August 1, 2023 • 43 mins
We meet Cookie for the first time as she faces a firing squad. The murder of a respected journalist lights the fuse of revolution.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Just a warning, this podcast includes adult language and situations,
references to drug use, violence, and some things that will
be very hard to listen to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
They bring us all together and they take us outside
into a courtyard and stand us up against the wall.
This is a firing squad.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome to the Journalista Podcast. I'm Steve StEB your host.
This is a memoir about the dangerous and improbable life
of Cookie. Hood party girl, mus mother, journalist warrior. Cookie
(00:48):
is a classic broad right out of a Bogart movie.
She looks like she's been through some shit, with a deep,
coarse voice and a street tough demeanor. She's not famous,
but she did break the biggest story of the nineteen eighties.
You've probably heard of, the Iran Contra scandal. It was
like Watergate nine to eleven, Trump Russia January sixth, all
rolled into one big clusterfuck now. To be clear, and
(01:10):
Cookie will tell you this. There were a lot of
journalists who claim a piece of the Iran Contra story.
There were a lot of threads to unwind. Let me
give you a quick overview of that story. Wait on
second thought, I think I'll let Fox's American dad do it.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
In the eighties there was Cold War trauma. We bought
the commis inside picker our friends with a contrus. Freedom
was then Prussolas sent them lots of money for guns
and land muns. Congress to the Contra money floor just
because they moved a teeny bit of floor. But then
(01:51):
a hero claims fort His name was Oliver North.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Ian Reagan went.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Around the sissy Congress.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
North North, you see, Nor secretly sold mistress to a
harmless country called Iran that would always be a grateful ally.
Then he gave the prophets to the conference genius.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It all blew up in their faces. You've probably seen
the iconic image of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in his
snappy uniform with his hand in the air, standing before
a joint session of Congress investigating the Iran Contra scandal.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
Do you solemn this way that in the testimony you're
about to give will be the tooth, the whole tooth,
and nothing but the truth.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
So help you God, I do, please me shill. Some
of you might know him from his short tenure as
the head of the NRA or frequent appearances on Fox News.
You might remember President Reagan saying this on your television
back in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 6 (02:51):
First, let me say I take full responsibility from my
own actions and for those of my administration. As angry
as I may be about that activities undertaken without my knowledge,
I am still accountable for those activities.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
But the sales were uncovered by the press. Step Reagan,
the North whale began to stress because what they did
was technically high thereason.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
In the end, several dozen Reagan administration officials were indicted
with eleven convictions, including the Secretary of Defense, two national
security advisors, the Assistant Secretary of State, chief of the
CIA's Central American Task Force, chief of Covert Ops CIA,
former Air Force Major General Richard Seacourt, and of course
(03:40):
Oliver North. Sounds like justice will not exactly the next
president and former CIA director under Nixon, George H. W. Bush,
pardon all of them. The president's cronies walked sound familiar.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Oh North, he's a soldier and a hero and the lost,
and now he's on Fox news News.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I fucking love that. We already know the end of
the story. But that's not the good part. It's the journey.
Cookie's journey always at the crossroads of history, one way
or another. So how does a half American, half Nicaraguin
party girl from New Orleans with absolutely no journalism experience
(04:31):
break the biggest story of the eighties. That's what journalista
is all about. I'm here right now to introduce my
very very good friend. She's like my family member, Cookie Hood.
Good Morning's stay, Good morning Cookie. I want to talk
for a minute about how this started between us. I
got a call from a friend who said that they
had a friend who had a crazy story that would
(04:53):
be a great movie. I looked you up. I put
Cookie Hood in Google and it went nowhere.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
For me, which led you to believe Eve, I thought
you were.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Full of shit. I get a box in the mail.
It's from Cookie Hood, and I'm like, hmm, what could
this be. I opened this.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Box and it was a treasure troth it was. It
was filled with photographs, press passes, newspaper clipping.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Letters from famous people, singing your prayers words.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I sent you the receipts.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yes, and you had a picture of like laying on
a couch next to Ed Bradley, and you know, all
kinds of Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter Carter. Yeah, it's a
fun story to tell, and I'm just really glad we're
doing this together. Are you excited.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I'm stoked, stoked, I'm stoked. Mike Wallace once said to me, Cookie,
I'm gonna give you the best piece of advice. Always
cover the story, never be the story, and as you'll
be able to tell in this podcast, I was the
story a lot of times, so I was breaking Mike's
(05:56):
number one rule. But he said to me a few times,
you know what, it's you. It's okay that you're the story.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
You should be the story. All right, Well, let's get
into this before Cookie changes the world. She has to
go through some serious bullshit. Let me take you back
to December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy four. Cookie is just
sixteen years old.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
One of my friends. We went to his mountain retreat
where his family lived. He decided to bring back a
pound of weed to take back to Monagua for New Years.
And I'm going to be getting dropped off in my neighborhood,
which is a very wealthy, cloistered neighborhood. We're driving in.
(06:38):
It's after dark as we're passing in front of the house.
Coming in the other direction are two taxis, poor people taxis.
They stop in front of the house and we're side
to side with them. All the doors fly open. Masked
gunman jump out, They shoot the chauffeur's bodyguard. We're all
(07:00):
looking at each other like, what the fuck is going up?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
This is how the New York Times described it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The next day, leptist gorillas invaded a Christmas party for
the United States ambassador and seized about twenty prominent Nicaraguans
as hostages to be exchange for political prisoners.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
For a little context, I turned to Justin Woolf, PhD,
professor of Latin American history at Tulane University right here
in New Orleans. His first book was The Everyday Nation, State,
Community and Ethnicity in nineteenth century Nicaragua. That's a mouthful.
He knows his shit, but he looks a lot like
the bass player from zz Top.
Speaker 7 (07:39):
It was a Christmas party in honor of the US
Ambassador to Nicaragua, Shelton Turner, and so the lot of
diplomatic big wigs, a lot of members of the Somosa
family and government were all there. It was a big
celebration in the midst of kind of tragedy and misery
all around. I've got the earthquake in nineteen seventy two,
and so the party is a let them eat cake
(08:03):
kind of moment. Here's an event that will highlight for
the Santinistas kind of terribleness of the regime. It allows
them to make a splash. It allows them to convince
the regime that they can strike a blow. Now, as
it turned out, the US ambassador who had been there
had left the party early.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And for Cookie, it wasn't just a bunch of big
wigs and politicians. It was personal.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I had family, aunts, uncles, neighbors in that party. So
Moses starts sending all the guardia, all the soldiers there
to surround that house. And there was some shooting going
back and forth, and we're like, man, this is some
serious shit.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
The soldiers gun's drawn, pull them out of their car
at gunpoint, throw them to the ground, and begin searching
it for weapons. The friend who brought the weed, he's
shitting his pants about Now.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
My cousin says, don't say anything. I'm going to do
the talking. Don't speak Spanish. We want them to think
that you're just an American. And we see this guy
pull out, I mean, the biggest bag of weed.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
The Samosa garsmen think these kids were sent there to
be a distraction from the Sandinista commandos attacking the party.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
My other friend and my other cousin, who were underground Sandinistas,
they knew they were fucked. They took the four of us,
pushed us into a military vehicle, took the weed, and
just whisked us away.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
The soldiers take them to the same prison where the
guy who brought the weeds brother was murdered by the
Guardia a few years earlier.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And he starts crying in the vehicle, saying, we're never
going to get out of this alive.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Samosa declares martial law and no one can give any
orders except the dictator himself.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Being arrested was a shock in and of itself, because
I was always in a family and in a bubble
that nothing could ever.
Speaker 6 (09:59):
Happen to me.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
All you have to do is make a call, you're
out of trouble. But here I am being thrown into
a prison. I had only heard at that time that
you know, women were raped, and you know whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
This prison is a very dangerous place. Cookie and her
friends are interrogated through the night. The Guardia trying to
get these teenagers to spill the beans on the Sandinista attackers.
Then some fucking crazy shit happens.
Speaker 8 (10:24):
There's been a big kidnapping on the West Coast. The
victim is Patricia Hurst, the daughter of newspaper executive Randolph
Hurst and a granddaughter of the legendary William Randolph Hearst.
