Jorge Alessandri

format_list_bulleted Contenido keyboard_arrow_down

ImprimirCitar

Jorge Eduardo Alessandri Rodríguez (Santiago, Chile, May 19, 1896 - ibid, August 31, 1986) was an engineer, politician, businessman, and union leader. Chilean, member of a family of prominent public figures. He served as President of the Republic —being the last one born in the 19th century— during the period between 1958 and 1964.

From a very young age he had an early public figure, always presenting himself as an independent candidate. Between 1926 and 1930 he was elected deputy for Santiago, to later be president of the Caja de Crédito Hipotecario (CCH) between 1932 and 1938. After the triumph of Pedro Aguirre Cerda he dedicated himself to business activity as president of the Paper Manufacturing Company and Cartons (CMPC).

During the government of Gabriel González Videla, between 1947 and 1950, he was appointed as Minister of Finance, but after an acute political and social crisis he had to leave the cabinet and returned to his business and union functions as president of the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC), the highest business organization in the country.

His figure rose strongly after the weakening of the right-wing parties and the initial success of ibañismo in 1952. Thus, Alessandri, although always linked to his independent tendency, became an important figure within the opposition. In May 1957 he was elected senator for Santiago and in 1958 he was elected president of the Republic, with the support of the Liberal Party (PL) and the Conservative Party (PCon), ending —after twenty years— the political predominance of the center and the left.

During his government, he applied an active economic and social program and faced the effects of the 1960 earthquake. Despite this difficulty, he supported the holding of the 1962 World Cup, which gave a strong boost to the nascent television, a communication medium which he fervently encouraged. At the international level, he aligned himself with the United States, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and applied some of the reforms promoted by the Alliance for Progress, such as a limited Agrarian Reform through Law No. 15,020 promulgated in 1962..

After a short stage of economic prosperity characterized by its inflation control policy that included replacing the peso with the escudo and fixing the exchange rate, a period of financial crisis began that forced the devaluation of the currency in 1961, which caused a great social upheaval against the measures imposed by his government.

At the end of his term he returned to his business functions. However, in 1970, the right grouped in the National Party (PN) since 1966, raised him again as a presidential candidate, an election in which he came second, behind the socialist Salvador Allende.

After the military coup of 1973, he collaborated with the Military Government Junta as a member of the Council of State, whose role was decisive in the elaboration of the Political Constitution of 1980. From then on, he returned to private life and to the presidency of the Paper and Cardboard Manufacturing Company until his death from a stroke in 1986.

Youth and studies

Jorge Alessandri (on foot) and his father Arthur in 1920

He was born on May 19, 1896 in Santiago, Chile. Son of Arturo Alessandri Palma, twice President of the Republic (1920-1925, 1932-1938), and Rosa Ester Rodríguez Velasco, being the second of eight siblings, among them the jurist Arturo, and the deputies and senators; Eduardo and Fernando.

He completed his school education at the National Institute. After finishing his secondary education, he entered the Engineering School of the University of Chile, where he graduated as a civil engineer in 1919. He accompanied his father in times of persecution and exile. In the workplace, he was a professor of the chair & # 34; resistance of materials & # 34; in the School of Civil Engineering of his house of studies. In addition, he worked in the Directorate of Public Works (DOP) of the Ministry of Public Works and as an engineer in the Inspection Department of the State Railway Company (EFE), a position he resigned in April 1926. In 1931, he was in charge of the Municipal Paving Department of Santiago.

From that same year, he joined the private company and was president of the Caja Hipotecaria. Also, he was an engineer at the Sociedad de Quinteros and manager of the Lebu Carboniferous Company. He was head of welfare and since 1939, president of the Paper and Cardboard Manufacturing Company (CMPC). In addition, he chaired the National Distribution Center (CENADI), was director of the Viña del Mar Sugar Refinery Company (CRAV), and directed the Central Chamber of Commerce and the Pizarreño Industrial Society. To this, he adds the vice presidency of Banco Sud Americano, the presidency of the FC Llano de Maipo Society and the presidency of the Saltpeter and Iodine Sales Corporation (COVENSA).

