“Total anxiety,” said Msgr. Carlos Avilés Cantón, the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Managua. “Every day waking up and asking, ‘How many deaths?’ Death, death, death. That’s what makes you sad.”

Talks between the government and the opposition fell apart last month, putting a political solution further out of reach. The government has continued to hunt down and jail opponents, and many observers, including the United Nations, worry that a new antiterrorism law is being used to criminalize members of the opposition, including those protesting peacefully.

“We’re in a very difficult stage,” said Álvaro Leiva, the director of the Nicaraguan Association. “It’s the stage of repression.”

Hundreds of protest leaders have gone into hiding or fled the country. Mr. Leiva said his team members had been threatened — it is unclear by whom — and forced to move out of their homes and sleep in a network of safe houses.

Mr. Ortega, who has refused the opposition’s demands to step down or hold early elections, has responded with a publicity blitz, giving interviews to several international news organizations, in which he has deflected blame for the bloodshed and sought to convey that the country is returning to normal.

But even some of Mr. Ortega’s closest allies acknowledge that Nicaragua is a mess. In an interview with The New York Times late last month, Paul Oquist, the minister-private secretary for national policy, recognized the sense of fear and uncertainty in Nicaraguan society — on both sides of the conflict.

He seemed particularly concerned about the damage the nation’s economy had suffered, calling it “enormous.”