Jaime Roldós Aguilera

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Jaime Roldós Aguilera (b. November 5, 1940 in Guayaquil, Ecuador - d. May 24, 1981) was President of Ecuador from 10 August 1979 to 24 May 1981. He was a reformer, and was threatened more than once by personal enemies. Roldos and his wife founded the People, Change and Democracy Party or Partido Pueblo, Cambio y Democracia in Spanish. He was President during a brief military encounter with Peru in 1981. He died in an airplane crash later in 1981 when his Air Force plane (variously identified as either a Beechcraft King Air or an Avro turboprop) crashed in heavy rain near the Peruvian border. All eight other passengers and crew died as well.

Many Ecuadorians claimed that Roldós' death was actually an assassination carried out by the United States. American businessman John Perkins alleges in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man that Roldós was assassinated by a bomb located in a tape recorder in order to serve American interests in Ecuadorian oil prospects (Perkins originally claimed Roldós died in a helicopter crash; this has since been corrected). Roldós died just months before Panamanian head-of-state Omar Torrijos also died in a plane crash. Other Ecuadorians believed that Roldós had been killed by the Peruvian government.

The Ecuadorian Roldosist Party is named after him. Roldos was succeeded as President by Osvaldo Hurtado.

[edit] References

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004. See pages 156-157 regarding Roldós's alleged assassination.