Olaya Herrera, Enrique (1880–1937)

Enrique Olaya Herrera (b. 12 November 1880; d. 18 February 1937), president of Colombia (1930–1934). Born in Guateque, Boyacá, Olaya received his law degree in 1903. During the administration of Carlos E. Restrepo (1910–1914), he was foreign minister and later minister to Argentina. From 1922 to 1929 he was Colombian minister to the United States, a delicate position for a Liberal in a Conservative regime. In 1930, with the Conservatives divided, Olaya won the presidency under a "National Concentration" banner, promising a coalitionist government. His regime was faced with serious partisan violence, particularly in the northeast. He faced the Great Depression with orthodoxy; only in April 1933 did he suspend interest payments on Colombia's foreign debt. In social matters Olaya was weakly reformist, as seen in the 1931 Labor Code. He responded to the Peruvian seizure of the Amazon port of Leticia with a large-scale mobilization, but the matter was settled by negotiation. After his term, Olaya was minister to the Vatican; before his death he was a likely Liberal candidate for the presidency in 1938.

See alsoColombia: Since Independence .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gustavo Humberto Rodríguez, Olaya Herrera: Político, estadista, caudillo (1980).

Terrence B. Horgan, "The Liberals Come to Power por debajolde la ruana: A study of the Enrique Olaya Herrera Administration, 1930–1934" (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1983).

Ignacio Arizmendi Posada, Presidentes de Colombia, 1810–1990 (1990), pp. 229-232.

                                      Richard J. Stoller