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

Chamorro, Violeta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684810557 ISBN 13: 9780684810553

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1996

Synopsis

"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

About this title

Review:

The assassination of her husband, journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal in 1978, who exposed the corruption and atrocities of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, thrust Violeta Barrios de Chamorro into the political spotlight. A housewife and mother of four, she resumed her husband's fight and found herself highly coveted by the Sandinistas once they had replaced Somoza. Though she joined them for a brief time, she eventually ran against their candidate for president in 1990 in the first country's first democratic election since Somoza took over and earned a surprising victory. Dreams of the Heart, a memoir, recounts Chamorro's rise from homemaker to statesperson and illustrates how she led her country through an important transition better than anyone could have expected.

From Kirkus Reviews:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0684810557
• ISBN 13: 9780684810553
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352