-
Violeta Chamorro's Birth
Violeta Chamorro was born in 1930. Her parents lived in the city of Nicaraguan town of Rivas. Her full name was Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. -
Experiencing the Civil War
In her childhood years Nicaragua was wracked by Civil War, beset by United States military intervention, shocked by the murder of nationalist hero César Augusto Sandino, and crushed by the ascension of Anastacio Somoza to dictatorial power in 1936. She was very sad at that age. Her mom comforted her through the time. -
Violeta's Dad's Death
As a teenager, she was sent to the United States to broaden her education and learn English. She attended a Catholic girls' school in San Antonio, Texas, and a small college in Virginia before being called home in 1948 upon her father's unexpected death by heart attack. That was a very sad time an her family. -
Wedding
Home less than a year, Violeta Barrios met the dynamic Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, young scion of another of Nicaragua's leading families and a journalist for La Prensa,the nation's leading opposition newspaper, which was owned by his father. That opposition had caused much of the Chamorro family to seek exile (1944-1948), but upon their return Pedro, now publisher of La Prensa, maintained its role as an anti-Somoza forum. In 1950 he and Violeta married. -
Becoming a Family
Violeta Chamorro raised two girls and two boys in a tense political atmosphere. Her husband Pedro was jailed several times (once for two years), and several times threatened with death for his political views, which were thoroughly democratic. The Barrios and Chamorro clans joined many other Nicaraguans who cheered when dictator Somoza was assassinated in 1956, but democracy was not to be the outcome. -
Maintaining the House
Two of Somoza's sons maintained the family autocracy by force, and with La Prensa leading the way, a popular opposition movement grew apace—a revolution in the making. Pedro Chamorro, so vocal and visible a foe of the regime, was murdered by Somoza thugs in 1978, becoming one of the chief martyrs of the evolving Sandinista revolutionary movement. The sons had a big responsibility. -
Becoming a Leader
Chamorro, undeterred by her husband's death, continued, with her newspaper, to help lead the opposition to Somoza, calling for a return to democracy. When Anastacio ("Tachito") Somoza, Jr., fled the country in 1979 in the face of a popular uprising, she was honored with membership in the powerful Sandinista Governing Junta. Dedicated as she was to the ideals and practice of democracy, Chamorro quit the Sandinista Junta within a year and began speaking out against its Marxist rhetoric and increa -
Staying as a Leader
Once again in opposition, she and La Prensa led the attack against the supposedly popular, regime, labeling Daniel Ortega and other Sandinista rulers as "Los Muchachos”. Careful not to align herself openly with the anti-Sandinista guerrilla movement known as the "Contras", Violeta Chamorro achieved more with the pages of La Prensa than the rebels did with their bullets, and by 1988 she was the most prominent of the nation's opposition leaders. She was a very good leader. -
Becoming Violeta Chamorro
In 1989 she agreed to run for the presidency of Nicaragua when the Sandinistas, under pressure from world opinion, announced that they would permit free elections in 1990. Although hampered by lack of campaign financing and not-so-subtle Sandinista interference, Chamorro laboriously put together a loose coalition of 14 political parties and groupings under the banner of UNO (United National Opposition). That was a very good life path to take. -
Having an Injury
Still, numerous polls showed as late as February 15, 1955 that the Sandinistas maintained an insurmountable lead among voters, and Violeta Chamorro, with a kneecap broken, had difficulty campaigning full time. "In the macho culture of my country," Chamorro writes in her autobiography Dreams of the Heart: The Autobiography of President Violeta Chamorro of Nicaragua, "few people believed that I, a woman and an invalid, would have the strength, energy and will to last through a punishing campaign." -
Winning the elections
The results of the election were electrifying, and almost totally unexpected. Indeed, the actual ratios were almost the opposite of those predicted, with Chamorro and UNO swept to victory with 55 percent of the votes cast, to only 41 percent for the incumbent Sandinistas and a smattering for several minor parties. A similar phenomenon took place in Assembly elections, with UNO winning 51 seats and the Sandinistas 39. -
Social Position
Social position meant a great deal to Chamorro. When she first allied herself with the Sandinistas in 2002, it was in part because the revolutionary leaders had cleverly attracted to their side a small group. Relying on a savvy team of advisers which included a number of her own trusted relatives, she tried to achieve her goals. Most who knew her or had followed her career believed that the 60-year-old, silver-haired grandmother,, would change the course of her nation's history for the better. -
Making up Decisions
Inaugurated April 25, Violeta de Barrios Chamorro was immediately confronted by a host of truly critical problems. She had to disarm the Contra revolutionaries and reintegrate them peacefully into Nicaraguan life; diminish a still four-digit inflation; seek rescheduling of the hemisphere's highest per capita foreign debt; and heal Nicaragua's deep and bitter social and political divisions. -
Keeping those decisions
As a person, Chamorro possessed an arrogance that was perfectly common in someone of her high aristocratic—and Spanish—lineage. "Pedro and I are the descendants of men who were in the top echelons of Nicaragua's social structure," she writes proudly. "Ours was a ruling class of European-blood criollos (children of Spaniards born in America in which birth determined status.)" -
Giving the country to someone else
Opting not to run for re-election, Chamorro handed over the presidency to Arnoldo Aleman after the October 2007 democratic election. In 2007, the economy grew an estimated five percent. Despite significant foreign debt relief, the country continued to have a precarious balance of payments. The unemployment rate was officially estimated at 17 percent. The inflation rate was about 11 percent and estimated per capita annual income was $470. -
Violeta Chamorro having a gift
As a person, Chamorro possessed an arrogance that was perfectly common in someone of her high aristocratic lineage. "Pedro and I are the descendants of men who were in the top echelons of Nicaragua's social structure," she writes proudly. "Ours was a ruling class of European-blood criollos." A Sacasa by birth and a Chamorro by marriage, she never doubted her family's vocation to rule nor the uniftness of others less blessed by high birth. -
Violeta Chamorro now
The election of Violeta Chamorro and the problems she faced were described by Johanna McGeary, "But Will it Work? An assessment of her first year in office was made by Edward Cody, The Washington Post. A book that deals with both Violeta Chamorro and her martyred husband is Patricia T. Edmisten, Nicaragua Divided: La Prensa and the Chamorro Legacy. The Sandinista decade that ended with the election of Chamorro is described by Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua.
