Augusto Bernardino, Leguía y Salcedo, President of the Republic between 1908-1912 and 1919-1930 . The son of Nicanor Leguía y Haro and Carmen Salcedo Taforó, he was born in a mansion at 431 Atahualpa Street in the Plaza de Armas of Lambayeque on February 19, 1863, and died on February 6, 1932. His first letters were he learned in Lambayeque, at the Rosario Gallo and Pedro Mantilla schools. Affected by a bronchial ailment, he was sent to Valparaíso at the age of 13 (1876-1878), where he began business studies at the English college of Goldfinch and Bluhm. He returned to Peru and the war with Chile (1879) surprised him in Lima, working in the commercial house of Enrique S. and Carlos A. Prevost. He joined the battalion No. 2 of the reserve army commanded by Colonel Manuel Lecca (1880), participating in the battle of Miraflores (January 15, 1881) and in the defense of Redoubt No. 1 . After the war, he continued to work in commerce, joining the New York Life Insurance Company, becoming manager for Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru (1888). He married Julia Swayne y Mariátegui, granddaughter of the great Francisco Javier Mariátegui, with whom he had seven children . When New York Life withdrew from Peru, Leguía dedicated himself to the sugar business as a representative of the Swayne Estate and entered into a contract in London with the Lockett house to form the British Sugar Company Limited (1896), an entity that owned sugar production estates. industrial sugar factory in the valleys of Cañete and Nepeña. Upon his return, he formed the insurance company Sud América (1900).
Augusto Leguía and his beginnings in politics
Despite not belonging to the aristocracy by birth, his solid prestige in financial activity allowed him to be admitted to the Civil Party, playing an important role in the election of Manuel Candamo to the presidency. He appointed him Minister of Finance in 1903, a position he would hold during the José Pardo y Barreda regime (1904-1908) until he was proclaimed presidential candidate for civilismo (1907). he assumed the presidency of the Republic for the period 1908-1912 , supported by the Civil and Constitutional parties. His opponents from the Democratic Party led a riot on May 29, 1909, arresting Leguía and demanding his resignation. They were unsuccessful and those involved in the uprising were locked up in the Penitentiary while the newspapers La Prensa, El Imparcial and El Pueblo were closed. However, Leguía had to face other difficulties, mainly in the international order. Faced with the pending problem with Chile over the captive provinces of Tacna and Arica, border conflicts with Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia intensified. With Bolivia there was a danger of war but it all culminated with the Polo-Bustamante treaty (1909); With Brazil, the limits were definitively set in the Velarde-Río Branco treaty (1909); with Ecuador the situation was more critical because this country refused to accept the arbitration of the king of Spain that favored us; there was even mobilization of troops by both parties, but the intervention of the United States, Brazil and Argentina prevented a major conflict (1910). On the other hand, the Colombians occupied the right bank of the Caquetá River in Peruvian territory and refused to abandon it; the army, under the command of Colonel Óscar R. Benavides, defeated the invaders in La Pedrera and occupied Puerto Córdova (1912) .
With regard to internal policy, the Leguía government created the Guano Administrative Company (1909), reformed the customs system (1910), bought the first airplanes (1911), passed the first laws on work accidents and created the department of Madre of God for purposes of diplomatic order (1912). Shortly after the end of his mandate Leguía broke with civilism, being exiled to Panama by the regime of Guillermo Billinghurst (1913), then went to the United States and finally to England, where he lived until 1918 dedicated to business.
Return to Peru and the arrival of the presidency
In 1919 he returned to Peru as a candidate for the presidency of the Republic competing with the civilian Ántero Aspíllaga . His electoral campaign was supported by two pillars:the Constitutional Party and the University of San Marcos; this last institution proclaimed him in an unusual start “Master of Youth” , without having had any academic degree. In this way, Leguía presented himself as a standard bearer of youthful desires to change the structures of the country. He won the elections, but alleging that his victory was not going to be recognized by the Civil Party, he organized a coup (July 4, 1919) and convened a National Assembly, chaired by the sociologist and jurist Mariano H. Cornejo (government ideologue), who proclaimed him President of the Republic on October 12, 1919. Thus began the so-called "Oncenio de Leguía" , also described as the regime of the “New Homeland” , which sought to modernize the country through a change in relations between the State and civil society. To carry out this project, the National Assembly promulgated a new Constitution (January 18, 1920), whose most outstanding note was the extension of the presidential and legislative period from 4 to 5 years; later, the National Assembly modified the Constitution allowing presidential re-election . In 1924 Leguía was re-elected president and a new constitutional amendment allowed him a second re-election in 1929. The government displaced the old political parties, especially the civilistas (regulation of the press, exiles, intervention in the universities, replacement of the elected municipalities democratically by meetings of notables), giving way to the middle groups of the capital and provincial society.
