Background
Eduardo Frei Montalva was born in Santiago on 16 January 1911.
government official politician president
Eduardo Frei Montalva was born in Santiago on 16 January 1911.
His years of university study largely coincided with those of the Carlos Ibanez del Campo dictatorship. Frei and his colleagues at the Catholic University were active in the National Association of Catholic Students (ANEC) and in “study circles” under the aegis of ANEC. He got his law degree in 1933.
Soon after graduation, Frei, as president of ANEC, attended an International Congress of Catholic University students in Rome, and he served as secretary general. Subsequently, he traveled to France and Belgium, where he made contact with a number of people of Christian Democrat orientation, and attended the classes of Jacques Maritain.
Frei and his friends entered the Conservative Party after the overthrow of Ibanez. They organized the National Movement of Conservative Youth. In April 1935 Frei moved to Iquique, to edit the most important daily newspaper of the city, El larapacd. In 1937 he ran for Congress, losing by only 60 votes in an area where candidates of the left were usually the victors.
The advanced social ideas of Eduardo Frei and other leaders of the Conser¬vative youth, which in 1936 took the name Falange Nacional, aroused the growing opposition of the Conservative Party leadership. After the presidential elections of 1938, the party sought to “reorganize” the Falange Nacional, to which the Falange responded by establishing a separate political party.
In 1941 Eduardo Frei was elected president of the Falange Nacional. He led it in supporting the candidacy of Radical Party leader Juan Antonio Rios Morales, after the death of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda. In May 1945 Frei was named minister of public works by President Rios. However, he resigned in January 1946, after a bloody clash between police and trade unionists in Plaza Bulnes in Santiago.
In 1949 Frei first won electoral office, as senator, after having on four occasions unsuccessfully sought election to the Chamber of Deputies. He remained in the Senate until his election to the presidency.
The Falange Nacional nominated Frei as prospective candidate of a left-center coalition in the 1952 elections. However, when he was rejected, the Falange supported Pedro Enrique Alfonso of the Radical Party.
In 1958 the Falange Nacional merged with two other small groups to establish the Christian Democratic Party. Eduardo Frei was its nominee in that year’s presidential election. He came in third, getting slightly more than 20 percent of the vote. In the next congressional election, the Christian Democratic Party became the country’s most voted party.
Eduardo Frei was nominated for president again by the Christian Democrats in 1964. His only serious competitor was Salvador Allende Gossens, the Socialist leader. This time Frei won, receiving over 56 percent of the popular votes.
In spite of considerable progress in a number of its programs, inflation which had developed during the two previous administrations continued under Frei. This, together with resentment at increased taxation, the presence of ex-President Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez as a candidate, and the attempt of the Christian Democrat nominee Radomiro Tomic to assume a far left position, brought defeat of the Christian Democrats in the 1970 election. Salvador Allende, the Socialist leader and nominee of the left-wing coalition. Popular Unity, won a narrow plurality. His election was confirmed later in Congress, with support of the Christian Democrats.
Eduardo Frei was once again elected to the Senate in March 1973 and became its president. He did not support the military coup of September 11, 1973, which overthrew the government of Allende, although he recognized it as virtually inevitable. Early in 1974 he strongly denounced the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. For the rest of his life Frei was the most prominent leader of the opposition to the dictatorship.