Background
Arturo Alessandri Palma was born on 20 December, 1869 in Longaví, Chile.
Arturo Alessandri Palma was born on 20 December, 1869 in Longaví, Chile.
He received his law degree in 1893.
Alessandri was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1897 and continued to serve there until 1915. He also practiced law and dabbled in speculation in the nitrate industry, making and losing several small fortunes. As a deputy, he was particularly adept at manipulating the parliamentary system in an attempt to bring about the overthrow of the incumbent cabinet. He himself served short periods as a minister and in 1918 headed a short-lived cabinet as minister of the interior.
Alessandri first gained national popularity in 1915, when elected senator from the nitrate Province of Tarapaca, defeating the entrenched boss of the province, Arturo del Rio. That victory marked him as a potential presidential candidate.
In 1920 Alessandri was the nominee of the Liberal Alliance, which included the Radical Party, a major faction of Liberals, and most of the Democratic Party. The contest was so close that it was submitted to a "Tribunal of Honor” of Congress, which finally conceded victory to Alessandri.
Although elected senator from Tarapaca again in 1926, Alessandri soon resigned and went into exile in Europe, where he remained until the overthrow of Ibanez in 1931. Soon after his return, Alessandri was nominated for president by the Democratic Party but was defeated in the 1931 election by Juan Esteban Montero. After the short-lived Montero regime and the 100-day Socialist Republic, new elections were called at the end of 1932. Arturo Alessandri was victorious.
For a few years after leaving the presidency, Alessandri was the butt of violent antipathy from the left. However, even in the 1942 elections made necessary by the death of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Alessandri’s role was decisive. He led a group of Liberals who repudiated their party’s support of ex-dictator Ibáñez and backed Juan Antonio Rios Morales, which gave Rios the margin of victory.
In 1944 Alessandri was again elected to the Senate and a year later became its president. In 1946, following the death of President Rios, Alessandri was named Liberal Party candidate for president but ceded this place to his son, Fernando Alessandri Rodriguez. When no candidate won a majority, Arturo Alessandri negotiated for the Liberals to throw Liberal support in Congress behind Radical nominee Gabriel González Videla, in return for three places in his cabinet.
Arturo Alessandri’s last exercise of political influence came in April 1947 when, after a disastrous showing of the Liberals in municipal elections, he successfully urged withdrawal of the Liberals from the cabinet. This facilitated President González Videla’s reorganization of his cabinet, dropping three Communist ministers who had until then shared posts with the Liberals and Radicals.
While at the university, he was active in the Liberal Party, and was aligned with the faction opposed to President José Manuel Balmaceda, and edited an anti-Balmaceda periodical. La Justicia. In later years Alessandri was to regret his support of Balmaceda’s opponents in the 1891 civil war.