Armando Calderón Sol was President of El Salvador from June 1, 1994 to June 1, 1999, representing the Nationalist Republican Alliance. He was the first president elected in El Salvador after twelve years of civil war. Born in San Salvador in 1948, Calderón attended the exclusive primary and secondary schoolColegio Externado San José, graduating in 1966. In 1977, Calderón received a graduate degree in Jurisprudence and Social Sciences from Universidad Nacional de El Salvador. He was a lawyer, a businessman, and one of the founders of ARENA. As mayor in San Salvador from 1988 to 1994 he built the Monument to "Hermano Lejano" at the end of the Comalapa Highway and Blvd. Los Proceres and also built the bust monuments along the Proceres Boulevard. He promoted physical exercise and initiated a cyclist's circuit in the San Jacinto neighbourhood on Avenida Cuba. When he ran for president in 1994 he won the presidential office during the runoff elections against the leftist candidate, Dr. Ruben Zamora from the CD-FMLN coalition. Calderón is acknowledged in the press for restoring the status-quo after the civil war, which ended on January 16, 1992. He advocated the privatization of state-owned telephone companies and pension funds to stimulate the economy and modernize the country's infrastructure. He is also known for having promoted reforms to make El Salvador competitive in the maquila industry, removing trade barriersacross the board, including removing protection for local agriculture. This had the unintended consequence of disrupting small scale farming, driving migration to larger cities and creating a cheaper labour supply for the maquilas. Calderón is also credited with the integration of former guerrillas combatants back into civilian life. He is also known for having initiated the privatization of the telecommunications companyANTEL, and the electrical works CAESS, public hospitals and pension funds. He followed president Alfredo Cristiani's neoliberal approach, and his structural adjustment programs. Calderón Sol died on 9 October 2017 at 00:15 a.m. of lung cancer at a Houston, Texas hospital at the age of 69.
