An incendiary speaker, combative personality and avid admirer of the communist governments in Cuba and North Korea, Borge was central to both the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle and the establishment of a junta after the revolution and then the elected Sandinista government. He became the target of the Contra rebels supported by the Reagan administration.

Jailed twice by the Somozas’ brutal dynastic dictatorship, Borge was himself accused of human rights violations as the powerful interior minister during the 1985-90 elected Sandinista administration, until it was voted out of power.

Working from a six-story building that bore the slogan “Guardian of the People’s Happiness,’’ he controlled the police, immigration agents, jails and even firefighters, often using his nearly unbounded powers to punish the Sandinistas’ enemies in the press, Roman Catholic Church and private business.

Miskito Indians living along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast alleged Borge orchestrated the displacement and killing of Miskitos suspected of anti-Sandinista activities, said Marcos Carmona, president of Nicaragua’s Standing Commission on Human Rights. Borge was also accused of ordering the killing of 37 opposition members in a jail in the city of Granada during President Daniel Ortega’s first term in office, something Borge always denied.

A staunch defender of the Sandinistas and Ortega, who won back the presidency in 2007 and was re-elected last year, Borge once wrote that “the return of the right is inconceivable’’ and pledged before the 2011 presidential election that the Sandinistas would stay in power “forever.’’ Asked that year who he most admired, he responded: “First, Fidel Castro. Second, Fidel Castro. Third, Fidel Castro. Fourth, Fidel Castro. Fifth, Fidel Castro.’’