Miguel García Granados Zavala

Miguel García Granados Zavala

General Miguel García Granados Zavala (born  September 29, 1809 in El Puerto de Santa María , Cádiz , Spain , †  September 8, 1878 in Guatemala City ) was a Guatemalan President .

Life and family

Miguel García Granados was the eighth of his parents' eleven children. His father came from a long-established and wealthy family in colonial Guatemala. In 1792 his parents had moved from Guatemala to Spain. However, in 1811 they returned to Guatemala because of the Napoleonic occupation of Spain. He attended excellent schools in the USA and Guatemala and finally completed his education in London . Like many of his ancestors, García Granados then went on to become an officer.

García Granados was married to Cristina Saboría, with whom he had several children. In the years 1877/78 the Cuban poet José Martí was a frequent guest in García Granados' house and fell in love with his daughter María (1861–1878), whom he wrote in his poem La Niña de Guatemala (The Girl from Guatemala) a literary one Monument set.

García Granados' older sister María Josefa , gained fame as a writer and publicist, and one of his grandsons, Colonel Miguel García Granados Solís, was a pioneer in aviation.

The liberal revolution

Miguel García Granados was politically active in the liberal camp. He was an avowed opponent of the conservative rulers Rafael Carrera and Vicente Cerna . After having held various political offices in his younger years, he became a member of the Liberal Party in the Guatemalan Parliament in the late 1860s.

He supported the armed uprising of Field Marshal Serapio Cruz against the increasingly dictatorial features of Cerna's rule . After the uprising was put down and Cruz was executed , he fled to Mexico , where he secured Benito Juárez's support for the armed struggle against the conservative Cernas regime. Then he organized, together with General Rufino Barrios, a force with which he marched from Chiapas into Guatemala. After numerous defeats by the government troops , President Cerna fled. On June 30, 1871, the liberal revolutionary troops reached Guatemala City and García Granados was appointed president.

The presidency

The appointment of Miguel García Granados was based on the so-called "Declaration of Patzicía" of June 3, 1871. In this declaration, the liberal revolutionaries of the Cerna government formally denied legitimation and stipulated that García Granados would be in office for a transition period of two years the president should take over.

The most important reforms that García Granados initiated during his reign included the introduction of general freedom of the press , the curtailment of the power of the Catholic Church through the expulsion of the Jesuits and two bishops and a ban on the raising of tithes , the organization of officer training through the establishment of the Officers' academy Escuela Politécnica , the establishment of a Ministry for Infrastructure Promotion ( Ministerio de Fomento ) and the uniform determination of the age of majority for men and women at 21 years. In addition, with ordinances of August 17 and November 18, 1871, he introduced the flag and coat of arms that are still in use today.

Web links

• Miguel García Granados on the homepage of the Guatemalan government
• Biography on deguate.com (spanish)

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 ed., UNAM, Mexico 1980, ISBN 968-58-2789-3

predecessor	Office	successor
Vicente Cerna Sandoval	President of Guatemala June 30, 1871–4. June 1873	Justo Rufino Barrios Auyón