Background
Diego Portales Palazuelos was born on 16 June 1793 in Santiago.
Diego Portales Palazuelos was born on 16 June 1793 in Santiago.
Before entering politics, Portales had a business career of varying success. After overthrow of the Liberal government in the Battle of Lircay in April 1830, he dedicated himself to politics.
From April 1830 until his death, Portales held various cabinet positions in the governments of Presidents Tomas Ovallc and Manuel Bulnes Prieto, sometimes handling more than one portfolio at a time. For a while he was also governor of Valparaiso and commanding officer of the navy.
Portales was assassinated. Reviewing troops that were to confront the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia on which Chile had recently declared war, Portales was seized by the regiment Maipo and shot without trial.
He established a stable system of government in that country in the 1830s and took an active part in the writing of the Constitution.
Portales was largely responsible for establishing a centralized, presidential system of government in which the chief executive had great power, limited only by the right of Congress to pass the annual budgets and to have annual parliamentary authorization to maintain a standing army and navy. Witness to the success of Portales’ endeavors was the longevity of the 1833 Constitution and the fact that between 1830 and 1891 no successful effort was made to overthrow the government.
He established a political organization that became the Conservative Party, dedicated to bringing into existence, in Portales’ words, a government “obeyed, strong, respected and respectable, impersonal, superior to the parties and to the prestige of individuals.”
