Miró Quesada Family

The Miró Quesada Family is a wealthy and notable Peruvian family, owner of the daily newspaper El Comercio since 1876, and very influential in twentieth-century politics in Peru. Through intermarriage with other wealthy families of Peru, the Miró Quesadas' interests have been an important part of the coastal elite groups that dominated Peruvian economic activities during and after major export boom cycles. Under the leadership of merchant and journalist José Antonio Miró Quesada (1845–1930), the family consolidated its wealth and reputation by the 1890s through its strong involvement with the Civilista Party. José Antonio's eldest son, Antonio Miró Quesada de la Guerra (1875–1935), was elected congressman between 1901 and 1912 and took charge of El Comercio. During the second regime of Augusto B. Leguía (1919–1930), Antonio lived in Europe as a political oppositionist. Upon his return to Peru, he and his wife were assassinated by an Aprista follower in 1935.

Aurelio (1877–1950) and Luis Miró Quesada de la Guerra (1880–1976), brothers of Antonio, shared thereafter the management of the newspaper. In 1974 the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado, as part of its Plan Inca, expropriated the family's newspaper business and assigned it formally to peasant organizations. In 1980, however, El Comercio was returned to the Miró Quesada family, represented by Aurelio Miró Quesada Sosa (b. 1907) and Alejandro Miró Quesada Garland (b. 1915). In 2004, Quesada Garland was working as the editor of Lima's daily El Comercio newspaper when a high-profile businessman named Fernando Zevallos sued him, the newspaper, and a reporter over several stories which linked Zevallos to drug traffickers.

See alsoJournalism .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlos Astiz, Pressure Groups and Power Elites in Peruvian Politics (1969).

Dennis Gilbert, "The Oligarchy and the Old Regime in Peru" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1977), translated as La oligarquía peruana: Historia de tres familias (1982).

Alfonso Quiroz, "Financial Leadership and the Formation of Peruvian Elite Groups, 1884–1930," in Journal of Latin American Studies 20 (1988): 49-81.

                                      Alfonso W. Quiroz