Andres Rodriguez Pedotti (19 June 1923-21 April 1997) was President of Paraguay from 3 February 1989 to 15 August 1993, succeeding Alfredo Stroessner and preceding Juan Carlos Wasmosy.
Biography[]
Andres Rodriguez was born in Borja, Paraguay in 1923, and he served in the Paraguayan Army from 1946 to 1992, reaching the rank of Lieutenant General. He was military dictator Alfredo Stroessner's closest confidant for 35 years, enriching himself from controlling the nation's largest brewery, a chain of currency exchanges, an import-export company, a copper wire company, and several ranches. During the late 1980s, however, Rodriguez became affiliated with the soft-liner wing of the Colorado Party of Paraguay, resulting in Stroessner purging the army in January 1989 and closing the nation's currency exchanges as a strike at Rodriguez. Rodriguez responded with a coup on 2 February 1989, overthrowing Stroessner. Rodriguez served as President from 1989 to 1993, purging the military of Stroessner's loyalists, cancelling most of Stroessner's most repressive measures, abolishing the death penalty, freeing political prisoners, welcoming back several longtime exiles, and allowing all non-communist parties to compete in the May 1989 election. In 1992, Paraguay adopted a constitution limiting the president to a single five-year term with no possibility of re-election. Rodriguez died of cancer in 1997.