Osmín Aguirre y Salinas

Osmín Aguirre y Salinas

Osmín Aguirre y Salinas (born December 24, 1889 in San Miguel , El Salvador , † July 12, 1977 in San Salvador ) was a military and from October 21, 1944 to March 8, 1945 President of El Salvador.

Life

In the official historiography, after the fall of Arturo Araujo, a Directorio Cívico took over the office of President from December 2-4, 1931. In this Directorio Cívico Osmin Aguirre Salinas held the office of Minister of War. The term of office of this Directorio Cívico was supposed to hide the fact that Arturo Araujo was overthrown by his deputy Maximiliano Hernández Martínez .

In February 1932, Aguirre was deposed as police chief for conspiracy against Hernández. When Martínez was forced to resign in May 1944 by a general strike ( huelga de brazos caídos ), he installed Andrés Ignacio Menéndez as president. Menéndez decreed the constitution of 1886, which sanctioned the right to insurrection. Now Aguirre became police chief again.

To prevent the election of Doctor Arturo Romero, who was the leader of the bourgeois opposition to Hernández Martínez, as president, Aguirre put himself to power. Menéndez then resigned for "health reasons".

Aguirre Salinas suspended the constitution and locked hundreds in jails. Salinas reached an understanding with Tiburcio Carías Andino , who was one of the first to recognize the Aguirre regime, and had the rooms of Honduran citizens in the Nuevo Mundo Hotel in San Salvador turned upside down, after which the Honduran citizens emigrated to Honduras. The El Salvador Supreme Court ruled Aguirre's government unconstitutional. After the verdict, the presiding judge, Miguel Tomas Molina, went to the Guatemalan embassy and asked for asylum. Also in Guatemala, where the dictator Juan Federico Ponce Vaidez had been overthrown just the previous week , the president of the Banco de Crédito , Doctor Jorge Sol Castellanos, resigned , after which all banks in El Salvador remained closed.

The farmers did not come to the markets. Salinas rattled his lend-lease weapons and declared that the Salvadorans who join the passive resistance would be shot. It was explained to a Time journalist: What the country needs is that all weapons be carted to the port of Acajutla and dumped in the sea there.

His government drove thousands of Salvadorans into exile. There was armed resistance against his government, some of which appropriated lend lease weapons and broadcast an underground radio program. In mid-December 1944, Aguirre had 17 Lend-Lease North American T-6 aircraft bombed around 1,000 Salvadoran exiles who wanted to cross the border from Guatemala.

Aguirre, brought the presidential elections to January 6, 1945. With the state apparatus in control of the election machine, there was no doubt about the outcome of the election. Five opposition candidates resigned after allegations against Aguirre's practice of pushing through the state party's candidate. On election day, farmers from the surrounding regions were driven by truck to San Salvador to vote, where they received food and drink vouchers for each vote. After that, it came as no surprise that the state party's candidate, General Castañeda Castro, was elected by a large majority.

Private

Colonel Osmín Aguirre y Salinas was married to Rosa Cardona. One of his four sons, Elmer Aguirre, was a member of the paramilitary Acción Cívica Militar . Another son, Dr. Aguirre, died in an accident.

death

In old age, Osmín Aguirre y Salinas suffered from throat cancer and could still articulate himself with paper and pencil. Colonel Osmin Aguirre died at the age of 87 on the way to Hospital Militar after using a firearm in front of his house on 15th Calle Oriente No 117 in San Salvador.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Roque Dalton The world is a limping centipede. The Century of Miguel Mármol , translated from Salvadoran Spanish by Michael Schwahn and Andreas Simmen, the original Spanish edition was published in 1972 under the title Miguel Mármol. Los sucedes de 1932 en El Salvador at EDUCA in San José, Costa Rica, Rotpunktverlag Zurich March 1997. p. 359
2. ↑ Asociación para el Fomento de los Estudios Históricos en Centroamérica, Las ventas y las vendedoras. Mercados, espacios públicos y orden urbano "moderno" en el Salvador, 1944-1948.
3. ↑ it: Federico Ponce Vaides
4. ^ Time magazine , Nov. 6, 1944, Dangling Arms
5. ^ Dalton p. 358

predecessor	Office	successor
Andrés Ignacio Menéndez	President of El Salvador October 21, 1944–8. March 1945	Salvador Castaneda Castro