Carlos Julio Arosemena Tola

Carlos Julio Arosemena Tola (born April 12, 1888 in Guayaquil , † February 20, 1952 there ) was an Ecuadorian banker . He was president of his country from September 17, 1947 to August 31, 1948.

Arosemena was a member of the commercial bourgeoisie in his hometown Guayaquil, the commercial metropolis of Ecuador. His father was a merchant and banker who immigrated from Panama. His mother came from the local upper class. Arosemena first attended a school in Guayaquil and was sent to Panama by his parents in 1895. From 1898 he attended Seaton Hall College in New Jersey and later studied medicine at Cornell University in New York. However, he broke off his medical studies and returned to Guayaquil in 1905. He worked for the Banco del Ecuador , of which his father was the manager. After his father's death in 1917, Arosemena withdrew from the bank and initially opened a shop in which he sold imported specialties and later also changed money. In 1920 he founded the bank Banco de Descuento , after discovering that the local trading houses had greater financing needs than they had previously been able to do. He was president of the bank until his death in 1952. Since the Banco del Ecuador was closed in 1931, the Banco de Descuento has been one of the two largest banks in Guayaquil. Arosemena has been a member and temporary chairman of various local and national charities.

He was elected President of Ecuador by parliament in 1947 after José María Velasco Ibarra was overthrown by the Defense Minister in his second term. Arosemena, who had never held public office before, was elected by a large majority and formed a government that included all political camps with the exception of the communists. His main task was to calm the political situation, which he succeeded during his presidency. In terms of foreign policy, he pursued the connection of Ecuador to the "western world" by signing the Charter of the Organization of American States and breaking diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union . He received an embassy from the International Monetary Fund under the direction of Robert Triffin , on whose recommendation a new currency law was passed in 1948, which incorporated Ecuador into the Bretton Woods system and created the Junta Monetaria as the supreme control body for currency issues. With the Charter of Quito as the conclusion of the first Greater Colombian Conference, preparatory work for the later Andean Pact was created.

The free elections of 1948, won by the moderate liberal Galo Plaza Lasso , were organized under his leadership .

Arosemena had been married to Laura Monroy since 1915. They had seven children, including Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy , who was President of Ecuador from 1961 to 1963. Arosemena died in 1952 after being bedridden for almost three years as a result of constantly worsening osteoarthritis . His grave is in a Carrara marble mausoleum in the Guayaquil Municipal Cemetery.

The bank founded by Arosemena was closed as bankrupt in 1985.

Web links

• Rudolfo Pérez Pimentel, Carlos Julio Arosemena Tola , In: Diccionario Biográfico del Ecuador , Guayaquil 1987-, volume 6, p. 49ff.
• Humberto Oña Villarreal, Carlos Julio Arosemena Tola , short biography on the pages of explored.com.ec , a portal of the daily newspaper Diario Hoy (Spanish)
• Simón Espinosa Cordero, Carlos Julio Arosemena Tola (1888–1952) , short biography on the pages of edufuturo.com , the educational portal of the prefecture of the Pichincha province (Spanish).

predecessor	Office	successor
Mariano Suarez	President of Ecuador 1947 - 1948	Galo Plaza Lasso