Background

Daniel Salamanca was born on 8 July 1868 in Cochabamba.

Education

He obtained his primary and secondary education in Cochabamba, where he passed the bar exam in 1880.

Career

He was national deputy, senator, and minister of finance in the government of General José Manuel Pando. Salamanca was one of the founders of the Republican Party in 1914, along with General Pando and Bautista Saavedra, and in May 1917 ran as Republican Party candiate for vice president. At its December convention, following the Republican Revolution of July 1920, the party split over rival presidential candidacies of Saavedra and Salamanca, whose faction organized as the Genuine Republic Party.

Salamanca’s bid for the presidency was only successful in 1931, after the government of President Hernando Sites Reyes was overthrown in a bloody revolt. In March 1931 the Republican-Liberal coalition ticket of Daniel Salamanca and José Luis Tejada Sorzano was victorious.

His critics indict Salamanca not only for involving Bolivia in one of its most devastating wars, but also for mismanaging the war effort. The Bolivian High Command had opposed the timing of the hostilities and chafed at Salamanca’s constant interference. In turn, Salamanca deeply mistrusted them and overruled many military decisions. In November 1934, with the war going badly, Salamanca traveled to Chaco headquarters in Villamontes, where he was arrested and deposed by the military.

A broken and bitter man, Salamanca retired to Cochabamba and died only a month after the war’s conclusion, in June 1935.

Achievements

• Despite other achievements of his administration. Salamanca is largely remembered as a president who sought to solve domestic ills by a “good little foreign war," the Chaco War with Paraguay. Although Bolivia’s economy was severely depressed, Salamanca approved extensive defense spending for aggressive colonization of the Chaco region, and in July 1932 he escalated one of many border clashes into full-scale war.