Manuel A. Odria
Manuel Arturo Odria Amoretti was the President of Peru from 1948 to 1956.
Odria was born in 1897 in Tarma, a city in the central Andes just east of Lima. He graduated first in his class from the Chorillos Military Academy in 1915. He joined the army and as a lieutenant-colonel was a war hero in the 1941 border conflict with Ecuador. He soon achieved the rank of General.
In 1945, Jose Luis Bustamante y Rivero had attained the presidency with the help of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). Soon, major disagreements arose between Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, the founder of APRA, and President Bustamante y Rivero. The President disbanded his Aprista cabinet and replaced it with a mostly military one. Odria, a fierce opponent of APRA, was appointed Minister of Government and Police. In 1948, Odria and other right-wing elements urged Bustamante y Rivero to ban APRA. When the President refused, Odria resigned his post. On October 29, 1948, he led a successful military coup against the government and took over as president.
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