Word: chamorro
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Like other revolutions of thought and arms, the new Nicaraguan order has set friend against friend, brother against brother. Four years after the overthrow of Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, one remarkable family embodies the ideological divisions that tear at the fabric of the country: the old and respected Chamorro clan, a wealthy political and publishing dynasty that has given Nicaragua four Presidents and three generations of newspaper publishers. In their differing and passionately held points of view, the Chamorros are a microcosm of a nation at odds with itself...
Disharmony is new to them. For more than 40 years, the family was united in its opposition to the harsh and repressive regimes of successive members of the Somoza family. For three decades, that opposition was led by Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, brilliant and unflinching editor of the Managua daily La Prensa. On Jan. 10, 1978, Chamorro, 53, was gunned down on his way to the office by Sonioza henchmen. The apparent motive: retaliation for a La Prensa disclosure that a blood bank owned in part by Somoza was selling much needed blood abroad at a profit...
...Chamorro's assassination catalyzed the national rebellion that was already building against the regime, and subsequently served to sunder the bereaved family. In 1980, only a year after the revolution, the newspaper was paralyzed by a struggle between family members who supported the new Sandinista government and those critical of its Marxist-Leninist tendencies. The conservatives won, and Chamorro's brother Xavier, editor of La Prensa, left to form his own newspaper, taking most of the staff with him. Today Chamorro's widow, his brothers and sisters and four children are arrayed in almost equal numbers...
...three daily newspapers in Managua are published by Chamorros, each with a different editorial line. La Prensa (circ. 56,000) is now jointly edited by Chamorro's eldest son and namesake, Pedro Joaquin, 32, Chamorro's cousin Pablo Antonio Cuadra, 71, and uncle Jaime Chamorro, 49. El Nuevo Diario (circ. 48,000), edited by Xavier, 50, is solidly progovernment. Barricada (circ. 80,000), edited by Chamorro's youngest son, Carlos Fernando, 27, is the official paper of the Sandinista movement...
...recent propaganda attacks and rumors of U.S.-backed "destabilization plans," Alfonso Robelo Callejas, a leading moderate, declared: "The state of emergency is a very logical reaction. The Americans provided a lot of the elements." Others feared that the Sandinistas were exploiting the situation to edge toward greater control. Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, acting editor of the opposition daily La Prensa, called the emergency decree "one more step in the radicalization of the regime...