Speaker 9 (10:34):
Patricia Hurst is nineteen at a sophomore at Berkeley. She
and her fiancee were in her apartment near the campus
last night when a woman and two armed men burst in,
beat and bound her fiancee and a neighbor dragged Patricia
down the stairs, threw her into the trunk of a car,
and drove off.
Speaker 10 (10:52):
The Hurst newspaper heiress has been missing for nineteen months.
First she was kidnapped, then she announced that she had
joined ranks with her kidnapper, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
She was later indicted in connection with the San Francisco
bank hold up and labeled a fugitive.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
The Samosa guardsmen were not the brightest people, and this
commandante just got in his head that I was Patricia
Hurst because she was a wall at the time. I'm
a white American. He just thinks he's hit the lottery.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
It was a story that dominated the news for a
couple of years. Pretty girl, daughter of a famous newspaper tycoon,
kidnapped and turned into a domestic terrorist. And to be honest,
she did look a lot like Cookie.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Once that commandante started saying, it's Spanish. Yes, she's Patricia Hurst.
The Spanish just came out of me. I'm like, no,
you idiot, I'm not Patricia Hurst. And then he says,
this bitch speaks better Spanish than you and I she
speaks like a local. After being interrogated all night, then
we're thrown into cells. We are now realizing that our
(11:55):
name and our status means shit. No name throwing I
know him, you know, we're friends of Samosa, We're related
to some didn't mean shit, so we knew we were
in trouble. They bring us all together and they take
us outside into a courtyard and stand us up against
the wall. And I'm just looking at this and I'm like,
(12:16):
this doesn't look good. This is a firing squad. And
then that one guy, the one that brought the weed,
just still crying. We're never going to get out of
this is the lie. My brother was killed here and
I was like, can you just shut the fuck up, dude.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
The soldiers raise their weapons ready to fire. Commandante gives
the teenagers the one more chance to confess what they
know about the Sandinistas. And remember, these kids don't know anything.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
My friends and family they know I'm wild and crazy,
but no one, absolutely no one is going to believe
that I was killed by a firing squad.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Wow, We'll be right back. Welcome back, terrorist attacks, hostages, murder,
firing squads. Before we find out what happened to cookie,
(13:18):
a little background. The United States had occupied Nicaragua for
years and left in nineteen twenty five after putting the
first Samosa dictator in power, Augusto Sandino, the opposition leader,
says no way, and all hell breaks loose. The US
Marines come back. Sandino wages a gorilla war and is
(13:38):
successful and pushes the Marines out of Nicaragua. I have
a question for Justin Wolf, what the hell happened after.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
The US Marines leave and there's this kind of effort
to negotiate a peace and for the Sandinistas. Under Sandino
to put down their arms and kind of come into
the government. There's this key meeting with the new government
to kind of negotiate and to the Saninistas in a sense.
But at the end of that event, as Sandino and
(14:10):
his key lieutenants are leaving this kind of negotiation party, is.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
There an agreement made?
Speaker 7 (14:16):
There there's an agreement, but Somosa doesn't believe that the
agreement will hold. Somosa orders his men to detain Sandino,
his brother, as well as a couple of his other
key lieutenants. They take them out to today where the
international airport in Monagua is and they execute them.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Sandino's murder creates the Sandinista movement as we know it today,
but it's his defiance and courage standing up against the
US occupiers and wealthy elites that makes him a hero
to the poor in the working class.
Speaker 7 (14:47):
The Santainistas of the sixties and seventies. They are going
to kind of recuperate the legend of Sandino and the
vision of the Somosas as the kind of implacable enemy
the people.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Back to the firing squad. No Cookie and her friends
didn't die. The story doesn't end in front of a
firing squad. They shoot over their heads, scaring the crap
out of them.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
My family in Generals were trying to get through to
Samosa to tell them let the kids out. We want
to go pick them up and bring them home. We
don't know that that's happening. That comen Dante, who at
that point knew that we were going to be released,
that we really were who we were friends of. Samosa
just said, I'm gonna fuck with these kids, you know,
scare the fuck out of them so that they don't
(15:47):
fuck with us anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
How did it feel when they were pointing guns at
you like they were going to shoot you?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
I just kept saying, this can't be happening. It's like
those movies where somebody who's innocent is being accused of
being guilty, but he's not, and he spends the whole
movie trying to convince the people that he's not guilty.
That went on for a few hours. Of course, I'm
thinking I'm talking the soldiers out of shooting us.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Was that the first time you ever had a gun
pointed at you?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Hmmm? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. It was definitely a shocker.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
The next day The New York Times reported on the
results of the negotiations.
Speaker 11 (16:24):
The Nicaraguan government agreed today to release twenty six political
prisoners and fly them to Cuba in exchange for the
lives of a group of prominent politicians and business leaders
seized by leftist gorillas at a Christmas party here Friday night.
A government spokesman said that the eight gorillas and the
freed political prisoners are all believed to be members of
the Sandinista National Liberation Front. The gorillas had also demanded
(16:48):
a five million dollar ransom.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Somosa, as ruthless as he was, he had one weakness,
and his weakness were his friends and his family. So
he was not gonna lie wow his friends or family
that were in that house to be harmed. A smart
dictator would have killed everyone in that house, Sandinista's, the
(17:10):
hostages would have been killed. Everybody would have been killed.
So he created the future of his own demise.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Something tells me Cookie would have been a good dictator.
So her family finally gets through to Samosa, and Cookie
and her friends are released. She's driven home, back to
the neighborhood where the whole thing started. She gets there
just as the bus arrives to pick up the commandos.
It's filled with the recently released Sandinista political prisoners and
the million dollars they got from Somosa.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So again my vehicle crosses with this vehicle and I
could see these political prisoners, and a couple of them,
actually quite a few of them later became very famous
and very important to our story.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Do you want to name one of them?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Danielle Ortego.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Ortego goes on to become the leader of the Sandinistas
and head of the new government after the revolution, and
of course public enemy number one to the Reagan administration.
Professor Wolf tells us why this is so important.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
The last major Saninista offensive is in nineteen sixty seven,
and it's a disaster. Almost every Saninista member who's engaged
in that event dies. It's like really bad. So you
have this very successfully planned action. You have the success
of getting leaders from within the Saninistas who'd been captured out.
(18:34):
You get money, which is key if you're buying arms
and all of that kind of stuff. Plus they've gotten
their message out in public. Censorship is one of the
key tools right of the dictatorship. There might be things
going on there may be opposition groups, there may be
plans to change the country, but if nobody knows about
it because of censorship, you're kind of stuck.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Now that underground revolution that was going on has now
come to light. And funny story, one of the hooded
guys that was in that house, My aunt, who I
was staying with at the time, was one of the hostages.
She asked this hooded terrorist, can I go to the bathroom?
And he answers her, of course, Donia Telma, of course,
(19:19):
missus Thelma. He knew her, he knew who she was,
and she recognized the voice. Didn't know who the voice was,
but knew that voice. That's when it started to become
obvious that there were some rich kids involved in this revolution,
all of them friends of mine. A lot were killed,
and so it's becoming obvious not just to me, but
(19:41):
to everyone that there's something brewing here. It isn't just poor,
humble people that are in the mountains fighting the revolutions
now in the city.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Tell me a little bit about the crazy childhood you had.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Well, my father was an American, my mother was from Nicaragua.
My dad was an executive with the airlines.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Tucker airlines.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
It was an El Salvador airlines that flew throughout Central America.
The journalists used to call it take a chance airlines
because you never knew. And my mother stay at home,
but she came from a very, very wealthy family in Nicaragua.
So I was raised in both countries, and the summer
vacation times were different in each country. Here in Nicaragua,
(20:34):
so I was literally in school all year long here
and there. I guess the biggest difference was when I
would be living here. Even though we lived well, you know,
do your chores.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
You have to do this.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
You have to be able to know how to work.
Whereas on my mother's side of the family and living
in Central America, it was all maids and chauffeurs and
nannies and cooks. But I managed somehow to always find
the party.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And your family was close to the dictator Simosa.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Absolutely I played with his kids. I played with the
children of generals. And obviously my family and friends were
all from that one percent that owned and had everything.
