Violeta Chamorro, the Nicaraguan peacemaker who fled the Ortega dictatorship, dies.
She was the first woman to become president in the American continent.
BarcelonaVioleta Chamorro was the first female president in Latin America. In 1990, she defeated Daniel Ortega after a bloody civil war that left more than 50,000 dead in Nicaragua. Her most symbolic act as president was in September 1990, when thousands of weapons were buried in Managua's Parc de la Pau. She is also recognized for her work in democratizing the Central American country, which experienced almost 10 years of civil war following the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979.
Her victory was a major setback for Daniel Ortega, who, after regaining power in 2007, governed with a single hand, going into exile in Costa Rica in October 2023, his health severely weakened. He died in the neighboring country at the age of 95, leaving Nicaragua in the hands of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who have imprisoned or exiled the opposition, including journalists, writers, and even Catholic leaders.
Nicaragua has become the opposite of what Chamorro dreamed of, who, when his term ended in 1997 after seven years of governing the country, was unable to run for reelection due to the constitutional limit. But Ortega has become another Somoza, who was overthrown in 1979, with no signs of democratic change in the short term. Precisely, Doña Violeta, as she was known, suffered the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza: her husband, the journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, director of the newspaper The Press, was assassinated in 1978, and his death is considered the end of the Somoza dictatorship.
For this reason, Chamorro attempted to democratize a bleeding country: "I felt great anguish in my heart upon receiving a country at war and destroyed. The homeland I inherited was a society torn by division," he explained in his memoirs. Dreams of the heartShe came to power unexpectedly as the candidate of the National Opposition Union, made up of 14 opposition parties, with almost 55% of the vote. She hugged him and said, "Boy, nothing's happening." On April 25, 1990, she promised to bring peace to the people and asserted that Nicaragua could not live "without freedom," because they are "the soul and reason" of this country. Chamorro fled Nicaragua, leaving the country in the hands of the Sandinista Front, which had appointed Daniel Ortega's brother, Humberto Ortega, as head of the army. He died in September 2024 as a political prisoner of another of her loves. Nicaragua, which was in ruins due to war and the intervention of the Ronald Reagan administration in the United States.