Enrique Olaya Herrera

Enrique Alfredo Olaya Herrera (Guateque, November 12, 1880-Rome, February 18, 1937) was a Colombian journalist, lawyer, diplomat and politician, member of the Colombian Liberal Party.

He was president of Colombia between 1930 and 1934, being the first liberal to hold office after the long stay of the conservatives in power, a period known as the Conservative Hegemony. Enrique Olaya Herrera came to the presidency representing a bipartisan coalition known as Concentración Nacional. He belonged to a liberal family and as such he participated in the Thousand Days War.

His government had to manage the economic problem that led the country to the collapse of capital, after the Great Depression of 1929, which was worldwide and had repercussions in Colombia. Olaya Herrera began the cycle of national protectionism in the 1930s, with which the development of Colombian industry with national capital was promoted, to make it the basis of development stimuli.

An inward development was printed, based on the national market and the expansion of internal demand. There was a decrease in imports and a stimulus to the national industry. Coffee prices in the international market fell, and foreign capital in Colombia was suddenly suspended, which was brought abroad again.

He was three times minister of foreign affairs; one for the pre-World War I Republican coalition government, one for the post-war Conservative government, and one for the succeeding government of Alfonso López Pumarejo.

He was also ambassador to the United States for eight years, being key in the reestablishment of relations between the two countries, after the independence of Panama from Colombia. His good relations with the Americans were key in his foreign policy when he governed the country.

He was later appointed Ambassador to the Holy See in Rome, where he died on February 18, 1937, while carrying out this position. After his remains were transferred to Bogotá, they received emotional honors in his memory.

As a prominent exponent of the Centennial generation, Enrique Olaya Herrera bequeathed to Colombians his conciliatory spirit and republican unity, whose projection we find in the tendencies of union between political parties.

Biography

He was born in Guateque, in the state of Boyacá, on November 12, 1880, in a middle-class home in the Cundiboyacense highlands, with ancestors from the Colombian Independence.

Olaya Herrera completed her primary studies at the Guateque Public School, alongside her parents. His mother, who liked to write simple, pure prose, influenced his intellectual style. His father, a graduate doctor, did not practice his profession and was dedicated to commerce and agriculture.

Journalistic career and early studies

Regeneration allegory.

Olaya Herrera is remembered as the "boy journalist from Guateque,", because when he was 12 years old he founded and directed the small newspaper El Patriota, receiving the support of major newspapers such as El Espectador de Medellín. Fidel Cano, head of the publication, precisely proposed a popular subscription so that Olaya could acquire his first printing press.

At the age of 14, he joined the newspaper El Fonógrado, owned by the brothers Alberto and Samuel Williamsom, from which he supported the ideas of young liberals like him.

Olaya completed his university studies at the Republican University, today the Free University (Colombia). There he was taught by prominent jurists such as Diego Mendoza Pérez, Juan Manuel Rudas, Ignacio V. Espinosa, Carlos Arturo Torres, José Camacho Carrizosa and others. At the University he founded the weekly El Estudiante, a handwritten newspaper that circulated among students.

There he attacked La Regeneración, commented on Colombian and international politics, and wrote the university chronicle. He entered active journalism writing reports for the newspaper El Autonomista, run by Rafael Uribe Uribe and Ricardo Tirado Macías. During his student vacations he founded the Cuban newspaper El soldado in Guateque, with which created a favorable environment for the independence of Cuba and the libertarian ideas of José Martí. This indicates that centenarians, like Olaya Herrera, were journalists by vocation and combined their journalistic experience with their political career.

Participation in the Thousand Days War

Liberal rebel troops meet Rafael Uribe Uribe, 1900.

Olaya Herrera began her political activities in the Thousand Days War, when some universities and colleges closed their classrooms and allowed their professors and students to serve in the liberal or conservative party ranks. Olaya and other members of the Republican University joined the Liberal ranks and fought on different campaign fronts.

