Arturo Alessandri Palma (20 December 1868-24 August 1950) was President of Chile from 23 December 1920 to 23 September 1924 (succeeding Juan Luis Sanfuentes and preceding Luis Altamirano), from 20 March to 1 October 1925 (succeeding Emilio Bello and preceding Luis Barros Borgono), and from 24 December 1932 to 24 December 1938 (succeding Abraham Oyanedel and preceding Pedro Aguirre Cerda). Alessandri was from the Chilean Liberal Party, and he crushed the Nazi movement in Chile.
Biography[]
Arturo Alessandri Palma was born on 20 December 1868 in Longavi, Chile, the son of an Italian father and a Spanish mother. He studied law at the University of Chile and graduated in 1893, and he joined the Chilean Liberal Party in 1897. In 1915, his charisma led to him becoming a senator from Tarapaca, and he won the 1920 presidential election.
Alessandri strengthened executive power to stop the President from being held hostage by the Congress, and he assisted the "saber rattlers" Marmaduke Grove and Carlos Ibanez del Campo in forcing the Congress to increase pay for soldiers, with the two Chilean generals literally rattling their sabers inside of their swords to force the Chilean government to pass Alessandri's labor code. He decided to resign on 9 September 1924 after feeling that he had become a pawn of the military, and a junta was formed to rule the country while he was gone. The "saber rattlers" Grove and Ibanez asked for him to return, and he did so in 1925. In March 1925, the government massacred 500+ protesting saltpeter miners, and he tried to maintain a right-wing radical alliance until 1937 due to his break with the workers. In 1932, he was elected president once more, and he sanctioned the Seguro Obrero massacre against the National Socialist Movement of Chile. He left office in 1938, and his son Jorge Alessandri would become president in 1958, while his other son Fernando Alessandri also entered politics.