Zaracondegui, Julián de (?–1873)

Julián de Zaracondegui (d. 1873), Peruvian merchant. Heavily involved in lending activities in Lima in the 1850s, Zaracondegui had excellent political connections. By 1860 he had established himself in a variety of enterprises. Owner of a major export-import business in Lima, he was also a member of the Tribunal del Consulado (the merchant regulatory board), a guano consignee, a general director of the Banco de Lima, and an officer of the welfare agency called Beneficiencia Pública de Lima. He also served a term in the Chamber of Deputies. In the 1850s Zaracondegui founded a marketing firm to sell Peruvian cotton in Europe, and in 1859 he formed a partnership with the Aspíllaga Family to purchase a cotton plantation in the Saña Valley of the north coast. He put up the necessary cash—the equivalent of $120,000—and the Aspíllagas managed production on the plantation. Soon the cotton failed and the owners turned to sugar, thereafter the main crop in that region.

Zaracondegui's fortunes began to deteriorate after 1870. When one of his partners, Manuel de Argumániz, scandalized Lima by accusing him of undermining the cotton merchandising operation, difficulties befell his other enterprises. The financial crisis of 1873 blindsided many entrepreneurs, Zara-condegui among them, and he committed suicide.

See alsoBanking: Overview; Cotton.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Michael Gonzales, Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875–1933 (1985).

Paul Gootenberg, Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru's "Fictitious Prosperity" of Guano, 1840–1880 (1993).

Additional Bibliography

Zegarra, Luis F. Institutions, Economic Development and Early Banking in Latin America, 1850–1930. Ph.D. diss. University of California, Los Angeles, 2002.

                                        Vincent Peloso