When Sandinista rebels seized power from the Somoza dynasty on July 19th, 1979, they inherited a country in ruins, its cities bombed by the departing despot, famine in rural areas and $3 million in state coffers.
Twenty years later the country is in far worse condition.
Unemployment now runs at 60 per cent, poverty at 75 per cent, school desertion is widespread, free healthcare has been dismantled and dwindling state coffers are disappearing into debt repayments and the pockets of conservative President Arnoldo Aleman, whose declared wealth rose from $26,000 in 1990 to $1 million in 1997, but is now now independently estimated at $60 million.
The final blow to the country's hopes of economic recovery came last October when Hurricane Mitch ripped through the country, leaving 3,000 dead, a fifth of the population homeless and a reconstruction task which will take decades.
In 1979 the victorious Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) launched a literacy crusade which taught people to read and write. Free healthcare gave children the strength to go to school, while land distribution gave their parents a livelihood beyond slave wages on private ranches.
The revolution distributed property to about 400,000 families, allowing 11/2 million people, or close to 50 per cent of the population, to benefit from land reform.
New Nicaragua showed off its colours in style, with bright murals covering army barracks, women's organisations challenging macho attitudes and a police force holding poetry workshops inside their offices.
The infant revolution also set up a powerful state security apparatus to monitor dissent, but revenge executions were rare and individual freedoms generally respected.
The country enjoyed the fastest economic growth rate in Central America between 1979 and 1982, but the regime faced one insurmountable obstacle, the Reagan administration, which combined a crippling trade embargo with financial and logistical aid to Contra rebels, who attacked from the nation's borders and drained 35 per cent of national budgets into the armed forces.
The Sandinistas' popularity held firm until the mid-1980s, when the Contra war sapped morale and mothers turned against a government that forced their young sons to go to a war that cost 50,000 lives. Authoritarian and bureaucratic tendencies within the Sandinistas also dented their popularity.
The Nicaraguan revolution was a cause celebre across Europe, as thousands of volunteers picked coffee or built schools, among them hundreds of Irish people.
The Irish Nicaragua Support Group (INSG) became the biggest solidarity group in the country, raising thousands of pounds for productive projects, lobbying politicians and playing a crucial role in the anti-Reagan protests which dominated the US president's 1984 visit.
The best-known leader of the revolution was Daniel Ortega, a charismatic, bespectacled guerrilla fighter of humble origins who became president after the first democratic elections were held in 1984.
President Ortega enjoyed a rapturous reception on his visit to Ireland in 1989, with red and black flags hanging from lamp posts on the road into Galway city, where an official welcome was extended.
The embargo, the war and the deepening economic crisis fuelled opposition to the regime, while the US government promised to end all three should the opposition candidate, Mrs Violeta Chamorro, win the 1990 elections. She did.
The end of Sandinista rule came as a shock to supporters, but the subsequent behaviour of Mr Ortega has guaranteed the FSLN little hope of ever regaining power.
In the time between the election defeat and the handover of power Sandinista leaders held a pinata, or giveaway, for themselves, grabbing state property and wealth.
The defeated leadership stifled internal dissent until reformers broke ranks in 1996, forming the Sandinista Renewal Movement, (MRS), taking 32 of the 39 Sandinista parliamentary deputies with them.
Mr Ortega has clung grimly to the FSLN leadership, despite two election defeats and a bruising personal scandal last year, when his stepdaughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez, accused him of sexually abusing her while he was president.
The investigation came to an abrupt end when Ortega pleaded parliamentary immunity.
The ruling Liberal Alliance party, led by right-wing President Aleman, has the necessary votes to strip Mr Ortega of immunity. However, the threat from Ortega supporters of a judicial inquiry into Mr Aleman's riches has cooled the President's crusading zeal.
In recent months, Mr Ortega and Mr Aleman, once bitter enemies, have held secret talks toward a governability pact. The nation's Supreme Court, electoral council and ombudsman posts would be split between the two parties while the two leaders would become senators for life, guaranteeing perpetual immunity from prosecution.
As mayor of Managua between 1990 and 1996, Mr Aleman painted over revolutionary murals, turned off the gas that lit the eternal flame to FSLN founder Carlos Fonseca and charged scavengers $4 a day to scour the city dump.
Since he won the presidency in 1996 he has promoted foreign investment and privatised state industries, even exporting 5,000 Nicaraguans to Taiwan to ease unemployment. A series of scandals has eroded his authority, notably the "narcojet" incident in April 1998 when US investigators seized the President's plane, reported stolen in Florida the previous year, with a stash of cocaine on board.
Nicaragua now looks like every country in the region, with gangs of street kids and expensive shopping malls, while people struggle alone for survival against overwhelming odds.
The 1979 revolution opened up a space for activism and introduced the concept of human rights, along with the notion that citizens had to fight to make them a reality.
The spirit and values of the revolution still live on in the popular organisations involved in women's rights, environmental, peasant, labour and student groups, but the bitter Sandinista split has soured the July 19th festivities.
The dissident renewal movement, led by a former vice-president, Mr Sergio Ramirez, booked Revolution Square last April, ahead of the official Sandinista Front, led by Mr Ortega.
The police gave the square to Mr Ortega on a technicality, as the dissident booking was made out for a place which no longer officially exists. Mr Ortega applied for a July 19th gathering in Republic Square, reverting to its pre-revolutionary and current title.
Nonetheless, a crowd of 100,000 people was expected at the national fiesta yesterday, to relive the day the dictator was toppled and a small nation lifted its head in pride, shaking a fist at the US government, the "enemy of humanity" denounced in their stirring anthem.