Miguel Iglesias
Miguel Iglesias Pino de Arce (June 11, 1830, Cajamarca, Peru – November 7, 1909, Lima, Peru) was a Peruvian soldier, general, and politician who served as the 35th President of Peru (Regenerator President of the Republic) from 1882 to 1885.
The original name of the family was de la Iglesia. Their ancestor was Captain Álvaro de la Iglesia who fought against the Moors in Spain in the 8th century. Lorenzo Iglesias Espinach left his home town of Solivella in Catalonia in the early 19th century to join three uncles on his mother's side who had founded the Chota silver mine, near the town of Cajamarca, in the county of the same name,in north Peru, in 1780. Lorenzo Iglesias Espinach became both the heir of his uncles and sub-Prefect of Cajamarca; was a friend of Simón Bolívar who stayed with him in Cajamarca; and was one of the group of dissident Spanish colonists who supported independence from Spain. In 1820 Lorenzo Iglesias married Rosa Pino and their son, Miguel, was born ten years later.
Miguel Iglesias Pino, later General and President, and known to posterity as "El Pacificador" inherited a 250,000-acre (1,000 km2) estate from his forebears, as well as lucrative silver mines. His power in the town of Cajamarca and the surrounding area was that of a feudal magnate and he had been recruiting troops with his own money - effectively a private army - since the 1866 war with Spain. He had been one of the senior army officers present at the Peruvian victory on the "Dos de mayo", was given the rank of Colonel, and named as Prefect of Cajamarca. In 1874, Iglesias initiated a revolution against the government of President Manuel Pardo and proclaimed himself political and military Chief of the North. Even though Iglesias's rebellion was a failure, he was not brought to account because no-one in Lima dared to confront the power of Iglesias in Cajamarca. Thus, Iglesias was able to consolidate his position in his northern Peruvian fiefdom. When war broke out in 1879, between a coalition of Peru allied with Bolivia, ranged against Chile, Iglesias commenced to raise a new private militia.
The war, now known as the War of the Pacific, quickly began to go wrong for Peru. In the campaign of November 1879 the Peruvian Navy lost their two most important warships, the iron clad Independencia was sunk by a corvette called Covadonga and the iron clad Huascar was captured by the iron clad Cochrane and Blanco Encalada , which had been supplied to Chile and Peru by British shipyards; the southern department of Tarapacá was overrun; and the professional Peruvian army was broken. Subsequently, Iglesias's friend, Nicolás de Piérola, launched a successful coup d'état, declaring himself Supreme Commander in Chief, and on December 23, 1879 he replaced President Prado who was considered to have mismanaged the conduct of the war thus far. One of the battalions lending their armed support to Pierola was Iglesias's "Vencedores de Cajamarca" and Pierola appointed Iglesias as Secretary of War in his new government.
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