Justo Rufino Barrios, Guatemalan president from 1873 to 1885, is an ardent exponent of a Central American union, urging in 1882 that the old federation be revived.
In 1885, when political means fail to produce results, he declares himself the Union’s ruler and marches his army into El Salvador, where he is defeated and killed at the Battle of Chalchuapa (April 2).
