Aycinena, Pedro de (1802–1897)

Pedro de Aycinena (b. 19 October 1802; d. 14 March 1897), Guatemalan minister of foreign relations (1854–1871) and interim president of Guatemala (1865). Aycinena was a principal minister and adviser to the Conservative regimes of Rafael Carrera (1851–1865) and Vicente Cerna (1865–1871). Son of Vicente Aycinena, second marqués of Aycinena, younger brother of Juan José de Aycinena, and nephew of Mariano de Aycinena, he belonged to one of Guatemala's most prominent families. In 1836 he married his first cousin, Dolores Aycinena y Micheo, daughter of José de Aycinena, Spanish Councilor of State and the Indies under Ferdinand VII. Their son Juan Fermín de Aycinena Aycinena was the eminent Guatemalan poet.

Graduating in civil and canon law from the University of San Carlos in 1821, Aycinena joined the Colegio de Abogados in 1823. He spent much of the 1820s in Europe representing his family's merchant house and returned to Guatemala to manage his family's affairs in the 1830s, following the family elders' expulsion after the civil war of 1826–1829. In the 1840s, with the return to Conservative rule in Guatemala (and most of his brethren to the country), he became involved in government. As foreign minister, he negotiated the controversial Wyke-Aycinena Treaty of 1859, which acknowledged British rights to Belize. He also negotiated Spanish recognition of Guatemalan independence in 1863. He was briefly exiled following the Liberal Revolution of 1871 and returned to pursue law and commerce until his death in 1897, the last of the Guatemalan serviles (conservatives).

See alsoGuatemala .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Diana Balmori, Stuart F. Voss, and Miles L. Wortman, Notable Family Networks in Latin America (1984), pp. 61-69. Further details may be found in Roberto Zeceña Flores, "Biografías de Ex-Ministros de Relaciones Exteriores," in Diplomacia y sociedad (Guatemala City) 3 and 4 (November-December 1969): 18-19, and Ramiro Ordóñez Jonoma, "La Familia Varón de Berrieza," in Revista de la Academia Guatemalteca de Estudios Genealógicos, Heráldicos e Históricos 9 (1987): 644-645.

                                        Richmond F. Brown