today to conduct a three-day long government simulation summit for high school students, the only one of its kind in Latin America.

The conference, which starts on Friday, seeks to promote the principles of democracy through committee meetings in which students investigate issues ranging from AIDS to economic privatization, according to HACIA president Francisco J. Flores ’02.

“Many of these countries have had dictatorships in the past, so this is a way to give these students a better sense of democratic governments,” Flores said. “In Spanish, ‘hacia’ means toward. We try to bring them closer to democracy.”

This year, 200 students from schools in Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and the United States will descend on Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, to play the roles of legislators and diplomats.

Some committees will simulate the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Organization of American States, which are the equivalent of the United Nations in South America and Central America, respectively.

The conference, founded in 1994, traditionally features an opening ceremony led by a prominent Latin American politician.

“It’s really remarkable how excited high schools in Central and South America get about HACIA,” said Maria Luisa Romero ’04, a HACIA board member who participated in the conference when she was in high school in Panama.

Romero said she was inspired to apply to Harvard and to study government after attending the conference.

“I came up with solutions to real problems and got to involve myself in the democratic system,” she said.

But Romero said she wished the conference were better publicized, particularly to public schools.

This year is the third time public school students will participate in the conference, Romero said. Their entrance fees have been paid for by HACIA.

Flores said that HACIA, hoping also to pique Harvard students’ interest in Latin American politics, recently inaugurated the Democratic Forum, an informal series of discussions with Latin American policy makers.

At the most recent forum, Flores and his group sat down with the former president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo.

“Talking to Zedillo over lunch was unbelievably inspiring,” Flores said.

Besides HACIA, members of other student groups will devote their spring breaks to community service.

Habitat for Humanity will take 10 students to Washington, D.C. to build houses for low-income families.

And two members of the Cuban American Undergraduate Student Association (CAUSA) will distribute medical and hygienic supplies to AIDS patients in Cuba.