Édgar Chamorro Coronel is an ousted leader of the Nicaraguan rebel Contras who later became a critic of the rebels and their Central Intelligence Agency sponsors, even cooperating with the Sandinista government in their World Court case, Nicaragua v.
Background
Edgar Chamorro is the son of Julio Chamorro Benard and wife Dolores "Lola" Coronel Urtecho, paternal grandson of Filadelfo Chamorro Bolaños and wife Bertha Benard Vivas and great-grandson of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro y Alfaro, 39th President of Nicaragua, and wife María de la Luz Bolaños Bendaña.
Career
United States. He got another degree from Harvard University in 1972 and founded a public relations and marketing firm, Creative Publicity, in Managua. In 1977, Anastasio Somoza Debayle appointed him to a figurehead post as a special ambassador to the United Nations General Assembly for a year. During the Sandinista Revolution, Chamorro sympathized with the rebels, at one point hiding Sergio Ramírez from the National Guard.
But as the civil war"s climax brought fierce fighting to the capital itself, fears for his family"s safety led him to leave for Miami, Florida on June 17, 1979.
Somoza fell a month later, but after visiting Nicaragua in September, Chamorro decided to remain in Miami. By late 1979, Chamorro had become involved in the anti-Sandinista activities of the Miami exile community.
He joined the Nicaraguan Democratic Union (UDN), formed the next year by José Francisco Cardenal, which merged into the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) in August 1981. He served on the FDN"s political executive committee, which decided to replace Cardenal with a new political directorate.
With his public relations experience, he took on a spokesman role for the FDN, and based himself in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to liaison with journalists covering the war.
Chamorro claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency prepped him before press conferences and told him to deny that the group had received any funding from the United States government. Chamorro was miffed when the FDN directorate, at the Central Intelligence Agency"s prompting, appointed Adolfo Calero as its president in October 1983. His not-so-private grumblings that his Chamorro lineage was more illustrious than Calero"s did not help their deteriorating relations.
Chamorro was forced out in November 1984, in the fallout from the furor over the Central Intelligence Agency"s Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, labeled by the press a "murder manual." He turned against the rebel movement, even submitting an affidavit for the Sandinista government before the International Court of Justice in Nicaragua v.
United States.
Chamorro is author of Packaging the Contras: A Case of C.I.A. Disinformation (1987).
Membership
He is a member of the prominent Chamorro family that provided four of Nicaragua"s past presidents. Chamorro was tapped to be a member of the directorate, unveiled at a December 8, 1982 press conference.