Manuel A. Odría, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Manuel A. Odría

President of Peru

Date of Birth: 26-Nov-1897

Place of Birth: Tarma, Junín, Peru

Date of Death: 18-Feb-1974

Profession: politician, military officer

Nationality: Peru

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius


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About Manuel A. Odría

  • Manuel Arturo Odría Amoretti (26 November 1896 – 18 February 1974) was a military officer who served as the 34th President of Peru, essentially ruling as a military dictator. Manuel Odría was born in 1896 in Tarma, a city in the central Andes just east of Lima.
  • He graduated first in his class from the Chorillos Military Academy in 1915.
  • He joined the army and as a Lieutenant Colonel was a war hero in the 1941 Ecuadorian-Peruvian war.
  • He soon achieved the rank of Major General. In 1945, José Bustamante had attained the presidency with the help of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA).
  • Soon, major disagreements arose between Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the founder of APRA, and President Bustamante.
  • The President disbanded his Aprista cabinet and replaced it with a mostly military one.
  • Odría, a fierce opponent of APRA, was appointed Minister of Government and Police.
  • In 1948, Odría and other right-wing elements urged Bustamante to ban APRA.
  • When the President refused, Odría resigned his post.
  • On October 27, 1948, he led a successful military coup against the government and took over as president.
  • After two years, he resigned and had one of his colleagues, Zenón Noriega, take office as a puppet president so he could run for president as a civilian.
  • He was duly elected a month later as the only candidate. Odría came down hard on APRA, momentarily pleasing the oligarchy and all others on the right.
  • Like Juan Perón, he followed a populist course that won him great favor with the poor and lower classes.
  • A thriving economy allowed him to indulge in expensive but crowd-pleasing social policies.
  • At the same time, however, civil rights in the nation were severely restricted and corruption was rampant throughout his régime.
  • People feared that his dictatorship would run indefinitely; they were surprised when Odría legalized opposition parties in 1956 and called fresh elections.
  • He did not run for office.
  • He was succeeded by a former president, Manuel Prado. When national elections were held again in 1962, Odría ran as a right-wing candidate for the Unión Nacional Odriista party.
  • None of the three major candidates - Odría, Haya de la Torre and Fernando Belaúnde - received the required one third of the vote to win with a plurality.
  • It appeared that Odría would win the Presidency in Congress, after having made a deal with Haya de la Torre, but a military coup removed President Prado from office a few days before his term ended.
  • Elections were held again in 1963, with the same three major candidates.
  • This time Belaúnde won with 39% of the vote.During the Belaúnde administration, Odría made an alliance with Haya de la Torre to create a single opposition block in Parliament, which became known as the APRA-UNO Coalition.
  • As a political force, they managed to create strong parliamentary opposition to President Belaúnde, who was forced to make important concessions to the Coalition in order to get most of his party-sponsored legislation enacted.
  • The Coalition suffered a setback after losing the elections for mayor in the capital, Lima. After the military coup that overthrew Belaúnde in 1968, Odría kept a low profile in Peruvian politics until his death in 1974.

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