Carlos Alberto Martínez (politician)

Carlos Alberto Martínez Martínez (18 July 1885 – 9 March 1972) was a Chilean trade unionist, typographer and socialist politician.

He served as Deputy between 1933 and 1938, later becoming Minister of Lands and Colonization under Presidents Juan Esteban Montero, Arturo Puga Osorio and Pedro Aguirre Cerda, and as Senator from 1939 to 1961.

He was born in Santiago on 18 July 1885, the son of Pedro and Gabriela Martínez. His grandson Gutenberg Martínez later became a prominent Christian Democrat politician.

Martínez received only elementary schooling and began working at age 12 in a timber yard. After a work accident he joined the “Imprenta Universo”, where he spent more than twenty years learning lithography, bookbinding and linotyping. He later ran his own printing shop until 1944.

He contributed to workers’ newspapers such as La Reforma (Santiago), El Trabajo (Tocopilla) and El Despertar (Iquique), and directed the official publication of the Workers' Federation of Chile (FOCh; Federación Obrera de Chile).^[1]

He married Rosa Klein, with whom he had six children.

Martínez was one of the founders of Chile’s early labor movement, helping organize the first printers’ union and the Graphic Federation in 1903. He played a leading role in establishing the FOCh and mutual aid societies such as “Igualdad y Trabajo.”

A follower of Luis Emilio Recabarren, he helped found the Social Republican Party (1925), and later the Unión Social Republicana de Asalariados de Chile (USRACH), serving as its president until 1928. During the dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo he was exiled to Tierra Amarilla.

In 1931 he joined Nueva Acción Pública (NAP) and in 1933 became one of the founders of the Socialist Party of Chile.

He held several ministerial posts in the 1930s:

• Minister of Lands and Colonization** under Vice President Juan Esteban Montero (August–September 1931);
• the same position in the short-lived Socialist Republic of Chile under Arturo Puga Osorio (June 1932);
• and again under President Pedro Aguirre Cerda (December 1938 – September 1939).

He was elected Deputy for Santiago in 1933 and reelected in 1937, serving on the Interior Government Committee and a special commission investigating the Braden Copper Company.

In 1939 he entered the Senate for the 1st Provincial District (Tarapacá and Antofagasta), completing the 1937–1945 term.

He was reelected Senator for the 3rd Provincial District (Aconcagua and Valparaíso) for 1945–1953 and again for 1953–1961, serving as Senate Vice President (April–November 1958).

Among his legislative initiatives were:

• inclusion of photogravers in the social security system (Law No. 6,221 of 1938);
• flood-control works on the Aconcagua River (Law No. 7,037 of 1941);
• and funding for the Public Assistance Building in Santiago (Law No. 11,054 of 1952).

He also served as Senatorial representative to the CORFO and the Maritime Workers’ Fund.

In 1969 he helped found the Independent Popular Action (API), which joined the Popular Unity coalition supporting President Salvador Allende. Martínez died in Santiago on 9 March 1972 at age 86.

• Anales de la República, Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile.
• Historia Política de Chile y su Evolución Electoral desde 1810 a 1992, Germán Urzúa Valenzuela, Editorial Jurídica de Chile, Santiago, 1992.

• BCN Profile