Background
Justo Rufino Barrios was born in San Lorenzo on 19 July, 1835.
Justo Rufino Barrios was born in San Lorenzo on 19 July, 1835.
After receiving a law degree from the University of San Carlos, he made a small fortune experimenting with various crops, particularly coffee, on his plantation.
Barrios entered politics at a time when Conservative governments were operating primarily for the benefit of the elite in the capital, and younger army officers, intellectuals, and provincial leaders expressed their grievances through the Liberal Party. In June 1871 Liberal revolutionaries, under Barrios and General Miguel García Granados, overthrew the Conservative regime. García Granados, an elderly man, became president. Trying to rule through compromise and tolerance of dissent, he only encouraged the remnants of the Conservative Party to plot against him and force him to step down.
Barrios assumed command in 1873 and immediately discarded the traditional idealism of the Liberals and the moderation of García Granados. Barrios believed that economic development was needed to bring Guatemala to the level of affluence of Europe and the United States, and this, not social and political reforms, became the government’s top priority. Barrios' projects included building railroads to both coasts, highways, and colonization of the interior. He encouraged foreign investors to exploit mineral and wood resources while protecting coffee and banana growers.
The economic “take-off” never materialized. Instead of contributing to an industrial revolution the wealthy invested abroad. Public works projects of the national government provided only short-term employment. As the Liberals gained wealth and prestige, they emerged as a new ruling class disregarding the interests of the masses. Barrios shaped Guatemala into a unitary republic with legislative and judicial branches clearly subservient to the executive. Through the 1879 constitution Justo Rufino Barrios came to embody the Guatemalan state more completely than anyone else in history.
Barrios allowed landowners to maintain a system of debt peonage. Landowners made loans to Indians who, paid very low wages, were always in debt; their children inherited the debts.
Barrios reshaped two key institutions: the military and the church. He recruited foreign instructors to teach at the national military school founded by García Granados. The more professional army became a source of support for Barrios rather than a nonpolitical force; by gaining greater social status, the army served as a tool for upward mobility among the lower classes.
Barrios, identifying the church as a consistent supporter of the Conservatives, instituted a number of anticlerical measures. When the church excommunicated him, he exiled all the bishops and archbishops. Barrios also originated a number of educational reforms along Positivist lines imposing a secular curriculum on all educational institutions, with the central government supervising its application.
Barrios carried out an activist foreign policy. He intervened in Costa Rica and Honduras and fought a brief war with El Salvador in 1876. On February 28, 1885, he announced that Central America was once again to be united, under his guidance. The government of Porfirio Diaz in Mexico, wary of a united Central America, encouraged defiance of Barrios' call. Barrios was killed in an aborted invasion of El Salvador.
