Nicaragua is now in the throes of a mass uprising against Ortega’s murderous regime. It’s a dangerous endeavor for an unarmed population, especially after the collapse of peace talks last week. But there’s no going back. Nicaragua has experienced a national awakening.

The protests against the connubial dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, began on April 12 when hundreds of university students took to the streets to march in defense of Nicaragua’s Indio Maíz Biological Reserve. Six days later, the protest grew to thousands of people, as students joined a larger pushback against Ortega’s attempt to increase social-security taxes and reduce pension benefits for the elderly.

The Ortega regime, with its long-running zero-tolerance policy towards any type of street demonstration, did not take well to the mounting unrest. Police and the Sandinista paramilitaries, a group of indoctrinated young people that Ortega uses as a shock force, responded with rabid and disproportionate force, firing rubber bullets and tear gas at students, then switching to live ammunition. “We weren’t ready for the massacres,” Valeska Valle, a 22-year-old student leader, told me. “We never thought the government was going to kill us. We never thought being a university student would be a crime in Nicaragua.”

The images of state repression were captured on cellphone videos, shocking a nation still haunted by the specters of past dictatorship and civil war. Nicaragua suffered for four decades under the brutal U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship, which the Sandinista Revolution ousted in 1979, leading to another decade of U.S.-funded counterrevolutionary “contra” war. “None of our martyrs will be forgotten,” the student leader Fernando Sánchez told me. “For them, for their families, and for all Nicaraguans, we cannot stop. We cannot allow this unscrupulous person to continue in the presidency.”

The government denies all responsibility for the violence and for the existence of the paramilitaries. Ortega has blamed the bloodshed on foreign agitators, gangs, organized crime, and drug cartels. But they’re not fooling anyone. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has called on the Nicaraguan government “to immediately end the repression” and “urgently adopt adequate measures to end the violence,” including the dismantling of all paramilitary groups.

As Ortega’s police attack protesters, beleaguered citizens are digging up the streets to barricade and defend their neighborhoods. At the roadblocks, those suspected of being government loyalists are sometimes stripped, humiliated, and beaten. The broken state is also curbing access to basic services. Public schools have closed in areas of heavy fighting. The state health-care system is also in tatters, as public hospitals are turning away injured protesters. “We are treating injured people here in the church because we can't take them to the public hospitals anymore,” Edwin Román, a Masaya priest, told 100% Noticias.