Assassination of Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro

On April 30, 1933, Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro, then president of Peru, was assassinated while riding in his presidential convertible at the Santa Beatriz racetrack in Santa Beatriz, a neighbourhood of Lima, Peru. Sánchez Cerro was accompanied by Prime Minister José Matías Manzanilla, Chief of Military Staff Antonio Rodríguez Ramírez and his aide-de-camp, Major Eleazar Atencio, when he was fatally shot by APRA militant Abelardo Mendoza Leyva. Sánchez Cerro was rushed to the Italian Hospital where he was pronounced dead two hours later. Also killed in the attack was Mr. Rodríguez Pisco, a member of the Republican Guard who had attempted to protect the president.

Sánchez Cerro was immediately replaced by Óscar R. Benavides as president after he was elected by Congress. As head of the Revolutionary Union, his political party, he was replaced by Luis A. Flores. The assassination led to a diplomatic end of the ongoing armed conflict with Colombia, as Benavides met with President Alfonso López Pumarejo two weeks later, agreeing to cease hostilities and handing over the disputed area to a League of Nations delegation, ultimately signing the Rio Protocol in 1934.