Alejandro Hales

Alejandro Hales Jamarne (April 23, 1923 – April 7, 2001) was a Chilean lawyer, diplomat and politician. He was a member of the Agrarian Labor Party. He served as the Minister of Agriculture from April 1953 to June 1954.

Family and education He was born in the Chilean city of Temuco on 23 April 1923, the son of Demetrio Hales Hales and Julia Jamarne Manzur, Jordanian immigrants settled in Chile since 1913. He was one of the four children born to the marriage; the others were Frida, Renato, Ilés, and Enrique. He completed his primary education at the Instituto de Humanidades San José of Temuco. Later, in 1940, he entered the University of Chile to study law, qualifying as a lawyer in 1946 with the thesis Cooperativism in the past and in the present. He took his professional oath on 2 January 1947.

He joined the Agrarian Labor Party (PAL) when it was founded in 1942 in Temuco, representing farmers from the Cautín Province. This political party was one of the main pillars of the 1952 presidential campaign of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who was part of the wave of socializing nationalisms spreading across Latin America.

In this context, he served as secretary general of Ibáñez’s presidential campaign. As a result, in 1953, once victory had been achieved, he was appointed joint minister of Agriculture and of Lands and Colonization, at just thirty years of age.

Ally of Frei Montalva Hales together with leaders of the Agrarian Labor Democracy. In 1964, together with a small number of leaders from his former political party, he formed the Agrarian Labor Democracy to support the presidential campaign of Eduardo Frei Montalva, who would go on to win the 1964 Chilean presidential election.

He participated in the 1965 parliamentary elections as a candidate for senator representing the 8th Provincial Grouping of Biobío, Malleco, and Cautín, but was not elected.

That same year he was appointed president of the National Wheat Commission. In 1987, he publicly stated that the Judiciary had processed only a dozen of the more than seven thousand writ of protection filed by relatives of victims of human rights violations.

In 1988, he served as president of the movement Independents for Democratic Consensus, and in 1989 he was a presidential pre-candidate.

Concertación era Hales between Presidents Carlos Menem (left) and Patricio Aylwin (right). Following the return to democracy, he was appointed, in 1992, Minister of Mining, this time by President Patricio Aylwin.