On April 25, 1990, the elected president of Nicaragua, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, assumed the mandate in a country torn by war, sown with corpses and deeply divided between sandinists and opponents. The war between cons and the army had reaped more than 50,000 lives and the country was in bankruptcy. That day, “full of anguish in the heart,” Chamorro made history inside and outside the country by becoming the first president chosen at the polls in Latin America and for taking peace to tired. That is the biggest legacy of Chamorro, who died in exile at dawn on Saturday in Costa Rica at age 95 after a long illness, their relatives reported.
“As they call her with love in Nicaragua, she ruled between 1990 and 1997 and for years she had suffered the repression of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Most of her children have been tireless. Just one year ago the sandinist apparatus confiscated the Summer House of Chamorro and inaugurated a hotel-school for the tourism sector. Her death occurs with her country in full dictatorial drift, with Ortega-with which she He took out of the presidency by force of votes – and his wife clinging to power after unleashing a brutal repression of opponents, which accelerated after the wave of protests of 2018, and annihilate all the critical voices of politics, civil society, the press, the professional sectors and the Catholic Church.
Chamorro (Rivas, 1929) was born within a family of landowners. He studied a period in the United States, but had to return to Nicaragua after the death of his father, Carlos Barrios. He married very young who would be the great opponent of the Somocista dictatorship, the journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. Doña Violeta had in her memoirs that her youth passed under the anguish of the siege, her husband’s imprisonment and exile.
From the pages of The press – The main Nicaraguan newspaper, with almost a century of history -, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro threw fierce criticism of the dictatorship, which had it as the most uncomfortable voice. Chamorro was murdered in 1978 by salary hitmen of the Somocista regime when he was driving his vehicle towards the writing of the. His murder sentenced the dictatorship. The funerals of the journalist and opponent were apotheosics and ended in a demonstration that demanded the fall of the dictator, who responded by ordering a tough repression.
Committed to her husband’s legacy, Violeta Chamorro actively participated in Nicaraguan political chaotic. In 1979 he was part of the so -called National Reconstruction Government Board, in which the writer also participated. Chamorro, however, left the Board in April 1980 for disagreeing with the socialist line that was later imposed. Then went to the writing of The pressfrom where he became a critical voice with the Sandinista regime, which would choose Daniel Ortega as a leader.
The alignment of the Sandinistas with Cuba and the Soviet block lifted ampoules in Washington, which initiated an aggression policy. The Ronald Reagan government financed the counter -right -wing guerrillas that tried to overthrow the Sandinista regime – and began a bloody civil war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, destroyed the economy of the country and send to other tens of thousands of its inhabitants into exile. In addition to despair, Nicaraguans demanded change.
In May 1989, the National Opposition Union (UN) was formed, a political organization of 14 parties that sought to electorally overthrow Sandinism. Violeta Chamorro was appointed candidate of the coalition and faced Ortega in the elections called for February of the following year. With a peace and reconciliation speech, Chamorro won against all prognosis those supervigilated elections. “They have voted me because they have faith in a deep change after 50 years of somocism and 10 of Sandinism. And I accept that vote, aware of my responsibility,” that triumph was recorded on the cover of their diary, The press, With the following headline: “Vote, Violet, Victoria.”
For the observers of that chaotic Nicaragua, the country faced uncertainty. Chamorro is pointed out his inexperience, his lack of academic preparation, the possibility that he would give the real command to Antonio Lacayo (married to his Christian daughter) and, of course, the fact of being a woman. Thus he responded to those criticisms in that “I know that they say that I am completely illiterate, but I do not care, for one ear it enters me and the other comes out; I send in the one, and nobody tells me what I have to do. Everything that is said about whether it sends this or the other is a nonsense. I will name my ministers. People with a gift.
Violeta Chamorro assumed the presidency of Nicaragua on April 25, 1990. The historic photo in which for the first time in a century a democratically elected president received the presidency band against thousands of his compatriots marked the Central American country, by teaching its inhabitants that the differences could be resolved with democracy and not with bullets.
“The homeland that I inherited was a society torn by division. Nicaraguans did not recognize ourselves as children of the same homeland. The partisan interests could more Memories The Nicaragua who says goodbye today is indebted to that legacy. Ortega and Murillo have issued a statement on Saturday in which they recognize that the figure of Chamorro “represented a contribution for the necessary peace” in the country, although the co -chants now arrogate the merits of that peace when the reality is that they forced the ex -president into exile.
The family has reported that it will inform in the next few hours about the religious ceremony that will be held in San José, where it was already very weakened in 2023, “to celebrate their life of love and generosity with their family and their beloved homeland Nicaragua.” “His remains will rest temporarily in San José, Costa Rica, until Nicaragua is again a Republic, and his patriotic legacy can be honored in a free and democratic country. We thank Nicaraguans, in all parts of the world, for their prayers and their solidarity, and especially to the people and the government of Costa Rica, which welcomed it in recent years of their lives,” the relatives said.
