José Vega Díaz

José Vega Díaz (15 August 1902 – 18 April 1994) was a Chilean politician, trade union leader, and deputy of the Republic.

Biography Vega Díaz was born in Sotaquí, Ovalle, Chile, on 15 August 1902. He was the son of Crispín Vega and Cruz Díaz. He completed primary education between the ages of six and twelve.

At the age of twelve, he began working in the nitrate mines as a miner and later in the railway sector as a boilermaker's assistant. At twenty-two, he worked as a typographer in Tocopilla, later becoming a publicist, workshop manager, editor, and director of the newspaper El Socialista of Antofagasta.

He collaborated with the magazine Vanguardia and with left-wing newspapers such as El Comunista of Antofagasta, El Despertar of Tocopilla, and Defensa Obrera of Iquique.

Political career Vega Díaz began his political activity as an independent, later joining the Socialist Party of Chile, where he served as party secretary in Tocopilla. He subsequently became a member of the Communist Party of Chile.

At the age of seventeen, he was already a trade union leader in the nitrate mines and later led the Federation of Chilean Workers (FOCH).

In 1930, he traveled to the Soviet Union as a delegate to the Congress of the International Political Bureau, and in August of the same year attended the Fifth Congress of the International Trade Union in Moscow. In 1934, he headed a delegation of the FOCH that investigated the peasant uprising of Ranquil in Lonquimay.

In the parliamentary elections of 1933, he was elected Deputy for the Second Departmental Grouping (Tocopilla, El Loa, Antofagasta and Taltal), serving for the 1933–1937 legislative period. He was re-elected for the same constituency for the 1937–1941 term. During his service, he acted as substitute member of the Standing Committee on Constitution, Legislation and Justice, and was a member of the Standing Committees on Labor and Social Legislation and on Industry.

Due to his political activities, he was subjected to arrests, internal exile, and was stripped of parliamentary immunity on two occasions.

Vega Díaz died in Santiago, Chile, on 18 April 1994.