Gustavo Noboa (21 August 1937-16 February 2021) was President of Ecuador from 22 January 2000 to 15 January 2003, succeeding Jamil Mahuad and preceding Lucio Gutierrez.
Biography[]
Gustavo Noboa was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador in 1937, the great-great-grandson of Diego Noboa. He worked as a lawyer and university professor before serving as Governor of Guayas from 1983 to 1984 and as rector of the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil from 1986 to 1996. He served as Jamil Mahuad's vice president from 1998 to 2000, when he assumed the presidency on Mahuad's overthrow in a coup. He retained Mahuad's neoliberal policies, attempting to revive the economy by freeing $400 million worth of assets frozen by the previous government. Leon Febres Cordero accused Noboa of mishandling the country's foreign debt, as his policies cost the country $9 billion. Noboa went into exile in the Dominican Republic in 2003, and he was placed under house arrest back in Ecuador from May 2005 to March 2006. He died in 2021.