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Guillermo Rodríguez Lara (November 4, 1924) also known as "Bombita", is a former military dictator of Ecuador who was in power from February 15, 1972 to January 11, 1976. He took courses in C&R&Bn Staff, Irregular Warfare Orientation, and Maintenance Management at the School of the Americas in Panama. As commander of the army, he led a military coup d'etat executed by a navy commander named Jorge Queirolo G. and forced president José María Velasco into exile, to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
During his rule, drilling the country's oil reserves funded the construction of hospitals, schools, roads, the oil refinery at Esmeraldas, and new equipment for the armed services. The Ecuadorian military removed him from power in 1976 and established the Supreme Council of Government to rule in his place.
Biography edit
Born of a modest family in the provincial town of Pujilí, Rodríguez Lara became a career army officer; his training included study at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, as well as military courses in Argentina and Colombia.
During thirty-three years of service he rose to become director of the Army War Academy and eventually commanding general of the army in April of 1971. When a series of events provoked the ouster of José María Velasco Ibarra on 15 February 1972, Rodríguez Lara became head of the new, self-styled "national revolutionary government."
At the outset of his administration, an explicit program for socioeconomic reform and modernization was outlined, but the military leadership was somewhat ambivalent. Traditionalists fought to block agrarian and tax reforms while opposing a nationalistic policy toward the new petroleum industry. Other officers fought for such measures, while Rodríguez Lara sought with increasing difficulty to maintain a position of compromise.
Not a persuasive or crowd-pleasing personality, he lacked a popular movement of his own. In September 1975 an uprising by rightist officers was put down, but Rodríguez's position had been fatally damaged. He was forced to resign on 11 January 1976 and was succeeded by a three-man military junta (the Supreme Council of Government) that eventually returned Ecuador to elected government. Guillermo Rodríguez Lara retired to his farm outside Pujilí. He has largely disappeared from public life, with his last public appearance being in 2014 and as for 2022 he hasn't appearance in public.