Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was the first female president of Nicaragua. She died on June 14th 2025, aged 95.
She was the daughter of a rancher and was educated at Catholic boarding schools, including in Texas and Virginia.
She married Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor of La Prensa, the Chamorro family's highly respected newspaper. They were married for 27 years before he was shot dead on January 10th 1978, presumably on orders from "Tachito" Somoza, the third in a line of dictators who had ruled Nicaragua since the late 1930s. Pedro had ceaselessly attacked the Somoza regime through his editorials, and was jailed, tortured or exiled for them on multiple occasions.
After the Sandinistas swept into power a year after Pedro's death, Chamorro briefly joined the ruling junta but left after nine months. She took over La Prensa, which was closed five times during the decade of war between the Sandinistas and right-wing contra rebels. Each time it sprang up defiant. Both the paper and Chamorro became symbols of resistance.
When an eventual peace agreement mandated free elections in 1990, Chamorro was selected to oppose Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista president, and won 55% of the vote. She inherited a devastated country: some 40% of the workforce was unemployed and inflation exceeded 13,000%.
She handed day-to-day governing to her son-in-law, Antonio Lacayo, who turned policy towards free markets. Chamorro persuaded the contras to disarm in exchange for houses and land, scrapped conscription (reducing the army by more than half) and, controversially, left Sandinistas in charge of the army and police to avert future violence. She also freed the men who had killed Pedro.
Her family had already produced two presidents of Nicaragua. Two of her four children—Pedro junior and Cristiana—strongly supported the contras; the other two—Carlos and Claudia—were active Sandinistas, with Carlos running the official Sandinista paper, Barricada.
She handed power to Arnoldo Alemán at the end of her term, only the second time in Nicaragua's history that one elected president had succeeded another.
After Ortega returned to power in 2007, Pedro junior and Cristiana were expelled from the country. In 2023 Chamorro, by then very frail, left for Costa Rica. She remained the most popular public figure in Nicaragua.
Hard reality has a way of cramping your style.