Víctor Contreras Tapia

Víctor Benito Contreras Tapia (7 July 1906 – 11 October 2005) was a Chilean nitrate worker, trade union leader and politician, member of the Communist Party of Chile.

He served as Deputy, Senator, and as Minister of Lands and Colonization during the government of President Gabriel González Videla.

Biography He was born in San Esteban, Los Andes, on 7 July 1906, the son of Ramón Contreras Córdoba and Clodomira Tapia. With only primary education in Arica, he began working as a farm laborer at the age of 13 and at 17 entered the nitrate fields. At 19 he worked as a tram conductor and later as a machinist for the Valparaíso Electricity Company, joining the Federación Obrera de Chile (FOCh).

He married María Ascensión Aguilera Olmedo, and later Julieta Henrion Navarrete. He had two children.

In 1926 he assumed his first post as a union leader, a role he held until 1932. The following year he joined the Communist Party (PC). Between 1936 and 1939, he presided over the Dockworkers’ Union of Tocopilla. In 1938 he was elected councilman of the commune, later serving as mayor from 1940 to 1945.

In the 1945 elections, he was elected Deputy for the 2nd Departamental Group (Antofagasta, Tocopilla, El Loa and Taltal) representing the National Progressive Party, the name under which communists ran in those elections. He participated in the Permanent Commission of Internal Government.

During the government of President Gabriel González Videla, he was appointed Minister of Lands and Colonization, serving between 3 November 1946 and 16 April 1947. After the enactment of the Permanent Defense of Democracy Law in 1949, he was exiled to Melinka.

In the 1961 elections, he was elected Senator for the 1st Provincial Group (Tarapacá and Antofagasta), serving until the dissolution of Congress in 1973. He participated in the Permanent Commissions of Mining; Agriculture and Colonization; Labor and Social Welfare; and Internal Police, among others. He was also a substitute member of the Communist Parliamentary Committee and part of the Party’s Central Committee.

He was a delegate to the Inter-Parliamentary Conference in Belgrade (1963) and took part in official missions to the Soviet bloc in 1968. In the 1969 elections he was re-elected senator, again for Tarapacá and Antofagasta.

On 11 September 1973, following the coup, his legislative term was cut short with the dissolution of Congress by Decree Law No. 21. He was exiled to the German Democratic Republic in November 1973, where he participated in numerous congresses and international meetings. He returned to Chile in 1983, settling in the commune of Pedro Aguirre Cerda.

He died on 11 October 2005, at the age of 99.