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Cristobal Mendoza

Jose Cristobal Hurtado de Mendoza y Montilla (23 June 1772-8 February 1829) was President of the First Republic of Venezuela from 5 March 1811 to 21 March 1812, preceding Francisco Espejo.

Biography[]

Jose Cristobal Hurtado de Mendoza y Montilla was born in Trujillo, Viceroyalty of New Granada, Spanish Empire in 1772, and he became a lawyer in Trujillo, Merida, and Caracas. He served as Mayor of Barinas in 1807 before joining the Caracan insurgency against the Spanish crown in 1810 and serving as Barinas' representative in the Constituent Congress. Days later, he was appointed president of the First Republic of Venezuela, and he authored the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence and helped build the republic's first constitution. He fled to Grenada amid a royalist reaction in 1813, and, on Simon Bolivar's liberation of Venezuela, Mendoza was appointed Governor of Merida and later Caracas in late 1813. He fled to Trinidad after Jose Boves captured Caracas in 1814, and, in 1826, he became Mayor of the Department of Venezuela within Gran Colombia. He was briefly exiled by Jose Antonio Paez (who opposed Mendoza's support for a federation of Latin American republics) before Bolivar reappointed Mendoza as Mayor of the Department of Venezuela until hi sresignation in 1828. He died in Caracas in 1829, and his birthday is commemorated by Venezuela's National Lawyer Day.

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