Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián

Manuel Lisandro Barillas

General Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián (born  January 17, 1845 in Quetzaltenango , Guatemala , †  March 15, 1907 in Mexico City ) was a Guatemalan president .

Life

Manuel Barillas came from a modest family of landowners and officers in the Quetzaltenango department . His father was the general José María Barillas.

Manuel Barillas attended school in Quetzaltenango, then, in line with family tradition, pursued an officer career and quickly made a career in the military . Most recently he was governor ( jefe político ) of the department of Quetzaltenango and under President Barrios second deputy to the president ( segundo designado a la presidencia ).

Presidency

When Barillas heard of Barrios 'death, he immediately went to Guatemala City , where he arrived on the day of Barrios' funeral, and asked to be appointed provisional president to succeed Barrios. On the day of President Barrios's death, his first deputy, Alejandro Sinibaldi , had already assumed this position. With reference to a force of 5,000 men under his command, which was encamped at the gates of the city, Barillas managed to persuade Sinibaldi to resign. Barillas was named provisional president that same day. In fact, Barillas had come to Guatemala City alone; the troops encamped outside the city did not exist.

Although the Guatemalan constitution of the time stipulated that a transitional president had to schedule new elections as soon as possible, Barillas extended his provisional presidency to a full six years. He was helped by an uprising in the Huehuetenango department in 1887, which he took as an opportunity to temporarily suspend rights guaranteed by the constitution and to dissolve parliament.

One of the most important official acts of Barillas as president was the end of the armed conflict with El Salvador . His policy, however, was essentially a continuation of Barrios' policy, he advocated the restoration of the Central American Confederation , as did Barrios, and resumed diplomatic efforts.

When Barillas finally called for the new elections required by the constitution, he tried by all means to prevent a victory for his fiercest opponent, General Reina Barrios . So he sent him shortly before the election date on a diplomatic mission to Germany. There Reina found that the mission was a deception. Nevertheless, Reina won the elections in 1892. Barillas tried to keep himself in power through a coup, but eventually had to hand over the presidency to Reina.

Exile and death

After retiring from politics, Barillas lived for a few years on his estates on the Pacific coast. In the meantime he was the owner of five large coffee plantations there with a total size of around 30,000 hectares , making it Guatemala 's largest coffee producer .

However, under the presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera , he had to leave the country and go into exile in Mexico . From there he organized an uprising against the Cabrera government in 1906, which sparked a Central American War. This war could only be ended with the mediation of the Presidents of the USA and Mexico, Theodore Roosevelt and Porfirio Díaz . Barillas was assassinated in Mexico City in 1907 , behind which the Estrada government stood. The two bombers Florencio Reyes Morales and Bernardo Mora was on September 8, 1907 executed .

literature

• Hector Gaitán A .: Los Presidentes de Guatemala Artemis & Edinter, Guatemala 1992, ISBN 84-89452-25-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Manuel Lisandro Barillas. February 15, 2016, archived from the original on March 28, 2007 ; accessed on February 10, 2016 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Alejandro Sinibaldi	Presidents of Guatemala April 6, 1885 - March 15, 1892	José María Reina Barrios