Olaya, in particular, joined the revolutionary hosts of General Zenón Figueredo, as a liberal standard-bearer. He remembers his participation in the action of Nocaima (Cundinamarca), on December 5, 1899, carrying the flag and wrapped in his red bayeton. Unfortunately for him, the conservative troops swept the liberals in this town, and his commander was defeated.

Studies in Europe and political beginnings

When the war ended, Olaya continued his studies, culminating his law degree with the thesis The conditional release, which was published by the Republican University.

In 1901, Olaya founded his second newspaper El Comercio, which remained in circulation until 1905, when Olaya began his diplomatic career. El Comercio was fond of the figure Rafael Uribe and supported him as an important leader within liberalism. The publication is considered the most faithful dissemination organ for his liberal ideas.

In 1904 he obtained the title of Doctor of Jurisprudence, in 1905 he started working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and at the end of 1906 he left for Belgium, where he specialized in diplomacy and sociology at the Free University of Brussels. For this reason, his greatest activity was oriented towards diplomacy, politics and journalism.

After his studies in Belgium, upon his return to the country, Olaya Herrera became part of the campaign against the government of the conservative general Rafael Reyes, when public opinion expressed its ideas against the treaties between Colombia and the United States and the nascent state of Panama, after gaining independence in 1903.

The Thirteenth Marcism

On March 13, 1909, Olaya addressed the crowd in the presence of liberalism leaders. Thus, he entered into that campaign against the dictatorship, initiated by Nicolás Esguerra, and the conservative lawyers José Vicente Concha and Miguel Abadía Méndez, which culminated in the resignation of General Reyes, on March 16, 1909, events that have been called "El Trecemarcismo".

With Reyes out of the government, war veteran Jorge Holguín was appointed, who then forcibly handed over power to former vice president Ramón González Valencia (also a veteran), who was supported by the Republicans and some liberals.

For his part, Olaya was elected in 1910 as a member of the Constituent Assembly that Reyes convened in 1909 and that González carried out, for the reform of the Constitution of 1886, representing the extinct Department of Quesada (which currently has territories of Cundinamarca).

Militancy in republicanism

His fellow party members were Rafael Uribe Uribe, Benjamín Herrera and Nicolás Esguerra among others. Among the conservatives, the deputies Carlos Eugenio Restrepo, José Vicente Concha, Pedro Nel Ospina, Guillermo Valencia and Guillermo Quintero Calderón participated. The political conciliation was proposed by a group of Colombians headed by Carlos Eugenio Restrepo from Antioquia, who held the Presidency of the Republic in the period between 1910 and 1914.

Olaya Herrera contributed effectively to the election of Restrepo in those years, when the so-called Republican Party was formed, whose flag was the conciliation between the parties and the constitutional reform aimed at correcting the Constitution of 1886. Republicanism was presented as a Summary of political parties. He also became director of the Sunday Gaceta Republicana, the official journalistic organ of the Republican Union.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1910-1911; 1921-1922)

President Restrepo, in return for supporting his campaign and his project for bipartisan unity, appointed Olaya as his Minister of Foreign Affairs on August 7, 1910.

Olaya ran this Ministry until November 23, 1911. He was also a participant in the ratification of the Urrutia-Thompson treaty, which was signed in 1914, when he was no longer in the ministry. He also managed to ease the tensions between Panama and Colombia through of the figure of the Uti possidetis iuris, with which a border conflict between the two countries was avoided, since they agreed to respect the limits prior to the independence of Spain from the unified state, based on a law of 1855. Another of his great feats was the solution of the border issue between Colombia and Nicaragua, regarding the San Andrés Archipelago, and the Mosquito Coast.

