Carlos Ibáñez del Campo

The coups of 1924 and 1925

The presidency of Arturo Alessandri saw a rise in popular discontent over an inefficient government. In 1924, the Chilean armed forces, led by General Luis Altamirano, began the saber-rattling (ruido de sables), a protest where soldiers banged their sabers against the floor of the Congress. Amid threats from the armed forces, Alessandri decided he could no longer govern and submitted his resignation. Although this resignation was not approved by Congress, Alessandri left the country and Altamirano established a military junta.

However, another faction of the armed forces, led by Colonel Marmaduke Grove and Lieutenant Colonel Ibáñez, decided the junta's reforms did not go far enough in ending the government's inefficiency. They led another coup, deposed Altamirano, and established a new junta with Emilio Bello Codesido as head. Ibáñez and Grove, the powers behind the scene, agreed to ask Alessandri to return and complete his term.

Minister of War and Home Affairs

Alessandri returned in 1925 and drafted a new constitution which was designed to decrease the powers of the legislature, thereby making government more effective. Ibáñez was named Minister of War and later Home Affairs Minister. However, Alessandri decided Ibáñez was becoming too ambitious, and some ridiculed Alessandri as a pawn of Ibáñez. In response, Alessandri resigned once more and went into exile. Ibáñez announced his candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections, but the three main Chilean political parties (Conservative, Liberal, Radical) pressured him to desist. The three parties then presented a consensus choice, Emiliano Figueroa Larraín, to be the sole presidential candidate, in order to avoid political campaigning in the volatile political atmosphere. Nevertheless, Ibáñez's closest adviser, leftist José Santos Salas, later declared his presidential candidacy, and a number of people suspected it was with Ibáñez's backing.

Figueroa triumphed with 71% of the vote, but kept Ibáñez as home affairs minister. Ibáñez was able to control the weak Figueroa who decided to resign in 1927 rather than be Ibáñez's puppet. Because he was home affairs minister, under the Chilean constitution, Ibáñez became vice president and announced elections for 22 May that year. In the presidential elections, the traditional political parties decided not to participate. Ibáñez's only opponent was the communist Elías Lafertte, who was exiled in the Juan Fernández Archipelago throughout the electoral campaign. Ibáñez won the election with 98% of the vote.

First presidency

As president, Ibáñez exerted dictatorial powers, using rule by decree (decretos con fuerza de ley), suspending parliamentary elections, instead naming politicians to the Senate and Chamber of Deputies himself. Further, political opponents were arrested and exiled, including his former ally Marmaduke Grove. According to historian Clarence Haring, Ibáñez's government "was not wholly a dictatorship nor yet was it constitutional; it was something of both, sometimes in harmony, sometimes at odds, with public sentiment." According to Frederick Nunn, "Ibafiez paid only lip service to civil liberties and democratic procedures of governance embodied in the same document. He was not a true dictator, but a rigid authoritarian, elevated to power constitutionally, who had grave doubts about traditional liberal democracy and constitutionalism."

More positive was the social legislation that was introduced during his presidency. In May 1931, a decree was issued that introduced a weekly rest for the staffs of public slaughterhouses. Two International Labor Organization conventions that dealt with health insurance for domestic servants and commercial and industrial employees were approved while regulations for safeguarding against occupational were enacted. A public agency was also enabled by Ibáñez (as noted by one study) "to insure workers in competition with employer's mutual insurance companies and commercial insurance." In addition, all of the labor legislation of that period was compiled into Latin America's first labor code.

He worked with the traditional parties in Chile to prevent the 1929 Chilean parliamentary election from being contested by socialists; they designated a candidate for each district.

His popularity lasted until after the Wall Street crash of 1929. At that point all loans were halted and called. Chile was heavily affected by the Great Depression, which led to a drastic decline in the value of Chilean exports; for example, the value of copper and nitrate exports declined by 89% from 1927–29 to 1932. Ibáñez's large public spending did nothing to alleviate the situation, and his opponents, primarily the exiled Grove and Alessandri, began to plan a comeback.

During July 1931, there were large protests against the government. Student protesters declared a four-day general strike and occupied university buildings at the National University. Rioting began on July 23. Protesters and police suffered violence, with approximately 20 deaths, as well as 200 injured. The police shooting of a physician in front of the building of the Medical Society led physicians to declare a physician strike. Ibáñez left the country for exile, on July 26, 1931, after delegating his office to the president of the senate, Pedro Opazo, who in turn resigned in favor of the interior minister, Juan Esteban Montero.

Between presidencies

Chile did not reach political stability until the 1932 reelection of Arturo Alessandri, whose economic policies managed to alleviate the depression. He ran for president again in the 1942 election, but lost to Juan Antonio Rios.

Return to the Presidency

In the 1952 presidential elections, the right-wing Agrarian Labor Party (Partido Agrario Laborista) declared Ibáñez a presidential candidate. Ibáñez also garnered the support of the left-wing Popular Socialist Party and some feminist political unions – the feminist María de la Cruz was his campaign manager, but she then refused a ministerial office. Ibáñez promised to "sweep" out political corruption and bad government with his "broom" and was nicknamed the "General of Hope". He criticized traditional political parties but was vague in his proposals and had no clear position in the political spectrum. He won the election with 47%.

The Bolivian National Revolution of 1952 influenced the followers of Ibáñez who saw it as a model of the national-populism they sought to implement in Chile.

His second term was a modest success. By that time he was already old and ailing, and he left government mostly to his cabinet. His major problems during his presidency were those concerned with the economy. He had no plan to control inflation – one of the most pressing economic problems at the time in Chile – and as a result it skyrocketed to 71% in 1954 and 83% in 1955. Helped by the Klein-Sacks mission, Ibáñez managed to reduce it to 33% when he left the presidency. During his term, public transport costs rose by 50% and economic growth fell to 2.5%.

Now much more of a centrist politically, Ibáñez won the support of left-wingers by repealing the Law for the Defense of Democracy, which banned the Communist Party. He did also take a softer approach on crime than in his first presidency. For example, he commuted the death sentence for the Jackal of Pupunahue to life imprisonment.

Some Chileans continued to support an Ibáñez dictatorship. These ibañistas, most of whom were retired army officers, created the "Línea Recta" (Straight Line) group to establish a new dictatorship. Ibáñez met with these conspirators, but ultimately his typical lack of trust ended the plans for a self-coup. A scandal rocked the Ibáñez administration when the press revealed Ibáñez's meetings with these conspirators.

Retirement and legacy

Ibáñez was succeeded by Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez, the son of his archenemy Arturo Alessandri. He abandoned politics and died in Santiago in 1960. As a result of Ibañez's nebulous and vacillating political ideology, he left no intellectual legacy to Chilean politics. His long and often poorly defined presence of more than thirty years on the Chilean political scene (during which he often appeared to have little actual sympathy with the political goals of the groups that supported him at various times, e.g. he was too moderate to agree with the nacistas and too respectful of existing institutions to emulate Peronism successfully) produced its most significant results in the early years of his caretaker presidency in the 1920s through his efforts to develop new towns in the regions to the south of the Central Valley and to improve existing infrastructure in the South.

The Región Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo is named after him, in honor of his attempts to integrate the isolated regions of Aysén and Magallanes into Chile. The General Ibáñez Airport in Punta Arenas is also named after him.