Ninety nine percent had nothing, but I didn't see it.
We lived in a bubble, and the bubble was parties
(21:30):
on the weekends. If you were dating someone. You couldn't
go out unless you had a chaperone, sort of antebellum
thing before the Civil War. It was wonderful because I
was living and catching the tail end of that era,
because things were going to change.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
When the earthquake hit, Nicaraguan officials in Miami today issued
an urgent appeal for blood donors. They said there's an
immediate need for twenty to twenty five thousand pints of
whole blood for the victims of Saturday's earthquake in Monogua.
The United States sending three million dollars in food, medicine, tents,
purification equipment another aid. Looting continue today and what's left
(22:09):
for the Nicaraguan capital with troops doing little or nothing
to stop it.
Speaker 12 (22:13):
Ninety percent of the city has been utterly destroyed. Even
the few tall buildings which do remain will soon be
brought down by dynamiting. There is not a single building
in the downtown section safe for occupancy. The city will
be leveled, as explained by Nicaragua's former president and now
Commander in chief of the Armed Forces, Anastasio Somosa.
Speaker 7 (22:35):
So the capital as you now know it will cease
to exist.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
That is right.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
We are going to live in tents until we make
an appreciation of the situation and decide.
Speaker 8 (22:47):
The government will have to decide.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
What they're going to do.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
Even though it's a disaster, it's really important for the Sanonistas. Now,
what we have is the Sananistas who have really shown themselves,
I think and beyond anyone else, is actually caring about
the kind of post earthquake disaster, helping people setting up
soup kitchens, but also organizing people right, trying to say like, look,
(23:12):
we are never going to get to a better place
until Somosa is gone.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
The US started sending supplies, you know, for instance, peanut butter.
I mean, nobody knew what peanut butter was. The poor people.
They started sending morphine. A lot of people in the
wealthy families got hooked on morphine. Drugs just blew up
with the rich kids. But I was already doing drugs
(23:39):
here in New Orleans. But when I'd go to Nicaragua
before the earthquake, I was still being the good girl.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Everything was broken, including the bubble that protected Cookies family
and the oligarchs that had flourished under the Samosa regime,
but they were still holding on trying to pretend like
everything was the same, like the earthquake never really happened,
business as usual.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
The second change came about every August. First was a
holidayy in Nicaragua. It was a religious holiday where rich
and poor didn't work, rich and poor drank.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
To excess grades and that's the.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Grades horseback riding. But of course only the rich people
were allowed to be on the horses and on the floats,
and the poor people, who were allowed to drink would
be on the periphery watching. They were partying, but they
were watching us partying to an excess and to a
degree that they would never have been able to.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
These prades like their own, like little marti gras type
of things, like.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
A morna guard thing. But you're on these carts, you know,
that were decorated, and you're just going through the city
and it's surrounded by poor people.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
The Associated Press describes it like this.
Speaker 13 (24:57):
The ten days of festivities have their roots in the
eighteen eight vy five discovery of the three inch tall
statue of Santo Domingo de Guzman, also known as Saint
dominicue Guzman, the founder of the Dominican Religious Order. A
peasant was cutting down a tree in what was then
the outskirts of Manawa when he found the tiny rendering
of the saint with a tonsure and beard, clad in
white ropes and a black cape. The statue of faith Will,
(25:19):
referred to as Papito, is protected by a glass bell
and carried through throngs of people on the street during
the celebration all of us Canador Papito, says Carlos Membreno,
a robust, gray haired transportation worker who sports tattoos on
both arms. It doesn't matter what do you do for
a living. He doesn't care about your money, education, or work.
He only cares about your promise.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And I think it was that day that I started
to see the faces of poor people, actually see them
so literally.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
You're on a float in a parade that was all
rich people.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Partying and several floats, like you said, like a parade, and.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
The audience for that are the poor people.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
It's always been that way, but that particular year, because
there had been some shootings and some revolutionary movement in
the mountains, Samosa was starting to do a crackdown and decided,
of course, our rich people and friends and family can't
be involved. It has to be the poor people who
(26:20):
really had more to gain by a revolution. So that
particular year, Samosa prohibited the sale of liquor to poor people. So, yes,
they were all from work, and yes they were lining
the streets, but they couldn't drink. And here we are,
the rich kids, privileged kids, drinking. We're on these carts,
(26:42):
we're driving through the city and all of a sudden,
something looks very out of place for me. And I
asked someone, Christiana Chamorro, who you'll find out later who
she is. I said, what's wrong. Why aren't people on
the street drinking? She goes, oh, you did, And here
alcohol sales were prohibited for the poor. I had already
(27:06):
been seeing their faces and the anger or the unfairness
that they were feeling. I said, stop this cart. I'm
getting off, and they were like, what are you talking about? Here,
I have another drink. It's going to let me off
this cart.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Now, change is coming. A respected journalist is murdered, and
Nicaragua will never be the same. We'll be right back.
(27:45):
Welcome back. We've talked about Cookie's younger life and the
origins of the dark divisions that created the Nicaragua we
know today. But this segment is about a crime, a
heinous act that changed the course of history and cleared
the path that Cookie never saw coming.
Speaker 8 (28:17):
Romero Romes King Las noticiace in lacion Al La s
Sinato and doctor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardinali.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
That was Monagua evening news. Pedro Chimorro had been murdered.
This is what The New York Times said when it happened.
Speaker 11 (28:35):
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, an editor known for his outspoken opposition
to the dictatorship of General Anastasio Simosa de Baile, was
shot to death today in downtown Monagua. The fifty three
year old editor and publisher of La Prinsa of Monagua,
the country's only opposition paper, was shot eighteen times by
three men in a car who forced his auto to
(28:56):
the curb. Mister Chimorro died on the way to a hospital.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
It's a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Who
killed Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Before we get into that, who
was he and why does he matter?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Somosa had a mortal enemy. He was a newspaper man.
His name was Pedro Juaking Chamorro. He was married also
to a well known society lady Violetta Barrios.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
The Chamorrow's were close family friends, and Violetta became Cookie's
aunt by marriage just a few years later. Justin Wolf
gives us a little background.
Speaker 7 (29:34):
The head of the oldest kind of most traditional elite
family in Nicaragua and really a revered business, intellectual and
social figure in Nicaragua. The Chamoto family had really been
important since the eighteenth century in Nicaragua. Chamorro's are presidents
twice in the nineteenth century again in the twentieth century.
(29:57):
It's one of those long kind of political dynas families,
right if we think about the U assets like the
Kennedys or the Bush family.
Speaker 14 (30:07):
Members of the Congress. It is my great privilege, and
I deem it a high honor and personal pleasure to
present to you her Excellency, Yoletta Chamorrow, President of the
Republic of Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
That was in nineteen ninety one, Violetta Chamorrow, the first
woman president of Nicaragua, speaking to a joint session of
the US Congress. If you recall, we met Chamorro's daughter
Christiana on the parade float with Cookie a few minutes ago.
They were childhood friends. She was running for president last
year in Nicaragua and in a fair election the likely
(30:46):
winner then Daniel Ortega, went full dictator.
Speaker 15 (30:50):
High profile opposition leaders arrested one by one in just
the last few days, months before a crucial election in
which strongman President Daniel Ortega is trying to cling to
his fourteen years of power. As fears grow, this is
only going to get worse.
Speaker 16 (31:08):
Earlier this week, the pro government prosecutor had charged tomorrow,
Nicaragua's most competitive presidential candidate with alleged money laundering and
what it termed as ideological deviations.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Her crime running for president against Danielle Ortega. She was
under house arrest until a few weeks ago. That's some
serious fascist bullshit.
Speaker 7 (31:31):
By the mid to late seventies, Chamorro is not only
an opponent of Somosa, but he is looking around and
he is looking, for example, at the Sandinistas, who some
of his children are members of, and seeing them. Eventually,
by nineteen seventy seven is probably the only viable path
(31:53):
forward out of a Somosa run Nicaragua. That's a huge
shift right the patriarch ar of traditional conservative politics in
Nicaragua sees the Santinistas not only as viable as a
meaningful and real opposition, but as actually the only one
that is organized enough and has a clear enough plan
(32:16):
to actually defeat Samosa.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Okay, so who killed Pedro Chimorro. There were a lot
of suspects, in fact, just about everybody. Let's start with
the obvious choice, the brutal dictator, anastasi of Simosa. He
clearly had no problem killing his own people, and like
any good strong man, he made a lot of people disappear.
