Francisco Manrique

Francisco Manrique (February 10, 1919 – February 15, 1988) was an Argentine naval officer, journalist, policy maker and presidential candidate.

Life and times

A native of Mendoza, in western Argentina, Francisco Manrique graduated from the Argentine Naval Academy in 1938 and from the Navy School in 1949. After being jailed as an opponent of President Juan Domingo Perón, he became head of the Casa Militar (the presidential military household) in 1955 following Perón's overthrow. He resigned as part of an effort to have the new military leader, President Eduardo Lonardi, removed, and was reinstated by Lonardi's successor, Pedro Aramburu, upon the former's resignation.

Manrique resigned from the Navy as a captain in 1958 to start a daily newspaper in opposition to President Arturo Frondizi, Correo de la Tarde. Following Frondizi's overthrow in 1962, he lad diplomatic efforts to have other members of the Organization of American States recognize the government of President José María Guido, who had been appointed in Frondizi's stead via the acephaly clause.

Manrique actively supported the March 1976 coup and many of his Federalist Party colleagues were therein appointed to local government posts, including 78 mayors. Following seven years of ruinous military rule, however, elections were called for October 1983. Manrique again ran unsuccessfully for President as the candidate of the center-right Federal Alliance. The winner, Raúl Alfonsín of the centrist UCR, appointed him Secretary of Tourism, a non-Cabinet position in 1986, by which Manrique unsuccessfully proposed the implementation of a tax on tourism abroad. He won election as a legislator in 1987 as a nonpartisan candidate on the UCR ticket. Remaining editor-in-chief of Correo de la Semana, Manrique died in Buenos Aires from complications related to lymphoma, in 1988. He was 69 years old.