Alfonso Quiñónez Molina

Life & Legacy

Alfonso Quiñónez Molina (11 January 1874 – 22 May 1950) was a Salvadoran politician and physician who served as the 24th President of El Salvador from 1923 to 1927. He also served as the country's acting president on two separate occasions (1914–1915 and 1918–1919) and twice served as Vice President of El Salvador under his brothers-in-law Carlos and Jorge Meléndez. The presidencies of Quiñónez and the Meléndez brothers from 1913 to 1927 are collectively known as the Meléndez–Quiñónez dynasty.
Quiñónez studied medicine and surgery at the University of El Salvador. He practiced medicine and served as an administrator of several Salvadoran hospitals from the late 1890s to early 1900s. He entered politics in 1899, becoming an alderman on the municipal council of San Salvador (El Salvador's capital city). He served as both mayor of San Salvador and an alternate member of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 1912. He was El Salvador's interior minister and war minister from 1913 to 1914. Quiñónez became provisional president of El Salvador in August 1914 while Carlos Meléndez (the incumbent president) ran in the 1915 presidential election; Carlos Meléndez won and appointed Quiñónez as vice president.
Quiñónez ran for president during the 1919 presidential election and established the Red League, a paramilitary organization, to attack and intimidate his political opponents. In December 1918, Quiñónez became provisional president after Carlos Meléndez resigned due to poor health; Quiñónez's assumption of the presidency made him ineligible to contest the presidential election. Quiñónez appointed Jorge Meléndez to run instead. He won and appointed Quiñónez as his vice president. Quiñónez ran for president again in 1923; he won with the Red League's help and assumed office on 1 March.
Quiñónez was succeeded as president in 1927 by Vice President Pío Romero Bosque, another brother-in-law. Through Romero, Quiñónez intended to rule El Salvador from behind the scenes, but Romero instead broke with the Meléndez–Quiñónez dynasty. Quiñónez left El Salvador for exile in France due to student protests against him and the Legislative Assembly reviewing the constitutionality of his appointment as the first presidential designate. Quiñónez backed a coup d'état against Romero in December 1927 which was unsuccessful. Quiñónez returned to El Salvador in 1936 and he died in San Salvador in 1950.