Former Nicaraguan President Violeta Barrios Moves to Costa Rica

The Chamorro Barrios family reported that the former president of Nicaragua, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, was transferred this morning by air from Managua to San Jose, Costa Rica, where she arrived at noon on October 17.

“From now on, Doña Violeta will settle in San Jose, under the care and love of her family, with the accompaniment of health personnel and specialized doctors,” says a statement issued by the family.

The former president, 93, suffered a stroke in October 2018 and since then she “remained in her residence in the Las Palmas neighborhood of Managua, under the care and love of her family, accompanied by specialized health personnel.”

“We are deeply grateful to the doctors, health personnel, and service workers, who cared for her well-being in Nicaragua during all these years, and to all the people who always accompany her with their prayers and concern about her state of health. “She continues to be delicate, but stable,” says the statement signed by her family.

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro defeated Daniel Ortega at the polls in 1990, becoming the first female president of Nicaragua. She also achieved reconciliation in a country devastated by war.

“I felt great anguish in my heart upon receiving a country at war and destroyed,” she narrates in her memoirs, Sueños del corazón (Dreams of the heart). “The country I inherited was a society torn by division. We Nicaraguans did not recognize ourselves as children of the same country. Party and personal interests were more powerful than the legitimate interests of the people,” says Doña Violeta, wife of the journalist and Martyr of Public Liberties, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, murdered on January 10, 1978.

Three children in exile

Of the four children of the former president, her daughter Claudia Lucía Chamorro is the only one who is in Nicaragua.

Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Barrios, former political prisoner of the Daniel Ortega regime, was exiled to the United States in February 2023. On that same date, Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, who currently resides in Costa Rica, was also released and exiled. Both were imprisoned in 2021 after showing interest in participating in the elections as presidential candidates.

Meanwhile, her son Carlos Fernando Chamorro, director of CONFIDENCIAL, has been exiled in Costa Rica since June 2021.

This article was originally published in Spanish in CONFIDENCIAL and translated by Havana Times.