Olaya in 1925, by Benjamin of the Street

In 1915, at the height of the European war, Olaya returned to his journalistic activities, founding the Bogota newspaper El Diario Nacional, which despite being liberal in nature, was against the direction he exercised over the party the veteran of the war Benjamín Herrera. Olaya was in charge of the newspaper until 1922, when his partner, the businessman Alfonso López Pumarejo, acquired the publication. López would later support Olaya's candidacy for the presidency, from El Diario Nacional.

He was Minister of Agriculture of Holguín for less than a month, between November 11 and 28, 1921, since he returned to occupy the chancellorship during the administration of the conservative president Jorge Holguín (who replaced the incumbent Marco Fidel Suárez after his resignation in November), until January 4, 1922; being also the architect of the Salomón-Lozano Treaty of 1922, with which borders with Peru were established, receiving the support of the US Secretary of State and the president of the Pan-American Union. He also dealt with the ratification and implementation of the Urrutia-Thompson treaty.

Olaya in 1928.

Embassy in the United States (1922-1930)

In the 1920s, Olaya Herrera collaborated in Parliament and diplomacy. In 1922 he accepted the diplomatic legation in Washington D.C. that the conservative president Pedro Nel Ospina made him, in which he served for eight years (since the also conservative Miguel Abadía Méndez confirmed him in office in 1926), despite Olaya was once critical of US policy towards Panama and oil exploitation in his country. Olaya came to say in 1919ː

"The American protectorate over Colombia, the men who today have the fate of the country in their hands, will agree on it, will have its usufruct and will be the sole and exclusive responsibility that Colombia, as a sovereign and independent state, has existed for only a century. And they are still left in this agonizing country, souls of slaves who tremble in terror because the press is not resigned as they do to bend their heads so that the yoke is not uncomfortable. "

Olaya delivers an album with photographs of work by Bogotanos children to a delegate of the Red Cross, John Barton Payne.

Olaya maneuvered Colombia's problems with the United States with great determination, after the separation of Panama in 1903. He is credited with significantly improving relations between the two countries and having consummated compensation for the loss of the Isthmus, a matter he knew about of his time at the chancellery in 1921.

Washington also supported the economic delegation of the Kremmerer Mission, which arrived in Colombia in 1923, and from which measures such as the creation of the Bank of the Republic emerged. Olaya led the Colombian delegation at the Sixth Pan-American Conference, which was held in Havana, in 1928, where US President Calvin Coolidge also attended.

His management additionally made US capital interested in investing in Colombian lands, an interest that came to an abrupt halt with the advent of the Great Depression in 1929, and the scandal over the Bananeras Massacre.

Disputes

His silence during the events of the Bananeras Massacre is a controversial issue in his tenure, since the country was discredited in the eyes of the US State Department, without Olaya having managed to avert the situation. He also came into controversy with his liberal (and formerly Republican) supporter, the prestigious journalist Eduardo Santos Montejo, director of the newspaper El Tiempo , who affirmed that Olaya was at a political crossroads, going so far as to sayː

“If he adopts there the Latin-Americanism policy of which the porta-estandarte should be Colombia, it will be in bad position before the State Secretariat. And if it is limited to continuing the weak policy that has been followed in the previous conferences, in which the Saxo-American will has been imposed, it will disappoint the hopes that the continent has conceived.”

Eduardo Santos

Presidential candidacy

In 1929, liberal leaders considered Enrique Olaya Herrera the most appropriate candidate to bring liberalism to power. Thus, on January 22, 1930, his candidacy was registered by a group of liberals and conservatives in Puerto Berrío (Antioquia). Two days later Olaya made his entry into Bogotá, where he was received by liberalism.

In fact, the great economic powers and the main newspapers in the country promoted his candidacy, the most important of them being Alfonso López Pumarejo, who was interested in maintaining a good relationship with the United States, and maintaining the economic paradise of which The country had enjoyed internationally with Olaya's management as ambassador. An American diplomatic agent would go so far as to sayː

"(It was our influence) what made it possible to choose Dr. Olaya with all the expected benefits for the United States. "

Olaya Herrera's presidential campaign in 1929 with the slogan "National Concentration".

