Once a Marxist revolutionary who cultivated support from workers, progressive social movements and intellectuals, he has recently relied on tacit alliances with the business elite and conservative religious leaders. Until the current turmoil, the latter groups have supported and legitimized the regime in the name of social peace and economic stability. Nicaragua indeed has been one of the most stable countries in the region, relatively free of the gang violence and drugs that have plagued other Central American nations. The price, however, is just too high.

It’s unclear whether Mr. Ortega is now experiencing a terminal crisis as Anastasio Somoza Debayle did, or whether these protests are the beginning of the end. But he is certainly facing a new reality. Government repression of popular protests has killed more than 30 to date, including one journalist, Angel Gahona, whose murder — like that of the ABC correspondent Bill Stewart in 1979 — was horrifically captured on video and broadcast around the world.

We’ve seen this before. During the 20th century, three Somozas systematically violated human rights and used their state control to enrich themselves and their cronies. Despite the abuses, Nicaragua’s traditional elite (the country is one of the poorest and most unequal in the hemisphere) mostly acquiesced to the dictatorship because it promised stability and implemented economic policies favorable to their interests. In exchange, the Somozas asked not to have their power challenged. To put it crudely, Somoza may well have used the following motto: “Make yourselves rich, but stay out of politics.”

This model, which the current regime has studiously emulated, turned out to be a recipe for tragedy. The Somozas’ United States-backed military dictatorship did bring four decades of relative peace to a country with a long history of revolutions and civil wars. But that stability came at the price of closing all political avenues for change. Thus, when Nicaraguans decided that they had enough, they saw no other way out but the violent overthrow of the dictatorship.

Confronted with an insurrectionary population, Mr. Somoza — the last of his clan — refused to resign, opting instead to hold on via brute force. In the run-up to his overthrow in July 1979, roughly 40,000 Nicaraguans lost their lives. Mr. Ortega, who was a leading figure in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which overthrew Mr. Somoza, knows very well how this story ends.