International News: Violeta Chamorro, former Nicaraguan President and peacemaker, dies at 95

Published by BBNTEAM at June 14, 2025

Posted: Saturday, June 14, 2025. 1:44 pm CST.

By Zoila Palma: Violeta Chamorro, the first woman elected president in the Americas and a key figure in ending Nicaragua’s civil war, died Saturday at age 95, her family announced.

Chamorro served as Nicaragua’s president from 1990 to 1997, leading the country out of a decade-long war between US-backed Contras and the ruling Sandinistas.

Her conciliatory leadership and maternal style helped usher in a fragile peace and a transition to democracy after years of violence and dictatorship, France24 reports.

She defeated Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in a surprising 1990 election victory, heading a broad anti-Sandinista coalition. Her win marked a turning point in the Cold War-era conflict that had gripped the region.

A widow of journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro—murdered in 1978 for opposing the Somoza regime—she rose to political prominence after taking over his newspaper La Prensa. Disillusioned with the Sandinistas’ leftist turn, she became a leading opposition figure in the 1980s.

Chamorro died in Costa Rica, where she had lived since 2023 to be near her children, some of whom are in exile due to their opposition to Ortega’s current regime.

Known affectionately as “Doña Violeta,” Chamorro had long retreated from public life and battled Alzheimer’s in her later years.

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