(32:40):
But why would he murder a high profile journalist from
one of the most prominent and beloved families of Nicaragua.
Chimorrow decided to go after Simosa in his newspaper Loprenza,
on television and his speeches. And remember, this is a
clash of two dynasties, one that dates back to the
seventeen hundreds with enormous historical and political clout, and one
(33:03):
with a history of oppression, violence, torture and murder. Something
had to give.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So what happened to this person who wanted freedom?
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Well, they murdered him. Who murdered him?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Forces?
Speaker 1 (33:21):
That was the voice of Pedro Chimorro's wife, violetta future
president of Nicaragua. Was she right? Somosa clearly had motive.
Chamorrow had the power and the voice. He was a
threat to the regime. But Cookie, who grew up knowing
them both, who as a child actually played with their children,
(33:41):
has a different perspective.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I don't think better working ever thought that Samosa would
kill him. They spoke to each other, they saw each
other at social affairs. They needed each other. Tomorrow needed
Simosa to be the bad guy. Simosa needed Chamur to
be the opposition. As long as it looked like a
dictator allowed opposition voices to be heard through newspaper and
(34:07):
some radio stations, it made him look less iron fisted dictator.
So neither one of them feared their lives from the other.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Not exactly sculpatory evidence, but if it wasn't Samosa, who
else had a motive to murder Tomorrow?
Speaker 7 (34:24):
He is being vocal in the press and in his
own speeches about Samosa, but also families that are in
the larger circle of the samosas his word, critiquing those
families and pointing out the crimes or the errors, or
the violence or the corruption of those families is viewed
(34:46):
as a personal attack for Tomoto. It was like identifying
the cancer that needed to be removed. And so of
course the Samosa's overall, the whole family, the in laws,
and then the key kind of acted families that were
part of the larger Samosa circle. They all despised Tomoto.
They despise being pointed out and lifted up as the
(35:09):
bane of Nicaragua.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
We owned everything car dealerships, banks, restaurants, shops. Poor people
didn't own anything.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
There's a funny story of Tomosa driving in the countryside
and he says to his driver, Oh, that's really a
pretty ranch. Who owns that? And the driver turns around
he says, your excellency, you own it.
Speaker 14 (35:33):
Dan.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Rather doing a piece for sixty minutes, ask Someamosa about
as many holdings general.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
I've been told that your wealth is in the neighborhood
of five hundred million dollars and the list is very
long of Sosa interested you and your family owned You
own the National Airline? No, we're a shareholders of it.
You're a major shareholder in the airline. Yes, you own
the National shipping line. Yes, I founded that, including your
own port Port Tomoso. Also, we founded that the leading
(36:00):
television station, Yes, radio station. You own a newspaper. Yes,
you own the biggest hotel in Managua. No, we're shareholders
of it. You're a major shareholder, no minority. You own
hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Yes, you owned cattle. Yes,
you own huge financial interests in banks and insurance companies.
Speaker 8 (36:21):
And you still we could go on and on.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
He owned everything, and he made sure that all his
friends were taken care of too.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
The wealthy elite had a lot to lose if Samosa
lost power, and Cookie's family was a part of that.
Could the motive just be money? I guess it's always money,
But what about big business? Nicaragua exported sugar, beef, bananas,
but most of that was owned by Someimosa and his friends.
The Nicaraguaan government did arrest for suspects, saying they were
(36:52):
hired by an American whose plasma exporting business was under
fire by Chamorro's newspaper Loprenza. Of course Simosa had a
piece of that plasma business as well. It always leads
back to Somemosa. But what about the United States. We've
had a stake in Nicaragua since we helped get the
first Smosa in power back in the nineteen twenties, and
(37:13):
of course we've assassinated people in the past.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
There's a famous line from Franklin Roosevelt about the first Tomosa,
the President Samosa's father, FDR referring to Samosa, he's the
son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.
All the Somosas were bound to the US. President Simosa
went to West Point, all of them US educated. Obviously
(37:37):
investments in this country. At this point, the US is
still backing the Nicaragua dictatorship.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Like we backed to O Salvador and Honduras.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
And well, correct fighting communism.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
In the presence of Cuba, right there.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Maybe were communists.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, who makes that Domino theory viable? Viable?
Speaker 7 (37:59):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
And I think you got the Allende and Chile and
you know, all these different movements that were put down
ruthlessly and viciously.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
At this point, we haven't discounted any of our suspects.
They all have motive, they all have opportunity. They all
wanted him dead. Is this like Julius Caesar where they
all put a knife in his back? Are they all
fucking guilty? Wait a second, I forgot about someone.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
The second generation. Simosa had a son, and he was
next in line to become president one day. He was
this flashy military kid. He might have gone to West
Point as well. He was hanging around with mercenaries. There
were famous American mercenaries that were coming to Nicaragua. Mike
the Mercenary, Bob the Mercenary. These were bad people. They
(38:52):
would wear the bullets across here like Pancho Villa. And
by this time the mercenaries are drying in tanks in
the streets. Of course I was friends with them too.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
That's right, Cookie parties with mercenaries. Where were they from?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
US? Just anywhere mercenary needed a job, he could come.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
The US mercenaries killed Pedro.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
We don't know who exactly did. We suspect that it
was Mike the Mercenary, but it was on the orders
of Samosa the third He had Pedro Woking Chamorrow assassinated.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
I don't know if Cookie's right about this, but it
sure makes a better story.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Of course, we later found out his father was furious
with him. Why did you do this because that kind
of stuff just didn't happen to rich people in Nicaragua.
Sure it happened behind the scenes to poor people and
revolutionaries and criminals, but that kind of stuff didn't.
Speaker 7 (39:56):
Happen in the end. I actually don't think who or
it ends up being the important question. The result of
it is what's really important, which is there's this massive
reporting in the US about this beloved hero of press,
freedom and democracy, ped jaquin Chimoto being assassinated in this
(40:17):
country led by a violent military dictator. So that's the
way the coverage is being presented. And then four every
day Nicaraguans, even those who were not really political. It
is both the murder of this very popular figure, but
also this idea that if he can be murdered, what
(40:40):
won't they do.
Speaker 11 (40:41):
This is how the Washington Post summed it up. At
a crucial moment. The Chamorro murder has dramatized for foreigners
the lawlessness and political tension long known to Nicaraguan's The
Samosa family has tried to run the politics and economy
of the country as its personal preserve, cleverly co opting
support and brutally destroying opponents. Whether the transition to the
(41:04):
post Simosa arrow will be violent or peaceful cannot be told.
What can be said is that, regardless of who killed him,
Pedro Chimorro died of Patriot's death.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
The assassination of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro changed everything. It lit
a flame under the long simmering revolution. The Santa de
Nisas were back in business in a big way. That
people who came out in the streets united in opposition
to Simosa. It was the beginning of the end of
a dictator. It made headlines around the world. Cookie didn't
(41:37):
know it yet, but her life was about to change.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Next time on Journalista, Pablo gave me half a pound
of cocaine for the wedding, so I brought my girlfriend
from New Orleans, flew her in and we spent the
whole day before and the whole day of grinding it up.
(42:04):
We started off with one graand bottles and realized quickly
that's likely to be enough, So we went and got
two gram bottles, filled up one hundred of them. When
the people arrived at the door, that's what they were
given with a bow on it. You know, this is
your party.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Favor The Journalist of podcast features the stories and voice
of Cookie Hood narrated by Steven Step. Produced by Sean J. Donnelly.
Executive producers Jason Waggensback, Roy Laughlin, and Ellen k. iHeart
Executive producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Step.
(42:42):
Music by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Steven Tanti.
Sound mixing by Jesse soln Snyder. Featuring the voices of
radio personality Ellen K. Lloyd, Shirt, Loyola University Professor Pablo Sabalis,
special guest Tulaine History Professor Justin Wolf Special Thanks to
Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slack.
