Background
Elías Lafertte Gaviño was born in Salamanca on 19 December 1886.
Elías Lafertte Gaviño was born in Salamanca on 19 December 1886.
He went to work at 11 years of age in the nitrate fields, became active in mutual benefit societies and other workers groups, and after the violent clash of nitrate strikers with soldiers in Iquique in 1907 became a convinced revolutionary.
In 1911 Lafertte first met Luis Emilio Recabarren Serrano. He soon became one of Recabarren’s principal lieutenants, working with him on periodicals in Iquique and Valparaiso, as well as in founding the Socialist Labor Party (PSO), and in the Labor Federation of Chile (FOCh), which after 1917 was led by Recabarren. He supported changing the PSO to the Communist Party in 1922.
In 1923 Lafertte was elected to the Executive Committee of the FOCh, and after Recabarren’s death at the end of 1924, he became its principal leader. In 1927 he was the Communist Party’s candidate for president, the only nominee to run against Colonel Carlos Ibanez del Campos, although he was then a prisoner on an island in the Pacific Ocean.
During the Ibanez regime, Lafertte spent a great deal of time in jail or in exile. After Ibanez’ overthrow, Lafertte worked to revive the FOCh. In 1932 he went to Montevideo fora Latin American Communist Trade Union Conference and to the Soviet Union for the first time.
Elias Lafertte was the Communist Party’s candidate for president in both the 1931 and 1932 elections. He received only a few thousand votes in either of them.
During the regime of President Arturo Alessandri Palma, which came to power in December 1932, Lafertte was again arrested and exiled. However, in congressional elections in 1937, he was elected to the Senate. He remained a member of that body most of the years until his death. From the late 1930s, he was also president of the Communist Party, although he had very little to do with determining the party’s policies.