Background
Policarpo Bonilla was born on 17 March 1856 in Tegucigalpa.
government official politician
Policarpo Bonilla was born on 17 March 1856 in Tegucigalpa.
Conservative Nationalist candidate Ponciano Leiva won the 1891 election through fraud by the incumbent government. Bonilla then went against one of his party’s main principles—achievement of power through the ballot alone— and called for a revolution. As a result, he was exiled in May 1892. Soon after. Liberal revolutionaries, helped by President José Santos Zelaya* of Nicaragua, marched into Tegucigalpa, and Congress declared Policarpo Bonilla president on December 15, 1894.
General Terencio Sierra, the Liberal presidential candidate in 1898, was elected. When he tried to stay in office in 1903, Manuel Bonilla (no relation to Policarpo) revolted and in May 1903 was formally sworn in. Policarpo Bonilla then organized a plot involving dissatisfied Liberals who had expected Manuel Bonilla to reward them with governmental positions, with help from Nicaraguan President Zelaya. Policarpo Bonilla’s conspiracy was cut short when Manuel Bonilla installed himself as dictator. Policarpo Bonilla’s estates were confiscated, and he spent nearly two years in prison before he was pardoned.
Upon his release, Bonilla immediately began plotting a new revolt. When Manuel Bonilla’s regime was toppled by a coalition of disaffected Hondurans and Nicaraguan forces of Zelaya, Policarpo Bonilla was pacified by the govern-ment’s offer of restoration of his land and 200,000 pesos.
Policarpo Bonilla continued to be active in politics and made his last unsuc¬cessful bid for the presidency in 1923.
Bonilla was a strong supporter of Central American unification. Although he and Presidents Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua and Rafael Antonio Gutiérrez of El Salvador agreed in June 1895 to establish a República Mayor de Centro America, and a congress of the new republic met several times, a revolution in El Salvador in November 1898 ended the unity effort.