Carlos Lleras Restrepo

Carlos Lleras Restrepo

Carlos Lleras Restrepo (born April 12, 1908 in Bogotá ; † September 27, 1994 ibid) was a Colombian politician of the Partido Liberal Colombiano and from 1966 to 1970 President of Colombia .

biography

The son of the well-known doctor Federico Lleras studied law at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia after school and worked as a lawyer after graduating in 1930 . In 1931 he was elected as a member of the parliament of the province of Cundinamarca . In 1932 he was part of the administration of Bogotá . The following year he was represented in the government of the province of Cundinamarca and as a member of parliament, to which he was re-elected in 1936. In the meantime he was between 1936 and 1937 President of the Court of Auditors ( Contraloría General de la República Colombia ). In August 1938 he was appointed Minister of Finance and Public Credit ( Ministero de Hacienda y Crédito Público ) by President Eduardo Santos for the first time and held this position until March 1941. During this time, in addition to a national coffee fund, several organizations were set up to improve the supply of money and credit. a. the Instituto de Crédito Territorial (ICT), Instituto de Fomento Municipal and the Instituto de Fomento Industrial (IFI).

Lleras Restrepo was a staunch liberal and was then chairman of the Partido Liberal Colombiano for the first time in 1941 . In August 1941 he became Minister of Finance and Public Loans and was a member of President Santos' cabinet until the end of his term in August 1942. In 1942 he was elected to the Senate. He then held the office of finance minister again from October 1943 to March 1944 in the cabinet of President Alfonso López Pumarejo . He was a member of the Colombian delegations in preparation for the United Nations Organization and on the occasion of the Bretton Woods Conference.

After the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 he was again party chairman and held this position until 1950. With the assassination of Gaitán, a violent conflict between the Liberal Party and the conservative Partido Conservador Colombiano began for decades . After his own house was completely destroyed by a politically motivated arson in 1952 , he went into exile in Mexico until 1954 .

Lleras Restrepo (right) on a visit to the Federal Republic with Federal Minister Heinrich Krone (1964)

In 1966 he won the presidential election as his party's candidate and was then President of Colombia from August 7, 1966 to August 7, 1970. After the establishment of the Institute for Agrarian Reform (INCORA), an extensive land reform took place between 1968 and 1969 , during which 60,000 land titles were awarded to workers and peasants. During his presidency he played a key role in establishing the Andean Pact in 1969 to promote economic union in Latin America and was one of the driving forces behind this agreement between Bolivia , Chile , Colombia, Peru and Venezuela . His tenure, however, the dropped expulsion of Marta Traba because of their protest against the occupation of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia by the military.

In 1978 he lost to the later election winner Julio César Turbay Ayala when he was nominated for the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party . Nevertheless, he remained politically active even after this defeat.

Carlos Lleras Restrepo was not only a cousin of the former President Alberto Lleras Camargo , but also the grandfather of Germán Vargas Lleras , a long-time senator who ran unsuccessfully in the 2010 presidential election and was appointed Interior and Justice Minister by President Juan Manuel Santos on August 7, 2010 was appointed.

Lleras had been in the management of the El Tiempo newspaper since 1941 , in which he also regularly published amounts.

Lleras was married to Cecilia de la Fuente since March 25, 1933, and the marriage resulted in four children, Carlos, Clemencia, María Inés and Fernando.

Web links

• Biography on the website of the President of the Republic of Colombia (Spanish)
• Biography in the Biblioteca Virtual del Banco de la República by Luz Stella Tocancipa (Spanish)
• rulers.org

predecessor	Office	successor
Guillermo León Valencia	President of Colombia 1966–1970	Misael Pastrana Borrero