Political career

His first participation in active politics was in 1925, at the age of twenty-nine, when he was elected as an independent deputy in the parliamentary elections of that year for the Seventh Departmental Circumscription of Santiago, for the legislative period between 1926 and 1930 He was a member of the Permanent Commission of Roads and Public Works and was the author of the laws that allowed the paving of Santiago, establishing a regulatory plan that limited the urban radius of the capital.

Because of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo's enmity with his father, Jorge Alessandri was imprisoned in 1927, before being sent into exile with a large part of his family. He returned in 1931 after the fall of the Ibáñez regime. The following year he was appointed by interim president Juan Esteban Montero president of the Caja de Crédito Hipotecario, although he resigned when Carlos Dávila took power after a coup. After his father's return to La Moneda, he was reinstated in office, which he held until 1938.

After serving in the National Congress, he retired from public life and dedicated himself to private business, becoming president of the Puente Alto Paper and Cardboard Manufacturing Company (CMPC).

In 1944 he was elected president of the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC), a position he had to leave in 1947, due to his re-entry into the political arena. That year, during the presidency of Gabriel González Videla, specifically the August 2, he served as Minister of Finance, managing to control the problem of inflation, which fell from 37% to 17%, through salary cuts, although this produced social unrest that brought down the cabinet in 1950, the same year when he resumed as president of the CPC. He left the title of the ministry on February 7, 1950.

Even though he jealously guarded his political independence, he became one of the leading figures with whom the center-right identifies. In the parliamentary elections of 1957 he was elected senator for the Fourth Provincial Group of Santiago, period 1957-1965.

A candidate in the 1958 presidential election, he presented himself under the image of an apolitical and independent figure, although supported by the United Conservative and Liberal parties, as well as other minor sectors. He won the elections with 31.2% of the votes (389,909), his triumph being ratified in the full congress thanks to the radical support, for which he assumed the presidency on November 3, 1958. Upon taking office, he had to leave the parliamentary seat, being replaced in the Senate on March 11, 1959, by Roberto Wachholtz Araya.

Presidency (1958-1964)

Alessandri, accompanied by high authorities, on the way to the cathedral.

He maintained that Chile, to overcome underdevelopment, only needed good administration. He was president of Chile from 1958 to 1964.

This would be the «management for Chile», in the style of the private sector. And following this idea, he surrounded himself with a technical team made up of lawyers (Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Interior), engineers (Public Works) and doctors (Public Health and Social Welfare). He would govern with the right, which had been away from power for twenty years, throughout his six-year term.

Ministers

Main article: Annex:Gabinetes ministeriales del gobierno de Jorge Alessandri

First steps

The first few years were successful; Management seemed to be the solution to Chile's problems: Alessandri ordered public spending, reorganized budgets, and began a vast plan of public works and housing construction. For the latter, it encouraged private investment by creating SINAP (National Savings and Loan System) and affordable housing, which stimulated the purchase of houses for the middle and upper class, and for the popular sectors the state, through the Corporation of Housing (Corvi), created 80,000 house-rooms. He promoted the modernization of the country, especially in terms of transportation and telecommunications, to host the 1962 Soccer World Cup, which he inaugurated at the National Stadium in Santiago —whose construction was ordered by his father.

The currency was changed from peso to escudo and the dollar was fixed, which served to control inflation. Likewise, he applied a tax reform in 1963, created the Agricultural Trade Company (ECA) and notably promoted fishing and related industries.

But its initial economic successes did not have a parallel action in the bureaucratic field, and there was no desire to renew the institutionality created in previous governments.

1960 earthquake

Main article: Valdivia Earthquake, 1960

The bad times began in 1960. On May 21, while Alessandri read his annual account at the hands of the nation before the full congress, a series of earthquakes shook the country and, the next day, at 3:00 p.m., a An even more devastating earthquake accompanied by tidal waves destroyed the southern part of the country.

