Chamorro Cardenal also increased the anti-Somoza rhetoric of his editorials, placing La Prensa at greater risk from the Somoza regime.

Like his father, Somoza Debayle had little tolerance for the strong criticism against his regime that was mounted by La Prensa, which claimed to have argued for responsible government, participatory democracy, and neoliberal economic policies.

That year, La Prensa was again occupied by Somoza's forces, and Chamorro Cardenal was charged with aiding the conspirators who had killed Debayle's father.

[4] In 1959, Chamorro Cardenal went to Havana, Cuba, to meet with the new revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, in order to bargain a deal for arms and munitions.

But, by May of that year, Chamorro had gathered enough capital and weapons to land 120 men, including himself, in the provinces of Boaco and Chontales, in an attempt to overthrow Somoza Debayle.

With modest tools, La Prensa caused a nationwide sensation by publishing over 100,000 primers that were the backbone of the National Literacy Campaign.

Notably, future Sandinistas such as Ernesto Cardenal, Sergio Ramirez, Gioconda Belli Murillo, and Carlos Mejía Godoy all contributed to the campaign.

[7] As Somoza went into exile from Nicaragua, he ordered a final destruction of La Prensa by his Guardsmen, who used kerosene to light the building on fire.

[citation needed] According to Noam Chomsky, the post-1980 version of La Prensa bears virtually no relation to the paper which opposed Somoza.

Eighty percent of the papers employees left with Chamorro Cardenal due to La Prensa's increasingly anti-Sandinista line and founded El Nuevo Diario.

[17] La Prensa staff members wrote articles in The Washington Post and other major US papers denouncing the Sandinistas and asking for aid for the Contras.

La Prensa editors claimed that they were harassed by state security and that it was sometimes censored or closed, although it had a significantly higher circulation than the Sandinista "Barricade" (70 thousand copies against 45 in 1986).

[citation needed] In Necessary Illusions, Noam Chomsky wrote that, La Prensa "made little effort to disguise its role as an agency of US propaganda, dedicated to overthrowing the government of Nicaragua by force".

Following its series of articles about human rights violations in October and November of that year, the government imposed a blockade of paper, ink, and other printing supplies.

News media Confidencial and 100% Noticias were looted and confiscated, journalists Miguel Mora and Lucía Pineda Ubau were arrested, and the work of 68 exiled reporters was disrupted.

[18] On August 12, 2021, La Prensa suspended its physical print edition, claiming the government refused to release newsprint imports.

On August 13, riot police raided the headquarters of La Prensa, reportedly cutting internet and electricity before removing boxes of material.

[22] La Prensa was the last remaining print newspaper in Nicaragua since the 2019 shutdown of fellow opposition paper El Nuevo Diario over a similar block of physical supplies by the Ortega government.