Severo Fernández

Severo Fernández Alonso Caballero (1849-1925) was President of his country, Bolivia, from 1896 to 1899. He is best remembered as the last president of the 15-year period of Conservative Party hegemony (1884-99).

Like Baptista, Fernández was a more conciliatory and legalist breed of Conservative. Perhaps for that reason, it was his fate to preside over the collapse of Conservative Party rule and its lose of power in the aftermath of the 1899 Civil War against the Liberals. A disgruntled Liberal Party was by then fed up with many years of Conservative dominance, often sustained by electoral fraud. Led by a new, combative leader -- the former military hero (War of the Pacific) José Manuel Pando -- the Liberals' calls for anti-government rebellions had become more strident since 1894, but they were always neutralized by a loyal military establishment. All of this changed radically with the emergence of a new, and very polarizing, "wedge" issue: the simmering displeasure in Sucre and Potosi regarding the de-facto takeover by the city of La Paz as seat of the Bolivian government, dating since the days of Marshall Santa Cruz (1829-39). The regional conflict also had much to do with the emergence of a new tin-mining elite based in La Paz and Oruro to the detriment of the old silver-mining establishment operating out of Sucre and Potosi, as symbolized by Conservative leaders such as Arce and Pacheco (both silver tycoons). To add fuel to the fire, the Liberals called for a federal descentralization of power, thus garnering further support from outlying regions of the country.

Civil War (often called the "Federal Revolution") exploded when Chuquisaca and Potosi parliamentarians in Sucre passed a "Law of Confinement," which ordered the President to reside in Sucre and issue decrees from it, rather than from La Paz. For their part, La Paz-Oruro-Cochabamba lawmakers associated with Pando's Liberal Party introduced a long-coming motion calling for the official transfer of the seat of Government to La Paz, legalizing what had in fact been customary law for decades. When this motion was prevented from being voted on by the Conservatives, the Liberal congressmen left Sucre and established themselves permanently in La Paz. At this point President Fernández himself led an army to La Paz, in order to "restore order." The ensuing bloodbath culminated in the crushing defeat of the Conservatives at the hands of General Pando, who emerged triumphant from the Battle of the Second Crucero, even taking President Fernández prisoner. Subsequently, Fernández was allowed to go to exile in Chile, but returned to Bolivia in his declining years, where he died in 1925.