Violeta Chamorro

Who is Violeta Chamorro?

Violeta Barrios Torres de Chamorro is a Nicaraguan political leader, former president and publisher. She became president of Nicaragua on April 25, 1990, when she unseated Daniel Ortega. She was elected as the head of a 14-party anti-Sandinista alliance known as the National Opposition Union, an alliance that ranged from conservatives and liberals to communists. She left office on January 10, 1997. Chamorro was the first and only woman to hold that position in Nicaragua. Chamorro was the first elected female head of state in the Americas, the second in the Western Hemisphere after Iceland's Vigdís Finnbogadóttir and the fifth in the world after the elections of Agatha Barbara in Malta, Elisabeth Kopp in Switzerland and Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. She was also the second woman elected in her own right as a head of government in the Western Hemisphere, and the first and only woman in the world to defeat an incumbent president.

Venezuela's former President, Carlos Andrés Pérez, was put to trial in his country after it was discovered that he had embezzled funds to support the campaign that got Violeta Chamorro to the Presidency.