Violeta Chamorro

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (born October 18, 1929) is a Nicaraguan political leader, publisher, former member of the Government Junta of National Reconstruction and former President of Nicaragua. She was born in Rivas, Nicaragua.

In 1952, Chamorro's husband, Pedro Chamorro, took over the anti-Somoza newspaper La Prensa and was frequently jailed for its content. Violeta Chamorro ran the newspaper after her husband's assassination in 1978.

La Prensa participated in the Sandinista-led revolution that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, and Chamorro became a member of the interim Junta of National Reconstruction that replaced Somoza. In April of 1980, however, she resigned from the junta, angry over Sandinista power in the government. During the 1980s, La Prensa vigorously attacked Sandinista policies and President Daniel Ortega. In turn, the paper was subjected on several occasions to partial or total censorship by the Sandinista government, which accused Chamorro of taking money from the United States and thus supporting the US-backed overthrow of the government.

In 1990, after nearly a decade of Contra warfare and economic sanctions, Chamorro became the presidential candidate of the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), a coalition of 14 political parties that ran against the Sandinistas in that year's national elections. UNO received 55 percent of the vote, and Chamorro became president of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1996, when Arnoldo Alemán was elected in her place.