León Febres Cordero

León Febres Cordero (1985)

León Febres Cordero Rivadeneira (also Febres-Cordero and Rivadeneyra ; born March 9, 1931 in Guayaquil ; † December 15, 2008 ibid) was an Ecuadorian mechanical engineer, manager and politician . He was president of his country between 1984 and 1988 and was the leading head of his party, the Partido Social Cristiano , for decades .

Origin, education, private life

Febres Cordero was born in the port and trading city of Guayaquil. He was the descendant of an influential family, from which General León de Febres-Cordero y Oberto (1797–1872) came, a leader of the independence movement in Guayaquil who was born in today's Venezuela. Francisco Febres Cordero ( Hermano Miguel ; 1854-1910), who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1984, also belonged to the Febres Cordero family because he was the grandson of a cousin of Febres Cordero y Oberto. The poet Rosa Borja (1889–1964) was a cousin of León's father Febres Cordero. Febres Cordero's father, Agustín Febres Cordero Tyler, was the manager of Sociedad Agrícola e Industrial San Carlos , which belonged to the richest man in Ecuador at the time, Juan Xavier Marcos .

Febres Cordero attended a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco in his hometown and then in the USA the now defunct Charlotte Hall Military Academy and the Mercersburg Academy . He then studied at the Stevens Institute of Technology (in Hoboken , New Jersey). In 1953 he was awarded with distinction graduated as a mechanical engineer (Mechanical Engineer) . He began further studies and a doctorate in mechanical and electrical engineering at a research and teaching facility maintained by the Westinghouse company in cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania . He did not complete his doctorate at the time. However, decades later, when he was President of Ecuador, he was awarded his doctorate by the University of Pennsylvania.

Febres Cordero was married to María Eugenia Cordovéz Pontón, with whom he had four daughters. Cordovéz Pontón is a cousin of Sixto Durán Ballén . In his second marriage he was married to Cruz María Massuh, with whom he had no children, until his death.

In 2008, Febres Cordero's health deteriorated significantly due to lung cancer. Shortly after receiving his final treatment in Tampa , he died on December 15, 2008 of emphysema as a result of his illness in a hospital in his hometown. In March 2005, his right eye had been removed from his second home in Miami as a result of a glaucoma infection.

Businessman

After completing his studies, Febres Cordero returned to Ecuador in 1953 and worked first for the largest brewery in Ecuador, Compañía de Cervezas Nacionales , and then for the national energy producer Emelec . Later he was one of the leading industrial managers in the group of the banana magnate Luis Noboa Naranjo , among other things as managing director of Industrial Molinera .

He was chairman and leading member of the chambers of industry and commerce and employers' associations in Guayaquil and the province of Guayas as well as chairman of the industrial association Asociación de Industriales Latinoamericanos .

Politician

Febres Cordero was elected to the constituent assembly in 1966, which elected Otto Arosemena president and passed a new constitution in 1967. From 1967 to 1970 he was a senator in the upper house of the Ecuadorian parliament and chairman of its economic and financial commission. From 1970 to 1984 he was a member of the Cámara Nacional de Representantes , which later became a freely elected parliament as a national congress.

In 1978 he joined the Partido Social Cristiano and soon became its political leader. He turned the party, which was originally based on Christian social teaching, into a market-liberal party, in which he himself stood for a technocratic, business-oriented political style.

From 1984 to 1988 he was President of Ecuador. In 1992 and 1996 he was elected mayor of Guayaquil, an office he held until 2000. With the “ Malecón 2000 ” project, he began the rehabilitation of the historic city center around the former harbor embankment, primarily for tourist purposes. Under his aegis, the economic and tourist reputation of Guayaquil recovered, which had gained the image of a dirty and unsafe industrial city from its predecessors from the Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano , including Abdalá Bucaram , under chaotic terms of office . The revival of the reputation of Guayaquil also caused a significant increase in the reputation of Febres Cordero, who became a kind of "city father", and the consolidation of Guayaquil as a stronghold of the Partido Social Cristiano . Febres Cordero's successor Jaime Nebot continues the policy of “urban regeneration” in this sense.

In 2002 and again in 2006 Febres Cordero was elected to the Ecuadorian parliament for the province of Guayas. At the beginning of 2007 he renounced his seat in the National Congress for health reasons.

