Alejandro Toro Herrera

Alejandro Enrique Toro Herrera (15 March 1930 – 2 February 2017) was a Chilean politician.

He served as Deputy for the 12th Departamental Group (Talca, Curepto and Lontué) between 1969 and 1973, and briefly as Senator for the 10th Departamental Group (Curicó, Talca, Maule and Linares) in 1973, until the dissolution of Congress following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.

Biography He was born in Temuco on 15 March 1930, the son of Uberlindo Antonio Toro Moreno and Cristina Herrera Rojas. On 1 September 1958, he married Quela Jara Valenzuela in Concepción. In a second marriage, he married Olga Devia Lubet. He was the father of six children: Alicia María, Eduardo Enrique, Doris Ruth, Víctor Antonio, Olga Cristina and Alejandro Alfredo.

In 1954 he was a delegate of the Communist Youth of Chile to the Congress of the Komsomol in the Soviet Union. The following year, he became regional Secretary-General of the Communist Party in Valparaíso. In 1967 he represented the party at the 8th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.

In the 1969 elections, he was elected Deputy for the 12th Departamental Group (Talca, Curepto and Lontué), serving on the Permanent Commissions of Foreign Relations and National Defense. That same year, he was also a delegate to the Communist Congress in Czechoslovakia.

In June 1972, he presided over the Chilean delegation to the Conference on Agrarian Reforms in Latin America, held in Bogotá. In 1973, he was elected Senator for the 10th Departamental Group (Curicó, Talca, Maule and Linares), serving on the Permanent Commission of National Defense. His legislative term was cut short by the coup d’état of 11 September 1973 and the dissolution of Congress.

After the coup, Toro went into exile in the German Democratic Republic (1974–1979), where he collaborated with the Oficina Chilena Antifascista led by former Senator Carlos Contreras Labarca. From 1979 to 1982, he represented the Communist Party in Mexico, organizing the exile network led by former Senator Hugo Miranda Ramírez and coordinating support offices in Canada, Cuba and Nicaragua. In 1982, he traveled to Mozambique, where he was also linked to the Mozambique Liberation Front.

In 1983, he attended the Party School in China and returned to Chile the same year, joining the Popular Democratic Movement (MDP). In 1986, he was arrested as spokesman for the Communist Party and sentenced to 1,082 days in prison under the Internal Security of the State Law.

Later distanced from the Communist Party, after it entered democratic participation agreements, he joined the Partido Democrático de Izquierda. In his final years he was politically independent, linked to the Concertación.

He died in Santiago on 2 February 2017.