Eliodoro Villazón

Who was Eliodoro Villazón?

Eliodoro Villazón was a member of the Liberal party and Constitutional President of his country, Bolivia, between 1909 and 1913.

A native of Sacaba, Cochabamba Department, he was a lawyer by trade but early in his life entered politics and held a number of offices through various administrations. As a Liberal, he was Minister of Foreign Relations under José Manuel Pando and Vice-President to Ismael Montes. Elected President in 1909, he benefited from the lingering popularity of, and good will to, the successful first Montes administration. Villazón was a measured, competent man and his term was relatively calm and prosperous, at least from the optic of the propertied elites that participated in national life in accordance to the prevailing, largely oligarchic, order. In 1912, his administration accrued a budgetary surplus. High-capacity mining exports and a rubber boom in the remote northern lowlands fed the economic apogee, which would later prove to be short-lived.

In 1913, Ismael Montes decided to again run for President and, having won the elections, received the Presidential sash from the same man to whom he had turned it over in 1909, Eliodoro Villazón. The now former-President was named Bolivian ambassador to various countries after leaving office, and died in Cochabamba on September 12, 1939, at age 91.