Zubizarreta, Gerónimo (1880–1952)

Gerónimo Zubizarreta (b. 9 October 1880; d. 14 May 1952), Paraguayan politician and university professor. Zubizarreta studied and later taught law at the National University in Asunción. After joining the Liberal Party in 1909, he occupied various positions in the party as well as in the Paraguayan Congress. Zubizarreta was highly respected for defending Paraguay's legal position before the Chaco War erupted between Paraguay and Bolivia in 1932. In 1937 he headed the Paraguayan delegation at the Buenos Aires Peace Conference but resigned in 1938 after losing in a power struggle with Paraguay's leader of the armed forces, General José Félix Estigarribia. He was elected president of the Liberal Party in 1946, but he was forced into exile the following year after his arrest under President Higínio Morínigo's regime. He returned to Paraguay in 1951 and remained president of his party until his death.

See alsoParaguay, Political Parties: Liberal Party .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Julio Cesar Chaves, "Géronimo Zubizarreta," in Cien vida paraguayas (1961), edited by Carlos Zubizarreta.

Leslie Rout, Politics of the Chaco Peace Conference, 1935–39 (1970).

Additional Bibliography

Farcau, Bruce W. The Chaco War: Bolivia and Paraguay, 1932–1935. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.

Lewis, Paul H. Political Parties and Generations in Paraguay's Liberal Era, 1869–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Lorini, Irma. El nacionalismo en Bolivia de la pre y posguerra del Chaco (1910–1945). La Paz, Bolivia: Plural Editores, 2006.

                                              Miguel A. Gatti