Revolution as a Family Affair : NICARAGUA DIVIDED La Prensa and the Chamorro Legacy <i> by Patricia Taylor Edmisten (University Presses of Florida: $19.95; 142 pp.; 0-8130-0972-3) </i>

On April 25, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro will become the fifth Chamorro inaugurated president of Nicaragua. The first president of independent Nicaragua was Fruto Chamorro, the great-great- uncle of her husband. Violeta has the distinction of being the first president in Nicaragua’s history to receive power from an incumbent whom she defeated in a peaceful democratic election.

The Chamorro family has been at the center of Nicaragua’s history, and the family’s current divisions--with two children supporting her and the other two working for her Sandinista rival--reflect her nation’s. Her challenge will be to heal the wounds of both her family and her nation.

Unlike the four other Chamorro presidents, Violeta was not born to lead. She married into the family, and Patricia Edmisten has placed her husband, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, at the center of her timely book, “Nicaragua Divided: La Prensa and the Chamorro Legacy.” For the last 40 years, Nicaraguan politics have revolved, to a considerable degree, around his life and death.

Pedro Joaquin became director of La Prensa in 1952 when his father, who had purchased the paper 20 years before, died. He devoted his paper and his life to attacking the Somoza family’s corruption and brutality. And he paid the price for his conviction.

In 1954, for conspiring to overthrow the elder Somoza, he was arrested and imprisoned for two years. Three months after Chamorro’s release from prison, Somoza was assassinated; and although Chamorro played no role in the killing, he was arrested again and ortured-- “the most horrible six days of my life.” After six months in jail, he was sent to “internal exile” in San Carlos, but escaped and spent the next two years in Costa Rica.

In May of 1959, after rejecting aid from Castro but accepting it from Jose Figueres of Venezuela, Chamorro launched another revolution against Somoza. This too failed, and Chamorro was imprisoned until a general amnesty in 1960. After these experiences, Chamorro turned to the pen and politics. His popularity grew, and many future Sandinista leaders, including Tomas Borge, Bayardo Arce and Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife, worked for him then.

In 1974, he assembled the disparate opposition groups into UDEL, the Democratic Union of Liberation. His philosophy was democratic, nationalist with a strain of anti-Americanism, and Christian. Although anti-Communist, he acknowledged that the “same cause that produces them (at least in Nicaragua) is the same that produces movements like our own.”

Under pressure from the Carter Administration, Somoza stopped censoring La Prensa in September, 1977, and Chamorro’s campaign gained momentum. Chamorro reported the approaching end of the Somoza regime, but he also told his wife, Dona Violeta, that his life was in danger. He was right about both. On Jan. 10, 1978, gunmen stopped his car and shot him dead.

Chamorro’s tragedy is that his death accomplished what his life had failed to do: It displaced Somoza. More than 40,000 people came to mourn him; almost all of the businesses in Managua shut down for several weeks, and the middle class called publicly for an end to the Somoza dictatorship. Chamorro’s son told me that he did not believe that Somoza assassinated his father, but the people of Nicaragua held the dynasty ultimately responsible, and the murder served as the catalyst that bound the middle class to the Sandinistas to produce the violent revolution.

For nearly a year after Somoza’s departure in July, 1979, the Chamorros and other revolutionary Nicaraguan families were united, and the United States was supportive of the revolution. Violeta was one of the members of the first junta to govern the country, expropriate Somocista property, begin land reform and imprison members of the National Guard.

However, the nine Sandinista commanders were the real power, and they showed little interest in holding free elections or tolerating dissent, preferring initially the political-military model of Cuba. Violeta resigned from the junta, and the Chamorro family fought over the direction of La Prensa.

The family split, with each side claiming Pedro Joaquin’s legacy. Violeta was joined by one of her husband’s brothers, Jaime; one son, Pedro Joaquin (the fifth), and one daughter, Cristiana. This group maintained control of La Prensa. Her husband’s other brother, Xavier Chamorro, founded a pro-Sandinista newspaper, Nuevo Diario, which conducted the press’ most hostile attacks against Violeta during the campaign. Another son, Carlos Fernando, became the Sandinista director of agitation and propaganda, and eventually the editor of Barricada, the Sandinista party newspaper. Another daughter became a Sandinista ambassador.

Edmisten, an associate professor of education at the University of West Florida, first visited Nicaragua in 1981 and was intrigued by the Chamorro family. Her lean, journalistic book allows each of the Chamorros to tell his story. She completed the book last November, after Violeta became the candidate of the National Opposition Union (UNO) but before she was elected president.

Unlike so many who have reported on Nicaragua during this last decade, Edmisten listens intently to both sides and her reports are fair and balanced. She concludes that both sides of the Chamorro family have passionately pursued Pedro Joaquin’s goals, though in different ways.

With her children split, Violeta intimately felt the pain of a divided Nicaragua, and thus after her landslide victory on Feb. 25, she welcomed her Sandinista children into her home and was the first to call for national reconciliation.

Pedro Joaquin never voted in an election in Nicaragua. He was either in prison or exile or, in 1972, recommending abstention on the grounds that Somoza would not permit a free election. In this sense, Pedro Joaquin was emblematic of Nicaragua’s authoritarian past, and his wife of the possibilities of a democratic future.

Edmisten provides interesting background on Pedro Joaquin’s life and on the power he exerted over his country, but she neglects to explain how Violeta emerged from his shadow. In a male-dominated world, surrounded by strong and ambitious men (including Pedro Joaquin’s two brothers), Violeta was the one who secured what eluded her husband--the presidency--and she did so in the first free election in Nicaragua’s history. That is no simple feat. She, more than any member of this talented family, has become both leader and symbol of a nation divided and in need of reconciliation.

In 1987, Edgar Chamorro predicted that his cousin, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, would some day become for all Nicaraguans “what Sandino is for the Sandinistas.” A “civilian fighter,” Pedro Joaquin would become “more of an inspiration and example because he used civilized means, having given up the rifle.”

The inauguration of his wife on April 25 offers the country the opportunity to unite behind the peaceful, democratic legacy that Pedro Joaquin Chamorro hoped to bequeath to his nation.