{"id":6941,"date":"2013-07-09T20:22:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T01:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fertur-travel.com\/blog\/?p=6941"},"modified":"2026-05-20T03:12:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:12:49","slug":"strange-story-from-peru-the-dictators-mistress-and-the-reluctant-bridegroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fertur-travel.com\/blog\/2013\/strange-story-from-peru-the-dictators-mistress-and-the-reluctant-bridegroom\/6941\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Story From Peru: The dictator’s mistress and the reluctant bridegroom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Peru is known as a country of superlatives. It contains the most and highest tropical glaciers and the deepest canyon in the world. The Inca formed the largest<\/em> and most<\/em> advanced pre-Columbian empire in the hemisphere. But Peru might just also hold title to the 20th century’s most bizarre shotgun wedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In September 1937, newspapers across the globe carried the story of Lewis Clarkson, an American business man who filed suit in a Washington D.C. divorce court seeking an annulment of his marriage to a Peruvian woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Peru's<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Clarkson claimed that 12 years earlier, he had been compelled to marry under threat of death by Peru’s former dictatorial president, Augusto B. Legu\u00ad\u00eda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bride \u2014  a young widow named Mercedes de la Quintana \u2014 was Legu\u00ad\u00eda’s very pregnant mistress, Clarkson contended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In court, Clarkson’s counsel related an astonishing story of an armed guard escorting Clarkson to the church, with revolvers pressed against his back, and threats of accidental death whispered in his ear,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Clarkson said that his previous relations with Se\u00f1ora Mercedes de la Quintana, the woman in question, had been wholly innocent, and that their relations after marriage had been wholly platonic,” the Morning Herald reported. “During their married life, he said, she had had several children, apparently by Legu\u00ad\u00eda, which Legu\u00ad\u00eda had compelled Clarkson to register as his own.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quintana was “known to be involved in Peruvian political intrigues and to be supported by various prominent government officials, including the then-president of the Republic,\u201d reported The Associated Press, quoting Clarkson’s court filing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The news stories offered conflicting versions of how Clarkson escaped Peru and returned to the United States. Legu\u00ed\u00ada was deposed in 1930 and died in a naval prison two years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarkson reportedly filed for the annulment when his “wife” came to the United States and looked him up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether Clarkson’s tale was a true accounting or a ruse is something of a mystery. Legu\u00eda was known to have maintained relationships with a variety of mistresses during his time in Peru’s Government Palace. But besides the press coverage in September 1937, there is no mention of either Quintana nor Clarkson in subsequent articles about the fallen dictator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peru Shotgun Wedding Postscript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Lewis
#image_title<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After I first wrote about Lewis Clarkson\u2019s extraordinary claim of being forced into marriage at revolver-point by President Augusto B. Legu\u00eda, the story caught the attention of U.S. historian Daniel Buck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on court records, passenger lists, census data and contemporary newspaper reports, Buck painstakingly reconstructed Clarkson\u2019s life and revealed him to be a serial bigamist and inveterate fabulist whose trail of abandoned spouses and aliases stretched from Brooklyn to Peru, Mexico, Guatemala and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buck\u2019s article, \u201cPresident Legu\u00eda and the Brooklyn Bounder,\u201d published in Andean Air Mail & Peruvian Times, shows how Clarkson\u2019s dramatic tale of political intrigue and a dictator\u2019s mistress fit neatly into a long pattern of self-serving reinvention, rather than standing as a singularly bizarre episode in Peruvian history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read his full account here: President Legu\u00eda and the Brooklyn Bounder.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Original Wire Dispatch: Charges Dictator Forced Marriage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Given Choice Between Wife Or Death, American Says<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

_____________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington, Sept. 15, 1937 (AP) \u2014 Charges that a former Peruvian dictator forced him to marry a South American se\u00f1orita \u2014 or else be “accidentally” shot \u2014 were aired in an annulment petition by Lewis M. Clarkson, former American commercial representative in Lima, Peru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the dictator-president was Augusto B. Legu\u00ed\u00ada, who fled the country during a revolution in 1930, was captured and died in 1932, and that Legu\u00ed\u00ada compelled him to marry Mercedes de la Quintana Viuda de Ludewig 11 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman, he said, was “known to be involved in Peruvian political intrigues and to be supported by various prominent government officials, including the then-president of the Republic.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1925, Clarkson declared, a representative of President Legu\u00ed\u00ada called him to the executive mansion, informed him that the woman was going to have a child, and threatened him with “accidental” death unless he married her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarkson said he had never been intimate with the woman and that she bore a child two months after they were married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He escaped from Peru, he said, in November, 1926, when he persuaded the dictator-president to let him leave the country on the pretext of going to enlist the aid of the United States in a Peruvian-Bolivian boundary dispute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

_________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peru is known as a country of superlatives. It contains the most and highest tropical glaciers and the deepest canyon in the world. The Inca formed the largest and most advanced pre-Columbian empire in the hemisphere. But Peru might just also hold title to the 20th century’s most bizarre shotgun wedding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,294,36],"tags":[543,544],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-6941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-nostalgia","category-prominent-peruvians","tag-augusto-b-leguia","tag-strange-tales","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t