(43:08):
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Just a warning, this podcast includes adult language and situations,
references to drug use, violence, and some things that will
be very hard to listen to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
They bring us all together and they take us outside
into a courtyard and stand us up against the wall.
This is a firing squad.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome to the Journalista Podcast. I'm Steve StEB your host.
This is a memoir about the dangerous and improbable life
of Cookie. Hood party girl, mus mother, journalist warrior. Cookie
(00:48):
is a classic broad right out of a Bogart movie.
She looks like she's been through some shit, with a deep,
coarse voice and a street tough demeanor. She's not famous,
but she did break the biggest story of the nineteen eighties.
You've probably heard of, the Iran Contra scandal. It was
like Watergate nine to eleven, Trump Russia January sixth, all
rolled into one big clusterfuck now. To be clear, and
(01:10):
Cookie will tell you this. There were a lot of
journalists who claim a piece of the Iran Contra story.
There were a lot of threads to unwind. Let me
give you a quick overview of that story. Wait on
second thought, I think I'll let Fox's American dad do it.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
In the eighties there was Cold War trauma. We bought
the commis inside picker our friends with a contrus. Freedom
was then Prussolas sent them lots of money for guns
and land muns. Congress to the Contra money floor just
because they moved a teeny bit of floor. But then
(01:51):
a hero claims fort His name was Oliver North.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Ian Reagan went.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Around the sissy Congress.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
North North, you see, Nor secretly sold mistress to a
harmless country called Iran that would always be a grateful ally.
Then he gave the prophets to the conference genius.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It all blew up in their faces. You've probably seen
the iconic image of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in his
snappy uniform with his hand in the air, standing before
a joint session of Congress investigating the Iran Contra scandal.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
Do you solemn this way that in the testimony you're
about to give will be the tooth, the whole tooth,
and nothing but the truth.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
So help you God, I do, please me shill. Some
of you might know him from his short tenure as
the head of the NRA or frequent appearances on Fox News.
You might remember President Reagan saying this on your television
back in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 6 (02:51):
First, let me say I take full responsibility from my
own actions and for those of my administration. As angry
as I may be about that activities undertaken without my knowledge,
I am still accountable for those activities.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
But the sales were uncovered by the press. Step Reagan,
the North whale began to stress because what they did
was technically high thereason.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
In the end, several dozen Reagan administration officials were indicted
with eleven convictions, including the Secretary of Defense, two national
security advisors, the Assistant Secretary of State, chief of the
CIA's Central American Task Force, chief of Covert Ops CIA,
former Air Force Major General Richard Seacourt, and of course
(03:40):
Oliver North. Sounds like justice will not exactly the next
president and former CIA director under Nixon, George H. W. Bush,
pardon all of them. The president's cronies walked sound familiar.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Oh North, he's a soldier and a hero and the lost,
and now he's on Fox news News.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I fucking love that. We already know the end of
the story. But that's not the good part. It's the journey.
Cookie's journey always at the crossroads of history, one way
or another. So how does a half American, half Nicaraguin
party girl from New Orleans with absolutely no journalism experience
(04:31):
break the biggest story of the eighties. That's what journalista
is all about. I'm here right now to introduce my
very very good friend. She's like my family member, Cookie Hood.
Good Morning's stay, Good morning Cookie. I want to talk
for a minute about how this started between us. I
got a call from a friend who said that they
had a friend who had a crazy story that would
(04:53):
be a great movie. I looked you up. I put
Cookie Hood in Google and it went nowhere.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
For me, which led you to believe Eve, I thought
you were.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Full of shit. I get a box in the mail.
It's from Cookie Hood, and I'm like, hmm, what could
this be. I opened this.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Box and it was a treasure troth it was. It
was filled with photographs, press passes, newspaper clipping.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Letters from famous people, singing your prayers words.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I sent you the receipts.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yes, and you had a picture of like laying on
a couch next to Ed Bradley, and you know, all
kinds of Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter Carter. Yeah, it's a
fun story to tell, and I'm just really glad we're
doing this together. Are you excited.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I'm stoked, stoked, I'm stoked. Mike Wallace once said to me, Cookie,
I'm gonna give you the best piece of advice. Always
cover the story, never be the story, and as you'll
be able to tell in this podcast, I was the
story a lot of times, so I was breaking Mike's
(05:56):
number one rule. But he said to me a few times,
you know what, it's you. It's okay that you're the story.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
You should be the story. All right, Well, let's get
into this before Cookie changes the world. She has to
go through some serious bullshit. Let me take you back
to December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy four. Cookie is just
sixteen years old.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
One of my friends. We went to his mountain retreat
where his family lived. He decided to bring back a
pound of weed to take back to Monagua for New Years.
And I'm going to be getting dropped off in my neighborhood,
which is a very wealthy, cloistered neighborhood. We're driving in.
(06:38):
It's after dark as we're passing in front of the house.
Coming in the other direction are two taxis, poor people taxis.
They stop in front of the house and we're side
to side with them. All the doors fly open. Masked
gunman jump out, They shoot the chauffeur's bodyguard. We're all
(07:00):
looking at each other like, what the fuck is going up?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
This is how the New York Times described it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The next day, leptist gorillas invaded a Christmas party for
the United States ambassador and seized about twenty prominent Nicaraguans
as hostages to be exchange for political prisoners.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
For a little context, I turned to Justin Woolf, PhD,
professor of Latin American history at Tulane University right here
in New Orleans. His first book was The Everyday Nation, State,
Community and Ethnicity in nineteenth century Nicaragua. That's a mouthful.
He knows his shit, but he looks a lot like
the bass player from zz Top.
Speaker 7 (07:39):
It was a Christmas party in honor of the US
Ambassador to Nicaragua, Shelton Turner, and so the lot of
diplomatic big wigs, a lot of members of the Somosa
family and government were all there. It was a big
celebration in the midst of kind of tragedy and misery
all around. I've got the earthquake in nineteen seventy two,
and so the party is a let them eat cake
(08:03):
kind of moment. Here's an event that will highlight for
the Santinistas kind of terribleness of the regime. It allows
them to make a splash. It allows them to convince
the regime that they can strike a blow. Now, as
it turned out, the US ambassador who had been there
had left the party early.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And for Cookie, it wasn't just a bunch of big
wigs and politicians. It was personal.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I had family, aunts, uncles, neighbors in that party. So
Moses starts sending all the guardia, all the soldiers there
to surround that house. And there was some shooting going
back and forth, and we're like, man, this is some
serious shit.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
The soldiers gun's drawn, pull them out of their car
at gunpoint, throw them to the ground, and begin searching
it for weapons. The friend who brought the weed, he's
shitting his pants about Now.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
My cousin says, don't say anything. I'm going to do
the talking. Don't speak Spanish. We want them to think
that you're just an American. And we see this guy
pull out, I mean, the biggest bag of weed.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
The Samosa garsmen think these kids were sent there to
be a distraction from the Sandinista commandos attacking the party.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
My other friend and my other cousin, who were underground Sandinistas,
they knew they were fucked. They took the four of us,
pushed us into a military vehicle, took the weed, and
just whisked us away.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
The soldiers take them to the same prison where the
guy who brought the weeds brother was murdered by the
Guardia a few years earlier.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And he starts crying in the vehicle, saying, we're never
going to get out of this alive.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Samosa declares martial law and no one can give any
orders except the dictator himself.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Being arrested was a shock in and of itself, because
I was always in a family and in a bubble
that nothing could ever.
Speaker 6 (09:59):
Happen to me.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
All you have to do is make a call, you're
out of trouble. But here I am being thrown into
a prison. I had only heard at that time that
you know, women were raped, and you know whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
This prison is a very dangerous place. Cookie and her
friends are interrogated through the night. The Guardia trying to
get these teenagers to spill the beans on the Sandinista attackers.
Then some fucking crazy shit happens.
Speaker 8 (10:24):
There's been a big kidnapping on the West Coast. The
victim is Patricia Hurst, the daughter of newspaper executive Randolph
Hurst and a granddaughter of the legendary William Randolph Hearst.
