Nicaragua’s former President Violeta Chamorro dies at 95

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP):

Violeta Chamorro, an unassuming homemaker who was thrust into politics by her husband’s assassination and stunned the world by ousting the ruling Sandinista party in presidential elections and ending Nicaragua’s civil war, has died, her family said in a statement on Saturday. She was 95.

The country’s first female president, known as Doña Violeta to both supporters and detractors, she presided over the Central American nation’s uneasy transition to peace after nearly a decade of conflict between the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega and US-backed Contra rebels.

At nearly seven years, Chamorro’s was the longest single term ever served by a democratically elected Nicaraguan leader, and when it was over she handed over the presidential sash to an elected civilian successor – a relative rarity for a country with a long history of strongman rule, revolution and deep political polarisation.

Chamorro died in San Jose, Costa Rica, according to the family’s statement shared by her son, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, on X.

“Doña Violeta died peacefully, surrounded by the affection and love of her children and those who had provided her with extraordinary care, and now she finds herself in the peace of the Lord,” the statement said.

A religious ceremony was being planned in San Jose. Her remains will be held in Costa Rica “until Nicaragua returns to being a republic,” the statement said.

In more recent years, the family had been driven into exile in Costa Rica like hundreds of thousands of other Nicaraguans fleeing the repression of Ortega.

Violeta Chamorro’s daughter, Cristiana Chamorro, was held under house arrest for months in Nicaragua and then convicted of money laundering and other charges as Ortega moved to clear the field of challengers as he sought re-election.

The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation closed its operations in Nicaragua in January 2021, as thousands of nongovernmental organisations have been forced to do since because Ortega has worked to silence any critical voices. It had provided training for journalists, helped finance journalistic outlets and defended freedom of expression.

Born Violeta Barrios Torres on October 18, 1929, in the southwestern city of Rivas, Chamorro had little by way of preparation for the public eye. The eldest daughter of a landowning family, she was sent to US finishing schools.

After her father’s death in 1948, she returned to the family home and married Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, who soon became editor and publisher of the family newspaper, La Prensa, following his own father’s death.

He penned editorials denouncing the abuses of the regime of General Anastasio Somoza, whose family had ruled Nicaragua for four decades, and was gunned down on a Managua street in January 1978. The killing, widely believed to have been ordered by Somoza, galvanised the opposition and fuelled the popular revolt led by Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front that toppled the dictator in July 1979.

Chamorro herself acknowledged that she had little ambition beyond raising her four children before her husband’s assassination. She said she was in Miami shopping for a wedding dress for one of her daughters when she heard the news.

Still, Chamorro took over publishing La Prensa and also became a member of the junta that replaced Somoza. She quit just nine months later as the Sandinistas exerted their dominance and built a socialist government aligned with Cuba and the Soviet Union and at odds with the United States amid the Cold War.

La Prensa became a leading voice of opposition to the Sandinistas and the focus of regular harassment by government supporters who accused the paper of being part of Washington’s efforts – along with US-financed rebels, dubbed “Contras” by the Sandinistas for their counterrevolutionary fight – to undermine the leftist regime.

Chamorro later recounted bitter memories of what she considered the Sandinistas’ betrayal of her husband’s democratic goals and her own faith in the anti-Somoza revolution.

“I’m not praising Somoza’s government. It was horrible. But the threats that I’ve had from the Sandinistas – I never thought they would repay me in that way,” she said.