Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera was a Colombian politician and military general to serve as the first and third President of Colombia. He also was a President of Grenada.
Background
Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera was born on 26 September 1798 in Popayan, into an old landed family of considerable wealth and prestige. The family’s members had a prominent place in national affairs. Mosquera’s oldest brother, Joaquin, was vice president of the new republic from 1833 to 1835; another brother, Manuel, became archbishop of Bogota in 1835. Tomás first won fame on the battlefield.
Education
Studied military science in Europe and the United States.
Career
At the age of 17, Mosquera joined the forces fighting for Colombia’s indendence. By 1824 he was a lieutenant colonel, commander of his home province of Popayán. His military successes and loyalty to the Liberator Simón Bolívar resulted in his appointment as intendent of Guayaquil in 1826 and of Cauca in 1828. The following year Mosquera was on a diplomatic mission in Lima, Peru.
Mosquera went abroad during the early 1830s, studying military science in Europe and the United States. On his return to Colombia, from 1834 to 1837 he represented Cauca in the national congress, where he was a strong advocate of economic development and a promoter of international trade.
President José Ignacio Márquez (1837-1841) named him minister of war. and in 1840 he joined General Pedro Alcántara Herran in suppressing the uprising led by José María Obando. Subsequently, he led a successful campaign against other insurgent groups in central and northern Colombia.
His reputation as a soldier, the support of the military, his social position, and the influence of his brother, the archbishop of Bogotá, combined to bring Mosquera the presidency in 1845.
Mosquera, soon, had left the country for the United States in 1850. In the chaos following the overthrow of Obando, urgent appeals were made for his return. He did so in 1854 and succeeded in overthrowing the dictatorship of José María Meló. Mosquera then returned to his home province of Cauca, which he helped reorganize as a state within the Granadine Confederation, represented it as senator, and served as governor after 1858. He was an unsuccessful candidate for president in 1857 representing the National Party, made up of Liberals and a faction of the Conservatives.
Mosquera was exiled to Peru in 1867. He remained there three years. The inevitable shifts in political fortunes resulted in his return, however, and until his death he represented Cauca as a senator and a governor.
Politics
Although he remained staunchly conservative in social views, Mosquera appointed the able Florrentino Gonzáles secretary of the treasury, and together they designed a national economic policy based on free trade which encouraged the country's export sectors. This policy divided the country’s ruling classes and initiated a period of intense national strife, which included a Liberal electoral victory in 1849.
Artisan groups opposed to free trade, students from the new National University, influenced by ideas from the revolutionary Europe of 1848, and young liberal members of the upper class were instrumental in electing Liberal General José Hilario López to the presidency in 1848. They strongly backed his anticlerical and abolitionist initiatives. When the populist hero. General José María Obando was elected president in 1853, the country appeared on the verge of an authentic social revolution. However, Obando was overthrown in April 1854 by General José María Meló.