Andres de Santa Cruz (30 November 1792-25 September 1865) was President of Peru from 29 June 1826 to 9 June 1827 (succeeding Simon Bolivar and preceding Manuel Salazar y Baquijano), President of Bolivia from 24 May 1829 to 20 February 1839 (interrupting Jose Miguel de Velasco's terms), and Supreme Protector of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation from 28 October 1836 to 20 February 1839 (with Velasco succeeding him in Bolivia and Agustin Gamarra in Peru).
Biography[]
Andres de Santa Cruz was born in Huarina, Upper Peru in 1792, the son of a Spanish father and an Aymara mother. He joined the Spanish Army in 1809 and fought against the Argentine patriots before being captured in 1817. He escaped from Buenos Aires and returned to Peru, where he continued to fight against the rebels until he was captured in 1820 and persuaded to join Jose de San Martin's patriot army on 8 January 1821. He commanded Peruvian troops at the Battle of Pichincha in May 1822, but he led a failed rebellion against the Peruvian Congress in 1823. He later served as chief of staff of Simon Bolivar's Peruvian Division and participated in the Battle of Junin, after which he helped liberate Bolivia. He served as President of Peru from Bolivar's return to Gran Colombia in 1826 until the collapse of the Bolivarian regime in Peru in 1827. Afterwards, he served as Peru's ambassador to Chile before being proclaimed President of Bolivia, inheriting an unstable and bankrupt country. Santa Cruz implemented the Napoleonic Code, strengthened the army, reformed the bureaucracy and public finances, issued a new constitution, and established a new currency, and his authoritarian regime brought stability to Bolivia as the rest of Latin America was engulfed in unrest. He then instigated several failed plots to achieve a political union with Peru, and he defeated the Peruvian caudillo Agustin Gamarra in 1835-1836 at the request of Peruvian president Luis Jose de Orbegoso. He created the Peru-Bolivian Confederation in October 1836, and he attempted to establish a similar authoritarian regime in Peru. This resulted in resistance movements in both Peru and Bolivia, and Chile helped the rebels overthrow the confederation in 1839. Santa Cruz fled to Ecuador and failed to regain power, and he was extradited to Chile and imprisoned from 1844 to 1846. He served as Bolivia's ambassador to several European countries from 1848 to 1855, but he failed to win the presidency and retired to Versailles, France, dying near Nantes in 1865.