Pedro Montt Montt

Pedro Montt

Pedro Montt Montt (born July 21, 1849 in Santiago de Chile , † August 16, 1910 in Bremen ) was a Chilean politician . From 1906 to 1910 he was President of his country.

Life

Pedro Montt was born to Manuel Montt Torres , Chilean President from 1851 to 1856, and Rosario Montt Prado.

After finishing school, he studied law at the Universidad de Chile until 1870 . He joined the National Party and soon took over its chairmanship, from 1879 he sat for the constituency of Petorca and La Ligua in the House of Representatives of Chile.

In 1881 he married Sara del Campo Yávar; the marriage remained childless.

Under the president José Manuel Balmaceda , Montt took over the ministries for justice and public education in autumn 1887 and the finance department in October 1889. In 1890 he turned against President Balmaceda and took part in the civil war of 1891 without giving up the chairmanship of the National Party . On behalf of the government, Montt, who spoke fluent English, French and German, traveled on a diplomatic mission to Peru , the USA and Europe. After the victory of the revolutionary forces in 1891, President Jorge Montt Álvarez appointed him Minister of the Interior.

As a representative of the Cautín region, he moved to the Senate in 1900. In the presidential elections of 1901 Pedro Montt stood as a candidate for the Coalición , but was defeated by Germán Riesco Errázuriz . In 1906 Montt was supposed to represent the capital Santiago in the Senate, but that did not happen because he was elected Chilean President when he took office for the second time in June.

His assumption of office on September 18, 1906 was overshadowed by a severe earthquake that had recently struck the area around Valparaíso . The main task of the new government therefore had to be the reconstruction of the devastated region. Montt appointed liberal and conservative ministers to his cabinet.

During Montt's tenure, the Chilean railway network was also expanded, which was expanded in the south to Puerto Montt and which was to be supplemented by a connection between the main towns of Ancud and Castro on the backward island of Chiloé . In 1910, a railway line crossed the Chilean Andes for the first time at Los Andes .

Another focus of Montt's efforts was the education system, which he expanded to include major schools, universities and public cultural institutions, including the Museum and Academy of Fine Arts ( Escuela y Museo de Bellas Artes ) in Santiago.

Pedro Montt was less glorious in social policy. The government in Santiago could not and did not want to improve the catastrophic working and living conditions of the workers in the saltpeter mines. In 1907 there were therefore extensive strikes. The mine workers of Iquique , who regularly received no money but only vouchers that they had to redeem in the overpriced grocery stores of the mining companies, took their demands before the management - almost ten thousand working-class families, including many Peruvians and Bolivians, camped on a public in Iquique Place in front of the headquarters of the mining company. Other protesting workers joined them.

The government then pulled together several army regiments in Iquique. On December 20, 1907, the military violently intervened in the protests at the Buenaventura saltpeter mine and shot six workers. Their funeral the following day turned into a political demonstration; the provincial governor of Iquique then suspended the constitutional freedoms and dissolved the workers' assemblies by force of arms, the number of deaths is given between 130 and a thousand. The survivors were imprisoned in camps in front of the city and there were often mistreated by the army.

The conflict between the government and the protesting workers continued to heat up, and although the press was censored, word of the Iquique massacre soon got around and was received with dismay by the public.

When one of the leading saltpeter mines ran into financial difficulties, the entire Chilean economy plunged into a severe crisis. The government printed money to cover government spending, triggering a massive increase in inflation .

In 1910 Pedro Montt fell seriously ill and his doctors recommended that he resign and seek treatment in Europe. In July 1910, Montt embarked for Germany, where he died on August 16, 1910 in Bremen after a heart attack. On December 3, 1910, his body - now embalmed  - was embarked in Bremen on the Chilean cruiser Blanco Encalada and returned to Chile. His interior minister and vice-president, Elías Fernández Albano , who had effectively represented him since July 8, 1910, temporarily took over the office of Chilean president.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ State Archives Bremen Sign. 3-B.16. No. 11 . as well as Bremer Nachrichten No. 334 of December 4, 1910 ( Bremer Nachrichten 1910 )

Web links

Wikisource: Death Certificate  - Sources and Full Texts

Commons : Pedro Montt  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Information about Pedro Montt Montt as well as documents, pictures and bibliography in the online database Memoria Chilena of the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile (DIBAM) ( Spanish )
• Short biography of Pedro Montt Montt at the Universidad de Chile (Spanish)