Alberto Baltra

Alberto Baltra Cortés (6 January 1912 – 20 September 1981) was a Chilean politician and economist, a member of the Radical Party.

Biography The son of Luis Baltra Opazo and Luisa Cortés Monroy, Alberto Baltra studied at the Liceo de Traiguén and the National Institute.

He entered the University of Chile, where he received the institution's award for the best graduate in 1935. He obtained his law degree in 1937, with a report entitled Ensayo de una teoría general de los actos inoponibles.

In the complementary elections of 1968 he was elected senator for the eighth provincial group of Bío Bío, Malleco, and Cautín, replacing the late José García González (PDC). The new group was originally part of Popular Unity, but it later abandoned this alliance and was critical of the Allende government.

For the parliamentary elections of March 1973, the PIR joined with other centre-right opposition parties in the Confederation of Democracy, formed in July 1972, and Baltra ran for Senator for Santiago, but received only 1.92% of the vote.

Baltra wrote several works on economics, some of which were awarded and used as textbooks at the University of Chile. He was a professor there, and among his disciples was the future president Ricardo Lagos, who was his assistant. He was a member of the Chilean Academy of Social, Political, and Moral Sciences.

In 1940 he married the lawyer Adriana Olguín, who would be the first female minister in Latin America to occupy the Justice portfolio under González Videla. The couple had one son, Luis Alberto Baltra Olguín.

Works Crecimiento económico de América Latina. Problemas Fundamentales, Editorial del Pacífico, Santiago, 1959 (winner of the Santiago Municipal Literature Award) Tres países del mundo socialista, Editorial del Pacífico, Santiago, 1962 Teoría económica, Volume 1, Editorial Andrés Bello, Santiago, 1963 Otro camino para Chile, Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, 1967 Gestión económica del Gobierno de la Unidad Popular, Editorial Orbe, Santiago, 1974