The first woman to lead a Central American country, she served in the 1990s after the nation had been shaken by political strife.

Before the assassination of her husband, the editor of the only independent newspaper in Nicaragua, Violeta Chamorro was scarcely involved in politics. But as the country descended into revolution and civil war,

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the Nicaraguan leader whose rule in the 1990s marked the end of the country’s civil war and who served as Latin America’s first elected female president, died on Saturday at 95.