Raúl Marín Balmaceda

Raúl Marín Balmaceda (14 November 1907 – 20 August 1957) was a Chilean lawyer and politician, member of the Liberal Party. He served as both a Deputy (1937–1949) and a Senator (1949–1957) of the Republic of Chile.

Biography Marín Balmaceda was born in Santiago in 1907, the son of Arturo Marín Vicuña and Esther Balmaceda Fontecilla, niece of President José Manuel Balmaceda. He studied law at the University of Chile, graduating as a lawyer in 1937 with the thesis Political and Administrative Concepts of Diego Portales. He never married or had children.

He worked as a lawyer for the Spanish consulate and embassy in Santiago, and in public administration as an officer of the National Library of Chile, senior officer at the Ministry of Justice, and secretary-general of the National Statistics Directorate. His intellectual pursuits included politics, history, economics, and religion, on which he published several works.

Political career A committed liberal, Marín Balmaceda became a member of the executive board of the Liberal Party.

In the 1937 Chilean parliamentary election, he was elected deputy for the 4th Departmental Group (La Serena, Coquimbo, Elqui, Ovalle, Combarbalá and Illapel). He sat on the Permanent Commission of Foreign Affairs, and as substitute deputy on the Commissions of Public Education and of Roads and Public Works.

He was reelected in 1941 and again in 1945, continuing in the Foreign Affairs Commission.

In 1949, he was elected senator for the 2nd Provincial Group (Atacama and Coquimbo). He served on the Permanent Commissions of Foreign Relations and Trade, Public Health, and as substitute in the Commission on Labor and Social Welfare. He also represented the Senate on the Council of the Agricultural Colonization Fund.

He headed the Chilean delegation to the First Pan-American Congress of History in Madrid (1949) and represented Chile at the Second Anti-Soviet Congress in Rio de Janeiro (1955). Reelected in the 1957 Chilean parliamentary election, he died suddenly of a heart attack during a Liberal Party meeting only months into his new term. His seat was filled in December 1957 by Hugo Zepeda Barrios.

Distinctions He was a corresponding member of the Chilean Academy of History and member of the Chilean Society of History and Geography.

He received several honors, including Commander and Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (Spain), the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and honorary citizenship of Gata, Cáceres, Spain.

He was director of the Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna Society for the Protection of Animals, and a member of the Club de La Unión, the Santiago Tennis Club, and the Ski Club.

In 1959, the locality of Puerto Raúl Marín Balmaceda, in Cisnes, Aysén Region, was named in his honor.