SAN JOSÉ: Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to the Central American country after years of war, was laid to rest Monday in Costa Rica two days after her death at age 95.
The first woman president of the Americas, who defeated ex-guerrilla leader and current president Daniel Ortega in 1990 elections, died in exile in neighboring Costa Rica.
Addressing her funeral mass in San Jose, her son Carlos Fernando Chamorro said he would take her ashes home to Nicaragua when it “becomes a republic again” -- a swipe at the increasingly autocratic Ortega.
During Chamorro’s seven years as president between 1990 and 1997 she helped end a civil war that raged for much of the 1980s between US-backed “Contra” rebels and Ortega’s left-wing Sandinista government.
She credited her victory with speaking to Nicaraguans in language “typical of a homemaker and a mother.”
She moved to Costa Rica in 2023 to be close to her children, three of whom are living in exile because of their opposition to Ortega.
Ortega, 79, led Nicaragua for a decade after toppling a US-backed dictatorship in 1979.
Since returning to power in 2007, he has shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
He has seized control of all branches of government and shut down thousands of NGOs since major anti-government protests in 2018, which he branded a US-backed coup bid.
