Ricardo Lagos

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Ricardo Lagos (2006)

Ricardo Froilán Lagos Escobar (born March 2, 1938 in Santiago de Chile ) was President of Chile from March 11, 2000 to March 11, 2006 .

Life

In 1954 Ricardo Lagos began studying law at the Universidad de Chile . In 1960 he graduated with honors and was admitted to the bar. He married Carmen Weber, received his PhD from Duke University, and divorced. After working at the economics faculty, he became director of the Escuela de Ciencias Políticas y Administrativas in 1967 until he was appointed general secretary of the Universidad de Chile in 1969 .

In the same year he met Luisa Durán, whom he married in 1971. He received a professorship in economics at the law faculty of the Universidad de Chile and worked in various positions at his alma mater and as a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the USA .

In the 1970s, Lagos described itself as an "independent left"; In 1961 he left the Chilean Radical Party when it entered the cabinet of Jorge Alessandri's government . Without diplomatic experience, Lagos supported the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations , where he sharply criticized the decision of US President Richard Nixon to abandon the gold backing of the US dollar. In 1972 Chile’s President Salvador Allende wanted to appoint him as Chilean ambassador to Moscow , but the Congress refused. Lagos stayed with the UN on various missions.

The coup of Augusto Pinochet forced him into exile in 1973. He continued to work for the United Nations until he returned to Chile on their behalf in 1978 and worked there for the International Monetary Fund . In the same year he also took on an economics professorship in Santiago and became director of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, FLACSO ).

In the 1980s, Lagos was one of the leading figures fighting for the re-establishment of democracy in Chile. Lagos led the Socialist Party of Chile and became president of the Alianza Democrática , an alliance of opposition groups that stood against the regime of General Pinochet. In 1983 Lagos gave up his position at the UN and became president of the "Democratic Alliance", in which the main anti-Pinochet parties worked together. In 1987 Lagos was involved in the founding of the Partido por la Democracia (Party for Democracy) and, as chairman of the "Committee of the Left for Free Elections", publicly campaigned among his compatriots to be entered in the electoral register and in the upcoming referendum of 1988 to vote “No” against a continuation of the Pinochet rule.

Ricardo Lagos increasingly became the undisputed leader of the opposition to the Pinochet government and also appeared courageously against the powerful general on television. After the opposition's victory in the referendum, however, he decided not to run for the opposition alliance Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia ( Concertación for short ) and left the candidacy to the Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin , who was more in the political center.

In 1990 Aylwin appointed him Minister of Education. In 1993, Lagos failed in the alliance's internal primaries against Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle , but continued to support the electoral and government alliance supported by the socialists. After the election, Frei appointed him Minister of Construction ( Obras Públicas ).

In 1999, Lagos became a presidential candidate after beating his opponent, the Christian Democrat Andrés Zaldívar , in the primaries . There was no absolute majority in the December elections, in a runoff election in January 2000 he beat his opponent Joaquín Lavín , who was close to the Pinochet regime, with 51.3% of the votes and became the second socialist president of Chile after Allende.

In 2001, Lagos convened the Comisión Nacional de Prisión Política y Tortura , which investigated the situation of political prisoners under the Pinochet dictatorship and their torture. Lagos' tenure was marked by the conclusion of several free trade agreements with various countries. He enjoys great prestige and high popularity among the population.

Web links

Commons : Ricardo Lagos  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ United Nations Session No. 61 (English) Retrieved November 27, 2018
2. ↑ Article about Ricardo Lagos in the Encyclopædia Britannica (English) Retrieved November 27, 2018
3. ↑ Biography (English) Retrieved November 27, 2018