I imagine that on more than one occasion Violeta Chamorro thought she was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her youth in Nicaragua were marked by the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, which began in 1937 and continued with governments led by two of his sons until 1979. Since then, the Central American country has been dominated by Daniel Ortega, except for the period when she was president, between 1990 and 1997. Before and after his term, the regimes that promised to fight for the common good and protect the most disadvantaged became kleptocracies led by unscrupulous men.

Violeta Barrios, who died last Saturday at the age of 95 in Costa Rica, married Pedro Joaquín Chamorro at a very young age. Chamorro, who was a relentless critic of the Somoza regime in the pages of the newspaper La Prensa , was an utter critic. Chamorro's assassination in 1978 was intended to silence those who opposed a corrupt system, but had the opposite effect: it produced a popular uprising that hastened the end of the dictatorship. Violeta wanted to continue the bequest of her husband, first from the newspaper and later in the political sphere.

In 1998, when he collected the award Brajnovic, from the Communications Department at the University of Navarra, we talked a lot about Nicaragua. I don't recall her ever criticizing those who had caused her so much suffering. Nor did I ever hear her complain about those who had sown resentment and violence in her country. She was a brave, hopeful, and grateful woman.

Throughout her life, Violeta Chamorro experienced the disastrous consequences of two extremely toxic delusions that are still relevant today: the totalitarian utopia, which seeks to achieve justice without freedom, and the relativist utopia, which attempts to achieve freedom without the truth. She always believed that political action required broad vision; and she defended a free press and manager It acts as a protective shield for citizens because it prevents the abuse of power by rulers.

Violeta Chamorro's family was no stranger to the climate of polarization generated by the Somoza dictatorship, which was later exacerbated by the Sandinista revolution. Her four children held very different ideological positions. To prevent these sometimes conflicting opinions from causing enmity between the siblings, Doña Violeta organized a family meal at her home on Sundays, with one strict rule: to avoid heated arguments, political talk was prohibited.

At the end of his visit While waiting at Pamplona airport, a middle-aged man approached him, gave him an envelope with some bills and said: “I don't have much money, but you are worse off and have recently suffered an earthquake; use this financial aid as you see fit." The stranger walked away, and Violeta Chamorro, still somewhat bewildered, exclaimed: "With people like that, it's possible to believe in a better world."

The former president of Nicaragua led a government of national reconciliation, promoted freedom of the press, and never allowed herself to be overcome by resentment and bitterness. She died in exile, yearning for her beloved homeland. But the final chapter of her life remains to be written: the transfer of her remains to a free Nicaragua.