Eduardo Santos
Eduardo Santos Montejo (born August 28, 1888 in Bogotá ; † March 27, 1974 ibid) was a Colombian journalist , politician of the liberal Partido Liberal Colombiana and President of Colombia from 1938 to 1942 .
biography
After attending school he worked as a journalist and finally in 1913 the owner and editor of the liberal daily El Tiempo , founded in 1911 , which he expanded into the largest daily newspaper in the country.
In 1917 he became a member of the Partido Liberal Colombiano and in August 1930 he was appointed Foreign Minister in the cabinet of President Enrique Olaya Herrera , to which he was a member until July 1931. In 1931 he became governor of the Departamento de Santander in the northeast for a short time before he was head of the Colombian delegation to the League of Nations between 1931 and 1933 . In 1935 he was elected senator and was a member of the Senate ( Senado ) until 1937.
Santos, who was the leader of the right wing within the party, was elected president in 1938 unopposed.
During his presidency from August 7, 1938 to August 7, 1942, he largely continued the reform course of his predecessor Alfonso López Pumarejo . Despite the onset of World War II , he introduced key programs that also laid the foundations for subsequent governments, such as in the areas of housing construction , credit reforms and highway construction. Another significant success of his tenure was the conclusion of a border treaty with Venezuela after several years of negotiations. There was also a new agreement with the Holy See which ended clerical control of the education system and required bishops to be citizens of Colombia. Even before taking office, he made it clear that the states of America had to stick together and therefore broke off diplomatic relations with the Axis powers after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 . At the same time, the national airline Avianca, previously owned by Germany, was nationalized .
After the end of his presidency he remained one of the leaders of the Liberal Party and was the country's first vice-president between 1948 and 1950 during the tenure of Mariano Ospina Pérez .
Between 1953 and 1957, in his capacity as editor of El Tiempo, he was one of the main critics of dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla , who then closed the publishing house for 22 months. However , he refused the offer of a reappearance of the newspaper under certain conditions as part of a press censorship and only began publishing El Tiempo again after the removal of Rojas Pinillas in May 1957. Santos remained editor of El Tiempo until his death .
The stadium of the football club Unión Magdalena in Estadio Eduardo Santos and a barrio of Medellín were named in his honor.
After his death, his nephew Enrique Santos became the sole editor of El Tiempo . His son, Eduardo Santos' great-nephew Juan Manuel Santos was also President of Colombia from August 7, 2010 to August 6, 2018.
Web links
- rulers.org
- Newspaper article about Eduardo Santos in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Alfonso López Pumarejo |
President of Colombia 1938–1942 |
Alfonso López Pumarejo |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Santos, Eduardo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Santos Montejo, Eduardo (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Colombian journalist, editor, politician, President of Colombia (1938–1942) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 28, 1888 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bogotá |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 27, 1974 |
| Place of death | Bogotá |