Campo, Rafael (1813–1890)

Rafael Campo (b. 24 October 1813; d. 1 March 1890), president of El Salvador (1856–1858). Educated at the University of San Carlos de Guatemala, Campo continued his father's successful agricultural and commercial enterprises in El Salvador and was among the first coffee planters in the country. He became politically active in the Conservative Party and was elected president on 30 January 1856, taking office on 12 February. He turned over power to his vice president, Francisco Dueñas, on 12 May of the same year, but resumed the presidency on 19 July. Regarded by many as a puppet of Guatemalan caudillo Rafael Carrera, the conservative Campo allowed greater political freedom than in other Central American states of the period.

In July 1856 Campo joined the other Central American states in the National War against William Walker, sending Salvadoran troops to Nicaragua under Ramón Belloso and Gerardo Barrios. Upon returning from the war in Nicaragua, Barrios failed in an effort to overthrow Campo in June 1857. Barrios gained power in 1858, however, when Campo stepped down on 1 February of that year, after the serious cholera epidemic of 1857 had exhausted the country. Campo later served as foreign minister under Francisco Dueñas, and was president of the Constitutional Convention of 1871. A critic of the Liberal governments that followed, Campo was in exile in Nicaragua for most of the decade following, but in 1882 he returned to Sonsonate, his birthplace, where he worked for the establishment of the hospital there. He died in Acajutla.

See alsoEl Salvador .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Philip F. Flemion, Historical Dictionary of El Salvador (1972), pp. 29-30.

María Leistenschneider and Freddy Leistenschneider, Gobernantes de El Salvador: Biografías (1980), pp. 103-105.

Additional Bibliography

Rivera, Abraham. Apuntes biográficos del Honorable ex-presidente de El Salvador Don Rafael Campo. San Salvador: Editorial Delgado, 1985.

                              Ralph Lee Woodward Jr.