Francisco Ramón Vicuña Larraín

Francisco Ramón Vicuña Larraín

Francisco Ramón Vicuña Larraín (* 1775 in Santiago de Chile , † January 13, 1849 ) was a Chilean politician . In 1829 he was temporarily president of his country.

Vicuña took part in Chile's struggle for independence in 1810 and organized the country's first own firearms production. For the constituency of Osorno , he sat in the constituent congress from 1811 and from 1814 in the Chilean Senate.

He was captured and exiled for conspiracy against the Spanish Crown. Only after the victory of the independence army at Chacabuco in 1817 was he able to return to his homeland. Bernardo O'Higgins posted him as a government representative in the northern provinces.

In 1823 he was appointed head of the administration of the city of Santiago and was again a delegate to the Constituent Assembly of 1823. In 1825, the director Supremo Ramón Freire y Serrano made him his deputy and made him his deputy minister of the interior and foreign affairs, as well as temporarily representing him War, Navy and Treasury Departments .

On September 16, 1829, after the votes in the presidential election had been counted, Congress appointed Francisco Antonio Pinto President, who had obtained a simple (if not an absolute) majority of the votes. In the election for vice-president, the two candidates, the liberal federalist Joaquín Vicuña and the conservative centralist José Joaquín Prieto Vial , achieved a tie. When the liberal-majority Congress declared vicuña the victor, the centralists took up arms and started the revolution of 1829 .

In the civil war that followed between the liberal federalists and the conservative centralists, President Pinto was forced to resign and leave the office to the President of the Senate, Francisco Ramón Vicuña. On December 7, 1829, the conservative troops under General José Joaquín Prieto Vial advanced from the south towards Santiago.

The vicuña government fled the fighting to Coquimbo, where they were captured by the victorious Conservative forces. As a result, Chile was leaderless for a few weeks until the new government junta appointed Francisco Ruiz Tagle as the new interim president in January 1830 .

Under the centralist presidents José Joaquín Prieto Vial and Manuel Bulnes Prieto , a liberal federalist like Vicuña was no longer able to hold important public offices. He died on January 13, 1849.