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On Wednesday, January 10, Managua's Plaza la Fe was the site of the kind of gathering Nicaragua has not seen since the 1980s, as more than 100,000 people converged to celebrate the inauguration of Daniel Ortega, the 61-year-old former Sandinista comandante and perennial presidential candidate who had returned to power after sixteen years in the political wilderness.
As the ceremony began, a recording of a fiery speech Ortega delivered during the height of Nicaragua's war against the contras blared from the PA system, stirring the crowd to life. Then Ortega emerged, flanked by the lions of the Latin American left, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. The lines in Ortega's face have deepened since he guided Nicaragua through its war against contra insurgents, and his signature black mustache is dyed now, but the scene staged at the plaza was enough to evoke nostalgia for his revolutionary heyday.