Speaker 9 (10:34):
Patricia Hurst is nineteen at a sophomore at Berkeley. She
and her fiancee were in her apartment near the campus
last night when a woman and two armed men burst in,
beat and bound her fiancee and a neighbor dragged Patricia
down the stairs, threw her into the trunk of a car,
and drove off.
Speaker 10 (10:52):
The Hurst newspaper heiress has been missing for nineteen months.
First she was kidnapped, then she announced that she had
joined ranks with her kidnapper, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
She was later indicted in connection with the San Francisco
bank hold up and labeled a fugitive.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
The Samosa guardsmen were not the brightest people, and this
commandante just got in his head that I was Patricia
Hurst because she was a wall at the time. I'm
a white American. He just thinks he's hit the lottery.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
It was a story that dominated the news for a
couple of years. Pretty girl, daughter of a famous newspaper tycoon,
kidnapped and turned into a domestic terrorist. And to be honest,
she did look a lot like Cookie.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Once that commandante started saying, it's Spanish. Yes, she's Patricia Hurst.
The Spanish just came out of me. I'm like, no,
you idiot, I'm not Patricia Hurst. And then he says,
this bitch speaks better Spanish than you and I she
speaks like a local. After being interrogated all night, then
we're thrown into cells. We are now realizing that our
(11:55):
name and our status means shit. No name throwing I
know him, you know, we're friends of Samosa, We're related
to some didn't mean shit, so we knew we were
in trouble. They bring us all together and they take
us outside into a courtyard and stand us up against
the wall. And I'm just looking at this and I'm like,
(12:16):
this doesn't look good. This is a firing squad. And
then that one guy, the one that brought the weed,
just still crying. We're never going to get out of
this is the lie. My brother was killed here and
I was like, can you just shut the fuck up, dude.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
The soldiers raise their weapons ready to fire. Commandante gives
the teenagers the one more chance to confess what they
know about the Sandinistas. And remember, these kids don't know anything.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
My friends and family they know I'm wild and crazy,
but no one, absolutely no one is going to believe
that I was killed by a firing squad.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Wow, We'll be right back. Welcome back, terrorist attacks, hostages, murder,
firing squads. Before we find out what happened to cookie,
(13:18):
a little background. The United States had occupied Nicaragua for
years and left in nineteen twenty five after putting the
first Samosa dictator in power, Augusto Sandino, the opposition leader,
says no way, and all hell breaks loose. The US
Marines come back. Sandino wages a gorilla war and is
(13:38):
successful and pushes the Marines out of Nicaragua. I have
a question for Justin Wolf, what the hell happened after.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
The US Marines leave and there's this kind of effort
to negotiate a peace and for the Sandinistas. Under Sandino
to put down their arms and kind of come into
the government. There's this key meeting with the new government
to kind of negotiate and to the Saninistas in a sense.
But at the end of that event, as Sandino and
(14:10):
his key lieutenants are leaving this kind of negotiation party, is.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
There an agreement made?
Speaker 7 (14:16):
There there's an agreement, but Somosa doesn't believe that the
agreement will hold. Somosa orders his men to detain Sandino,
his brother, as well as a couple of his other
key lieutenants. They take them out to today where the
international airport in Monagua is and they execute them.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Sandino's murder creates the Sandinista movement as we know it today,
but it's his defiance and courage standing up against the
US occupiers and wealthy elites that makes him a hero
to the poor in the working class.
Speaker 7 (14:47):
The Santainistas of the sixties and seventies. They are going
to kind of recuperate the legend of Sandino and the
vision of the Somosas as the kind of implacable enemy
the people.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Back to the firing squad. No Cookie and her friends
didn't die. The story doesn't end in front of a
firing squad. They shoot over their heads, scaring the crap
out of them.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
My family in Generals were trying to get through to
Samosa to tell them let the kids out. We want
to go pick them up and bring them home. We
don't know that that's happening. That comen Dante, who at
that point knew that we were going to be released,
that we really were who we were friends of. Samosa
just said, I'm gonna fuck with these kids, you know,
scare the fuck out of them so that they don't
(15:47):
fuck with us anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
How did it feel when they were pointing guns at
you like they were going to shoot you?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
I just kept saying, this can't be happening. It's like
those movies where somebody who's innocent is being accused of
being guilty, but he's not, and he spends the whole
movie trying to convince the people that he's not guilty.
That went on for a few hours. Of course, I'm
thinking I'm talking the soldiers out of shooting us.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Was that the first time you ever had a gun
pointed at you?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Hmmm? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. It was definitely a shocker.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
The next day The New York Times reported on the
results of the negotiations.
Speaker 11 (16:24):
The Nicaraguan government agreed today to release twenty six political
prisoners and fly them to Cuba in exchange for the
lives of a group of prominent politicians and business leaders
seized by leftist gorillas at a Christmas party here Friday night.
A government spokesman said that the eight gorillas and the
freed political prisoners are all believed to be members of
the Sandinista National Liberation Front. The gorillas had also demanded
(16:48):
a five million dollar ransom.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Somosa, as ruthless as he was, he had one weakness,
and his weakness were his friends and his family. So
he was not gonna lie wow his friends or family
that were in that house to be harmed. A smart
dictator would have killed everyone in that house, Sandinista's, the
(17:10):
hostages would have been killed. Everybody would have been killed.
So he created the future of his own demise.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Something tells me Cookie would have been a good dictator.
So her family finally gets through to Samosa, and Cookie
and her friends are released. She's driven home, back to
the neighborhood where the whole thing started. She gets there
just as the bus arrives to pick up the commandos.
It's filled with the recently released Sandinista political prisoners and
the million dollars they got from Somosa.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So again my vehicle crosses with this vehicle and I
could see these political prisoners, and a couple of them,
actually quite a few of them later became very famous
and very important to our story.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Do you want to name one of them?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Danielle Ortego.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Ortego goes on to become the leader of the Sandinistas
and head of the new government after the revolution, and
of course public enemy number one to the Reagan administration.
Professor Wolf tells us why this is so important.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
The last major Saninista offensive is in nineteen sixty seven,
and it's a disaster. Almost every Saninista member who's engaged
in that event dies. It's like really bad. So you
have this very successfully planned action. You have the success
of getting leaders from within the Saninistas who'd been captured out.
(18:34):
You get money, which is key if you're buying arms
and all of that kind of stuff. Plus they've gotten
their message out in public. Censorship is one of the
key tools right of the dictatorship. There might be things
going on there may be opposition groups, there may be
plans to change the country, but if nobody knows about
it because of censorship, you're kind of stuck.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Now that underground revolution that was going on has now
come to light. And funny story, one of the hooded
guys that was in that house, My aunt, who I
was staying with at the time, was one of the hostages.
She asked this hooded terrorist, can I go to the bathroom?
And he answers her, of course, Donia Telma, of course,
(19:19):
missus Thelma. He knew her, he knew who she was,
and she recognized the voice. Didn't know who the voice was,
but knew that voice. That's when it started to become
obvious that there were some rich kids involved in this revolution,
all of them friends of mine. A lot were killed,
and so it's becoming obvious not just to me, but
(19:41):
to everyone that there's something brewing here. It isn't just poor,
humble people that are in the mountains fighting the revolutions
now in the city.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Tell me a little bit about the crazy childhood you had.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Well, my father was an American, my mother was from Nicaragua.
My dad was an executive with the airlines.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Tucker airlines.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
It was an El Salvador airlines that flew throughout Central America.
The journalists used to call it take a chance airlines
because you never knew. And my mother stay at home,
but she came from a very, very wealthy family in Nicaragua.
So I was raised in both countries, and the summer
vacation times were different in each country. Here in Nicaragua,
(20:34):
so I was literally in school all year long here
and there. I guess the biggest difference was when I
would be living here. Even though we lived well, you know,
do your chores.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
You have to do this.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
You have to be able to know how to work.
Whereas on my mother's side of the family and living
in Central America, it was all maids and chauffeurs and
nannies and cooks. But I managed somehow to always find
the party.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And your family was close to the dictator Simosa.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Absolutely I played with his kids. I played with the
children of generals. And obviously my family and friends were
all from that one percent that owned and had everything.
