Quintín Quevedo Ferrari (31 October 1825 – 24 August 1876) was a Bolivian military officer who rose to prominence after aiding Mariano Melgarejo in the overthrow of President José María de Achá in 1864.

Said alliance became effective with the Chilean occupation of Antofagasta and the Bolivian Litoral Department, leading to the War of the Pacific.

After the overthrow of Melgarejo, Quevedo would relentlessly conspire against the governments of Agustín Morales, Adolfo Ballivián, and Tomás Frías.

However, much like Quevedo's earlier expedition to Cobija, his rebellion in 1875 greatly affected Bolivian politics, as only a few months later revolts broke out throughout the country, even resulting in the burning of the Government Palace that same year.

The fractured and weak state of the country and its government allowed for Hilarión Daza's coup in 1876 to easily succeed.

Without a doubt, Quevedo played a crucial role in Bolivian history, affecting so much of the nation's destiny in a period of only four years.

His father had supported the patriot cause in Upper Peru during the Spanish American wars of independence, leading to his exile to the Argentine Republic.

Velasco would reward Quevedo with the rank of lieutenant colonel[2] and allowed him to create El Independiente, a newspaper based in Cochabamba.

However, Linares triumphed and Quevedo gave the purchased equipment to the new government, opting to withdraw to private life and continuing his mercantile enterprise.

Linares, however, had been informed by his secret police of the invasion and was able to crush the insurrection in Sucre and then have Quevedo captured in the fields of Yaro.

[11] He remained in exile until José María de Achá overthrew the government in 1861, whereupon Quevedo was allowed to return.

[12] A triumvirate was established in the wake of the revolutionary triumph, and it was composed of Achá, Ruperto Fernández, and General Manuel Antonio Sánchez.

The newly appointed head of state sent Quevedo as Prefect and military governor or Beni,[2] a position he held until 1864.

In a long speech that Quevedo published that year, he declared himself a lover of peace and order who believed that the Constitutionalists were all charlatans and liars.

[17] Quevedo was made Prefect of Cochabamba in 1870 and was elected Senator for the Department of Tarata, having held the presidency of the National Congress that had met in Oruro that year.

[16] After the fall of Melgarejo, on January 15, 1871, Quevedo, one of the favorites of the infamous caudillo, emigrated again to Peru and then moved to Chile, where he began to conspire tirelessly.

In Valparaíso, he embarked on the steamer Tomé, carrying 104 mercenaries hired to make a revolution and several boxes of ammunition, weapons, and military uniforms, which were seized by the mayor of the city.

He left Valparaíso aboard the steamer Paquete de los Vilos on August 1, 1872, leading 180 men, Chileans and Bolivians, well armed and equipped.

This faction hoped to retake the lands which had been repatriated to its previous owners, seized by the government of Melgarejo and bestowed to his loyal allies.

[30] On August 21, 1873, the signing of the boundary treaty with Chile was announced as government legislature, one which Quevedo, alongside the majority of the Chamber of Deputies, approved.

Although Quevedo had been defeated in the elections of 1873, he did not surrender his aspirations of occupying the Palacio Quemado and continued conspiring to take power by any means, plotting with even more tenacity.

Joining his contender, Casimiro Corral, he organized an army of thousand two hundred men, having left La Paz on the morning of January 10, 1875.

[32] Quevedo stationed his army at the ranch of Chacoma, a place that was dominated by a gentle slope in the direction of Calamarca, exactly where Frias was coming from.

Their projectiles fell two meters in front of the government army’s line, which, throwing a general hurrah, continued marching forward.

He continued even after the combat began to harden, and with his two ministers, Mariano Baptista and Daniel Calvo, refused to withdraw to the reserves.

The fighting of the government troops was so ferocious that, after sustaining a 25-minute fire, they found the rebel forces completely dispersed and defeated.

With the coup d'état of General Hilarión Daza, Quevedo "felt discarded from the political scene and he dies as he was born, ostracized, far from the land of his parents and his home, the beautiful Cochabamba".

His excessive ambition for power and bad luck in his revolutionary enterprises took a toll on him, leading to the poor health which ended his life.

By supreme decree, promulgated on November 21, 1878,[36] his remains were repatriated from the city of Puno to Cochabamba, arriving in La Paz on December 9 of the same year, where a military funeral with full honors, corresponding to his rank, was held.