Febres Cordero has long been considered the most influential politician in Ecuador, since the PSC he led has always been one of the most important parties in the National Congress since the end of the military dictatorship in 1979. Since in Ecuador posts in the judiciary and public administration are traditionally filled with strong political considerations and since 1979 the presidents, with the exception of Rodrigo Borja, have always been confronted with an opposition majority in the National Congress with strong participation of the PSC or formed a government coalition with the PSC, Febres Cordero was able to see many key positions in the state apparatus occupied by his confidants through political pacts. His political influence declined in recent years, both within his party and in the country, but it continued to be seen as significant.

Throughout his political life, Febres Cordero was a polarized politician. This was due in particular to his rhetoric, which did not shrink from using unfavorable comparisons and expletives to cover political opponents. As a result, he was recently noticed less for his current parliamentary work than because of his comments on day-to-day political affairs, which he regularly communicated to radio, television and newspaper reporters.

In May 2007 the Correa government created a " truth commission " to investigate past human rights violations, particularly during the Febres Cordero government. Febres Cordero replied that there had been human rights violations during his government, as in the rest of the world and in all times, but these had already been dealt with and the new commission of inquiry was not suitable to add to the further. The Commission is still active.

Presidency

Election campaign

Febres Cordero and the "Front des National Reconstruction" led by him - consisting of the PSC, the Liberal and Conservative Parties , the Coalición Institucionalista Demócrata , the Partido Nacionalista Revolucionario and supporters of the late José María Velasco Ibarra - led a polemical election campaign, which was directed primarily against the incumbent President Osvaldo Hurtado and his politics, which were branded as “ statist ”. He referred above all to the fact that during the military juntas of the 1970s, and especially under Hurtado's predecessor Jaime Roldós, the state apparatus and clientelist social policy measures had been expanded with money from oil revenues, which had allowed the state quota to rise sharply. Hurtado, who had previously been Vice President under Roldos, had tried to revise the policy somewhat, but had failed to compensate for the effects of rapidly falling oil prices since 1982 in a country suffering from the " Dutch disease." “Suffered, led to economic crisis, unemployment, underutilized industrial capacities and a growing deficit in the state budget. In this context, Febres Cordero and his electoral coalition promised a significant downsizing of the state apparatus and free-market economic reforms on the model of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher . Febres Cordero, in particular, personally defamed his political opponents in the election campaign.

First phase of the presidency (1984–1986)

After the election victory, he based his government less on the parties of the electoral alliance than on his circle of origin, the bank managers and businessmen of Guayaquil. In the first two years of his presidency (mid-1984 to mid-86), he partially implemented the announced neoliberal reforms: tariffs were lowered and import quotas increased, the financial markets partially liberalized, and state pricing and subsidies for many goods abolished or reduced. Febres Cordero tried to cut red tape and cut government spending. He succeeded in attracting more international capital to Ecuador, above all in oil prospecting, while the development of the oil fields and the production remained reserved for the state company Corporación Estatal Petrolera Ecuatoriana (today Petroecuador ). A central component of neoliberal economic policy, a comprehensive tax reform , was neither formulated nor implemented during the entire presidency. Likewise, the abandonment of the fixed official exchange rate for the sucre was not implemented until 1986. Nevertheless, in this first phase, unemployment fell, the economy grew, inflation fell, national savings increased significantly and the state budget could be balanced.

A policy area emphasized by Febres Cordero, in addition to economic policy, was the fight against terrorism in Ecuador, especially the group Alfaro Vive, ¡Carajo! who kidnapped banker Nahím Isaías in August 1985 . The President himself led the Ecuadorian army's operation to rescue Isaías, which - under circumstances that are not entirely clear - killed the kidnappers and hostages. He is therefore still facing charges of human rights violations in the fight against terrorism.

Second phase of the presidency (1986–1988)

The second phase of the presidency (mid-1986 to mid-1988) was marked by numerous setbacks: On June 1, 1986, a referendum on the constitutional reforms proposed by Febres Cordero, which would have given him greater freedom of action, failed to achieve a majority. Febres Cordero's popularity had already declined significantly, as the reforms of the previous period had improved the economic situation, but not a promised boom. In addition, many reforms, such as the cut in subsidies for everyday products and the abolition of price fixing, had a negative impact on the disposable income of the lower classes in the short term. The beneficiaries, however, were primarily producers in the domestically liberalized areas (through rising prices) and exporting industries such as rose and shrimp farming . Politically, Febres Cordero was faced with an opposition that was in the majority in the National Congress, and that was hardly due to the polemical statements made by the president against the leaders of the Democracia Popular (Hurtado), the Izquierda Democrática ( Borja ) and the Partido Roldosista ( Bucaram ) was inclined to political compromises.

