Oscar Raymundo Benavides Larrea (15 March 1876-2 July 1945) was President of Peru from 4 February 1914 to 18 August 1915 (succeeding Guillermo Billinghurst and preceding Jose Pardo y Barreda) and from 30 April 1933 to 8 December 1939 (succeeding Luis Miguel Sanchez Cerro and preceding Manuel Prado Ugarteche).
Biography[]
Oscar Raymundo Benavides was born in Lima, Peru in 1876, and he received a military education in France before exploring the Amazon and skirmishing with Colombia in 1911. In 1914, the conservative, oligarchic faction of Congress persuaded Benavides to overthrow Guillermo Billinghurst's pro-labor government, and he ruled the country for a year before Jose Pardo y Barreda was elected President in 1915. He later served as an observer to the Battle of Verdun and as Ambassador to Italy, and he was arrested by Augusto B. Leguia on his return to Lima in 1921, as Leguia feared that Benavides would overthrow him. He spent the next several years in exile, but he returned on Leguia's overthrow in 1930. In 1932, he fought in the Colombia-Peru War, and he returned to the presidency from 1933 to 1939. He outlawed the socialist APRA and the Peruvian Communist Party, and he extended his mandate in 1936 through the use of authoritarian measures. He built living quarters and dining halls for workers, abolished road and bridge tolls, and encouraged tourism. He voluntarily stepped down from power in 1939 and served as Ambassador to Argentina from 1941 to 1944 before cofounding the National Democratic Front of Peru in 1944. He died in 1945.