The repair would cost $422 million. The United States government promised financial aid, but after the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy it was announced that the aid would not be delivered directly but through the Alliance for Progress program.

As a consequence of the 1961 parliamentary elections and the decrease in the number of right-wing parliamentarians who supported him, Alessandri lost the possibility of vetoing the laws that Congress could approve with the votes of his opponents (the Christian Democrats and the Frap), for which he was forced to agree with the Radical Party and reform his technocratic cabinet, replacing it with a much more political one. Even so, he was still at a disadvantage in Parliament.

He integrated Chile into the Alliance for Progress, which called for structural reforms from the countries that required this help, including agrarian reform, for which in 1962 he promulgated the first law of this kind. Said law, which was limited to distributing state-owned land to peasants and was colloquially known as the flowerpot reform, implied the creation of the Agrarian Reform Corporation (Cora) and the Development Institute Agriculture (Indap).

In 1963, Alessandri was involved in the controversy unleashed around the case of the Jackal of Nahueltoro, a rehabilitated murderer who had won the appreciation of public opinion, since he was requested to be pardoned to Thus freeing him from capital punishment, but the president refused, which increased his unpopularity among the most liberal sectors of Chilean society at the time.

Foreign Policy

Alessandri with his Argentine pair Arturo Frondizi (1961).

In the international order, Alessandri had to face border conflicts with Argentina (Palena area) and with Bolivia (use of the waters of the Lauca river). Chile adhered to the Montevideo Treaty and became part of the Latin American Free Trade Association (Alalc) in 1960.

Likewise, his government formulated a policy for the reduction of arms in Latin America, and another aimed at declaring the continent a denuclearized zone; he established diplomatic relations with the newly independent states of Africa and Asia; and in compliance with a majority agreement of the Organization of American States (OAS), he broke diplomatic relations with the government of Cuba, in 1964.

He made an official visit to the United States and several Latin American countries.

In 1959, he received visits from the Duchess of Kent Marina of Greece and her daughter, Princess Alexandra of Kent; Israel's Foreign Minister, Golda Meir, and France's Minister of Cultural Affairs, André Malraux. During his tenure, he received visits from various world political leaders, such as Presidents Dwight Eisenhower (United States), Arturo Frondizi (Argentina), João Goulart (Brazil), Heinrich Lübke (Federal Germany), Adolfo López Mateos (Mexico), Charles de Gaulle (France), Marshal Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia), Nobusuke Kishi (Japan), the Duke of Edinburgh and the American politician Adlai Stevenson, among other world leaders.

End of term

Alessandri, together with President John F. Kennedy (1962).

At the end of his government, Alessandri proposed constitutional reforms to the National Congress. He no longer thought he was "management"; of Chile the salvation of the country, he now he spoke of the fact that Chile needed a structural change, which the à la carte reform pursued.

But this idea was rejected by the Radical Party, which feared that the re-election of the president would be included in the reform discussion, boycotting the path of its own candidate, Julio Durán. These reforms included the power of the president to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and call elections only once during his term, leaving the Chamber of Deputies as the sole oversight unit, and integrating parliament with designated senators and former presidents.

Public life after his government

1970 Presidential Election

On November 3, 1965, a letter was published in the press, backed by 900 signatures, in which they addressed Alessandri to analyze the general reality and highlight his public action, thus beginning his second presidential candidacy.

Publishing in the press in September 1968, a Manifesto to the country —signed by Guillermo Feliú Cruz, historian; Hugo Gálvez Gajardo, former minister; Adolfo Silva Henríquez, farmer; Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz, university leader; Eduardo Boetsch García-Huidobro, engineer; and Jorge Délano Frederick, a journalist—requested membership to promote Jorge Alessandri's presidential candidacy. Part of the writers of said manifesto would later create the Alessandrista Independent Movement (MIA), which would serve as support for his presidential campaign.

Jorge Alessandri campaign emblem in 1970, formed by the letters A and V (“Alessandri will return”).

