Partido Socialista de Chile

Partido Socialista de Chile
Party leader	Álvaro Elizalde
Secretary General	Andrés Santander
founding	April 19, 1933
Headquarters	París 873 Santiago , Santiago Metropolitan Area
Youth organization	Socialist youth of Chile
Alignment	Democratic socialism social democracy
Colours)	red
Parliament seats	Senate: 7/43 Chamber of Deputies: 19/155
Number of members	109,612 (2012)
International connections	Socialist International (SI), Progressive Alliance
Website	www.pschile.cl/

The Partido Socialista de Chile ( PS , Spanish Socialist Party of Chile ) is a political party in Chile . Until March 11, 2010 she provided Michelle Bachelet, the country's first female president, and her predecessor Ricardo Lagos was a member of the PS. The party was founded in 1933, was part of the Frente Popular from 1938 , was a member of the revolutionary left-wing alliance Unidad Popular and from 1970 to 1973, Salvador Allende was the President of Chile. Banned under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet , the party was part of the democratization movement from the 1980s. Because the party was banned for a long time, the sister party Partido por la Democracia ( Party for Democracy ) was founded, which continues to this day. The Socialist Party was part of the center-left Concertación , which provided all of the country's presidents between 1990 and 2010. The chairman of the PS is Álvaro Elizalde .

history

founding

Marmaduke Grove

Between 1924 and 1932, the once stable democracy of Chile was in political chaos. In 1924 General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo replaced the liberal government of Arturo Alessandri and shortly afterwards banned all political parties. After the Great Depression hit Chile more than any other country , he was driven out of office and a series of short-lived governments and dictatorships followed. Ibáñez 'elected successor, Juan Esteban Montero , was brought to an end in less than a year by a coup by socialist officers around Marmaduke Grove . The then proclaimed Socialist Republic of Chile only lasted 12 days until one of the putschists took control alone: ​​the 100 days of Carlos Dávila's repressive rule were also ended by the military . Only when Alessandri was re-elected in October 1932 did the country calm down. In the years that followed, Chile's party system was reorganized. Perhaps the most important change was the establishment of the Socialist Party on April 19, 1933.

As early as 1912, a " Socialist Workers' Party " ( Partido Obrero Socialista , POS) was formed, which from 1922 onwards called itself the Communist Party of Chile ( Partido Comunista de Chile ). But it had always remained a splinter group and had never gained influence in parliament. The newly founded socialists were completely different: under the leadership of the Luftwaffe colonel and failed coup leader Marmaduke Grove, who had already won 18% of the votes in his much-noticed surprise success in the presidential elections in 1932 before the official founding of the party, they gained more than 5% in 1937 and over 10 in 1941 % of votes. With the founding of the PS, the labor movement was finally integrated into the party system. The bourgeois left, represented in the Radical Party , which had previously taken on the role of the parliamentary left, moved into the center, and the Liberal Party , which was formerly in the political center, moved closer and closer to the right-wing Conservative Party , until both finally joined the 1960s merged to form the National Party .

The Socialist Party was founded in 1933 out of a large number of small groups. The most important forerunner was the Unión Social Republicana de Asalariados de Chile (USRACH), which was founded in 1927 and dissolved in the same year and was created for the candidacy of José Santos Salas . Other groups were the Nuevas Acción Pública (NAP) by Eugenio Matte , the Acción Revolucionaria Socialista (ARS), the Partido Socialista Marxista , the Partido Socialista Unificado and the Orden Socialista . Grove became chairman of the new party and the young Salvador Allende chaired the Valparaíso local association .

