Background
Marco Aurelio Soto was born on 13 November 1846 in Tegucigalpa.
politician president statesman
Marco Aurelio Soto was born on 13 November 1846 in Tegucigalpa.
Largely educated in Guatemala, he worked there in the govenment ol the great Liberal caudillo Justo Rufino Barrios.
He became president of Honduras in 1876 largely becauuse of Barrios' influence.
Under the 1880 constitution, Soto was reelected president. He resigned in March 1883, ostensibly because of illness but more likely because Guatemalan President Barrios was planning a revolution to oust him. Congress refused to accept his resignation and granted him a leave of absence. Soto sent another resignation from San Francisco, California, on August 27, 1893, rather than plunge Honduras into war with Guatemala.
Soto initiated an ambitious program of reforms. A Department of Finance and National Mint were established to reorganize public finances. Civil, commercial, mining, and customs codes were reformed. Marriage, divorce, and the operation of schools and cemeteries were taken away from the Catholic Church and transferred to secularized public institutions. A national library and archives were opened, and faculties of law, social sciences, and medicine were established at the University of Honduras. A postal and telegraph service was established.
Construction was begun on a road from Tegucigalpa to Amapala on the Pacific- coast. More than KX) American and British companies were formed to rework old silver and gold mines with new technology and imported machinery. However. only the New York and Honduras-Rosario Mining Company survived. owing to declining silver prices and a resurgence of domestic turmoil between 1891 and 1894.
Although Soto never joined the Liberal party, or any party, his minister of public instruction, Ramón Rosa, welded the disorganized factions of liberalism into a compact and disciplined party, the Liberal League, in 1884. Soto himself remained active in politics and as late as 1902 launched an abortive campaign to succeed President Terencio Sierra.
