Background
Manuel Justo Pardo y Lavalle was born in Lima on 9 August 1834. He was a son of the conservative writer Felipe Pardo y Aliago (1806-1868).
politician president statesman
Manuel Justo Pardo y Lavalle was born in Lima on 9 August 1834. He was a son of the conservative writer Felipe Pardo y Aliago (1806-1868).
His early schooling was in Chile; he finished high school in Lima and then studied at the universities of Barcelona and Paris.
He returned to Lima in 1853 to launch a business career. Pardo expounded his nationalist and moderate Positivist ideas in the Revista de Lima. He was commissioned to negotiate a loan for Peru in Europe in 1864, and upon his return he joined the Huancayo uprising headed by Colonel Mariano Ignacio Prado. When Prado assumed dictatorial power to repel the attack on Callao by a Spanish Armada, Pardo was appointed minister of the treasury in 1865. Three years later he was named director of the Lima Public Beneficence Society and served as mayor of Lima from 1869 to 1870.
In 1872 he was elected as the first civilian president of the country. He assumed office after a military uprising against him was crushed by the civilian population of Lima.
Ironically, he urged his party to elect General Mariano Ignacio Prado as presidential candidate. General Prado succeeded him in 1876. After spending two years in Chile, Manuel Pardo returned to Lima to become senator of Junin and president of the Senate. A sergeant guarding the Parliament killed him when he was about to enter the building.
In 1871 Pardo founded the Partido Civil purportedly to promote civilian government and modernize the country.