Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, 95, Dies; Led Nicaragua After Civil War

Americas|Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, 95, Dies; Led Nicaragua After Civil War

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who rose to the presidency of Nicaragua in 1990, presenting herself as unity figure in the wake of civil war and becoming the first woman elected to govern a Central American country, died on Saturday morning at her apartment in San Jose, Costa Rica. She was 95.

Her death was confirmed by her son Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, who said she had been in poor health for many years.

Ms. Chamorro was thrust into the forefront of Nicaraguan politics by the assassination of her husband, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, a newspaper editor who was critical of leftist Sandinista revolutionaries and a fierce opponent of their nemesis, the Somoza family dictatorship, which began under President Anastasio Somoza García in 1936.

Ms. Chamorro served as president in the 1990s, at the end of a period in which the country had been shaken by war. She left the day-to-day management of government to a son-in-law and positioned herself as a symbol of unity in a profoundly divided country.

Her policies earned scorn from both left and right. In later years, though, public opinion surveys suggested that she was the most admired figure in Nicaragua, a symbol of reconciliation bathed in a Madonna-like aura of deep Christian faith.

Violeta Barrios was born on Oct. 18, 1929, in the Nicaraguan town of Rivas, near the southern border with Costa Rica, to Carlos Barrios Sacasa, a rancher, and Amalia Torres. Theirs was a wealthy family; she traced her ancestry to a Spanish officer who arrived in Nicaragua in 1762. Other ancestors included aristocrats, landowners and two Nicaraguan presidents.