Cáceres, Andrés Avelino (1833–1923)

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Cáceres, Andrés Avelino (1833–1923)

Andrés Avelino Cáceres (b. 1833; d. 1923), Peruvian military hero and president (1886–1890, 1894–1895), commander of the highland guerrilla resistance to the Chilean occupation of coastal Peru during the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). Like Francisco Bolognesi, Cáceres was drawn to military life in the 1850s in support of General Ramón Castilla against Generals José Rufino Echenique and Manuel Ignacio Vivanco. During Castilla's second term in office, Cáceres served as military attaché to the Peruvian legation in France. Upon his return to Peru he supported Colonel Mariano Ignacio Prado's 1865 revolution against General Juan Antonio Pezet's unpopular though legitimate government. When Manuel Pardo was elected as the first civilian president in 1872, Cáceres served as a faithful military officer. At this time he began to express political differences with his life-long foe Nicolás de Piérola, who conspired against Pardo.

Born in Ayacucho, Cáceres had extensive family and landowning interests in the south-central and central highlands of Peru, which provided him with the power base necessary to conduct his military campaigns against the Chilean army and to advance his own political ambitions. During the War of the Pacific, Cáceres fought in the battles of San Francisco and Tarapacá and in the 1881 defense of Lima in San Juan and Miraflores. Wounded in the latter battle, he hid in Lima and later went to the strategic central highland town of Jauja to initiate and lead his military and political resistance, the La Breña campaign. His guerrilla tactics earned him the name "Wizard of the Andes." The support his forces received from peasant communities fighting for their livelihood constituted the key factor of this protracted resistance.

However, Peruvian military and political leaders during the Chilean occupation were divided into several factions. Some, like Francisco García Calderón, had been imprisoned and exiled by the Chilean army. One such faction, led by General Miguel Iglesias, signed the Treaty of Ancón (1883), which allowed the Chilean army to withdraw from Lima. Cáceres opposed and fought Iglesias and assumed the presidency in 1886. During his term of office the Grace contract (1889), a costly settlement with foreign creditors, was signed to establish the bases for the economic recovery of Peru in the 1890s. In 1890, Cáceres handed power to General Remigio Morales Bermúdez, who died in office in 1894. Cáceres's subsequent attempts to regain power faced a popular insurrection led by Piérola, who succeeded in forcing Cáceres to resign and leave the country. After a long exile Cáceres returned to Peru and was awarded the honorific title of marshal in 1919. He died in Lima.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rory Miller, "The Making of the Grace Contract: British Bondholders and the Peruvian Government, 1885–1890," in Journal of Latin American Studies 8 (1978): 73-100.

Florencia E. Mallon, The Defense of Community in Peru's Central Highlands: Peasant Struggle and Capitalist Transition, 1860–1940 (1983).