José Simón Azcona del Hoyo

José Simón Azcona del Hoyo (born January 26, 1927 , † October 24, 2005 in Tegucigalpa ) was a politician in Honduras .

From 1935 to 1949 he lived in Cantabria , Spain, with his maternal grandparents. Then he illegally crossed the border into Portugal when he was about to be drafted into the Spanish army as a conscript . He then went to Honduras to study at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (UNAH) before completing his civil engineering degree at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico .

As a member of the Liberal Party (PL), he was Minister of Agriculture from 1975 to 1980 and, as head of the election campaign in 1981, contributed to the fact that, after 50 years of military dictatorship, the PL with Roberto Suazo Córdova was able to provide President. In 1981 Azcona del Hoyo became Minister of Telecommunications, but left the cabinet in 1983 after disputes with the President.

In the presidential election on November 24, 1985, Azcona del Hoyo ran and emerged victorious because of a new electoral law because he received the most votes of the four candidates for the PL. He served as president from January 27, 1986 to January 26, 1990. During his tenure, he achieved the return of Swan Island from the USA to Honduras. Together with his counterparts from Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, he was one of the signatories of the Arias Plan, which opened a peace process for Central America. Rafael Leonardo Calleja Romero was elected to succeed him.

Web links

• José Simón Azcona del Hoyo in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

predecessor	Office	successor
Roberto Suazo Cordova	President of Honduras January 27, 1986 - January 27, 1990	Rafael Leonardo Calleja Romero