CARRERA, Rafael. — President of the Republic of Guatemala, b. in Guatemala on 24 Oct. 1814, d. there on 14 Apr. 1865. Son of an Indian and a Negro, he received no education and at first worked as a cattle-keeper. In 1838, having placed himself at the head of the rebels, he besieged and captured Guatemala City. In 1847 he had himself elected President of the Republic, which he declared independent, an act that definitively brought to an end the United States of Central America. C. succeeded in winning the sympathy of England and acted as mediator in the conflict that had arisen between the President of Honduras, Guardiola, and the ecclesiastical authority. In 1854 he was elected President for life. He readmitted the Jesuits into Guatemala, from which they had been banished almost a century earlier, and on 7 Oct. 1852 concluded with the Holy See a very favourable concordat by which Catholicism was declared the State religion.
CARRERA, RAFAEL
Bibl.: Anon., s. V. ENOCH. Eur. Aul., X, pp. 1325-26; H. Bancroft, History of Central America, III, San Francisco 1886, passim; J. Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte der neuesten Zeit, II, Munich 1934, p. 154. The text of the concordat is in Raccolta di concordati su materie ecclesiastiche tra la S. Sede e le autorità civili, ed. A. Mercati, Rome 1919, pp. 810-11. Silvio Furlani