Dona Violeta’s Dreams : DREAMS OF THE HEART: The Autobiography of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua.<i> By Violeta Barrios de Chamorro with Sonia Cruz de Baltodano and Guido Fernandez (Simon & Schuster: $25, 352 pp.)</i>

Practically every nation in Latin America has felt put upon by the United States--the so-called “Colossus of the North”--at one time or other. But few Latin American nations have suffered longer, or more terribly, as a result of Yanqui intervention than Nicaragua.

Every Nicaraguan school child knows the story of William Walker, for example, the Tennessee mercenary who invaded Nicaragua in 1855, aiming to set himself up as president and eventually annex “his” nation to the United States as a slave state.

Nicaraguans also chafe at the memory of the 1916 treaty in which Nicaragua agreed, under pressure from Washington, not to build a transoceanic canal across Nicaraguan territory to compete with the new U.S.-controlled Panama Canal.

Then there was the U.S. military occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s. It ended in 1932, after U.S. Marines had trained and equipped a constabulary to maintain order in their absence. But the Nicaraguan National Guard soon became the private army of its commander, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, and the basis of a corrupt and brutal Somoza family dictatorship that would last until 1979, when Anastasio Somoza Debayle was overthrown in a popular rebellion. Among the leaders of that uprising were guerrillas known as Sandinistas who, not too surprisingly, were fiercely anti-American.

Even today, I’d bet most U.S. citizens remember only dimly, if at all, the most recent intervention in Nicaragua--Ronald Reagan’s futile, dirty little war of the 1980s to overthrow the Sandinista government. Reagan used a surrogate army of assorted Sandinista opponents, held uneasily together by CIA money, that came to be known as the Contras. Recent press reports have suggested the Contras were more than the “freedom fighters” Reagan often insisted they were. Specifically, it is alleged that some Contras helped finance their covert war by smuggling cocaine into the United States. But, for now, those who remember the Contra war probably think of it as a sideshow to the denouement of the Cold War.

That sideshow left more than 30,000 Nicaraguans dead. And the person most responsible for bringing the carnage to an end is a feisty Nicaraguan widow who is now nearing 70 years old, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

Dona Violeta, as she is called both by her political supporters and her many critics--who range from Cuba’s Fidel Castro to North Carolina’s Republican Sen. Jesse Helms--has been president of Nicaragua since 1990. That is when she surprised--and inspired--most of the world by defeating Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua’s first truly open and honest elections. Dona Violeta will step down next year in favor of a civilian successor to be elected Oct. 20. That achievement alone makes her autobiography, “Dreams of the Heart,” an important book despite its many flaws.

Chamorro was in a unique position to write a definitive book on the sad history of U.S.-Nicaraguan relations. She and her late husband, newspaper editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, were descendants of two of Nicaragua’s oldest families, with roots going back to the nation’s founding in the 18th century. The Chamorros were also among the most constant and courageous opponents of the Somozas. Unfortunately, “Dreams of the Heart” doesn’t focus enough on that epic story. Instead it is a heartfelt, often meandering and overwrought, personal memoir.

Still, there is no denying the drama of the events it covers. Pedro Joaquin Chamorro’s murder in January 1978 marked the beginning of the end for the Somoza regime. He was gunned down on his way to his newspaper office by a pair of the dictator’s henchmen. The killing so shocked Nicaraguans that they launched a series of general strikes, protests and other spontaneous anti-Somoza demonstrations that, combined with the pressure of the Sandinista guerrilla war, toppled the last Somoza by July, 1979.

Sooner than even their most suspicious critics expected, the Sandinistas seized control of the Nicaraguan revolution and tried to turn it to their political and personal advantage. They forged alliances with Castro and the former Soviet Union and lined their pockets with wealth and property seized not just from the Somozas but from other “bourgeoisie elements.”

This is where another serious flaw in Chamorro’s story emerges. For as a member of the first post-revolution junta, and later head of a government that defeated the Sandinistas at the polls, she was presumably in a unique position to detail how the Nicaraguan revolution was betrayed and then rescued. Yet she is scant on far too many details.

This may be a reflection of the unique dilemma Chamorro faced after her husband was slain. She was matriarch to a large, politically active family whose sons and daughters would take diametrically opposed sides in the 1980s. The son who succeeded Pedro Joaquin as editor of La Prensa would eventually flee into exile when his family’s newspaper was shut down by the Sandinistas and become a Contra leader in Miami. Another son and a daughter would become prominent leaders of the Sandinista movement.

Thus, Dona Violeta was not just a political leader and a national symbol. She was literally a mother struggling to keep her family together amid civil war. Like any mother faced with such a painful situation, she strove to be understanding of all her children. Even years later, she apparently cannot bring herself to criticize any of them. And, after six years as president, she has broadened her definition of “my children” to include all Nicaraguans. So even political opponents like Ortega are briefly criticized in one sentence, only to be generously forgiven in the next.

Of course, this forgiving spirit is the very quality that made Dona Violeta a savior for Nicaragua when she was elected president. Rather than do what every other victor in that nation’s political history had done--exile the losers--she allowed the Sandinistas to form a loyal opposition, disarmed the Contras and set about trying to rebuild the nation.

The most valuable portion of Chamorro’s book outlines the reasons she decided to keep a notorious Sandinista general, Ortega’s brother Humberto, in command of the Nicaraguan army early in her presidency. Although it alienated Helms and others in Washington, she decided that only the general who had built up the military could reduce its influence and size without even more violence and instability. And, Helms notwithstanding, the strategy worked.

If the rest of Dona Violeta’s autobiography was as detailed as this section, it could stand as a definitive history of the Nicaraguan revolution. But that book still remains to be written, no doubt by a historian with more emotional distance from Nicaragua’s suffering than Dona Violeta has.