The advanced sector of conservatism adhered to Olaya Herrera's candidacy, especially the Republicans, led by former President Carlos Eugenio Restrepo. On the contrary, the big coffee businessmen, led by the Ospina family (to whom former President Ospina belonged and his nephew, the influential businessman Mariano Ospina Pérez), opposed his candidacy, and being conservatives sought to sabotage his campaign..

However, in the absence of a unifying criteria within the party, two candidates launched their presidential campaignsː On the one hand, the poet Guillermo Valencia (who lost the 1918 elections), and on the other, the war veteran Alfredo Vásquez Cobo. This deep division, in addition to discrediting the government left behind by President Abadía, affected the party and reduced its credibility, and facilitated Olaya's path to the presidency.

The liberal movement was headed by López Pumarejo, who encouraged his party with the famous phrase: "Liberalism must prepare to assume power", and poured part of his capital to finance the campaign, also through his newspaper El Diario Nacional, which, as stated before, was owned by Olaya. On election day, Olaya defeated his conservative rivals with 44.6% of the votes, Valencia with 29.0% and Vásquez with 25.7%, becoming president of Colombia.

Thus began the Liberal Republic of the 1930s and 1940s. After the defeat of conservatism at the polls, the government of Miguel Abadía Méndez began to appoint liberal ministers to facilitate the connection with Olaya; the Catholic Church, although upset by the results, made itself available to the new government; the National Army remained loyal; and the young congressman Laureano Gómez (a personal friend of López Pumarejo), a notoriety leader within conservatism, offered his support to the government, and as a reward, Olaya appointed him ambassador to Nazi Germany, a fact that would be key in the political future of the country, years later.

Olaya continued his work as ambassador, returning to the United States in March to complete his diplomatic work, guaranteeing US investors the continuity in his government of friendly policies with his interests. He also asked the ambassador in Colombia, Jefferson Caffery, a list of the issues that both countries were interested in resolving, among them, the position of the Colombian newspapers with respect to the United States, and the oil activities in Colombian lands, such as the case of the Concession Barco, from the Barco family.

Presidential Portrait of Olaya, 1930.

Presidency (1930-1934)

The liberalism that came to power with Olaya presented the country with fundamental changes in relation to its new tendencies of social liberalism.

Economy

The government of Olaya Herrera was received in an atmosphere of optimism, after the pessimism that the Great Depression of 1929 brought to the country. During his government, he promoted national industry, concerned himself with the construction of highways and railways, stimulated education public and, especially, the progress of the teaching profession.

He stimulated the production of oil in Catatumbo, the works of Bocas de Ceniza were finished and constructions were made in the ports of Barranquilla and Buenaventura.

The government of President Olaya founded the Caja de Crédito Agrario, Industrial y Minero, in order to help small farmers. In the same way, through Decree 711 of 1932, he founded the Banco Central Hipotecario to finance medium-sized homes.

His government was interested in labor reforms for the benefit of workers; laws were enacted to protect children, Sunday rest and paid vacations; The workers had some conquests: the partial immunity from seizure of wages, the extension of compulsory life insurance, the regulation of cooperative societies, the encouragement of employment through public works, the eight-hour work day and other measures.

Public order

In the first two years of the government, violence manifested itself in some regions of Colombia, especially in Boyacá and Santander, mainly motivated by political factors. The towns with the greatest problems were Chiquinquirá and those to the west of Boyacá, the north in the Guicán region, the Province of García Rovira in Santander and some municipalities in Norte de Santander; the province's conservative bureaucracy defended its public offices against the new liberal authorities.

During his government he suffered a conspiracy to overthrow him, in which his minister of war, Carlos Arango Vélez, was involved. When Olaya learned of the situation, he dismissed Arango and in his place appointed General Carlos Uribe Gaviria (son of the late Rafael Uribe), and appeared with him at a military garrison to make his appointment public, all of this in barely 3 hours, on the 23rd. May 1932.

