Jose Gutierrez Guerra

José Manuel Gutiérrez Guerra, known as "the last Oligarch," (5 September 1869 in Sucre, Bolivia – 3 February 1929 in Antofagasta, Chile) was a Bolivian economist and statesman who served as the 28th president of Bolivia from 1917 to 1920. He was the grandson of Pedro José Domingo de Guerra, acting president in 1879 and chief justice of the Supreme Court, who had died in office after he was forced to assume presidential responsibilities during the disastrous War of the Pacific.

Early life and family The scion of two illustrious aristocratic families from Chuquisaca, which traced descent from Incan royalty and the first Spanish conquistadors who came into Peru, judges of the Audiencia of Charcas. On his mother's side, he was also related to Irish physician Francis Rynd and British statesman Lord Palmerston. He was sent to England at an early age to receive education. There, he studied under the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College, then St Bede's College, and Merton College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1890, aged 21.

He returned to Bolivia, where he worked in banking. An economist by training, he was hesitant to enter politics. As one contemporary put it, "He never sought political preferment." In 1914, he was elected to Congress as deputy from La Paz.

Gutiérrez lost significant support from Bolivia's elite after fining Simón I. Patiño for the smuggling of 10,000 cans of alcohol from Peru, which caused economic damage to the state. He was deposed in the 1920 coup d'état which, with military help, brought to power the opposition Republican party under the leadership of Bautista Saavedra. Gutierrez-Guerra sought refuge in the United States legation at La Paz and went on to take a banking position at New York-based Chase National. He lived the rest of his days in exile, dying in Antofagasta, Chile in 1929.