Andrés Rodríguez (politician)

Rodríguez died in New York City in 1997 after a long battle with cancer.

On June 20, 1992, Paraguay adopted a new constitution. It limited the president to a single five-year term, with no possibility of reelection. The ban on reelection retroactively applied to Rodríguez, even though he had promised that he would not run for a full term. Rodríguez called this provision evidence of a lack of confidence in his word, and boycotted the inauguration ceremony. Fears of a coup were only allayed when he signed the new constitution into law on June 22. He stepped down as president on August 15, 1992, the first Paraguayan president in decades to leave office at the end of his term. He was succeeded by Juan Carlos Wasmosy, who like Rodríguez was a member of the Colorado Party.

A couple of weeks following the coup, former interior minister Edgar Ynsfran, a former Stroessner ally who now sided with Rodríguez, told reporters that Rodríguez had begun planning the coup toward the end of December 1988.

Upon taking office, Rodríguez canceled most of Stroessner's most repressive measures, which came as a surprise given his previous closeness to Stroessner. He abolished the death penalty, freed political prisoners, and tried to imprison some leading members of the Stroessner government. He formally canceled the state of siege that had been in place for virtually all of Stroessner's rule; while it had nominally been repealed in 1987, its substance had remained in place in the form of draconian security laws and close restrictions on press freedom (opposition leaders had been arrested, and the Colorados had been the only party that had been allowed to campaign unmolested in the 1988 elections). He also welcomed back several longtime exiles.

However, relations between the two grew increasingly strained in the late 1980s. As the decade wore on, Rodríguez cultivated ties with the "traditionalists" in the long-dominant Colorado Party. This element of the party had supported Stroessner throughout his three-decade rule, but had come to favor a more humane way of governing. Matters came to a head in January 1989, when Stroessner relieved several generals of their commands and replaced them with men thought to be unquestionably loyal to him. Later that month, in what was viewed as a direct strike at Rodríguez, Stroessner closed all of the country's currency exchanges. On February 2, Stroessner summoned his former ally and gave him an ultimatum—either accept appointment as defense minister (which would have effectively been a demotion) or retire. It was reported that Rodríguez avoided the reunion (and attempted to quell rumors of him planning a coup) by faking a leg injury, going as far as having a fake cast put on one of his legs.

As provisional president, Rodríguez dissolved the Chamber of Deputies on February 9 under a provision in the 1967 constitution that allowed the president to dissolve the legislature if he felt it had acted in a manner that distorted the constitutional separation of powers. He issued a decree setting new elections in May, and announced that all non-Communist parties would be allowed to compete. He intended to use this as a tool to purge the militants. This was a remarkable turn in a country where the opposition had been barely tolerated for much of its history, particularly during Stroessner's rule. Indeed, at the time of the coup, the country had only known two years of pluralism in its entire history. A presidential election for the balance of Stroessner's term was also on the same day as the congressional elections. The constitution required new elections within 90 days of a president resigning less than two years into his term, with the winner serving the unexpired portion of the term. Rodríguez ran as the Colorado candidate and was elected with 76 percent of the vote in what was the closest thing the country had seen to a free and fair election up to that time.

Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti (June 19, 1924 – April 21, 1997) was a military officer and politician, being President of Paraguay from February 3, 1989, to August 15, 1992. He led the coup d'état on February 2 and 3, 1989, against the dictator Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda.