DREAMS OF THE HEART: The Autobiography of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua

"Interesting if self-serving memoir by former president of Nicaragua, 'always guided by the selfless desire to improve the lot of [her] countrymen.' Details workings of non-Sandinista opposition to Somoza through 1979, and conflicts during 1980s between right and Sandinista regime. Accuses opponents after 1990 of 'scurry[ing] to hide under the skirts of the U.S. Congress or White House.'"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.http://www.loc.gov/hlas/The president of Nicaragua tells of her struggle to bring peace to her country

Nicaraguan president Chamorro delivers a stinging critique of the Sandinistas' "Cuban-Soviet model" of communist rule following the downfall of the Somoza dynasty dictatorship in 1979. Her husband, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, outspoken editor of the liberal newspaper La Prensa, spent years in jail undergoing torture and solitary confinement. Upon his assassination in 1978, she became leader of the fledgling democratic opposition, then briefly joined Daniel Ortega's Marxist regime in 1980. But she quickly became disillusioned with the Sandinistas, whom she accuses of betraying the revolution by choking civil liberties, crippling the private sector, assassinating opponents, squandering public assets for personal gain and erecting a state monopoly that led to even greater inefficiency and corruption. Chamorro, who was elected president in 1990, defends her political course, equidistant from the CIA-backed Contras and the communists. She writes affectingly of being a widow, raising five children and of her recent efforts to conquer widespread poverty and unemployment. This is both a valuable historical document and a moving personal story. Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An anecdotal memoir by the present democratically elected leader of Nicaragua. Chamorro came to politics accidentally. Although born, like her husband, into the ``top echelons of Nicaragua's social structure,'' the descendant of European landowners, she came to sympathize with the plight of the Indian majority after marrying Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, editor of the liberal newspaper La Prensa. Pedro's murder in 1978 at the hands of the government of Anastasio Somoza, whom he had regularly criticized in print, thrust her into the tumult of revolutionary politics. After the Sandinista rebellion overthrew Somoza, Chamorro became a leader of the loyal opposition, watching as Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega ``turned into a black-shirted party boss with a red bandana around his neck.'' Many of her fellow citizens evidently shared her dismay, and she became president of the country, having won by a large margin in a 1990 race thought certain to go to the Sandinistas. (``Theirs,'' she points out, ``was a $20 million campaign handled by a top American public relations team, ours a campaign run on a shoestring budget.'') Among the high points of the book are Chamorro's firsthand reports of infighting among the Sandinista leadership, torn by complex rivalries that led one hero of the war against Somoza, Comandante Zero, to be excluded from postwar rule. She also provides ample--and remarkable--details on the labyrinthine ways in which American aid dollars filtered down to the coffers of democratic organizations, certainly less generously than they did to the contra fighters. Chamorro is sometimes too fond of unmeaty apothegms, and her book is marred by a translation that is at times jarringly unidiomatic. Yet it provides a close look at the inner workings of a government and a nation in transition, led by a woman of obvious bravery and good will. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The author, who was born into a politically influential and socially prominent family, recalls a life that led from marriage and motherhood to political opposition, to widowhood, and then to the apex of her country's politics: the presidency of Nicaragua. Marred by an awkward translation, this autobiography nevertheless is a revealing and exciting portrait of the family nature of Nicaraguan politics, of the author's activist perspective at a time when few peers were similarly motivated, of the interaction between her personal life and the life of the nation, and of the personal and political difficulties that would determine her and Nicaragua's future. Because of the influential U.S. role in Nicaraguan affairs in the 1980s, this work will be of considerable interest to American readers. Highly recommended.?Roderic A. Camp, Latin American Ctr., Tulane Univ., New Orleans
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

For many on both sides of the heated 1980s debate over U.S. policy toward Nicaragua, the 1990 election victory of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro over Sandinista Daniel Ortega was a shock. Her memoir lets readers examine the political education of a Central American wife and mother, an anti-dictatorship activist, then an appointed and elected leader. The Barrios and Chamorro families are part of a Nicaraguan elite that traces its roots to the Spanish invaders and acknowledges little Indian blood. Violeta's husband, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, owner/editor of La Prensa, was a leading critic of the Somozas (who controlled Nicaragua from 1946 until 1979); Pedro set the standard Violeta lived by after his assassination in early 1978. Violeta credits Pedro and businessmen in the "civic resistance" with as much influence as the Sandinista guerrillas in forcing Anastasio Somoza from power. She was too committed to capitalism to remain long in the Sandinista-dominated junta; La Prensa soon attacked the country's new leaders. Violeta de Chamorro has axes to grind and grinds them here. But her vision of Nicaragua is rather different from that of Sandinistas, contras, or the State Department, so U.S. readers would do well to consider her analysis. Mary Carroll