Before April 18 of this year, Nicaragua was largely heralded as a tourism success story, achieving an unlikely rise after a decades-long civil war and emerging as an eco-tourism mecca for those looking to expand their horizons beyond neighboring Costa Rica. Today, it finds itself in the midst of the largest uprising it has seen since the civil war ended in 1990. Numbers vary, but one human rights group estimates that at least 448 protestors have been killed at the hands of security forces and paramilitaries since the unrest began in April. Hotels and tour operators have largely shuttered, and tens of thousands of people are without work. Costa Rica is receiving some 200 asylum requests a day, mostly from young people who have been put on government blacklists, the Miami Herald reports. With the elected government of Daniel Ortega, who is serving his third consecutive term as president, refusing to back down, it's unclear when things will return to normal in the Central American nation—or what a new normal could look like.

How the unrest started

Largely peaceful anti-government demonstrations, in which students, pensioners, and workers protested changes to the social security system, began on April 18 and were met by force from the police and military: at least 25 people were killed in the first four days of protests, according to the Chicago Tribune. Ortega backed down from the social security overhaul, but protests have continued, with thousands taking to the streets demanding that the next elections, currently scheduled for 2021, be pushed up to 2019, citing government corruption, censorship, and violence. The Nicaraguan president has called the protestors "right-wing delinquents" and blamed the uprising on a U.S. "conspiracy" designed to topple his administration. Ortega, 72, whose wife Rosario Murillo serves as vice-president of the country, is now being called a dictator by many, even as he was once heralded as a revolutionary icon for toppling the dictatorship of the Somoza dynasty in the 1970s in what's known as the Sandinista revolution.

What the tourism industry is saying

After decades of year-over-year growth in annual tourist arrivals to Nicaragua, a number of travel specialists and hotel owners we spoke to say it has come to a virtual standstill in the past few months. "Since April, popular colonial cities have become ghost towns, and the beaches are empty," said Tim Pyne, who owns a boutique hotel in the lakeside, colonial town of Granada. (Pyne asked that the hotel—which he closed indefinitely in May—not be named.) "Many hotels, tour operators, and restaurants catering to tourists have closed their doors."

In the first weeks of unrest, tour operators tried to tough it out, but after two months of sporadic and unpredictable violence, they began canceling trips altogether.

"By early June, we told [our clients], 'You have to leave,' because things were escalating and they were getting too dangerous," the owner of an agency that specializes in travel to the country said over the phone from Costa Rica. (He asked not to be named, out of fear of government reprisals.) For trips scheduled in July and August, his agency either canceled trips or rerouted itineraries to Costa Rica and Panama. He points out that even if some of the beaches or more remote areas of the country aren't as heavily affected as the capital, Managua, or Masaya, once the heartland of the Sandinista revolution, the danger to tourists remains. "Some large, expensive hotels are still open and will tell you that everything is okay, but that’s not right," he said. "It’s very irresponsible. And maybe at the beach nothing will happen, but if you’re landing in Managua, and there are roadblocks, the streets are dangerous."