César Gaviria

César Gaviria Trujillo

César Gaviria Trujillo (born March 31, 1947 in Pereira , Colombia ) is a Colombian politician. He was President of Colombia from 1990 to 1994 and Secretary General of the Organization of American States from 1994 to 2004 .

Biographical

César Gaviria Trujillo was born on March 31, 1947 as the eldest of six children of coffee farmer Byron Trujillo and his wife Mélida. After attending school in his hometown of Pereira and in Fresno , California , he studied economics at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá . He finished his studies as the best in his year. From 1982 to 1986 he headed the daily newspaper “ La Tarde ” ( Spanish: the afternoon / evening) in Pereira and wrote articles for the largest Colombian newspaper El Tiempo . César Gaviria Trujillo is married to Ana Milena Muñoz de Gaviria. On the evening of April 28, 2006, his 52-year-old sister Liliana Gaviria was ambushed and killed by strangers. The raid happened in Risaralda province 175 kilometers west of Bogota.

Political career

1970 César Gaviria Trujillo began his political career as a councilor in Pereira (until 1974); at the same time he was an assistant in the National Planning Council of Colombia (until 1971). From 1974 to 1990 Gaviria Trujillo sat for the Liberal Party in the Colombian House of Representatives; From 1975 to 1976 he was also mayor of his hometown.

Ministerial posts and advancement in the Liberal Party

During the reign of Julio César Turbay Ayala (1978 to 1982), Gaviria Trujillo was Vice Minister for Development. In 1986 he was elected chairman of the Liberal Party and promoted to campaign manager for Liberal presidential candidate Virgilio Barco . After his election victory, Gaviria Trujillo became finance minister in August 1986; his most important projects in this function were tax and agrarian reform .

In 1987 Gaviria Trujillo was appointed Minister of the Interior and from that point on began preparing a reform of the 1886 constitution. He led the negotiations with the guerrillas of the M-19 organization , which led to their disarmament on March 8, 1990 and the establishment of a new party of the same name. Barco also appointed César Gaviria as his representative.

In February 1989, Gaviria resigned from his ministerial post to lead the election campaign for Liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán . After the murder of the popular politician who wanted to fight corruption and drug trafficking on August 18, 1989, Gaviria, who is also part of the left wing of the party, succeeded him.

Presidency

In the presidential elections on August 7, 1990, Gaviria Trujillo prevailed with 47.8% of the vote against the conservative candidates Àlvaro Gómez Hurtado and Rodrigo Lloreda Caicedo and against Antonio Navarro Wolff from the newly founded party Alianza Democrática M-19 . Two other left-wing candidates, Carlos Pizarro León-Gómez and Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa , were murdered during the election campaign.

During the government of Gaviria, the current Colombian constitution of 1991 was passed. For the first time, former guerrilla fighters and representatives of ethnic minorities ( indigenous people , Afro-Colombians ) were involved in drafting it . In addition, Gaviria's government committed itself to the fight against drug trafficking and cultivation, against paramilitary groups and against the guerrilla organizations FARC and ELN .

After negotiations with the government, the “drug czar” Pablo Escobar surrendered to the Colombian authorities on June 19, 1991 . The Gaviria government suffered a credibility crisis when Escobar managed to escape from his prison cell in July 1992. In addition, the Colombian press exposed the luxurious conditions under which Escobar was imprisoned. In December 1993, Escobar was shot dead by police in Medellín .

The Gaviria government implemented reforms of social security and the labor market on the basis of the new constitution; in addition, Gaviria tried to stop the high inflation in order to strengthen the Colombian economy. To solve the problem of undersupply with electricity, Gaviria Trujillo introduced the so-called apagón for a year and a half , a time limit on the availability of electricity.

Organization of American States

Even before the end of his presidency in August 1994, Gaviria Trujillo was elected Secretary General of the Organization of American States on March 27, 1994 with 20:14 votes . In 1999 he was confirmed for a second period in this office. In 2002 and 2003 he mediated between the Chavez government and the opposition during the political crisis in Venezuela . After the end of his second term in 2004, Gaviria Trujillo founded Hemispheric Partners in New York , a consultancy for companies operating in Latin America.

Return to Colombia

Since 2004 Gaviria Trujillo has intensified his activities in the Liberal Party of Colombia. In June 2005 he was elected party leader; he made it his goal to unite the divided party by the 2006 presidential election.

In the run-up to the vote of the Colombian people on the peace agreement in Havana on October 2, 2016, César Gaviria will lead the public campaign for approval of the peace treaty (La campaña por el "Si").

Others

Gaviria Trujillo is a member of the “ Club de Madrid ”. In the TV series Escobar, el Patrón del Mal , Gaviria is played by the Colombian actor Fabian Mendoza . In the television series Narcos , the Mexican actor Raúl Méndez took on the role of Gaviria.

literature

• César Gaviria Trujillo , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 20/2012 from May 15, 2012, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Caracol Radio: Gaviria dice SÍ a la paz y acepta dirigir la campaña del plebiscito , July 8, 2016.

predecessor	Office	successor
Virgilio Barco	President of Colombia 1990 - 1994	Ernesto Samper