International relations

Colombia-United States Relations

Thanks to his tenure as ambassador to the United States between 1922 and 1930, relations with the United States during his government were prosperous and cordial despite the fact that he was accused of being too condescending to the Americans, after learning that he supported the oil interests of the US government, as previously noted.

One of the results of that cordiality was the visit of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Cartagena on Tuesday, July 10, 1934. Ironically, Franklin's fifth uncle and first uncle to his wife Eleanor, Theodore Roosevelt, He was responsible for the separation of Panama in 1903, 31 years before that visit. Roosevelt thus became the first president of the United States to visit Colombian soil.

Colombian-Peruvian War

In September 1932, the port of Leticia was taken by a group of Peruvians; General Alfredo Vásquez Cobo was called to direct the armed operations in Colombia. In an atmosphere of national solidarity, the Colombian people collaborated with money and jewelry to finance the war. After several clashes, the Colombian-Peruvian War ended with the signing of the Rio de Janeiro Protocol in 1934.

The foreign affairs minister, Roberto Urdaneta, was in charge of resolving the conflict, and the success of his management earned him the chancellorship months later. The Rio treaty, which was verified by the League of Nations, resumed the limits established between the two countries in 1922, and Leticia, capital of the department of Amazonas, once again became part of the country.

Post-government

Olaya in her last years

1934 Elections

In February 1934, the candidate of his party, Alfonso López Pumarejo, defeated the indigenous Eutiquio Timoté, for the Communist Party. López swept the elections, supported by Olaya and the full party, and also thanks to the veto that the Conservative Party imposed throughout the country. Thus, Olaya handed over power to López on August 7, 1934.

Diplomatic assignments

On January 30, 1935, López appointed him Minister of Foreign Affairs, remaining in office until September 24 of the same year, when he was sent by López to the Holy See to be ambassador to Pope Pius XI. He was replaced in the chancellery by Roberto Urdaneta, who had been his minister.

Truncated candidacy of 1938

For the 1938 elections, the Liberal Directorate decided that its candidate for the presidency would be former president Olaya Herrera. However, the unexpected death of Olaya put a stop to the aspirations of the party, which finally offered the candidacy to Eduardo Santos, who ended up being elected president without an opponent, consequently a conservative veto that would remain in force until 1946, when the liberals lost power..

Death

Enrique Olaya Herrera died on the morning of February 18, 1937, at the age of 56. His death, the product of a stroke, occurred in a clinic in Rome. His state of health had deteriorated during the last week before he died.With his death the embassy was occupied by his co-partisan, the brilliant lawyer Darío Echandía, who would become Colombia's designated president a few years later..

Funerals

Tomb Enrique Olaya Herrera in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá.

Olaya's remains remained under constant siege by the press and the political class for 3 days, and it took 40 more days before he was finally buried. Due to the pomp with which he was fired, they are considered one of the most famous funerals in the history of Colombia.

On February 20, his body was provisionally located in the Verano Cemetery in Rome. Offerings of flowers and representatives were sent by Pope Pius XI, King Victor Emmanuel III, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.When Echandía arrived in Rome to take office, he too paid due homage to Olaya's corpse..

One of Olaya's daughters lived in New York, so the corpse was sent there, arriving on May 8, 1937, remaining in a burning chamber. On May 11, the body was shipped on a United Fruit Company steamship bound for Colombia, arriving in Buenaventura on May 15, accompanied by his daughters.

In Colombia there was an authentic mobilization around the funeral remains of Olaya, since according to the press of the time, there were several private funerals in some cities of the country, while the corpse returned from Rome. This is explained because Olaya was an extremely popular politician.The body toured several cities, including Ibagué, where his figure was respected.

