Background
Óscar R. Benavides was born in Lima on 15 March 1876.
Diplomat government official military president
Óscar R. Benavides was born in Lima on 15 March 1876.
He graduated from the Chorrillos Military Academy as second lieutenant in artillery.
Rising steadily in the army hierarchy, he spent some time in Europe to receive further training and to convalesce from a tropical malady acquired in the jungle in 1911, during an armed conflict with Colombia. In collaboration with a powerful banking family, Benavides deposed Constitutional President Guillermo Billinghurst in 1914 and proclaimed himself president of the republic. The following year José Pardo y Barreda, the presidential candidate of the oligarchic Partido Civil, was proclaimed winner of the elections and succeeded him. Benavides’ arbitrary actions moved Manuel González Prada (1844-1918) to write the book Bajo el oprobio.
Subsequent to the assassination in 1933 of President Luís M. Sánchez Cerro, who had plunged the country into a bloody civil war after outlawing the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP), the manipulated Constituent Assembly promoted Benavides to division general and elected him provisional president to serve until 1936. When tabulations of the votes in the 1936 election showed the overwhelming lead of Luis Antonio Eguiguren, the presidential candidate supported by the outlawed PAP, Benavides canceled the results and had the Constituent Assembly extend his mandate for three more years and disband itself. Benavides assisted Manuel Prado in 1939 to win a six-year presidential term. In return, the new millionaire ruler, scion of the family that had helped Benavides overthrow Billinghurst, honored him with the rank of marshal and appointed him ambassador to Spain (1940-1943) and Argentina (1943-1944). Benavides returned to Peru in 1944 to help form the National Democratic Front that elected José Luís Bustamente y Rivero president of the republic in 1945, thanks mainly to the support of the Apristas.
Marshal Benavides died soon after Bustamante was proclaimed president-elect.