Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal (23 September 1924 – 10 January 1978) was a Nicaraguan journalist and publisher. He was the editor of La Prensa, the only significant opposition newspaper to the long rule of the Somoza family. He is a 1977 laureate of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize of Columbia University in New York. He married Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who later went on to become President of Nicaragua (1990-1997). In 1978, he was shot to death, one of the precipitating events of the overthrow of the Somoza regime the following year. Background Chamorro was a son of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Zelaya and wife Margarita Cardenal Argüello and paternal grandson of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Bolaños and wife Ana María Zelaya Bolaños. He was the maternal grandson of Salvador Cardenal Saborío (son of Pedro Cardenal Ayerdi and wife Ana Ma. Saborio Bonilla), and wife Isabel Argüello Prado (daughter of Pedro Argüello Argüello and wife Leocadia Parado y Méndez). Both were relatives of Leonardo Argüello, 66th President of Nicaragua. His great-grandparents were Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Alfaro, 39th President of Nicaragua, and wife María de la Luz Bolaños Bendaña. He had two brothers, Jaime Chamorro Cardenal and Xavier Chamorro Cardenal, and two sisters, Ligia Chamorro Cardenal, married to Samuel Barreto Argüello (grand child of president Leonardo Arguello) and Ana María Chamorro Cardenal, married to Carlos Holmann Thompson (son of Edgard T. Holmann Reinecke and wife Carolina Thompson Gutierrez) from San Juan del Sur, parents of Eduardo, Verónica, Hugo Martín, Ana Carolina, Bruno, Ericka, and Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro. Murder and legacy Chamorro wrote a letter in 1975 to Somoza: "I am waiting, with a clear conscience, and a soul at peace, for the blow you are to deliver." Three years later, in January 1978, Chamorro was killed by unknown gunmen who pulled up beside him in a car and opened fire with shotguns. Somoza claimed Chamorro was assassinated by Pedro Ramos, a Cuban-American entrepreneur whose business had been attacked by La Prensa. At the time, however, the Chamorro family and the wealthy opposition held that Somoza had ordered him killed. Ramos took refuge in Miami, where he died. He was tried in absentia and found guilty of murder after the revolution, but he never returned to Nicaragua. At his funeral, thousands of people followed the coffin from Managua's Oriental Hospital to the Chamorro family home, taking turns carrying it. Following Chamorro's murder, an