Enrique Olaya Herrera

Enrique Alfredo Olaya Herrera (12 November 1880 – 18 February 1937) was a Colombian journalist and politician. He served as President of Colombia from 7 August 1930 until 7 August 1934 representing the Colombian Liberal Party.

Early years

Olaya Herrera grew up in a time of intellectual nonconformity and erudition, in a generation that had to live in through the Thousand Days War. He studied in the local public school of his hometown Guateque, in the Department of Boyacá as had his parents. He was son of Justiniano Olaya and Emperatriz Herrera, and had two brothers: Leonidas and Joaquín. When he was 12 years old, Olaya Herrera became known as the "child journalist of Guateque" after his founding of a newspaper called El Patriota (The Patriot) for which he managed to obtain many exchanges with major newspapers like El Espectador based in Medellín. Olaya Herrera studied law at the Universidad Republicana (later to become the Free University of Colombia), and founded a weekly magazine called El Estudiante (The Student) in a newspaper format, which was written by hand.

Political career

Olaya Herrera is considered a member of the "Centennial Generation," corresponding to the cohort of political and intellectual leaders prominent at the time of the first century after the war of independence, roughly corresponding to the years from 1925 to 1940. Other members of this group were Alfonso López Pumarejo, Laureano Gómez, Eduardo Santos, Mariano Ospina Pérez, Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, Luis López de Mesa, Luis Eduardo Nieto Caballero and others.

As a journalist for the newspaper El Autonomista (The Autonomist) which was owned by Rafael Uribe Uribe and Ricardo Tirado Macias, Olaya Herrera made a name by criticizing the "Regeneration," which was the name of the numerous policies that marked the return of the country to a unitary state government system, as well as the rise of conservative, authoritarian, and clerical power following the Colombian Constitution of 1886.