Lleras Restrepo, Carlos (1908–1994)

Carlos Lleras Restrepo (b. 14 April 1908; d. 27 September 1994), president of Colombia (1966–1970). The son of a prominent but poor Bogotá scientist, Lleras Restrepo was already a rising Liberal politician when he received his law degree in 1930. He served as comptroller and finance minister during the regimes of Alfonso López Pumarejo and Eduardo Santos (1934–1942). A leader of the Liberals' "civil resistance" during the Conservative regime of Mariano Ospina Pérez (1946–1950), he was forced into exile in 1952, during the presidency of Laureano Gómez. A leading backer of the bipartisan National Front, he reached the presidency in 1966 promising an analogous "national transformation" on the social and economic fronts. A technocrat by temperament, Lleras Restrepo organized "decentralized institutes" in fields as diverse as sports and scientific research. In 1968 he forced through a constitutional reform increasing the executive's budgetary and planning powers. In the late 1970s, through his influential magazine Nueva Frontera, Lleras Restrepo was a vocal opponent of the Liberal regime of Julio César Turbay. Lleras Restrepo's writings include the multivolume autobiography, Historia de mi propia vida (1983–).

See alsoColombia, Political Parties: National Front .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ignacio Arizmendi Posada, Presidentes de Colombia, 1810–1990 (1990), pp. 275-280.

Additional Bibliography

Morales Benítez, Otto. Carlos Lleras Restrepo: Perfil de un estadista. Bogotá: Ediciones Academia Colombiana de Jurisprudencia, 2000.

                                      Richard J. Stoller