TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031290/0312105.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 128 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 23

Chamorro: More Than Just a Name?


By JOHN MOODY/MANAGUA


    The President-elect was called to the telephone in her
elegant home Monday night just as the guard at the front door
admitted a visitor. On the line was Ronald Reagan. In the foyer
was Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Both wanted to congratulate Violeta
Chamorro on her stunning upset, though clearly Reagan was the
happier of the two. With the charm and diplomacy bred by her
patrician upbringing, Chamorro told Reagan that she would have
to call him back. Then she turned and embraced the Sandinista
chief.

    That these two antagonists sought out Chamorro at precisely
the same moment was appropriate. Seven weeks shy of
inauguration, Dona Violeta already refers to her administration
as a "period of reconciliation." Her mission as President, she
believes, is to heal.

    Also to learn. Chamorro owes her election not to any
natural gift for leadership but to her married name. Though
graced with regal poise and an engaging personality, she has had
little experience in public life. Her grasp of Nicaragua's
Sisyphean economic challenge is tenuous, and her political range
is narrow: at least initially, she is leaning heavily on the
dozen family members and advisers who constitute her brain
trust.

    She would rather have been First Lady. Born into a wealthy
cattle-ranching family, Violeta Barrios enjoyed a charmed
girlhood that included private schooling in Texas. She plunged
abruptly into the teeming currents of Latin politics in 1950
when she wed Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the crusading, ambitious
publisher of the daily La Prensa. His opposition to Nicaragua's
Somoza family dictatorship frequently landed him in jail. While
raising their four children, Violeta also carried food to
Pedro's cell and smuggled notes to his confederates.

    Her husband's assassination on a Managua street in 1978,
widely pinned on Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ignited the popular
outrage that a year later brought the Sandinistas to power.
Exploiting Violeta's symbolic value as the widow of a martyr,
the victorious rebels persuaded her to join a coalition junta.
She accepted but soon fell out with Ortega and his fellow
Marxists. Chamorro left the government in 1980 and became
publisher of La Prensa. The job automatically made her the most
prominent and vociferous enemy of the Sandinistas in the
country.

    When the hybrid National Opposition Union realized last
year that to challenge Ortega it needed star quality on its
presidential ticket, the magic Chamorro name was again decisive.
Wary of wading back into politics, the silver-haired widow at
first demurred, but she accepted the nomination at the urging
of her husband's spirit, with whom she says she communes
regularly.

    Dona Violeta's early campaign appearances were frightfully
inept. Confronted with issues she had not mastered, she often
berated her questioners or deferred to running mate Virgilio
Godoy. By January she had learned to stick to prepared speeches
and emphasize her personal appeal. Her radiant smile and
motherly concern warmed Nicaraguans chilled by a decade of
Ortega's martial scowls.

    Empathy may be her greatest virtue as President.
Nicaraguans have been killing one another in revolution and
civil war for more than a decade. Who knows these divisions
better than Dona Violeta? She is the widow of a man murdered for
his political beliefs, and a mother reviled as a traitor by two
of her children, who are committed to the revolution. Yet never
have her Sandinista son and daughter been unwelcome in her
home. That kind of tolerance is hard for an embittered nation
to summon up. It should help to have an exemplar who has
experienced anguish firsthand.

    Chamorro is certain she can suture Nicaragua's
self-inflicted wounds. Abolishing the unpopular military draft
will be the first step. She must also rein in Godoy, whose
statements during the campaign suggested that settling old
scores might be the new government's top priority. At her first
press conference, the President-elect made a point of fielding
tough questions herself and praising Ortega for his concession
of defeat.

    Chamorro will have no honeymoon with the sizable Sandinista
minority that considers her a class enemy, and she has little in
common with the poor. Last January, when she broke her knee in
a fall at home, she jetted to Houston for surgery. She returned
home in a wheelchair that cost more than most of her countrymen
earn in a year.

    Some Nicaraguans expect the new government to banish
poverty by decree. They will be disillusioned by the time and
exertion required to refloat an economy that has run aground.
And Chamorro will not perform without error. She considers her
mission divine but suffers from high-handedness and an aversion
to criticism, no matter how well intentioned. Irritated by
endless comparisons with Philippine President Corazon Aquino,
another widow of a national hero, she has developed a response
both disarming and revealing: "I would rather be thought of as a
Latin Margaret Thatcher."

    Actually, Chamorro's presidential style will resemble that
of her long-distance admirer. Like Ronald Reagan, Chamorro holds
deeply ingrained if unrefined notions of what she wants to
accomplish. She has demonstrated an ability to impart those
aspirations to the populace, and she knows how to delegate
authority to more able lieutenants.

    For the record, Chamorro never returned Reagan's call, but
he phoned again Tuesday, and the two spoke only briefly.
Chamorro was fretting over her first postelection address,
trying to make sure it sounded just right. It was a distraction
the Great Communicator would surely appreciate.