Bustamante y Rivero, José Luis (1894–1990)

José Luis Bustamante y Rivero (b. 1894; d. 1990), democratically elected president of Peru (1945) who was ousted in 1948 by a military coup led by General Manuel Odría. Bustamante y Rivero, born in Arequipa, was educated as a lawyer at the universities of Arequipa and Cuzco. During his early political activities he expressed southern regionalist interests influenced by the local version of pierolismo (after the civilian caudillo Nicolás de Piérola). He opposed President Augusto B. Leguía's failed policies toward the provinces. In 1930, as political secretary of the Revolutionary Junta in Arequipa, Bustamante supported the military coup led by Colonel Luis M. Sánchez Cerro. Between 1934 and 1945 he held diplomatic posts in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

In 1945, a group of middle-class leaders of moderate populist ideology, supported by the illegal Aprista movement and the Communist Party, formed the National Democratic Front (FDN) in Arequipa. With the consent of the army, the FDN announced Bustamante's candidacy in the 1945 elections, in which he successfully defeated the right.

In several ways the Bustamante administration continued and enhanced protectionist measures introduced by the previous president, Manuel Prado. These measures included exchange and price control and import quotas. As a result, the moderate inflation that had begun to rise under the Prado administration increased substantially under Bustamante. The floating internal debt also increased, contributing to inflation. President Bustamante was under the political pressure of the well-organized Aprista Party, which was strongly represented in the parliament. A failed Aprista armed uprising in 1948 precipitated the coup by Odría, who, with the help of U.S. financial advisers, reintroduced liberal economic measures. He died in Lima.

See alsoPeru, Political Parties: National Democratic Front .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

See his Tres años de luchapor la democracia en el Perú (1949); Gonzalo Portocarrero Maisch, De Bustamante a Odría (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Díaz Orihuela, Javier. El triunvirato de la libertad. Lima: Gráfica Israel, 2003.

Ortiz Caballero, René. José Luis Bustamante y Rivero. Lima: Editorial Brasa, 1995.

Rávago Bustamante, Enrique de. 4 juristas y 1 soldado jurista: Vicente Morales Duárez, Manuel Lorenzo de Vidaurre y Encalada, Francisco García Calderón, José Luis Bustamante y Rivero, Ramón Castilla y Marquesado. Lima: s.n., 2005.

                                  Alfonso W. Quiroz