Francisco Cumplido

Family and education He completed his primary education at the Salvador Sanfuentes School and at the Miguel Luis Amunátegui High School, and continued his secondary education at the Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera, all of the aforementioned institutions located in Santiago. He later pursued higher education in law at the University of Chile.

He married Alicia Antonieta García Valdés; the marriage produced no children.

Academic career Between 1969 and 1972, he served as director of the Institute of Political and Administrative Sciences of the University of Chile, and from 1970 to 1978 he worked as a professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). He also served as a professor of political institutions and constitutional law at the Diego Portales University, and as rector of the Miguel de Cervantes University.

On 11 March 1990, he assumed office as Minister of Justice in the government of President Patricio Aylwin, serving until the end of the administration on 11 March 1994. Among the milestones of his tenure were the so-called Cumplido Laws, which included the “Law on Terrorist Conduct”, adapted to international treaties, the repeal of the death penalty (finally abolished during the government of President Ricardo Lagos in 2001), and the strengthening of individuals’ rights within the criminal process.

Subsequently, as a former minister of State, he conducted several studies in law for the Ministry of the General Secretariat of the Presidency (Segpres) and the Ministry of Finance. In 2004, together with his colleague Juan José Romero, an academic at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, he was recruited by the National Mining Society of Chile (Sonami) to prepare a legal report opposing the first royalty bill. The document, entitled Constitutional limits to State intervention through the establishment of a mining royalty, stated categorically that said royalty “is a tax and would suffer from defects of unconstitutionality”.

He died in San Antonio on 16 July 2022, at the age of 91. His remains were laid out in the locality of Cuncumén, within that municipality.