A House Divided

Like other revolutions of thought and arms, the new Nicaraguan order has set friend against friend, brother against brother. Four years after the overthrow of Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, one remarkable family embodies the ideological divisions that tear at the fabric of the country: the old and respected Chamorro clan, a wealthy political and publishing dynasty that has given Nicaragua four Presidents and three generations of newspaper publishers. In their differing and passionately held points of view, the Chamorros are a microcosm of a nation at odds with itself.

Disharmony is new to them. For more than 40 years, the family was united in its opposition to the harsh and repressive regimes of successive members of the Somoza family. For three decades, that opposition was led by Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, brilliant and unflinching editor of the Managua daily La Prensa. On Jan. 10, 1978, Chamorro, 53, was gunned down on his way to the office by Sonioza henchmen. The apparent motive: retaliation for a La Prensa disclosure that a blood bank owned in part by Somoza was selling much needed blood abroad at a profit.

Chamorro's assassination catalyzed the national rebellion that was already building against the regime, and subsequently served to sunder the bereaved family. In 1980, only a year after the revolution, the newspaper was paralyzed by a struggle between family members who supported the new Sandinista government and those critical of its Marxist-Leninist tendencies. The conservatives won, and Chamorro's brother Xavier, editor of La Prensa, left to form his own newspaper, taking most of the staff with him. Today Chamorro's widow, his brothers and sisters and four children are arrayed in almost equal numbers on opposing sides of the country's political battleground.

All three daily newspapers in Managua are published by Chamorros, each with a different editorial line. La Prensa (circ. 56,000) is now jointly edited by Chamorro's eldest son and namesake, Pedro Joaquin, 32, Chamorro's cousin Pablo Antonio Cuadra, 71, and uncle Jaime Chamorro, 49. El Nuevo Diario (circ. 48,000), edited by Xavier, 50, is solidly progovernment. Barricada (circ. 80,000), edited by Chamorro's youngest son, Carlos Fernando, 27, is the official paper of the Sandinista movement.

The women in the family are also sharply divided in their political loyalties. Pedro Chamorro's widow Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, 54, served briefly in the first five-member junta after the revolution. The appointment was primarily symbolic, to honor her slain husband, and after a few months she resigned for reasons of health. She now openly opposes the Sandinistas. Chamorro's daughter Christiana, 31, also became disenchanted with the Sandinistas and left her civil service job in the press office of the Council of State two years after the Sandinistas came to power. Daughter Claudia, 30, an artist, continues to work for the Ministry of Culture, however, and is planning to study in Cuba.

As the reluctant matriarch of the divided clan, Violeta strives to keep politics out of the spacious white stone family residence in the center of Managua, a house in which other Chamorros gather regularly. "We don't discuss politics at home," she says firmly. "In this house, we are still a family." That is not always easy. Says Carlos: "Things will never be as they were before. It's hard."

But he also asserts that La Prensa under his brother's editorship is infiltrated by counterrevolutionaries and fund ed by the CIA. Pedro, meanwhile, scoffs at Carlos' belief that government censorship is necessary: "I'd like to see him be told to take out this, rewrite this, cut this. Believe me, he wouldn't like it at all." Asked to characterize this disparate brood, a family friend notes that the elder Chamorro was a man of passionate beliefs and considerable complexity. He observes: "No one child is exactly like the father. To me, it's as if each child inherited one facet of his personality." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.