Camacho Roldán, Salvador (1827–1900)

Salvador Camacho Roldán (b. 1 January 1827; d. 19 June 1900), Colombian Liberal politician, publicist, and businessman. Born in Nunchía, Casanare, Camacho received his doctorate in law and became a judge in 1848. His prominence brought him increasingly higher appointments during the 1850s, including the governorship of Panama (1852–1853). Camacho was elected to the House of Representatives in 1854 and served both there and in the Senate for the next thirty years. A fiscal expert, he served successively as minister of finance and development (1870–1872) and of foreign affairs (1878). He had been president designate (1868–1869) and acting president (December 1869) but never became president, except for one day in July 1871. Camacho's decades of public service left him poor until 1887, when he established the Librería Colombiana and the dry goods firm of Camacho Roldán y Tamayo, in Bogotá. He edited numerous important newspapers from 1849 to 1881. Camacho advocated a technologically oriented educational system as the means to economic growth. His Escritos varios (3 vols., 1892–1895, repr. 1983) were culled from his extensive corpus of economic and political works. His travels are recorded in Notas de viaje (1898). Camacho is best known for his Memorias (2 vols., 1894, 1924, repr. 1946). He died at El Ocaso, his country house, at Zipacón, Cundinamarca, about thirty miles from Bogotá.

See alsoColombia: Since Independence .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Antonio José Iregui, Ensayo biográfico: Salvador Camacho Roldán (1919).

Additional Bibliography

Cacua Prada, Antonio. Salvador Camacho Roldán. Tunja: Publicaciones de la Academia Boyacense de Historia, 1990.

Vallejo Morillo, Jorge. Cuatro economistas colombianos. Bogotá: Norma, 2003.

                                  J. LeÓn Helguera