Beat Allende first; then defeated...
Chilean politician. He was the head of state between 1958-1964. He is the son of two-time president Arturo Alessandri. He graduated from the Civil Engineering Department of the National University of Chile in 1919. He was a lecturer for a while. He later became the manager of Chile's largest paper mill and the deputy general manager of the Bank of South America. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1925. His first important political post was minister of finance during the presidency of Gabriel Gonzales Videla from 1948-1950. He was elected senator from Santiago in 1956.
Jorge Eduardo Alessandri Rodríguez (19 May 1896 – 31 August 1986) was the 26th President of Chile from 1958 to 1964, and was the candidate of the Chilean right in the crucial presidential election of 1970, which he lost to Salvador Allende. He was the son of Arturo Alessandri, who was president from 1920 to 1925 and again from 1932 to 1938.
A very competitive election campaign began in Chile a year before the 1958 elections. Neither party had a chance to win the election alone. The coalition of conservative parties nominated Jorge Alessandri as their presidential candidate. Alessandri, during the election campaign, said that he would establish an effective administration in the country and that he would assign duties to technical men, not politicians. Its economic program was more geared towards the rich and middle class. He won the elections by a very small margin against Salvador Allende, the candidate of the socialist-communist alliance.
The economic situation of the country was very bad, inflation and unemployment had reached very high levels. For one year, Alessandri gathered all the powers in the direction of the country's economy. He aimed to reduce the inflation rate by implementing a tight monetary policy. Wage increases were limited, and imports of luxury goods were restricted. Corporate tax from private companies was reduced to increase industrial production; efforts were made to expand the domestic market with public expenditures. Within two years, most of the intended targets were achieved.
The inflation rate was reduced, and the balance of payments was improved. However, the fact that wage increases were below the inflation rate increased poverty and led to discontent.
The great earthquake that destroyed sixty-five thousand houses in Southern Chile in 1960 interrupted the economic policy that was being implemented. During the presidency of Jorge Alessandri, the lack of adequate measures for basic problems such as agrarian reform, unemployment, and housing problem, wage increases lagging behind price increases, led to the loss of popular support for the coalition, and the 1964 elections led to the election of Christian Democratic Party candidate Eduardo Frei. ended up passing.
He ran for election as the candidate of the revived conservative coalition in 1970, but this time he was defeated by Salvador Allende, whom he had previously defeated.