Gabriel González Videla

Gabriel González Videla

Gabriel González Videla (born November 22, 1898 in La Serena , † August 22, 1980 in Santiago de Chile ) was a Chilean politician . He served as president of his country from 1946 to 1952 .

Life

Gabriel González Videla was born as the oldest of 18 children. After leaving school, he studied law at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago until 1922 . He then returned to his hometown of La Serena, where he became involved in local politics for the Radical Party and worked as a lawyer. In 1926 he stood against the military rule of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo . From 1932 he was chairman of his party. He represented his home constituency in the Chilean parliament from 1937 to 1941. When his party co-founded the Frente Popular , González was elected chairman of this alliance.

The Chilean President Pedro Aguirre Cerda sent him in 1939 as an envoy to Europe to represent Chile in France , Belgium and Luxembourg . He arrived in Europe on September 1, 1939, the day World War II broke out. In addition to his diplomatic work in Paris, González took the opportunity to study economics at the Sorbonne .

After his return to Chile, he ran against Juan Antonio Ríos for the presidential candidacy, but was defeated and was sent as ambassador to Brazil by Ríos, who then clearly won the presidential elections of 1942 . In 1944 he asked to be dismissed from this post in order to return to political activity in Chile. The following year he was elected to the Senate for the Tarapacá and Antofagasta region and represented (with others) his country in San Francisco at the establishment of the United Nations .

After President Ríos' death in June 1946, González was run by his Radical Party as a presidential candidate; The party alliance Alianza Democrática made up of radicals , communists and democrats , for which González had vehemently advocated continuation within the party, also supported his application. The poet and communist senator Pablo Neruda , who was to become one of his harshest critics in the following years, was among the supporters.

In the presidential elections on September 4, 1946, there were three other candidates in addition to González: the conservative Cruz Coke , the liberal Fernando Alessandri and the socialist Bernardo Ibáñez . González won clearly (10% ahead of Cruz Coke) with 40.1% of the vote. However, since he was unable to achieve an absolute majority , he had to be confirmed by Congress as President in accordance with the Chilean constitution and for the first time in the history of this constitution. González succeeded in making various concessions to skeptical MPs to get the factions of both the Communists and the Liberals on his side. Only the MPs of the Conservative faction of the defeated Cruz Coke voted unanimously against him.

González took office on November 3, 1946. His first cabinet included radicals, liberal and independent ministers as well as representatives of the Communist Party. Since the representatives of these ideologically sometimes extremely distant political currents tried above all to enforce clientele interests, government work was strained from the start. There was a particular dispute over the role of the state in economic policy. Some radicals and liberals left the government to protest against the communist-backed trade union movement. When in July 1947 public transport workers in Santiago, with the support of the communists, went on strike against government policy, there was a definitive break: González rearranged his cabinet and bypassed the communists. Then, with their help, the strikes extended to the copper and phosphate mines.

González's government made a few attempts at mediation, but at the same time intensified the fight against the protesting workers. González appointed an officer to be Minister of the Interior and took tough military action against strikers. Special laws were passed that allowed communists and union officials to be locked up in detention centers.

The worsening bloc confrontation between the Western victorious powers of World War II and the Soviet Union after the Berlin crisis now also had an impact on Chilean domestic politics. González was clearly on the side of the US on this issue . In 1947 he signed the Inter-American Treaty of Mutual Assistance and in 1948 co-founded the Organization of American States . Under pressure from the US government, González broke off diplomatic relations with the states of the Soviet sphere of influence, whose embassies were suspected of actively supporting the Chilean communists and their strikes.

In 1948 he convened a "Cabinet of National Concentration" in which the Conservatives were now also involved. On September 3, 1948, this government passed the controversial “Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy” ( Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia ), popularly known as “ Ley Maldita ” (“Damned Law”). Through this, the Communist Party was banned, its functionaries removed from mandates and public offices, and its supporters deleted from the electoral register. In Pisagua , in one of the most inhospitable and remote regions of Chile on the edge of the Atacama Desert , a concentration camp was set up for arrested communists and other political prisoners. This camp was temporarily commanded by the officer at the time, Augusto Pinochet , who reactivated it 25 years later after his military coup in 1973.

Monument to Gabriel González Videla in La Serena, Chile.

The hard line towards the left has been accompanied by some concessions in social policy. Laws on continued payment of wages and protection against dismissal were passed and rents were limited. In May 1949 women's suffrage came into force in Chile.

In terms of foreign policy, González reinforced the Chilean territorial claim to part of the Antarctic by having a military base built there in 1948 . Today the Chilean González Videla Antarctic Station is named in his honor.

1952 ended his term of office; in the elections of September 4, 1952, Carlos Ibáñez del Campo was elected to succeed Gabriel González Videla. Nevertheless, González remained active in political life: in 1962 he took over the chairmanship of the Frente Democrático , with which he fought against the spread of communism in Chile and Latin America. Consequently, after more than forty years, he left the Radical Party when, in August 1971, it was considering joining the government of the Unidad Popular under the socialist Salvador Allende . 1973 after the coup the military under Augusto Pinochet González was Vice President of the State Council ( Consejo de Estado ) and worked with while working out of the 1980 Constitution, which should legitimize the military regime constitutionally.

Gabriel González Videla died on August 22, 1980 after a heart attack.

See also

• History of Chile

literature

• Gabriel Gonzalez Videla , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 14/1981 of March 23, 1981, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Gabriel González Videla  - Collection of images, videos and audio files