Eliodoro Villazón

Eliodoro Villazón Montaño (22 January 1848 – 12 September 1939) was a Bolivian lawyer and politician who served as the 27th president of Bolivia from 1909 to 1913 and as the 15th vice president of Bolivia from 1904 to 1909.

Early life Villazón was born on January 22, 1848, in the town of Sacaba in the department of Cochabamba. He was the son of José Manuel Villazón and Manuela Montaño. His great uncle was General Anastasio Villazón. He graduated as a lawyer from the University of San Francisco Xavier and one of the most distinguished lawmakers in the country.

At the age of twenty, during the de facto government of President Mariano Melgarejo (1864-1871), Villazón founded the newspaper El Ferroviario. Villazon married Enriqueta Torrico.

At the age of twenty-three, Villazón attended the National Assembly of 1871 which had been called by the government of newly installed President Agustín Morales after the overthrow of Melgarejo. Specialized in finance, Villazón made a considerable fortune by managing the fortunes of several magnates of his time, including that of Francisco Argandoña and Gregorio Pacheco.

Because of his affluence and political power, he was one of the main founders of the Liberal Party of Bolivia and supported his party during the Bolivian Civil War of 1898-1899. He was Minister of Foreign Relations during the government of liberal President José Manuel Pando, and he devoted himself to resolving border conflicts with Bolivia's neighboring countries.

During the presidency of Ismael Montes, Villazón became Vice President of Bolivia at the age of 56, serving from 1904 to 1909. He also worked as a defense attorney in the Bolivian-Peruvian border dispute over the Manuripi. This treaty put an end to the Peruvian-Bolivian border dispute, and prevented an alliance between Bolivia and Chile against Peru. It also fixed some pending boundary issues with Argentina.

At the end of his term, he handed over the command of his party to his eventual successor, Ismael Montes, who won the general elections of 1913 and was inaugurated as president on August 14. Villazón then traveled to Buenos Aires to work as Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Bolivia in Argentina.

Later life and death Twenty-six years after having left the presidency, Eliodoro Villazón died on September 12, 1939, in the city of Cochabamba at the age of ninety-one. He was one of the four oldest presidents of Bolivia, along with Hugo Ballivián, Víctor Paz Estenssoro and Lidia Gueiler.