Word: chamorros
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...images still stir the spirit: multitudes, swathed in yellow, sweeping Corazon Aquino to power in the Philippines; Benazir Bhutto campaigning atop truck caravans in Pakistan; Violeta Chamorro, in a wheelchair, toppling Nicaragua's haughty Sandinista regime. In the past decade, no man has come to power as dramatically and as spectacularly as these women. For feminists everywhere, the rise of Aquino, Bhutto and Chamorro seemed to augur huge steps forward for societies usually characterized by unrelenting machismo. The images, however, were misleading...
Behind each woman in power was a powerful man or an influential political dynasty. In their election campaigns, Aquino and Chamorro constantly reminded voters that they were carrying on the work of their deceased husbands. Aquino is the widow of Benigno Aquino Jr., Ferdinand Marcos' most bitter rival, who was assassinated in August 1983; Chamorro is the widow of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the newspaper publisher whose murder in 1978 led to the downfall of the brutal Anastasio Somoza regime. During her 1988 election campaign, Bhutto never ceased alluding to the legacy of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed...
Unlike Britain's Margaret Thatcher or Israel's Golda Meir, Aquino, Bhutto and Chamorro claimed power not through proven political skills but on the strength and symbolism of their family ties. For much of the Third World, the idea of the nation-state has not evolved too far from the idea of kingdoms; rulers are still heads of extended tribes or vast families, rather than chief executives of the machinery of government. Politics very often pits clan against clan, all the way from Machiavellian patriarchs to the wives and daughters, whose chief duty is still procreation and the maintenance...
Bush Administration officials are seriously considering freezing a $300 million aid package to Violeta Chamorro's government in Nicaragua. Reason: Nicaragua refuses to withdraw a suit filed in the World Court charging that the U.S.-backed contra war violated international law. The cautious Chamorro doesn't want to offend the powerful Sandinistas, who filed the case in 1984 and continue to hold control over the people's army...
After 100 days of ruling Nicaragua, what power does the Violeta Chamorro government actually wield? Not much, according to State Department officials, who believe that the ousted Sandinistas still run the country. "The civilians hold the offices, but the Sandinistas have all of the muscle, and they monitor phone calls at will," says a U.S. diplomat just back from Nicaragua. Humberto Ortega, brother of the ex-President and Chamorro's army chief, earns grudging American respect as the most politically adroit figure in the country. Chamorro gets a harsh assessment. "Even her friends call her 'Rag Doll,' " says...