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Jose Miguel de Velasco

Jose Miguel de Velasco (29 September 1795-13 October 1859) was President of Bolivia from 2 August to 18 December 1828 (succeeding José María Pérez de Urdininea and preceding Jose Ramon de Loayza), from 1 January to 24 May 1829 (succeeding Pedro Blanco Soto and preceding Andres de Santa Cruz), from 22 February 1839 to 10 June 1841 (succeeding Andres de Santa Cruz and preceding Sebastian Agreda), and from 18 January to 6 December 1848 (succeeding Eusebio Guilarte and preceding Manuel Isidoro Belzu).

Biography[]

Jose Miguel de Velasco was born in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1795. He served in the Spanish Army under Jose Manuel de Goyeneche before defecting to Jose de San Martin and Antonio Jose de Sucre's patriotic armies, and he fought at the Battle of Ayacucho and the Battle of Junin. He rose to the rank of general, and he served as prefect of Santa Cruz from 1826 to 1828. Velasco became Minister of War and acting president in 1828 following Sucre's overthrow and José María Pérez de Urdininea's ouster, and he dissolved the assembly and recalled the previous president-designate Andres de Santa Cruz to assume the presidency. Velasco served as Santa Cruz's vice-president from 1829 to 1835, in which capacity he participated in the War of the Confederation. He fell out with Santa Cruz over the latter's obsession with unification with Peru, and he declared Bolivia's secession from the Peru-Bolivian Confederation on 9 February 1839. He returned to the presidencyt from 1839 to 1841, and he passed a liberal constitution that abolished capital punishment for political crimes, established special courts and municipalities, and guaranteed the right to petition. In 1839, Velasco crushed Jose Ballivian's rebellion, but supporters of Santa Cruz overthrew Velasco in 1841. Peruvian forces proceeded to invade Bolivia, and Velasco set aside his rivalry with Ballivian to help defeat the invaders before going into exile in Argentina. He returned to power in 1848 after a revolution, but he was overthrown in a counter-coup before retiring from politics and dying in 1859.

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