International crude oil prices fell dramatically in 1986. A severe earthquake on March 5, 1987 , the epicenter of which was in the province of Napo , about 75 km northeast of Quito , had an additional negative effect on the economic, political and social situation . It claimed about 1,000 lives and left great damage; Among other things, the Oleoducto Trans-Ecuatoriano , the only pipeline from the production areas in the Amazon basin to the export port on the coast, was destroyed, so that oil exports were not possible for months. Two months earlier, on January 16, 1987, units of the national air force captured Febres Cordero at the base in Taura (near Guayaquil). They called for the release of Air Force General Frank Vargas , who led a short-lived uprising at the Manta base in March 1986 and was amnestied by Congress in late 1986, which Febres Cordero had not recognized. The kidnappers threatened the president with his assassination; he agreed to their demands within a few hours and was released on the same day. The Congress then unsuccessfully demanded the resignation of the President.

In this second phase, Febres Cordero switched his policy to populist measures and significantly increased state construction activity, increased electricity subsidies, permitted wage increases or decreed increases in the minimum wage and tightened the previously relaxed and in some cases abolished state price controls. At the same time, however, he refused to sign similar resolutions if these had been drawn up by parliament under the leadership of the Social Democrats. His market-liberal advisors and parts of the organized business community distanced themselves from the president's policies. At the end of his reign, the inflation rate in Ecuador had risen significantly again and the national budget was in deficit. Febres Cordero's successor, the Social Democrat Rodrigo Borja , was forced to resume the reform course that Febres Cordero had interrupted.

literature

• David Wong Chauvet: León Febres-Cordero. Madera de Guerrero , Poligráfica, Quito 2006, ISBN 9978-337-77-6 (richly illustrated, elaborately designed multi-part interview of the author with Febres Cordero - characterized by the personal admiration of the interviewer for the interviewee)
• Edward A. Lynch: Ecuador under Leon Febres Cordero: the folly of halfway measures , In: Lowell S. Gustafson (Ed.), Economic Development under Democratic Regimes Neoliberalism in Latin America , Praeger Publishers, Westport (Connecticut) 1994, ISBN 0- 275-94829-3
• César Montúfar: La reconstrucción neoliberal. Febres Cordero o la estatización del neoliberalismo en el Ecuador, 1984–1988 , Ed. Abya Yala , Quito 2000, ISBN 9978-04-622-4 .
• León Roldós : El abuso del poder. Los decretos-leyes económicos urgentes aprobados por el gobierno del Ing.León Febres Cordero , Ed. El Conejo, Quito 1986.

Web links

• Simón Espinosa Cordero, León Febres Cordero (1931) , on edufuturo.com , the educational portal of the prefecture of the Pichincha province (Spanish)
• Humberto Oña Villarreal, León Febres Cordero , on explored.com.ec , an online offer of the Diario HOY newspaper, Quito (Spanish)
• Historia de los Presidentes - León Febres Cordero on the homepage of the Ecuadorian President (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} León Febres-Cordero murió ayer, es velado en la Catedral , El Universo (Guayaquil), December 16, 2008.
2. ↑ Soledad Martínez, 40 años tras los hilos del poder , El Comercio (Quito), January 21, 2007.
3. ↑ Febres Cordero retornó muy delicado , El Comercio, December 8, 2008.
4. ↑ León Febres Cordero pierde su ojo derecho ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , HOY online (Quito), March 31, 2005. 
5. ↑ LFC deja diputación y viajará a Miami ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , El Universo, January 6, 2007. 
6. ↑ See Febres Cordero admite violación a derechos humanos durante su Gobierno ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , HOY online, May 4, 2007, and to the Commission itself, which will deal with 327 cases Comisión de la Verdad debe escarbar 327 casos ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , HOY online, May 5, 2007.  

predecessor	Office	successor
Osvaldo Hurtado	President of Ecuador 1984–1988	Rodrigo Borja