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Manuel Arturo OdrÃa Amoretti was the President of Peru from 1948 to 1956.
Manuel OdrÃa was born in 1896 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 Ecuadorian-Peruvian war. He soon achieved the rank of Major General.
In 1945, José Bustamante had attained the presidency with the help of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance. Soon, major disagreements arose between VÃctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the founder of APRA, and President Bustamante. The President disbanded his Aprista cabinet and replaced it with a mostly military one. OdrÃa, a fierce opponent of APRA, was appointed Minister of Government and Police. In 1948, OdrÃa and other right-wing elements urged Bustamante to ban APRA. When the President refused, OdrÃa resigned his post. On October 27, 1948, he led a successful military coup against the government and took over as president. After two years, he resigned and had one of his colleagues, Zenón Noriega, take office as a puppet president so he could run for president as a civilian. He was duly elected a month later as the only candidate.
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