Juan Antonio Jara

Juan Antonio Jara Pereira (1845 - 21 July 1887) was a Paraguayan politician and lawyer; he was vice president of Paraguay between 1882 and 1886, during Bernardino Caballero's presidency.

Biography Jara was born in 1845 in Asunción, from a family of landowners. He was sent to study in Paris and returned only in 1869, after the fall of Asunción at the closing stages of the Paraguayan War. Soon after, he began to be active in the country's politics, to write for its newspapers, to do commercial deals on yerba mate and to work as a lawyer; besides all that, he was named Attorney General in 1870. He would maintain that position until early 1871, when he was elected national deputy.

Though he was general Bernardino Caballero's vice president from 1882 onwards, and had been in his bloc since the early 1870s, after the election he soon went to the oppositionists, with whom he formed a minority in the Senate and tried to contest perceived corruption in the government; during his entire vice presidency, he also was president of the senate. It was thus that in the 10th of July of 1887 he was one of the founders of the traditional Liberal Party, rival to Caballero's Colorado Party. He died shortly after, in the 21st of the same month.

One of Asunción's most important neighborhoods, Barrio Jara, is named after him, for he was the owner of most of the land that comprises it.