Fascinating. I had never known any of this history beyond a vague right-wing Somozas vs. left-wing Sandinistas, and it's very interesting to learn how wrong that impression of mine had been.
So...with that caveat that I'm real ignorant about all this, is the Pedro Chamorro Cardenal here the husband of President Violeta Chamorro?
Yes, President Violeta Chamorro (*) was the widow of the tragically diseased Pedro Chamorro Cardenal. Maybe I should have mentioned that the Chamorro family has been very prominent in Nicaragua for almost two centuries, and General Emiliano Chamorro, whom I mentioned in the post, was distantly related to Pedro Chamorro Cardenal. You can see them both in this family tree:
Notice the many generals and presidents in that tree. The founder of the family arrived from Spain in the 18th century (***) and established himself in Granada, unwittingly tying the family to the Granada-based conservatives for many generations.
(*) She was usually called in Spanish: Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, or Violeta Barrios viuda de Chamorro. Barrios was her maiden name.
(**) There's an English version of the same tree, but for some reason it doesn't show some of the connections correctly.
(***) A late arrival. Thus a "small" family with the consequent "surname prestige" that many such successful families have in some Latin American countries.
Fascinating. I had never known any of this history beyond a vague right-wing Somozas vs. left-wing Sandinistas, and it's very interesting to learn how wrong that impression of mine had been.
So...with that caveat that I'm real ignorant about all this, is the Pedro Chamorro Cardenal here the husband of President Violeta Chamorro?
Thank you for this very educational essay.
Yes, President Violeta Chamorro (*) was the widow of the tragically diseased Pedro Chamorro Cardenal. Maybe I should have mentioned that the Chamorro family has been very prominent in Nicaragua for almost two centuries, and General Emiliano Chamorro, whom I mentioned in the post, was distantly related to Pedro Chamorro Cardenal. You can see them both in this family tree:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familia_Chamorro (*)
Notice the many generals and presidents in that tree. The founder of the family arrived from Spain in the 18th century (***) and established himself in Granada, unwittingly tying the family to the Granada-based conservatives for many generations.
(*) She was usually called in Spanish: Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, or Violeta Barrios viuda de Chamorro. Barrios was her maiden name.
(**) There's an English version of the same tree, but for some reason it doesn't show some of the connections correctly.
(***) A late arrival. Thus a "small" family with the consequent "surname prestige" that many such successful families have in some Latin American countries.