BY TIM ROGERS

Standing on the floor of the old national legislature where he and a group of Sandinista rebels sparked a national insurrection 30 years ago, legendary guerrilla leader Edén Pastora urges Nicaraguan youth to continue the revolution after he and his graying comrades have passed away.

''You need to be more revolutionary,'' Pastora, 71, told the packed audience of high-school students, as part of the government's weeklong commemoration of the assault on the National Palace. ``Sandinismo and the revolution are the only instruments that can save this country.''

Pastora first introduced the world to the Sandinista revolution on Aug. 22, 1978, as the dashing Comandante Cero who took the entire legislature of 90 lawmakers hostage and then forced dictator Anastasio Somoza to agree to a prisoner swap for jailed Sandinista rebels.

On Friday, he will be among several surviving commandos from that operation who will be decorated in a medal ceremony at the palace.

''You are heroes and you will always be,'' said one female student who addressed Pastora and seven other commandos on behalf of her classmates. ``Today Nicaragua is free, thanks to your initiative, your bravery.''

Pastora, the only one of the 25 rebels in his commando unit who refused to hide his face behind a red and black bandanna during the hostage-taking, became an icon of the Sandinista revolution when he victoriously raised his assault rifle above his head before boarding the plane that took the rebels and freed prisoners to Cuba.

The following day, the picture of Pastora with his arms over his head circled the globe. Suddenly, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was news.

''The takeover of the National Palace showed that Somocismo could be defeated, and that the people didn't have to be afraid,'' Pastora told the students. ``Internationally, the takeover of congress made the world turn its eyes toward Nicaragua.''

INDIFFERENCE

Today, Pastora said, the fear that the Sandinista revolution helped to uproot from Nicaragua has been replaced by indifference.

''A great part of the youth today is falling in certain apathy; they are more into reggaeton and drugs and superficial things,'' Pastora said, urging students to study the lives of national hero Augusto Cesar Sandino and Jesus Christ to prepare themselves to give ''generational relief'' to the old revolutionary guard in the coming years.

Despite the rhetoric on the congressional floor, Pastora didn't always feel so enthusiastic about the Sandinista government he now promotes.

Even though he played a key role in the fighting that toppled Somoza in 1979, Pastora was given only a minor role in the next government led by a nine-member Sandinista directorate that included Daniel Ortega, Nicaraguan's current president.

Pastora's low profile was partly because the ruling Sandinista directorate feared his charisma and partly because, while several members of the directorate were Marxists, Pastora was ideologically untested.

In 1981, Pastora wrote a letter to the Sandinista directorate saying that he was leaving the country to go help other revolutionary movements in Latin America and went briefly to Mexico to work with Guatemalan rebels.

But soon afterward, he reappeared in the southern jungles of Nicaragua, fighting against the Sandinistas. The CIA financed much of the ''contra war,'' but Pastora maintains that the faction he led spurned U.S. assistance.

Pastora claimed the FSLN had sold out its ideals to the communists, though others claim he was probably most upset about being denied a leadership role in the government.

''I was a rock in the right shoe of the CIA, and the left shoe of the FSLN,'' he says.

The Sandinistas were defeated in 1990 elections, and Ortega lost two subsequent attempts to regain the presidency before winning in 2006, in an election in which Pastora ran against him on a minority ticket.

Despite their history, Pastora is now back with Ortega and the FSLN, three decades later.

In hindsight, Pastora says his problem was never with Ortega, whom he now refers to affectionately as ''my brother Daniel.'' In fact, Pastora said this week -- for the first time -- that it was Ortega and his two brothers, Humberto and Camilo, who ``organized, ordered, planned and directed the takeover of the National Place.''

That's a version that is contested by some of the others involved.

NEW DIRECTION

Pastora says his subsequent problems with the first Sandinista government were with the other ''radical'' members of the Sandinista National Directorate, most of whom have since left the FSLN to start the Sandinista Renovation Movement, a party to the left of the FSLN.

Their departure from the party, Pastora says, has allowed Ortega to now lead a new phase of ``revolution in liberty in democracy, with freedom of the press and human rights -- all the things that didn't exist in the 1980s.''

''This is the Sandinista revolution I wanted in the 1980s,'' Pastora told The Miami Herald, noting improvements in health, education and poverty relief. ``Had this been the government in the 1980s, there wouldn't have been a [contra] war.''

Yet others who fought to defend the original Sandinista government in the 1980s claim the revolution is over. Many old-school Sandinistas have become the leading critics of the new administration.

''The Sandinista Front has become an instrument exclusively at the service of Daniel Ortega, and not any other revolutionary goal or any philosophy of change or transformation of the country,'' said former Vice President Sergio Ramírez.