García Calderón, Francisco (1834–1905)

Francisco García Calderón (b. 1834; d. 1905), a Peruvian lawyer and legal historian. Author of a compilation of nineteenth-century Peruvian law, he was forced to resign as minister of finance in the administration of José Balta when he could not end Peru's financial dependence on its guano consignees. He achieved prominence and notoriety during the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). A committee of wealthy Limeños elected him president in early 1881, when they anticipated high Chilean occupation taxes. He began the negotiations that eventually led to the Treaty of Ancón (1883) that ended the war. During the negotiations, García Calderón adamantly refused to cede the southern departments of Tacna and Arica to Chile. Yet he underwent severe criticism from former president Nicolás de Piérola, who resisted the Chileans from his position in Ayacucho, and from General Andrés A. Cáceres, who fought on in the central highlands. Fearing a rally of resistance among Peruvians and interference from the United States on the issue of cession of territory, the Chileans seized the president and imprisoned him in Santiago until the end of the war.

See alsoPeru: Peru Since Independence; War of the Pacific.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

David Werlich, Peru: A Short History (1978).

William F. Sater, Chile and the War of the Pacific (1986), esp. pp. 206-217.

Additional Bibliography

Guerra Martinière, Margarita. La ocupación de Lima, 1881–1883. Lima, Perú: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Dirección Académica de Investigación, Instituto Riva-Agüero, 1996.

                                     Vincent Peloso