Although Alessandri kept out of public activity, he remained continuously interested in his course. «I have perceived, thus necessarily, the growing rumor of the tide of discontent, hopelessness and restlessness, inevitable products of the just aspirations awakened but unsatisfied».

Alessandri ran for high office again in the presidential election of September 4, 1970, and during his campaign he did not appear in the first two episodes that corresponded to his candidacy on the political program Decision 70 from TVN, being screened a feature film in his replacement. In addition, in one of the episodes corresponding to his candidacy, Alessandri was shown visibly tired (product of a tour carried out through the provinces of Atacama and Coquimbo) and with a tremor of hands when holding objects in the air; these facts generated the postulate of his opponents that Alessandri would be at a very advanced age to be able to govern. The presidential election gave the following results: Salvador Allende: 36.6%, Alessandri: 34.9% and Radomiro Tomić: 27.8%. The confidence of the Alessandristas turned into fear of a socialist government, while the Allendistas and even several Christian Democrats took to the streets to express their joy.

As no one obtained the required majority, it was the National Congress that, according to the Constitution of that time, had to determine the winner. The vote, in which 195 parliamentarians participated, took place on October 24; the recount was announced by the secretary of the Chamber of Deputies, Pelagio Figueroa: Salvador Allende, 153 votes; Jorge Alessandri, 35; blank, 7.

Role of Alessandri in the military dictatorship and last years

Plaque in the building where Alessandri lived, on the side of the Plaza de Armas.

After the coup d'état that overthrew Allende, he collaborated with the military dictatorship in the Council of State, which would intervene in the final form of the draft new constitution initiated by the Ortúzar Commission.

Alessandri resigned from the Council of State on August 12, 1980, after the Governing Board approved a text on the 8th of the same month in which more than half of what he had written had been deleted, modifying the text of the aforementioned commission; the new constitution was ratified in a plebiscite the following month, which has been questioned about its legitimacy due to the non-existence of electoral records.

Subsequently, Jorge Alessandri retired to private life, holding the position of president of Empresas CMPC until his death.

He died at the Military Hospital of Santiago on August 31, 1986 at 9:30 p.m. (local time), due to septic shock. At the time of his death, he had had left hemiplegia for 3 years.

After the return to democracy and the reopening of the National Congress, Law 19013, published on December 17, 1990, authorized the erection of two monuments in his memory in the cities of Santiago and Valparaíso.

Personal life

For several decades he lived in a 220 m² apartment located on the fourth floor of the building on Paseo Phillips in the Plaza de Armas. During his term as president, Alessandri used to walk every morning without escorts from his residence to the Palacio de La Moneda, located a few blocks away.

Alessandri remained single throughout his life, and except for alleged affairs that he would have had with the wife of a businessman and with Laura Allende (Salvador Allende's sister), in addition to the rumors that linked him to the actress Silvia Piñeiro, He had no known partner. This circumstance fueled rumors about his sexual orientation, an issue that was taken advantage of by his political adversaries, with greater force during the 1970 presidential election campaign; Thus, Alessandri's alleged homosexuality was alluded to both in public rallies —through chants such as "A Alessandri cuando guagua se le diretor el paragua"—, as well as in left-wing newspapers, particularly in the newspaper Clarín, who referred to him indirectly as "the Lady." Alessandri never referred to the rumors, which according to Alberto Gamboa "was an intelligent position, because he did not give rise to permanent discussions and trouble."

Distinctions and decorations

Escudo de Jorge Alessandri como Caballero de la Orden de Isabel la Católica (Spain).

National Awards

Grand Master of the Order of Bernard O'Higgins (ChileChile, 1958-1964).
Grand Master of the Order to Merit of Chile (ChileChile, 1958-1964).
As an engineering student at the University of Chile, he received the Eliodoro Gormaz Award for having had the highest qualifications throughout the career. He was an academic member of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
Declared “illustre son” and distinguished with the Antofagasta Golden Anchor (1963).