CHAMORRO AND CHAMORRO . . .
Richard West on
the family that is the key to Nicaraguan politics
THE leader of the Nicaraguan opposition, Senora Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, bears the most famous name in the coun- try. In fact the Chamorrists are still a political party. Since independence from Spain, in 1821, one or more of the Cha- morro clan have always been leading the opposition if they have not been in the government. Anyone hoping to under- stand Nicaragua should try to forget the ideologies, the Sandinistas and Contras, and study instead the Chamorros. The first Chamorros went from Seville to Central America in the 1730s. They settled in and around Granada, the handsome old city on Lake Nicaragua, which in those days was part of the shortest route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. For this reason the city- was prone to attack by pirates or foreign naval commanders like Nelson, making their way up the San Juan river. Its strategic position also made Gra- nada rich, as did the fertile volcanic earth. When the Spaniards abandoned Central America in 1821, the different provinces tried for a time to establish a federation, but slowly broke into different mutually jealous states like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. Among these, Nicaragua was unique in having a constant civil war as well as fighting her neighbours.
The country was split between Granada and Leon, the former administrative cen- tre. Granada was clerical, Legitimist and Conservative; Leon called herself Demo- crat, afterwards Liberal, and was inclined to free-thinking.
The rivalry between Leon and Granada took on more urgency with the Californian Gold Rush of 1848, when the Americans opened an inter-ocean shipping route through the San Juan river and Lake Nicaragua. Hundreds of thousands of North Americans started to move through the country, scattering wealth around them. The Leonese were determined to get their hands on this traffic and captured half of Granada in 1854, demolishing most of one of its churches. The next year they hired as their General a North American soldier-of-fortune, William Walker, to do the job for them. Walker and his band of 'Immortals' captured Granada by taking it
from the lake at night. At first Walker befriended the politicians he always de- scribed as `Chamorrists' but when they plotted against him, had them shot in the Plaza in front of the Alhambra Hotel. He also confiscated Cornelius Vanderbilt's inter-ocean shipping assets, and stood for election as President of Nicaragua. Although he cheated no more than anyone else had done in the past, the Leonese as well as Chamorrists resented a foreigner getting in on their act. When Walker was forced to escape from Granada in late 1856 he tried to get his revenge by having it razed to the ground and even planted a spear in the ground with the slogan 'Aqui fue Granada!', 'Here stood Granada!' However, the razing was not as efficient as Nicaragua's frequent earthquakes, and now Granada is one of the few towns almost intact from Spanish times.
A Chamorro has written the only Nicaraguan biography of Walker, full of passion and outrage. A' plaque on the refurbished cathedral honours the priest who snatched the monstrance out of the flames, when Walker ignited the building. In front of Jalteva Church is a plaque to General Joaquin Chamorro, President of Nicaragua from 1875 to 1879, 'who brought in the railway, the telegraph, property registration and compulsory education'. The Chamorros and their relations stayed in power till the end of the 19th century, bestowing on Nicaragua its only era of peace, after which they were re- placed by an arch enemy, the Liberal General Zelaya. He grabbed the Chamor- ro coffee estates and also the famous volcano, Momotombo, which had been hymned by Victor Hugo. Like most anti- Chamorrists, from Walker to the Sandinis- tas, General Zelaya quarrelled with all the neighbouring countries, and then invaded Honduras using the new machine-guns bought with graft. In 1909, General Emil- iano Chamorro, a veteran of three abortive risings, set up his flag on the east coast, whereupon the United States sent in the Marine Corps. Chamorro was president of the country from 1917 till 1921 and after- wards held the power behind the throne until the American-supervised general election of 1924, the first fair vote to Nicaraguan history, and almost the last. The Americans left, well pleased with their work, whereupon Chamorro mounted a coup d'etat, purged all the Liberals and made himself president once more.
When the Liberals mounted a counter- coup, on the east coast, the United States sent back the Marines to stop the civil war and arrange a settlement. American Democratic Congressmen moaned over this constant intervention in Nicaragua. especially the US backing for the Chamor- ro family. The equivalents of Senator Edward Kennedy loved to reel out cata- logues of the fat jobs held by Chamorros, from President of the Republic down to Governor of Corinto and Consul in New Orleans and San Francisco, There was pleasure when once more the Liberals came into power, closed the Chamorro family newspaper La Prensa, and threw many conservatives into prison, along with the communists. The Americans would have left again but for the rising by 'General' Augusto Sandino, the bandit who plundered the mines and coffee plantations of north-eastern Nicaragua, also fighting a brilliant guerrilla war against the US Marines. After the second and final free election in Nicaraguan history, in l932, the Americans left, and 'General' Somoza mUrdered 'General' Sandino, whose name is enshrined in the present ruling party.
Throughout the Somoza years, the main opposition came from conservatives such as Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the editor of La Prensa, and husband of Violeta, the present Opposition leader. He started out as a guerrilla in the early 1950s. He helped to arrange the mass demonstration in 1907 which ended with the machine-gunning of nearly a thousand people. Chamorro was imprisoned but put together a coalition against the Somozas in 1974, backed by businessmen and the Church. On 10 Janu- ary 1978, gunmen murdered Chamorro iii . his car. This may have been the work ot Anastasio Somoza Portacarrero, 'the Brat', or of crooks exposed by La Prensa for running a trade in human blood from a factory known as the House of Dracula. A furious crowd burned down many businesses belonging to the Somozas and their chums, including the House of Dracu- la. It was the spark that started the civil war and overthrow of the Somozas, 1.8 months later. The prime movers of this
resistance were not the Sandinistas but the Chamorrists and the Church, especially Archbishop, now Cardinal Obando y Bra- vo.
After the revolution, some Chamorros joined the Sandinistas, becoming the edi- tors of their newspapers, Barricada and El Nuevo Diana, while other Chamorros, like Violeta, stuck with La Prensa. The Sandi- nistas have four times closed La Prensa, as the Somozas never did. The odious Minis- ter of the Interior, Tomas Sorge, has threatened to skin alive the La Prensa staff, while the President's brother Umber- to Ortega has said that if the Sandinistas were threatened with overthrow, the staff of La Prensa will be the first to be strung up along the highways'.
Senora Chamorro is now in the same position as Mrs Corazon Aquino. Like Mrs Aquino, Senora Chamorro is loathed by the Left. But whereas the Left in the Philippines played no part in getting rid of the Marcos couple, the Sandinistas man- aged to hijack the popular movement, against the Somozas. Having got rid of one nasty dictatorship, the Nicaraguans now have to get rid of another, with ten times the number of army and police, backed by Russians and Cubans.
Richard West's new book Hurricane in Nicaragua is published by Michael Joseph, £14.95.
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