Frente Popular

Fascist movements were founded in Chile in the early 1930s, including the National Socialist Movement of Chile and local branches of the German NSDAP . In response to this and the right swing of Alessandri's second government, the communist, socialist and bourgeois Radical Party founded the anti-fascist Popular Front ( Frente Popular ) in 1936 . Two years later, the alliance with Pedro Aguirre Cerda won the presidential election. The election was overshadowed by the murder of around 60 young fascists who attempted a coup ( Masacre del Seguro Obrero ). Just three years later, the frente was dissolved due to conflicts between communists and socialists and disagreement over foreign policy during the Second World War , but the radicals with Presidents Juan Antonio Ríos and Gabriel González Videla continue to rule until 1952 with the support of the left-wing parties.

Against the backdrop of the beginning of the Cold War , the González government banned the Communist Party in 1948 through the Ley Maldita . Half of the socialist MPs also supported the law, while Salvador Allende spoke out vehemently against it. Allende himself, as chairman of a parliamentary commission of inquiry, visited the concentration camp in Pisagua , which had been set up for the communists.

Unidad Popular and Government of Allende

Allende on a GDR postage stamp

Allende's life project of a union of the left had been set back years by the Ley Maldita . Only after the re-admission of the communists was the leftist alliance Frente de Acción Popular (FRAP), which nominated the socialist Allende as a joint presidential candidate in 1958 and 1964.

On the XXII. Congress, held in Chillán in November 1967, radicalized the party's political line, supported by Carlos Altamirano Orrego and Ranquil. The party now officially committed itself to Marxism-Leninism and demanded revolutionary, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist changes. In 1969 the alliance was renamed Unidad Popular (UP). The following year Allende won the presidential election. Despite internal conflicts in the PS, the Unidad Popular did not break up due to internal conflicts, but was destroyed by the 1973 coup .

Repression and Change

On the day of the coup on September 11, 1973, the PS was banned and numerous functionaries, members and sympathizers were arrested, tortured and murdered. In 1974 the party ceased to exist in Chile. The PS was the only UP party to undergo a fundamental ideological change in the early 1980s. Influenced by the social democratic transformation movements in Central Eastern Europe , the PS turned to the political center and accepted the liberal market principles of the Pinochet regime.

Transition and Concertación

Michelle Bachelet (2006)

Because the party remained banned from 1987 after the gradual re-admission of political parties, the sister party Partido por la Democracia ( Party for Democracy ) was founded, but it still exists today. It was not until December 27, 1989 that the Socialist Party was re-admitted to Chile. The Partido Socialista has been a member of the center-left alliance Concertación por la Democracia, which has been permanently ruling since 1990 . With Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006) and Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010; 2014–2018), the socialists provided two of the four presidents of the post-Pinochet era. Lagos was previously a member of the Partido por la Democracia (PPD).

Results of the Socialist Party in parliamentary elections

Election year	Share of votes		be right	MPs
1937	11.2%		46,050	19/147
1941	17.9%		80,377	17/147
1945	7.1%		32,314	6/147
1949	3.4%		15,676	5/147
1953	4.9%		38,371	9/147
1957	4.4%		38,783	7/147
1961	11.1%		149.122	12/147
1965	10.6%		241,593	15/147
1969	12.8%		294,448	15/150
1973	18.7%		678.796	28/150
In the 1989 elections , the socialists were still ostracized.
1993	11.9%		803.716	15/120
1997	11.0%		640.397	11/120
2001	10.0%		614.434	10/120
2005	10.1%		663,561	15/120
2009	9.9%		653,367	11/120
2013	11.1%		691.713	16/120
2017	9.7%		584,972	19/155

See also

• History of Chile
• Political system of Chile
• Frente Popular (Chile)
• Frente de Acción Popular
• Unidad Popular
• Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia
• Torture in Chile

Web links

Commons : Partido Socialista de Chile  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Partido Socialista de Chile (Spanish)
• Website of the Chilean Ministry of the Interior with election results (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ emol.com
2. ↑ Pierre Ostiguy, La transformation de système of partis politiques chiliens . (PDF; 286 kB) In: Politique et société , vol. 24, 2005, p. 132. Société québécoise de science politique
3. ^ As the Front of the People , a federal party of socialists and communists