Armando Calderón Sol

Armando Calderón Sol (24 June 1948 – 9 October 2017) was a Salvadoran politician, lawyer, and businessman who served as President of El Salvador from 1994 to 1999 as a member of the Nationalist Republican Alliance. He also served as Mayor of San Salvador, the country's capital city, from 1988 to 1994. He was El Salvador's first president elected after the end of the Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992).

Calderón Sol studied at the University of El Salvador and became a lawyer. He became politically active in 1979 as a member of the Salvadoran Nationalist Movement (MNS) with which he allegedly had links to far-right death squads. In 1981, he was a founding member of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and served on its National Executive Council (COENA). He served as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1994, Calderón Sol was both the mayor of San Salvador and the leader of ARENA.

Calderón Sol won the 1994 presidential election in the second round with over 68% of the vote. During his presidency, he focused on privatizing government owned industry, criminal justice reform, and leading El Salvador in its post-civil war transition period. His government received criticism for a controversial increase of the value-added tax in 1995 and for facing violence from civil war veterans dissatisfied with the terms of the Chapultepec Peace Accords, which Calderón Sol helped negotiate as mayor of San Salvador. He remained active in politics after he left the presidency. Calderón Sol died in Houston, Texas, United States in 2017 to lung cancer and he was buried in San Salvador.