I remember it as though it were yesterday. It was almost as if a scene from Graham Greene’s novel ‘Our Man in Havana,’ had come to life. Stepping off the plane at Managua airport, it was the humidity that hit me first, then the sight of the palm trees swaying gently in the breeze.

Then suddenly there they were, Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolutionaries. Some wore red and black neckerchiefs, while others were dressed in khaki fatigues, dark patches of sweat beneath the straps of the rifles slung over their shoulders. I’ve finally arrived, I thought to myself. This is what being a foreign correspondent is all about.

It’s the best part of forty years ago now since I arrived that day in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, in the wake of the leftist revolution by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) that overthrew the monstrous dictatorship of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle.

For 43 years the Somoza family had ruthlessly ruled over this Central American country, but here it now was in the hands of the new Revolutionary Government under commandante Daniel Ortega.

The Herald:

Daniel Ortega, centre, after the Sandinistas seized control during the 1970s uprising

That the revolution’s immediate aftermath was my first ever foreign assignment as a journalist is perhaps the main reason it remains etched in my mind’s eye. But there were other reasons too, not least because what followed next would be the first war I ever reported from, as the Sandinistas subsequently went on to fight for the revolution’s survival against the right wing Contra rebels who were armed and supported by Washington and the CIA.

I have no shame in admitting that despite the need for a certain professional detachment, I was somewhat in awe of the Sandinistas. Their fight from the hills and jungles which was brought into Nicaragua’s cities with the support of the civilian population was the stuff of legend.

In the eyes of many, myself included, this was unequivocally a war between good guys and bad guys. On the side of good were the Sandinistas and ordinary Nicaraguans, on the side of evil the Somocista.

Somoza after all was a dictator who thought nothing of diverting foreign earthquake aid to his own warehouses. Here was a ruler who once said, “I don’t want an educated population; I want oxen.” He and his cadres quite literally bled their people to death, the president and his son being both part owners of a company called Plasmaferesis.

This was a business that collected blood plasma from up to 1,000 of Nicaragua’s poorest people every day for sale in the United States and Europe. The homeless, the alcoholics, the desperately poor went to sell half a litre for a few Nicaraguan cordobas in order to survive, while Somoza and his family pocketed the vast profits from the exported blood plasma.

I had no qualms back then as to where my sympathies lay. Just like so many ordinary Nicaraguans

for me the Sandinistas represented the best hope for giving back a disenfranchised people a stake in their own future.

It remains then to their credit that for some years Commandante Ortega and his revolutionaries succeeded in doing just that, despite’s Washington’s best efforts to undermine them. But where once ordinary Nicaraguans could point justifiably to their nemesis in North America, today many are accusing Ortega and the Sandinistas of working at home to oppress them.

More than a month after changes to Nicaragua’s social security system triggered student-led protests, indignation at a brutal crackdown in which at least 77 people have been killed and over 800 wounded has morphed into an all out challenge to Ortega’s rule.

Protesters demand he step down, while regional diplomatic body the Organisation of American States said last week he should hold early elections.

So far Ortega has shown no signs of heeding that call, and the violence continues to escalate. Just a few days ago human rights group Amnesty International (AI) reported that the Nicaraguan authorities have adopted a strategy of repression, characterised by the excessive use of force, extrajudicial executions, control of the media, and the use of pro-government para military groups.

“The Nicaraguan authorities have turned on their own people in a vicious, sustained and frequently lethal assault on their rights to life, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at AI.

The Herald:

A demonstrator shot in the head is tended by paramedics after clashes during a march against Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega in Managua.

For the loose alliance of students, farmers, politicians and academics who have come together on the streets, it will not be easy to dislodge Ortega. That now seems to be their express aim rather than just looking for concessions from the government.

While no stranger to such political pressures and street confrontations, Ortega still looks more vulnerable now than at any time in his current 11-year tenure as president.

Watching television footage of the running street battles these last few days, I couldn’t help thinking how like the Sandinistas of the revolutionary days the current young protestors appeared. With their masks and home made mortars they stood behind barricades that could have come straight out of those days in 1979 and the early 80s.

Many of today’s protestors no doubt will have been reared on the oral histories and stories of those revolutionary times recounted to them by their parents, but this is a different generation with very different expectations.

Writing last week, the young Nicaraguan journalist Cinthia Membreno, made the point that over the past 11 years, people of her generation have come to see Ortega not as a revolutionary hero but as the face of dictatorship. Perhaps not a Somoza, but a dictator nonetheless.

Not everyone of course feels this way about the president. Many while admitting that corruption exists are wary of calls to overthrow the Sandinista leader.

“The people united will never be defeated,” was the slogan on the streets all those years ago when Somoza was overthrown. Today it’s being chanted again and its difficult to see how such calls and the momentum on the streets right now can be halted.

The time might finally have come for the end of one of the longest standing leftist governments in Latin America. How tragic it is to see the Sandinista cause squandered in such a way. How terrible to see Nicaraguans once again being trampled underfoot, given the great sacrifices made in getting rid of Somoza all those years ago.