Justo Rufino Barrios Auyón

Justo Rufino Barrios Auyón

General Justo Rufino Barrios Auyón (born  July 19, 1835 in San Lorenzo , San Marcos , Guatemala , †  April 2, 1885 near Chalchuapa , El Salvador ) was a Guatemalan president .

Life

Justo Rufino Barrios was the son of a wealthy landowner from the department of San Marcos. He completed his school education in San Marcos , Quetzaltenango , and most recently in Guatemala City . He then studied law at the Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala . After graduating in 1862, he worked as a notary in San Marcos for a few years. Because of his liberal outlook and a love affair with the daughter of the head of administration ( corregidor ) of the department of San Marcos, Barrios soon came into conflict with the local authorities and withdrew to his estate "Malacate".

The liberal revolution

From 1867, Barrios gathered a group of like-minded people and began a guerrilla war against the conservative government under President Vicente Cerna Sandoval . After he was only moderately successful at first, he joined the group of the liberal Field Marshal Serapio Cruz in 1869 , who had also fought against the conservative government for several years. When the uprising was crushed by government forces in early 1870 and Cruz was executed, Barrios fled to Mexico . There he met Miguel García Granados , with whom he set up a liberal force in Chiapas with the support of Benito Juárez .

In 1871 Barrios and García Granados invaded Guatemala with their troops. They won several victories against the government troops under the personal command of Cernas, in which Barrios proved to be a courageous and tactically skilled general. On June 30, 1871, they took Guatemala City and overthrew the Cerna government. Under the subsequent provisional government of Miguel García Granados Barrios was Supreme Commander of the Army and first deputy to the President. However, he soon fell out politically with García Granados, as his reforms did not go far enough for him.

The presidency

In 1873 Barrios won the presidential election for the Liberal Party. As president, he carried out radical reforms. These turned primarily against the influence of the Catholic Church . For example, he expelled all the ecclesiastical orders in the country and nationalized their property. Many of the former monasteries became public buildings, for example the Franciscan monastery as the post office and the Capuchin monastery as the police headquarters. He also abolished ecclesiastical jurisdiction and reduced the influence of the church on education by introducing public schools.

Barrios founded the National Bank ( Banco Nacional de Guatemala ) in 1874 and the National Library in 1879. He introduced general conscription , a nationwide army structure and a central land registry. In 1879 the first Guatemalan constitution was passed. This came into force a year later. Despite his liberal and modern attitude, his style of government was very authoritarian. Numerous political opponents had to leave the country and go into exile under his government.

In 1879 Barrios was re-elected for another six years. In this second term, among other things, between 1880 and 1884, the country's first railway line was built between Puerto San José on the Pacific coast and Guatemala City. In addition, a decree from 1883 laid the foundation for the construction of the railway line on the Atlantic coast to Puerto Barrios (which, however, was only completed in 1908).

In 1882, at the instigation of Barrios, the Herrera-Mariscal Treaty between Guatemala and Mexico was concluded. With this contract, Guatemala renounced (without compensation) the area of Soconusco, which had been disputed between the two countries since 1823, as well as the repayment of loans.

The Confederation

Like most liberals in Central America, Barrios advocated the restoration of the Central American Confederation . This was one of the central themes of his second term. After numerous negotiations did not lead to a result, Barrios decided to create facts. In agreement with the presidents of El Salvador and Honduras , Rafael Zaldívar and Luis Bográn Barahona , by decree of March 6, 1885, he declared the Central American Confederation to be restored and appointed himself Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Army. A few days later, however, the Salvadoran President Zaldívar changed his mind and spoke out against the confederation. As a result, on March 30, the first armed clashes between Guatemala and El Salvador broke out. Barrios was killed on April 2 at the Battle of Chalchuapa , in which he led the Guatemalan troops . With him died the plan to restore the Central American Confederation.

literature

• Hector Gaitán A .: Los Presidentes de Guatemala . Artemis & Edinter, Guatemala 1992, ISBN 84-89452-25-3 .
• Jorge Mario García Laguardia: La reforma liberal en Guatemala . 2nd Edition. UNAM, Mexico 1980, ISBN 968-5827-89-3 .
• Robert L. Scheina: Latin America's wars . Vol. 1: The age of the caudillo, 1791-1899 , Washington, DC (Brassey) 2003. ISBN 1-57488-450-6 . ISBN 1-57488-449-2

Web links

Commons : Justo Rufino Barrios  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Justo Rufino Barrios on the homepage of the Guatemalan government

predecessor	Office	successor
Miguel García Granados Zavala	Presidents of Guatemala June 4, 1873 - April 2, 1885	Alejandro Sinibaldi