Augusto Leguía
Augusto Leguía was president of Peru from 1908 to 1912 and from 1919 to 1930, the eleven years of the second term being the oncenio, the longest rule the republic had had. He was the sugar and insurance man who took the presidency the second time by a coup against the government that had just declared him elected, in case it changed its mind. He was carried from the palace to a prison ship in August 1930 by the officers of the next coup and died in the naval hospital sixteen months later. The first term was the Civilista party's, the Lima oligarchy's. It was unremarkable except for the day in May 1909 when the Piérola brothers' men seized him in the palace and marched him through the streets to make him resign, which he would not. The army rescued him. The oncenio was the New Fatherland. There were the constitution of 1920, the American loans, a hundred million dollars, that built the avenues of Lima, and the Plaza San Martín. There were the roads made by the conscripted labour of the Indians under the road law of 1920, which the highlands remember, and the irrigation of the coast. There were the American companies given the oil at La Brea, the copper at Cerro de Pasco and the customs to run, and the frontier settled with Colombia at Leticia in 1922 and with Chile at Tacna in 1929, both of which the country called betrayals. The opposition was dealt with by exile, Haya de la Torre to Mexico, where he founded APRA, and Mariátegui to Europe, where he founded the socialist party. He was re-elected in 1924 and 1929 after amending the constitution each time. He called himself the giant of the Pacific. The depression took the loans away and a colonel rose at Arequipa on 22 August 1930 and had the presidency in three days. The old man was taken from the palace by the officers he had promoted, put on the cruiser Grau, and then in the penitentiary. There he was tried for the loans and died, at sixty-eight, in February 1932, untreated, having refused to be. He was born in Lambayeque, worked for the New York Life Insurance Company and the sugar estates. He was finance minister in 1903. He is the president the country's builders cite and its historians do not, the one who made Lima a capital and the republic a debtor.
- Lived: 1863 CE – 1932 CE
- Nationality: Peruvian
- Roles: president, businessman, politician
