President Alberto Lleras Camargo
President of Colombia, 1958-1962
Colombian journalist and politician who became Colombia’s president in 1958 after orchestrating a successful coup d'état. He was educated at the National University in Bogotá and moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, after leaving law school. Lleras Camargo became a newspaper journalist, eventually directing the Bogotá daily El Tiempo and founding the weekly Semana. Lleras Camargo’s long career in Colombian politics began in 1930 with his election to the Chamber of Deputies. He served as minister of the interior from 1935 to 1937. In 1938 he founded the newspaper El Liberal, after which he held many cabinet and diplomatic posts. After President Alfonso López resigned in July 1945, Lleras Camargo, then foreign minister, became provisional president and formed a coalition government with the Conservatives, splitting the Liberal Party. From 1948 to 1954 he served as the first secretary general of the Organization of American States. In 1954 Lleras Camargo became president of the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, but he was forced into exile the following year by the populist dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. In 1956 Lleras Camargo met in Spain with Laureano Gómez, a Conservative politician who had been the dictator of Colombia from 1950 to 1954. The two masterminded a successful coup d'état against Pinilla’s regime and formed an alliance of Colombia’s Liberal and Conservative parties called the National Front. Both parties agreed to share all government offices and to alternate in the presidency. In 1958 Lleras Camargo was elected the first National Front president. After his term ended in 1962, he resumed his career as a writer and journalist.