Ninety nine percent had nothing, but I didn't see it.
We lived in a bubble, and the bubble was parties
(21:30):
on the weekends. If you were dating someone. You couldn't
go out unless you had a chaperone, sort of antebellum
thing before the Civil War. It was wonderful because I
was living and catching the tail end of that era,
because things were going to change.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
When the earthquake hit, Nicaraguan officials in Miami today issued
an urgent appeal for blood donors. They said there's an
immediate need for twenty to twenty five thousand pints of
whole blood for the victims of Saturday's earthquake in Monogua.
The United States sending three million dollars in food, medicine, tents,
purification equipment another aid. Looting continue today and what's left
(22:09):
for the Nicaraguan capital with troops doing little or nothing
to stop it.
Speaker 12 (22:13):
Ninety percent of the city has been utterly destroyed. Even
the few tall buildings which do remain will soon be
brought down by dynamiting. There is not a single building
in the downtown section safe for occupancy. The city will
be leveled, as explained by Nicaragua's former president and now
Commander in chief of the Armed Forces, Anastasio Somosa.
Speaker 7 (22:35):
So the capital as you now know it will cease
to exist.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
That is right.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
We are going to live in tents until we make
an appreciation of the situation and decide.
Speaker 8 (22:47):
The government will have to decide.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
What they're going to do.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
Even though it's a disaster, it's really important for the Sanonistas. Now,
what we have is the Sananistas who have really shown themselves,
I think and beyond anyone else, is actually caring about
the kind of post earthquake disaster, helping people setting up
soup kitchens, but also organizing people right, trying to say like, look,
(23:12):
we are never going to get to a better place
until Somosa is gone.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
The US started sending supplies, you know, for instance, peanut butter.
I mean, nobody knew what peanut butter was. The poor people.
They started sending morphine. A lot of people in the
wealthy families got hooked on morphine. Drugs just blew up
with the rich kids. But I was already doing drugs
(23:39):
here in New Orleans. But when I'd go to Nicaragua
before the earthquake, I was still being the good girl.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Everything was broken, including the bubble that protected Cookies family
and the oligarchs that had flourished under the Samosa regime,
but they were still holding on trying to pretend like
everything was the same, like the earthquake never really happened,
business as usual.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
The second change came about every August. First was a
holidayy in Nicaragua. It was a religious holiday where rich
and poor didn't work, rich and poor drank.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
To excess grades and that's the.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Grades horseback riding. But of course only the rich people
were allowed to be on the horses and on the floats,
and the poor people, who were allowed to drink would
be on the periphery watching. They were partying, but they
were watching us partying to an excess and to a
degree that they would never have been able to.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
These prades like their own, like little marti gras type
of things, like.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
A morna guard thing. But you're on these carts, you know,
that were decorated, and you're just going through the city
and it's surrounded by poor people.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
The Associated Press describes it like this.
Speaker 13 (24:57):
The ten days of festivities have their roots in the
eighteen eight vy five discovery of the three inch tall
statue of Santo Domingo de Guzman, also known as Saint
dominicue Guzman, the founder of the Dominican Religious Order. A
peasant was cutting down a tree in what was then
the outskirts of Manawa when he found the tiny rendering
of the saint with a tonsure and beard, clad in
white ropes and a black cape. The statue of faith Will,
(25:19):
referred to as Papito, is protected by a glass bell
and carried through throngs of people on the street during
the celebration all of us Canador Papito, says Carlos Membreno,
a robust, gray haired transportation worker who sports tattoos on
both arms. It doesn't matter what do you do for
a living. He doesn't care about your money, education, or work.
He only cares about your promise.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And I think it was that day that I started
to see the faces of poor people, actually see them
so literally.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
You're on a float in a parade that was all
rich people.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Partying and several floats, like you said, like a parade, and.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
The audience for that are the poor people.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
It's always been that way, but that particular year, because
there had been some shootings and some revolutionary movement in
the mountains, Samosa was starting to do a crackdown and decided,
of course, our rich people and friends and family can't
be involved. It has to be the poor people who
(26:20):
really had more to gain by a revolution. So that
particular year, Samosa prohibited the sale of liquor to poor people. So, yes,
they were all from work, and yes they were lining
the streets, but they couldn't drink. And here we are,
the rich kids, privileged kids, drinking. We're on these carts,
(26:42):
we're driving through the city and all of a sudden,
something looks very out of place for me. And I
asked someone, Christiana Chamorro, who you'll find out later who
she is. I said, what's wrong. Why aren't people on
the street drinking? She goes, oh, you did, And here
alcohol sales were prohibited for the poor. I had already
(27:06):
been seeing their faces and the anger or the unfairness
that they were feeling. I said, stop this cart. I'm
getting off, and they were like, what are you talking about? Here,
I have another drink. It's going to let me off
this cart.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Now, change is coming. A respected journalist is murdered, and
Nicaragua will never be the same. We'll be right back.
(27:45):
Welcome back. We've talked about Cookie's younger life and the
origins of the dark divisions that created the Nicaragua we
know today. But this segment is about a crime, a
heinous act that changed the course of history and cleared
the path that Cookie never saw coming.
Speaker 8 (28:17):
Romero Romes King Las noticiace in lacion Al La s
Sinato and doctor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardinali.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
That was Monagua evening news. Pedro Chimorro had been murdered.
This is what The New York Times said when it happened.
Speaker 11 (28:35):
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, an editor known for his outspoken opposition
to the dictatorship of General Anastasio Simosa de Baile, was
shot to death today in downtown Monagua. The fifty three
year old editor and publisher of La Prinsa of Monagua,
the country's only opposition paper, was shot eighteen times by
three men in a car who forced his auto to
(28:56):
the curb. Mister Chimorro died on the way to a hospital.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
It's a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Who
killed Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Before we get into that, who
was he and why does he matter?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Somosa had a mortal enemy. He was a newspaper man.
His name was Pedro Juaking Chamorro. He was married also
to a well known society lady Violetta Barrios.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
The Chamorrow's were close family friends, and Violetta became Cookie's
aunt by marriage just a few years later. Justin Wolf
gives us a little background.
Speaker 7 (29:34):
The head of the oldest kind of most traditional elite
family in Nicaragua and really a revered business, intellectual and
social figure in Nicaragua. The Chamoto family had really been
important since the eighteenth century in Nicaragua. Chamorro's are presidents
twice in the nineteenth century again in the twentieth century.
(29:57):
It's one of those long kind of political dynas families,
right if we think about the U assets like the
Kennedys or the Bush family.
Speaker 14 (30:07):
Members of the Congress. It is my great privilege, and
I deem it a high honor and personal pleasure to
present to you her Excellency, Yoletta Chamorrow, President of the
Republic of Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
That was in nineteen ninety one, Violetta Chamorrow, the first
woman president of Nicaragua, speaking to a joint session of
the US Congress. If you recall, we met Chamorro's daughter
Christiana on the parade float with Cookie a few minutes ago.
They were childhood friends. She was running for president last
year in Nicaragua and in a fair election the likely
(30:46):
winner then Daniel Ortega, went full dictator.
Speaker 15 (30:50):
High profile opposition leaders arrested one by one in just
the last few days, months before a crucial election in
which strongman President Daniel Ortega is trying to cling to
his fourteen years of power. As fears grow, this is
only going to get worse.
Speaker 16 (31:08):
Earlier this week, the pro government prosecutor had charged tomorrow,
Nicaragua's most competitive presidential candidate with alleged money laundering and
what it termed as ideological deviations.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Her crime running for president against Danielle Ortega. She was
under house arrest until a few weeks ago. That's some
serious fascist bullshit.
Speaker 7 (31:31):
By the mid to late seventies, Chamorro is not only
an opponent of Somosa, but he is looking around and
he is looking, for example, at the Sandinistas, who some
of his children are members of, and seeing them. Eventually,
by nineteen seventy seven is probably the only viable path
(31:53):
forward out of a Somosa run Nicaragua. That's a huge
shift right the patriarch ar of traditional conservative politics in
Nicaragua sees the Santinistas not only as viable as a
meaningful and real opposition, but as actually the only one
that is organized enough and has a clear enough plan
(32:16):
to actually defeat Samosa.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Okay, so who killed Pedro Chimorro. There were a lot
of suspects, in fact, just about everybody. Let's start with
the obvious choice, the brutal dictator, anastasi of Simosa. He
clearly had no problem killing his own people, and like
any good strong man, he made a lot of people disappear.
