Manuel Prado Ugarteche (21 April 1889-15 August 1967) was President of Peru from 8 December 1939 to 28 July 1945 (succeeding Oscar R. Benavides and preceding Jose Luis Bustamante y Rivero) and from 28 July 1956 to 18 July 1962 (succeeding Manuel A. Odria and preceding Ricardo Perez Godoy). He was the leader of the personalist Pradist Democratic Movement.
Biography[]
Manuel Prado Ugarteche was born in Lima, Peru in 1889, the son of President Mariano Ignacio Prado. He served as an army officer and helped to overthrow President Guillermo Billinghurst in 1914; he became President of the Central Reserve Bank in 1934 before being elected President in 1939 with the support of the APRA party. Ugarteche was a conservative aristocrat, and he persecuted the APRA in 1948 before turning to his old antagonists for support in the 1956 election. He promised to legalize the APRA, govern democratically, and assure the APRA a chance to win the 1962 election, but he went on to empower his own Pradist Democratic Party by making them the strongest party in parliament and giving them the majority of government and diplomatic positinos. The APRA was not permitted to have candidates for Congress in 1956, leaving Prado in power. In July 1962, he was overthrown by a military coup and sent into exile, dying in Paris in 1967 at the age of 78.