Esteb: Welcome back. We’ve talked about Cookie’s younger life and the origins of the dark divisions that created the Nicaragua we know today. But this segment is about a crime. A heinous act that changed the course of history and cleared the path that Cookie never saw coming.

*News Anchor speaking Spanish*

Esteb: That was Managua Evening News. Pedro Chamorro had been murdered. This is what the New York. Times said when it happened:

News Reporter: Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, an editor known for his outspoken opposition to the dictatorship of General Anastasio Somoza de Debayle, was shot to death today in downtown Managua. The 53 year old editor and publisher of La Princesa of Managua, the country’s only opposition paper, was shot 18 times by three men in a car, who forced his auto to the curb. Mr. Chamorro died on the way to a hospital.

Esteb: It’s a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Who killed Pedro Joaquin Chamorro? Before we get into that, who was he and why does he matter?

Hood: Somoza had a mortal enemy. He was a newspaperman. His name was Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. He was married also to a well known society, Lady Violeta Barrios.

Esteb: The Chamorros were close family friends, and Violeta became Cookie’s aunt by marriage just a few years later. Justin Wolfe gives us a little background.

Wolfe: The head of the oldest kind of most traditional elite family in Nicaragua, and really a revered business intellectual and social figure in Nicaragua. The Chamorro family had really been important since the 18th century in Nicaragua, Chamorros are presidents twice in the 19th century. Again, in the 20th century. It’s one of those long, kind of political dynasty families, right? If we think about the US, it’s like the Kennedys or the Bush family.

US Congress: Members of the Congress, it is my great privilege and I deem it a high honor and personal pleasure to present to you Her Excellency Violetta Chamorro, President of the Republic of Nicaragua.

Esteb: That was in 1991 Violeta Chamorro, the first woman President of Nicaragua, speaking to a joint session of the US Congress. If you recall, we met Chamorro’s daughter, Christiana, on the parade float with Cookie a few minutes ago. They were childhood friends. She was running for president last year in Nicaragua and in a fair election, the likely winner. Then Daniel Ortega went full dictator.

News Anchor: High profile opposition leaders arrested one by one in just the last few days, months before a crucial election in which strongman President Daniel Ortega is trying to claim to his 14 years of power as fears grow. This is only going to get worse.

News Anchor: Earlier this week, the Pro government prosecutor had charged Chamorro, Nicaragua’s most competitive presidential candidate, with alleged money laundering and what it termed as ideological deviations.

Esteb: Her crime: running for president against Danielle Ortega. She was under house arrest until a few weeks ago. That’s some serious fascist bullshit.

Wolfe: By the mid to late 70s, Chamorro is not only an opponent of Somoza, but he’s looking around and he is looking for example at the Sandinistas who, some of his children are members of, and seeing them, eventually, by 1977 as probably the only viable path forward out of a Somoza-run Nicaragua. That’s a huge shift, right? The Patriarch of traditional conservative politics in Nicaragua sees the Sandinistas not only as viable as a meaningful and real opposition but is actually the only one that is organized enough and has a clear enough plan to actually defeat Somoza.

Esteb: OK, so who killed Pedro Chamorro? There were a lot of suspects, in fact, just about everybody. Let’s start with the obvious choice. The brutal dictator, Anastasio Somoza. He clearly had no problem killing his own people, and like any good strong man, he made a lot of people disappear. But why would he murder a high-profile journalist from one of the most prominent and beloved families in Nicaragua? Chamorro decided to go after Somoza in his newspaper, La Prensa, on television, and his speeches. And remember. This is a clash of two dynasties, one that dates back to the 1700s with enormous historical and political clout and one with a history of oppression, violence, torture and murder. Something had to give.

News Anchor: So, what happened to this person who wanted freedom? Well, they murdered him. Who murdered him? The Somoza forces.

Esteb: That was the voice of Pedro Chamorro’s wife, Violeta, future president of Nicaragua. Was she right? Somoza clearly had motive. Chamorro had the power and the voice. He was a threat to the regime. But Cookie, who grew up knowing them both, who as a child actually played with their children, has a different perspective.

Hood: I don’t think Pedro Joachim ever thought that Somoza would kill him. They spoke to each other; they saw each other at social affairs. They needed each other. Chamorro needed Somoza to be the bad guy. Somoza needed Chamorro more to be the opposition. As long as it looked like a dictator allowed opposition voices to be heard through newspaper and some radio stations. It made him look less iron-fisted-dictator, so neither one of them feared their lives from the other.

Esteb: Not exactly exculpatory evidence. But if it wasn’t Somoza, who else had a motive to murder Chamorro?

Wolfe: He is being vocal in the press and in his own speeches about Somoza, but also families that are in the larger circle of the Somozas. His word critiquing those families and pointing out the crimes or the errors or the violence, or the corruption of those families, is viewed as a personal attack. For Chamorro, it was like identifying the cancer that needed to be removed, and so of course the Somozas, overall, the whole family, the in-law’s, and then the key kind of connected families that were part of the larger Somoza circle, they all despise Chamorro. They despise being pointed out and lifted up as the bane of Nicaragua.

