Word: chamorros
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Though the leaders of Nicaragua's Marxist government detest her politics and have often tried to intimidate her into silence, they have been known to troop dutifully to Dona Violeta's comfortable four-bedroom house across from a parklet in Managua to talk things over. Chamorro knows her enemy and has not the slightest hesitation about addressing the commander of the revolution and President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, like a naughty schoolboy -- or worse. The last time Ortega visited her home, he noticed that a nine-year-old picture of him with members of Nicaragua's first postrevolutionary government...
...denied any such ambitions, a gleeful light fires up her eyes when the subject of challenging Ortega comes up. And she has reason to be optimistic. A recent survey concluded that if the election were held tomorrow, the Sandinistas would lose to the opposition. When Ortega is pitted against Chamorro by name, the polls show her a slight favorite...
...Chamorro has long been the best-known woman in Nicaragua, and the family whose name she bears has been one of the country's wealthiest and most powerful for generations. "I am a symbol, I know that," she says. She is also an anomaly: an influential woman in a macho society, albeit one that claims to have eradicated sexism. What probably makes her most dangerous to the regime, however, is the fact that she can -- and regularly does -- act with the courage of those who have nothing left to lose...
...daughter of a wealthy ranching family, she had been married to Pedro Joaquin Chamorro for 27 years when he was assassinated in 1978, probably on the orders of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. A year later, the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza, thanks partly to La Prensa's valiant editorials and the Chamorro family's money. Then the widow Chamorro watched in horror as the Sandinistas, whom she had mistaken for unorthodox social democrats, revealed the extent of their allegiance to Moscow and Cuba and their disdain for democratic politics...
...Carlos Fernando, 33, is editor in chief of the Sandinista daily Barricada, and has run editorials calling his brother a traitor. Daughter Cristiana, 35, is a director of La Prensa. Her sister Claudia, 36, was the Sandinista Ambassador to Costa Rica until last year. The private pain of the Chamorro family is a microcosm of Nicaragua's national agony. And Dona Violeta is the prism through which it is seen...