Word: violeta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...VIOLETA BARRIOS DE CHAMORRO may be President of Nicaragua, but Daniel Ortega's defeated Marxist party still controls the Sandinista Popular Army. Now a group of prominent Nicaraguans calling themselves the "Civilist Movement" are working quietly to remove this Sword of Damocles by abolishing the army altogether. Its peace-keeping functions would be turned over to the national police force, which is less political. The Civilist Movement wants to offer citizens a referendum on the issue, which war-weary citizens would be likely to approve in an honest election. After all, neighboring Costa Rica has got by without an army...
Fiers believes that we should ignore the Iran-Contra scandal because "the Nicaraguan policy, including the support to the contras, was fully successful." But Violeta Chamorro's eventual democratic election to the presidency of Nicaragua does not justify illegal support for guerrilla revolutionaries...
...decade-long civil war between the U.S.-backed contra rebels and the Sandinistas is supposed to be over. It has been 18 months since a coalition led by President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro ousted the Sandinista National Liberation Front in free elections, and 14 months since about 27,500 contras voluntarily surrendered their weapons. But harassment by the army and police, which remain under Sandinista control, has driven about 1,000 so-called recontras to rearm, threatening a recrudescence...
...could no longer maintain that low profile after his mother-in-law, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, defeated the Sandinistas and became President of Nicaragua in April 1990. Lacayo, who served as Chamorro's campaign director, immediately began shaping the new administration; according to insiders, he picked the President's Cabinet and made the controversial decision to retain Sandinista General Humberto Ortega Saavedra as head of the armed forces. Lacayo's official title is Minister of the Presidency, but some feel he might as well be called Mr. Presidency. "Dona Violeta conferred absolute power on Antonio from the beginning," says...
Whatever the shortcomings of the Chamorro government, they pale in comparison with the Sandinistas' shameless pillaging of the country during the two months between their electoral defeat and the day Violeta Barrios de Chamorro took the helm. Nicaraguans refer to those rapacious weeks as "la pinata," after the papier-mache animals that children whack with a stick so they can plunder the candy stuffed inside...