The road from Managua to the town of Tierra Azul has been an occasional target for antigovernment rebels. So when President Daniel Ortega Saavedra recently made the two-hour trip, he took along plenty of security. A fleet of more than a dozen sturdy vans accompanied the President's off-white Toyota, while an armed, Soviet-made helicopter provided surveillance from the air. When Ortega, 40, reached his destination, a makeshift plaza, he quickly took a seat behind a long table. "Face the People," a folksy forum that brings ordinary Nicaraguans into contact with officials of the Marxist-oriented Sandinista government, was under way.
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