 

Hood: We owned everything, car dealerships, banks, restaurants, shops, poor people didn’t own anything. You know, there’s a funny story of Somoza driving in the countryside and he says to his driver “Oh, that’s really a pretty ranch. Who owns that?” And the driver turns around, he says “Your Excellency, you own it.”

Esteb: Dan Rather doing a piece for 60 Minutes, asked Somoza about as many holdings.

Rather: General, I’ve been told that your wealth is in the neighborhood of $500 million. And the list is very long of special interests that you and your family own. You own the national airline.

Somoza: No, we’re shareholders of it.

Rather: You’re a major shareholder in the airline.

Somoza: Yes.

Rather: You own the national shipping line.

Somoza: Yes, I founded that.

Rather: Including your own port, Port Somoza.

Somoza: Also, we founded that.

Rather: You own the leading television station?

Somoza: Yes.

Rather: Radio station.

Somoza: Yes.

Rather: You own a newspaper?

Somoza: Yes.

Rather: You own the biggest hotel in Managua?

Somoza: No, we’re shareholders of it.

Rather: You’re a major shareholder.

Somoza: No, minority.

Rather: You own hundreds of thousands of acres of land?

Somoza: Yes.

Rather: You own cattle?

Somoza: Yes.

Rather: You own huge financial interest in banks and insurance companies and you…

Somoza: Yes! We could go on and on.

Hood: He owned everything and he made sure that all his friends were taken care of too.

Esteb: The wealthy elite had a lot to lose if Somoza lost power and Cookie’s family was a part of that. Could the motive just be money? I guess it’s always money. But what about big business? Nicaragua exported sugar, beef, bananas, but most of that was owned by Somoza and his friends. The Nicaraguan government did arrest 4 suspects, saying they were hired by an American whose plasma exporting business was under fire. But Chamorro’s newspaper, La Prensa, of course, Somoza had a piece of that plasma business as well. It always leads back to Somoza. But what about the United States? We’ve had a stake in Nicaragua since we helped get the first Somoza in power back in the 1920s. And of course, we’ve assassinated people in the past.

Hood: There’s a famous line from Franklin Roosevelt about the first Somoza, the present Somoza’s father. FDR, referring to Somoza “He’s a son of a bitch. but he’s our son of a bitch.” All the Somozas were bound to the US. President Somoza went to West Point, all of them US-educated. Obviously, investments in this country. At this point, the US is still backing the Nicaragua dictatorship.

Esteb: Like we backed El Salvador and Honduras and Panama and all those places.

Hood: Correct, correct. “Fighting communism.”

Esteb: And the presence of Cuba right there makes it…

Hood: Who were communists…

Esteb: Yeah. Who makes that domino theory viable, yes.

Hood: And I think you got the Allende in Chile and you know all these different movements that were put down ruthlessly and viciously.

Esteb: At this point, we haven’t discounted any of our suspects. They all have motive. They all have opportunity. They all wanted him dead. Is this like Julius Caesar where they all put a knife in his back? Are they all fucking guilty? Wait a second. I forgot about someone.

Hood: The second generation Somoza had a son and he was next in line to become president one day. He was this flashy military kid. He might have gone to West Point as well. He was hanging around with mercenaries. There were famous American mercenaries that were coming to Nicaragua. Mike The Mercenary, Bob The Mercenary. These were bad people. They would wear the bullets across here like Pancho Villa and by this time the mercenaries are driving in tanks in the streets. And of course, I was friends with them too.

Esteb: That’s right. Cookie parties with mercenaries.

Where were they from?

Hood: US. Just anywhere mercenary that needed a job, he could come.

Esteb: The US mercenaries killed Pedro?

Hood: We don’t know who exactly did. We suspect that it was Mike The Mercenary, but it was on the orders of Somoza III. He had Pedro Joaquin Chamorro assassinated.

Esteb: I don’t know if Cookie is right about this. But it sure makes a better story.

Hood: Of course, we later found out his father was furious with him. Why did you do this? Because that kind of stuff just didn’t happen to rich people in Nicaragua. Sure, it happened behind the scenes to poor people and revolutionaries and criminals. But that kind of stuff didn’t happen.

Wolfe: In the end, I actually don’t think who ordered it ends up being the important question. The result of it is what’s really important, which is there’s this massive reporting in the US about this beloved hero of press freedom and democracy, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro being assassinated in this country, led by a violent military dictator. So that’s the way the coverage is being presented. And then four everyday Nicaraguans, even those who are not really political, it is both the murder of this very popular figure, but also this idea that “If he can be murdered, what won’t they do?”

Esteb: This is how the Washington Post summed it up.

News Anchor: At a crucial moment, the Chamorro murder has dramatized for foreigners the lawlessness and political tension long known to Nicaraguans. The Somoza family has tried to run the politics and economy of the country as its personal preserve, cleverly co-opting supporters and brutally destroying opponents. Whether the transition to the post-Somoza era will be violent or peaceful cannot be told. What can be said is that regardless of who killed him, Pedro Chamorro died a patriot’s death.

Esteb: The assassination of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro changed everything. It lit a flame under the long simmering revolution. The Sandinistas were back in business in a big way the people who came out in the streets united in opposition to Somoza. It was the beginning of the end of a dictator. It made headlines around the world. Cookie didn’t know it yet but her life was about to change.