During the eleven years of leguiísta government the country was totally transformed. Notable events of the period were the celebration of the first centenary of independence (1921 and 1924) which, despite the economic crisis, was held with a waste of pageantry and luxury. Numerous foreign delegations arrived and commemorative works were built such as the plaza and monument to San Martín. The immigrant colonies embellished Lima with valuable gifts:the Germans gave away the clock tower in the University Park; the Italians the building for the Museum of Italian Art; the English the old wooden stadium; the Japanese the monument to Manco Capac in La Victoria; the Chinese a fountain in the Reserve Park; the Belgians a monument to Labour, the French a statue of Liberty; the Spanish a Moorish arch; Americans a statue of Washington; the Mexicans that of the priest Hidalgo, etc. The capital was completely modernized with the opening of Progreso (today Venezuela), Unión (today Argentina) and Leguía (today Arequipa) avenues, and the inauguration of the Santa Beatriz neighborhood . Many of these great public works were carried out at the cost of heavy loans with the United States that led Peru to economic dependence, with a debt that reached 150 million dollars in 1930, in addition to creating new taxes and the increase of other like those of playing cards and matches. This allowed the construction of highways through the unpopular Road Conscription Law and of the railways from Chimbote to the Callejón de Huaylas and from Huancayo to Huancavelica; the start of the Olmos irrigation project; the construction of the maritime terminals of Callao and Matarani; the acquisition of four submarines for our Navy; the inauguration of the aviation school in Las Palmas; the purchase of the first fighter planes and seaplanes; the creation of the Civil Guard and Police school; the formation of new banks such as the Central de Reserva (for the issuance and control of currency), the Credito Agrícola (to promote agriculture) and the Central Hipotecario (to grant credit to those who wanted to build their houses); university reform; the reconstruction of the Government Palace after the fire of July 1921; the inauguration of the Bolívar hotel, the Country Club and the National Club; the qualification of the old church of San Carlos, located in the University Park, as Panteón de los Proceres; the completion of several buildings such as those of the Banco Anglo Sudamericano, the Banco de Reserva del Perú, the Banco Italiano and the Mining Building, owned by the archbishopric, the first skyscraper in Lima; the construction of the Washington and Sucre squares, the University park, the Post Office passage, etc.
Peruvian politics at the beginning of the 20th century
In the field of political ideas, although civilismo languished, new groups appeared that brought together the middle and popular sectors with reformist or revolutionary tendencies; the foundation of Apra in Mexico (1924) by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and the Socialist Party in Lima (1929) by José Carlos Mariátegui represented this trend. In the cultural field, the “Oncenio” It was the time when indigenism flourished in all its aspects, especially in the field of painting and literature; the Patronage of the Indigenous Race was also created and June 24 was established as Indian Day. On the other hand, the exploitation of the La Brea and Pariñas oil fields passed from the hands of the London Pacific to those of the International Petroleum Company, through the Paris Award (1924). In the international field, border problems with Colombia and Chile had remained pending solution. With Colombia, the controversial agreement was reached to cede all the lands between the Caquetá and Putumayo rivers plus the so-called Amazon Trapeze , giving Colombia the right to navigate the Amazon (Salomón-Lozano treaty signed on March 24, 1922 and approved five years later by Congress). With Chile, the solution was more traumatic:the plebiscite foreseen in the Treaty of Ancón to decide the future of the captive provinces of Tacna and Arica was unrealizable due to the Chileanization policy undertaken by the neighboring country to the south since the beginning of the century; a North American mission verified in situ the lack of guarantees. In any case, the government of Leguía signed the peace treaty (May 15, 1929) that represented the resignation of the unfulfilled plebiscite and the loss of Arica .
The eleventh anniversary of Leguía
The “Oncenio” was perhaps the time when the figure of the president was flattered to unsuspected limits:the parliament awarded him the title of “Prócer de la República” (1928); the cabinet gave him an oil painting:“We have not found anything worthy of offering you:only your own effigy”, declared the minister Pedro Rada y Gamio; he was made a member of the Royal Academy of Language and doctor honoris causa of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of San Marcos; there was talk of the “Century of Leguía”, of the “Jupiter President”, of the “New Messiah”, of the “Wiracocha”, and he was compared to Bolívar, Julius Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, etc. After the effervescence, the "Oncenio" became increasingly unpopular:the accusations of corruption, the discontent of the middle and popular groups, the unrest in the army and the economic crisis, exacerbated by the Great Depression of 1929 by the bankruptcy of the Wall Street Stock Exchange in the United States, provoked the coup led by Luis M. Sánchez Cerro, who overthrew President Leguía from Arequipa, accusing him of being a tyrant and a thief (August 22, 1930) . The “Manifesto to the Nation” of the insurgents, drawn up by the jurist José
Luis Bustamante y Rivero stated the following at the beginning:“The pronouncement that has just been made in Arequipa is not the work of a party or the feat of a group, nor the audacity of a caudillo; it is the genuine expression of a fervent and unanimous national yearning, long repressed by tyranny”. Arrested, the president was deported to Panama on the ship "Almirante Grau", but the revolutionaries demanded his imprisonment and he was transferred first to the island of Frontón and then to the penitentiary . The former president's residence was attacked by the mob and also those of the main members of his government. Victim of a painful illness, Leguía died in the Naval Hospital in 1932 .