Diego Portales

Diego Portales (1793-1837), Chilean statesman. Portales was born on June 26, 1793, in Santiago, where his father was superintendent of the Royal Mint. In 1822, after Chile had won its independence from Spain, he started a trading company that later took over management of the estanco, the state tobacco monopoly. He gradually became leader of the conservative estanquero group that opposed Chile’s Liberal government. In 1829 he joined forces with the supporters of the exiled dictator Bernardo O’Higgins and General Joaquín Prieto, and together they decisively defeated the Liberal army in 1830.

Portales remained in Prieto’s government as minister of war and vice president until 1833; he helped form the constitution of 1833, which set the nation on a firm basis. Refusing the presidency for himself, he devoted his efforts to building an efficient governmental bureaucracy and briefly served as governor of Valparaíso (1832-1833). He returned to the war ministry in 1835 when Chile was threatened by a newly formed Peru-Bolivia confederation. During the subsequent war, Portales was taken prisoner by a mutinous Chilean regiment and was killed on June 6, 1837.