Gabriel González Videla

Gabriel Enrique González Videla (22 November 1898 – 22 August 1980) was a Chilean lawyer and politician who held the office of the 25th president of Chile between 1946 and 1952. Before that, he served as a deputy from 1930 to 1941 and as a senator for Tarapacá and Antofagasta from 1945 to 1946. A longtime member of the Radical Party, where he also held leadership roles, he left the party in 1971 because it supported socialist president Salvador Allende. Starting in 1973 and continuing until his death in 1980, he took an active role in Augusto Pinochet’s government, serving as vice president of the Council of State from 1976 onward. In that capacity, he helped write Chile’s 1980 constitution.

Born in the coastal city of La Serena on 22 November 1898, he was the eldest of eighteen children of Gabriel González Castillo and Teresa Videla Zepeda. After finishing school at the Liceo de La Serena, he studied law at the University of Chile, graduating in 1922—the same year his father became paralyzed. Because of this, González returned to La Serena to support his family. He became a freemason in 1924.

In 1915, he joined the Radical Party’s youth wing and later became a member of the Radical Assembly of La Serena. He took part in protests against the military government set up by Luis Altamirano in 1924. In 1927, he spoke out against President Carlos Ibáñez and was forced into hiding. After Ibáñez’s government fell in 1931, González resumed his political work and served as president of the Radical Party from 1931 to 1937.

He was elected deputy in 1930 for a district covering La Serena, Coquimbo, Elqui, Ovalle, Combarbalá, and Illapel. Congress was dissolved by a 1932 coup led by socialist Marmaduque Grove, but González was reelected for the same district in 1933 and again in 1937. He resigned in 1939 after President Pedro Aguirre Cerda appointed him ambassador to France, then to Portugal in 1940, and finally to Brazil in 1942.

In 1941, President Aguirre Cerda, whose health was rapidly declining, named Interior Minister Jerónimo Méndez as vice-president and died soon after, on 25 November 1941. A presidential election was set for 1 February 1942. Two days before the Radical Party’s internal primaries, González—representing the party’s leftist wing—returned to Chile to challenge Juan Antonio Ríos for the nomination. The results were too close to call, so a tribunal of honor was formed, which declared Ríos the candidate of the left-wing coalition known as the Democratic Alliance. This alliance included the Radical, Socialist, Communist, Democratic, and Workers’ Socialist parties. Ríos won the general election with 56% of the vote and took office on 2 April.

In 1945, González was elected senator for Tarapacá and Antofagasta and represented Chile at the United Nations conference in San Francisco.

González finally won the Radical Party primaries in 1946. He tried to revive the Democratic Alliance that had brought Ríos to power in 1942, but the Socialist Party rejected the offer, and the popular front could not be rebuilt. In the end, he secured only a plurality, backed by his own Radical Party and the Communist Party. In the presidential election, he received 40% of the vote, defeating right-wing candidates Eduardo Cruz-Coke and Fernando Alessandri, as well as socialist Bernardo Ibáñez. Because he did not reach the required 50%, the election went to Congress, which confirmed him on 24 October.

González Videla’s first cabinets, from 1946 to 1948, included Communist ministers. However, the Cold War and internal problems pushed him to the right. Chile became caught up in Cold War tensions, with Moscow and Washington meddling in its affairs. This friction caused the Workers’ Union (CTCh) to split into Communist and Socialist branches in 1946, and later led to the outlawing of the Communist Party. The Socialists, now opposed to the Communists, aligned with U.S. labor interests through the AFL-CIO.

Once in office, González fell out with his Communist allies. They demanded more cabinet seats, which he refused. The Communist Party then withdrew its support. In response, he expelled them from his cabinet and banned the party entirely under the 1948 Law of Permanent Defense of Democracy, which outlawed communist and similar parties. He also broke relations with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. Many key communist figures fled, including poet Pablo Neruda, who had denounced González in the Senate for “selling out to the United States.” Communists who stayed were arrested but not tortured or executed. A pro-communist miners’ strike in Lota was brutally suppressed. Demonstrations against what communists called *la ley maldita* (“the damned law”) led to martial law, but were successfully put down.

In 1948, González learned of a plot by some armed forces members to overthrow him and install Carlos Ibáñez as president. He ordered an investigation and the arrest of the coup leaders, including the operation’s head.