Violeta Chamorro
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (born
October 18,
1929) is a
Nicaraguan political leader and publisher. She was the forty-eighth
President of Nicaragua from
1990 to
1996, and the first (and
as of 2006, only)
woman to hold that office. Chamorro was the second woman elected in her own right as a
head of government in
North America (behind
Eugenia Charles of
Dominica), and the first in
Latin America.
She was born in the south-western city of
Rivas. In
1952, Chamorro's husband,
Pedro Chamorro, took over the anti-
Somoza newspaper
La Prensa and was frequently jailed for its content. She took over the paper after her husband's
assassination in
1978.
La Prensa participated in the
Sandinista-led
revolution that overthrew the government of
Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, and Chamorro became a member of the interim
Junta of National Reconstruction that replaced Somoza. In April 1980, however, she resigned from the junta, angry over Sandinista power in the government. During the 1980s, Chamorro and
La Prensa vigorously attacked Sandinista policies and President
Daniel Ortega. In turn, the Sandinistas accused Chamorro of taking money from the
United States and thus supporting the US-backed overthrow of the government.
In 1990, after nearly a decade of
Contra warfare and economic sanctions, Chamorro became the presidential candidate of the
United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), a coalition of 14 political parties that ran against the Sandinistas in that year's national elections. UNO received 55 percent of the vote, and Chamorro thus defeated Ortega in the presidential election. However, the alliance broke up after the election, and Chamorro was left with virtually no political party during her presidential term.
Chamorro left politics after her term, and now lives a quiet life in her home in
Managua.
