Jose Gutierrez Guerra

Who was Jose Gutierrez Guerra?

José Gutiérrez Guerra, known as "the last Oligarch," was President of Bolivia between 1917 and 1920. He was the grandson of Pedro José Domingo de Guerra, President in 1879, a man of high integrity and chief justice of the Supreme Court, who had died in office after he was forced to assume presidential responsibilities during the disastrous War of the Pacific.

The scion of an aristocratic family from Chuquisaca which traced descent from Incan royalty, the first Spanish conquistadors who came into Peru and eminent judges of the Audiencia of Charcas, on his mother's side, he was related to British statesman Lord Palmerston. He was sent to England at an early age to receive the best education possible. There, he studied under the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College, from 1883 at St Bede's College, Manchester and then from 1885 at Merton College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1888, aged 19.

He later returned to Bolivia, where he worked in banking. An economist by training, he entered politics almost against his will. In 1914, he was elected deputy from La Paz. His rise was meteoric, however, as he was tipped to succeed Ismael Montes as Liberal party candidate in the 1917 presidential elections. Having won at the polls, he took office but faced severe problems stemming from worsening economic conditions and mounting opposition from the recently formed Republican party. The 1917 assassination of the founder of that party and former president, José Manuel Pando, further undermined Gutiérrez-Guerra's popularity and legitimacy. Worse, he failed to act decisively from the point of view of his opponents, despite his call on Congress to launch an official investigation into the alleged excesses and misdeeds of his predecessor and political chief, Ismael Montes. Twenty-plus years of unbroken Liberal control of the government had fatigued most Bolivians and turned them against the ruling elites and their methods, and earned the red-bearded, green-eyed head of state of this Andean nation, where the majority of people are Indian, the nickname "the last Oligarch."