Finally, his mortal remains were transferred to Bogotá, being buried in the Central Cemetery on May 20, 1937, where they have rested since then. The respective state honors were given to him in a gigantic and well-attended ceremony in the Plaza de Bolívar.

Private life

Olaya in 1922. Olaya had a high height, abnormal for the Colombian media.

Face

Olaya was known as a not very affable person, since he rarely smiled. In addition, for having a considerable height (he measured 1.88 cm, being, by far, the tallest president in the history of Colombia, without taking into account Francisco de Paula Santander, of whom there are no records), and a cold look, he earned a reputation for being a stern man. That fame was also fueled by the fact that there are few photographs where he appears smiling, one of them being taken from his presidential campaign when he first registered his candidacy, in 1929.

Family

Enrique was a descendant of illustrious figures of the Colombian Independence.

He was the son of Emeterio Lorenzo Justiniano Olaya Ricaurte and Empress Herrera Medina. His father was a descendant of the Creole nobleman Jorge Miguel Lozano, Marquis of San Jorge, since he was the maternal grandson of Ignacio de Ricaurte y Lozano, related to the Marquis; and also a relative of Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Viscount of Pastrana, he was also a descendant of the military Antonio Ricaurte and the enlightened Antonio Nariño.

Olaya and his wife, during their stay in the United States as ambassador, with a plaque in the Church of Santa Maria, 1926.

On his maternal line, Olaya was the great-great-grandson of Diego de Medina y Rojas, the first mayor of Tunja, and who in turn was the maternal great-grandfather of businessman Pedro Aquilino López, patriarch of the López family, to which his ally belonged and personal friend, Alfonso López, and his son Alfonso López Michelsen. Ergo, López and Olaya were distant relatives.

Marriage and offspring

Olaya, López Pumarejo, Urdaneta and their respective wives, in the Country Club, 1930.

In 1911, Olaya Herrera married María Teresa Londoño Sáenz on December 2, 1911, in a ceremony preceded by the Italian bishop Francesco Ragonesi, apostolic nuncio in Colombia at the time of the events.

María was the daughter of Andrés Adolfo Londoño Azcuénaga and Manuela Sáenz Pinzón. María Teresa and Enrique were related to each other by Antonio Ricaurte, the common line of both. María stood out during her government for offering pompous dinners at the Presidential Palace, and because she, along with her daughters, brought beauty pageants to Colombia.

Enrique had daughters from the couple: María Olaya Londoño, married to Jorge Cárdenas Núñez (who was a descendant of the Arboleda family, specifically Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera), and Lucía Olaya Londoño, married to Manuel Aya Schroeder.

Legacy and Tributes

National park. I'm looking for Enrique Olaya Herrera.

The protectionist tendency of his government generated a nationalist consciousness that turned the country from nineteenth-century free trade to the protectionism of the 1930s.

During the first government of Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934-1938), who succeeded Olaya, this tendency was strengthened, under the slogan of "Revolution on the Move". Despite the reformist wave of López, his successor, the government of Eduardo Santos Montejo partially halted reform policies in its "Great Pause".

In 1910 construction began on a park on Carrera Séptima, which is now known as the Enrique Olaya Herrera de Bogotá National Park, considered a national monument since 1996, and where a sculpture in honor of General Rafael stands Uribe Uribe. As a curious detail, the park was inaugurated the day before Olaya took office when he was president of the country.In the park there is also a bust in his honor. In Bogotá there is also the Olaya Herrera neighborhood, located in the town of Rafael Uribe Uribe. The neighborhood receives the common name of "El Olaya", and also the Colegio IED Enrique Olaya Herrera.

In Medellín there is also the Olaya Herrera Airport. On the other hand, in Barranquilla, Olaya Herrera avenue (carrera 46) was built. In Santander de Quilichao there is a neighborhood called Olaya Herrera. And the municipality Olaya Herrera in the department of Nariño.

Works

• Territorial studies (1905)
• An independence that endangers (1908)
• Most-favoured-nation clause (1926)