For more than two decades since the end of the Contra War in the early 1990s, Nicaragua had been able to project an image of relative stability and steady economic growth alongside social programmes for the poor. The brutal repression of the student protests that erupted on 19 April has changed all that. Years of pent-up frustration at an increasingly monolithic and undemocratic regime has given way to a movement for profound political change that may sweep President Daniel Ortega from power.