Juan Antonio Rios Morales

Juan Antonio Rios

Juan Antonio Ríos Morales (born November 10, 1888 on the Huichicura estate near Cañete , † June 27, 1946 in Paidahue) was a Chilean politician . From 1942 to 1946 he was President of his country.

Life

Juan Antonio Ríos was born the youngest of four children from the third marriage of his father, a landowner. He attended the school in his hometown and then studied at the college in Concepción , which he left in 1914 as a lawyer.

He was enthusiastic about the ideas of the Radical Party early on and soon took over the leadership of its youth organization in Concepción. In 1920 he supported the victorious candidate Arturo Alessandri Palma in the presidential election and led his campaign in southern Chile. In October 1921 he married Marta Ide, with whom he had three sons. In the same year, Alessandri, the new president, sent him to Panama as consul general . Ríos stayed there until 1924, when he was elected to Congress for his home constituency in southern Chile . In 1925, President Alessandri Ríos was appointed to the committee that dealt with drafting a new constitution. The constitution, which was drawn up with Río's participation, was adopted by a large majority in a referendum on August 30.

During the military dictatorship under Carlos Ibáñez del Campo , Juan Antonio Ríos was chairman of the Radical Party, which was vehemently in favor of a return to democracy. Ríos himself was less hostile to the Ibáñez government and its achievements. This led to the Radical Party expelling him after Ibáñez 'overthrow because of his collaboration with the regime at the party congress on July 26, 1931.

In 1932 another military coup overthrew incumbent President Juan Esteban Montero Rodríguez . Ríos supported the coup and joined the cabinet of junta chief Carlos Dávila as interior minister . Another coup brought General Blanche to the presidential palace of Santiago de Chile , the Moneda . This time the experienced lawyer Ríos received the post of Minister of Justice from the military . In October 1932, Arturo Alessandri won the presidential election by a clear margin and the country returned to constitutional order. As ex-minister of the putschists, Juan Antonio Ríos initially stepped down from the big political stage.

In the parliamentary elections of 1933, however, Ríos ran again as an independent candidate in his home constituency, which he then represented in Congress until 1937. After this time, Ríos was politically rehabilitated and his party took him back into their ranks.

At the end of Arturo Alessandri's term of office, the radicals, together with Social Democrats and Communists, formed the center-left alliance Frente Popular ("Popular Front"), of which Ríos became the first chairman. In the primaries held within the party alliance for the presidential candidacy, Pedro Aguirre Cerda clearly won against Ríos. The popular front candidate was also able to clearly win the subsequent national elections and took office in December 1938.

Under Aguirre, Juan Antonio Ríos served as president of the state mortgage bank (Caja de Crédito Hipotecario) and was one of the leading figures within the Radical Party. Within the party, Gabriel González Videla was his fiercest rival. Due to pulmonary tuberculosis, President Pedro Aguirre gave up his post in November 1941 to Vice-President Jerónimo Méndez and died that same year. A successor was to be elected on February 1, 1942. Ríos and his rival González, who had rushed back to Santiago from a foreign diplomatic post in Europe just two days before the decision was made, fought for their party's top candidate. In the intra-party primaries, the two were tied, so the decision had to be transferred to an arbitration committee, which voted in favor of Ríos' candidacy. The electoral alliance under the new name Alianza Democrática ("Democratic Alliance"), which he cited as the top candidate , was also joined by the left-wing parties.

With a clear absolute majority of almost 56% of the vote, Juan Antonio Ríos won the presidential elections in February 1942 against the right-wing candidate, the former dictator Ibáñez, and took office on April 2, 1942.

In his economic policy he relied on the promotion of the state oil, electricity and steel companies. In terms of foreign policy, Ríos kept Chile neutral during World War II, which was also done with consideration for the numerous Chileans of German and Austrian origin, and initially resisted the urge of the USA to join the war on the side of the Allies . However, Chile broke off diplomatic relations with the Axis powers soon after Rio took office under pressure from abroad, which threatened economic sanctions. After the outcome of the war became increasingly clear and there was strong domestic protest against Chile's neutrality, the government decided at the end of 1944 that the country should join the war as an ally of the USA. Even after the formal entry into the war in February 1945, the influence on the war remained very small.

Domestically, Ríos and his cabinet, consisting largely of “experts and political friends” (people from Ríos' right-wing environment without any connection to the Radical Party), saw themselves increasingly isolated: his party demanded the dismissal of all right-wing politicians and top officials from their offices a purely radical government. At the same time, the president was unexpectedly diagnosed with rapidly progressing cancer. As his health deteriorated, Ríos reluctantly gave in to his party's demands and finally reshaped his cabinet so that it consisted only of radical ministers. As early as January 1946, however, he had to give up official business completely due to his illness. He spent his last days in Paidahue, where he died on June 27, 1946, two years before the end of his term of office.

Web links

• Newspaper article about Juan Antonio Ríos Morales in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .