El Cuá is a municipality in the Jinotega department of Nicaragua. Formerly part of the municipality of El Cuá-Bocay, it became a separate municipality in 2002. Its population rose from 43,305 in 2005 to 56,897 in 2012.The area around El Cuá saw bitter fighting during the Contra War in the 1980s, and the village was the home of that war's only known United States casualty, the engineer Ben Linder.