(32:40):
But why would he murder a high profile journalist from
one of the most prominent and beloved families of Nicaragua.
Chimorrow decided to go after Simosa in his newspaper Loprenza,
on television and his speeches. And remember, this is a
clash of two dynasties, one that dates back to the
seventeen hundreds with enormous historical and political clout, and one
(33:03):
with a history of oppression, violence, torture and murder. Something
had to give.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So what happened to this person who wanted freedom?
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Well, they murdered him. Who murdered him?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Forces?
Speaker 1 (33:21):
That was the voice of Pedro Chimorro's wife, violetta future
president of Nicaragua. Was she right? Somosa clearly had motive.
Chamorrow had the power and the voice. He was a
threat to the regime. But Cookie, who grew up knowing
them both, who as a child actually played with their children,
(33:41):
has a different perspective.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I don't think better working ever thought that Samosa would
kill him. They spoke to each other, they saw each
other at social affairs. They needed each other. Tomorrow needed
Simosa to be the bad guy. Simosa needed Chamur to
be the opposition. As long as it looked like a
dictator allowed opposition voices to be heard through newspaper and
(34:07):
some radio stations, it made him look less iron fisted dictator.
So neither one of them feared their lives from the other.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Not exactly sculpatory evidence, but if it wasn't Samosa, who
else had a motive to murder Tomorrow?
Speaker 7 (34:24):
He is being vocal in the press and in his
own speeches about Samosa, but also families that are in
the larger circle of the samosas his word, critiquing those
families and pointing out the crimes or the errors, or
the violence or the corruption of those families is viewed
(34:46):
as a personal attack for Tomoto. It was like identifying
the cancer that needed to be removed. And so of
course the Samosa's overall, the whole family, the in laws,
and then the key kind of acted families that were
part of the larger Samosa circle. They all despised Tomoto.
They despise being pointed out and lifted up as the
(35:09):
bane of Nicaragua.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
We owned everything car dealerships, banks, restaurants, shops. Poor people
didn't own anything.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
There's a funny story of Tomosa driving in the countryside
and he says to his driver, Oh, that's really a
pretty ranch. Who owns that? And the driver turns around
he says, your excellency, you own it.
Speaker 14 (35:33):
Dan.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Rather doing a piece for sixty minutes, ask Someamosa about
as many holdings general.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
I've been told that your wealth is in the neighborhood
of five hundred million dollars and the list is very
long of Sosa interested you and your family owned You
own the National Airline? No, we're a shareholders of it.
You're a major shareholder in the airline. Yes, you own
the National shipping line. Yes, I founded that, including your
own port Port Tomoso. Also, we founded that the leading
(36:00):
television station, Yes, radio station. You own a newspaper. Yes,
you own the biggest hotel in Managua. No, we're shareholders
of it. You're a major shareholder, no minority. You own
hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Yes, you owned cattle. Yes,
you own huge financial interests in banks and insurance companies.
Speaker 8 (36:21):
And you still we could go on and on.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
He owned everything, and he made sure that all his
friends were taken care of too.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
The wealthy elite had a lot to lose if Samosa
lost power, and Cookie's family was a part of that.
Could the motive just be money? I guess it's always money,
But what about big business? Nicaragua exported sugar, beef, bananas,
but most of that was owned by Someimosa and his friends.
The Nicaraguaan government did arrest for suspects, saying they were
(36:52):
hired by an American whose plasma exporting business was under
fire by Chamorro's newspaper Loprenza. Of course Simosa had a
piece of that plasma business as well. It always leads
back to Somemosa. But what about the United States. We've
had a stake in Nicaragua since we helped get the
first Smosa in power back in the nineteen twenties, and
(37:13):
of course we've assassinated people in the past.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
There's a famous line from Franklin Roosevelt about the first Tomosa,
the President Samosa's father, FDR referring to Samosa, he's the
son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.
All the Somosas were bound to the US. President Simosa
went to West Point, all of them US educated. Obviously
(37:37):
investments in this country. At this point, the US is
still backing the Nicaragua dictatorship.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Like we backed to O Salvador and Honduras.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
And well, correct fighting communism.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
In the presence of Cuba, right there.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Maybe were communists.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, who makes that Domino theory viable? Viable?
Speaker 7 (37:59):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
And I think you got the Allende and Chile and
you know, all these different movements that were put down
ruthlessly and viciously.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
At this point, we haven't discounted any of our suspects.
They all have motive, they all have opportunity. They all
wanted him dead. Is this like Julius Caesar where they
all put a knife in his back? Are they all
fucking guilty? Wait a second, I forgot about someone.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
The second generation. Simosa had a son, and he was
next in line to become president one day. He was
this flashy military kid. He might have gone to West
Point as well. He was hanging around with mercenaries. There
were famous American mercenaries that were coming to Nicaragua. Mike
the Mercenary, Bob the Mercenary. These were bad people. They
(38:52):
would wear the bullets across here like Pancho Villa. And
by this time the mercenaries are drying in tanks in
the streets. Of course I was friends with them too.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
That's right, Cookie parties with mercenaries. Where were they from?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
US? Just anywhere mercenary needed a job, he could come.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
The US mercenaries killed Pedro.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
We don't know who exactly did. We suspect that it
was Mike the Mercenary, but it was on the orders
of Samosa the third He had Pedro Woking Chamorrow assassinated.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
I don't know if Cookie's right about this, but it
sure makes a better story.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Of course, we later found out his father was furious
with him. Why did you do this because that kind
of stuff just didn't happen to rich people in Nicaragua.
Sure it happened behind the scenes to poor people and
revolutionaries and criminals, but that kind of stuff didn't.
Speaker 7 (39:56):
Happen in the end. I actually don't think who or
it ends up being the important question. The result of
it is what's really important, which is there's this massive
reporting in the US about this beloved hero of press,
freedom and democracy, ped jaquin Chimoto being assassinated in this
(40:17):
country led by a violent military dictator. So that's the
way the coverage is being presented. And then four every
day Nicaraguans, even those who were not really political. It
is both the murder of this very popular figure, but
also this idea that if he can be murdered, what
(40:40):
won't they do.
Speaker 11 (40:41):
This is how the Washington Post summed it up. At
a crucial moment. The Chamorro murder has dramatized for foreigners
the lawlessness and political tension long known to Nicaraguan's The
Samosa family has tried to run the politics and economy
of the country as its personal preserve, cleverly co opting
support and brutally destroying opponents. Whether the transition to the
(41:04):
post Simosa arrow will be violent or peaceful cannot be told.
What can be said is that, regardless of who killed him,
Pedro Chimorro died of Patriot's death.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
The assassination of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro changed everything. It lit
a flame under the long simmering revolution. The Santa de
Nisas were back in business in a big way. That
people who came out in the streets united in opposition
to Simosa. It was the beginning of the end of
a dictator. It made headlines around the world. Cookie didn't
(41:37):
know it yet, but her life was about to change.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Next time on Journalista, Pablo gave me half a pound
of cocaine for the wedding, so I brought my girlfriend
from New Orleans, flew her in and we spent the
whole day before and the whole day of grinding it up.
(42:04):
We started off with one graand bottles and realized quickly
that's likely to be enough, So we went and got
two gram bottles, filled up one hundred of them. When
the people arrived at the door, that's what they were
given with a bow on it. You know, this is
your party.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Favor The Journalist of podcast features the stories and voice
of Cookie Hood narrated by Steven Step. Produced by Sean J. Donnelly.
Executive producers Jason Waggensback, Roy Laughlin, and Ellen k. iHeart
Executive producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Step.
(42:42):
Music by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Steven Tanti.
Sound mixing by Jesse soln Snyder. Featuring the voices of
radio personality Ellen K. Lloyd, Shirt, Loyola University Professor Pablo Sabalis,
special guest Tulaine History Professor Justin Wolf Special Thanks to
Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slack.
(43:08):
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio
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