Violeta Chamorro, an unassuming homemaker who was thrust into national politics by her husband’s assassination and stunned the world by ousting the ruling Sandinista party in presidential elections and ending Nicaragua’s civil war,

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the first female president of Nicaragua, died early Saturday morning in Costa Rica at the age of 95, her family announced in a statement. Chamorro, an unlikely leader whose rise to power was fueled by her husband’s murder,

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