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Nicaraguan former President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (R) in downtown Managua, Nicaragua, on June 13, 2008. Miguel Alvarez/AFP via Getty Images
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SAN JOSE, Costa Rica—Violeta Chamorro, an unassuming homemaker who was thrust into politics by her husband’s assassination and stunned the world by ousting the ruling Sandinista party in presidential elections and ending Nicaragua ’s civil war, has died, her family said in a statement on Saturday. She was 95.
The country’s first female president, known as Doña Violeta to both supporters and detractors, she presided over the Central American nation’s uneasy transition to peace after nearly a decade of conflict between the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega and U.S.-backed Contra rebels.
