Jaime Jorge Guzmán Errázuriz (June 28, 1946 - April 1, 1991) was a Chilean lawyer and senator, member and doctrinal founder of the conservative Independent Democrat Union party. He opposed Marxist President Salvador Allende and later became a close advisor to dictator Augusto Pinochet. A professor of Constitutional Law, he played an important part in the drafting of the 1980 Constitution. He was assassinated in 1991, during the transition to democracy, allegedly by members of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, a terrorist organization formed to fight the Pinochet Government.
Contents |
Jaime Guzmán was born in Santiago to Jorge Guzmán Reyes and Carmen Errázuriz Edwards. Between 1951 and 1962 he studied in the Colegio de los Sagrados Corazones de Santiago, where at a young age he showed interest in literature and strong leadership qualities. Already during his senior year he began to show interest in political life. An excellent student, he graduated from high school at the age of 15.
In 1963, only 16 years old, he was accepted to study law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (UC, formerly PUC) (Spanish: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), graduating in 1968 with hightest honours. He was awarded the Monseñor Carlos Casanueva prize for being the best student in his class.
During his university years he founded the Movimiento Gremial Universitario, a conservative political movement that in 1968 won the presidency of the student union of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, maintaining an almost uninterreptuded leadership until today. The Movimiento Gremial quickly expanded through the main universities in Chile.
As the leader of the Gremialista movement, Guzman worked with advocates on the left and right in congress to call for the removal of Salvador Allende by the military, because there was no available constitutional means to impeach him at that time. The UK's Economist magazine, reporting on Allende's removal two days after the coup, wrote: "...there must be no confusion about where the responsibility for Chile’s tragedy lies. It lies with Dr Allende and those in the marxist parties who pursued a strategy for the seizure of total power to the point at which the opposition despaired of being able to restrain them by constitutional means."[1]
After the military coup, Guzmán became a close advisor to General Augusto Pinochet and a highly influential policy maker in Chile at this time, including being summoned by Pinochet to take part in the Comisión Ortúzar charged with drafting a new constitution. He also was a key participant in the drafting of Pinochet's Chacarillas speech of 1978, one of the founding texts of the military regime.[2]
Enjoying close contacts with Jorge Alessandri, he converted himself to the neoliberal economic policies supported by the Chicago Boys and eventually distanced himself from Alessandri, while getting closer to Pinochet and to his minister Sergio Fernández.
After having participated to the drafting of the 1980 Constitution, Guzmán distanced himself from active participation in the government and returned to his original political activities. He thus created in 1983 the Unión Demócrata Independiente from the movement started in the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In a 1989 lecture to university students, Guzman said that "(we) the civilians in the government...realized that the military regime was an untamed and unbridled horse which had to be restrained so that it would not commit more human rights violations."
Following Chile's return to democracy, Jaime Guzmán presented himself as a candidate in the legislative elections. Despite coming third place, behind important figures of the Concertación, Andrés Zaldívar and Ricardo Lagos, he was still elected due to the binomial electoral system.
Guzmán continued until his death his functions as a professor of constitutional law in the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Chile. He was known to have a vast knowledge of Scholasticism.
Guzmán died on 1 April 1991, shot at the exit of the Catholic University where he was a professor of Constitutional Law. He was driven to a nearby hospital by his driver but died 3 hours later from several bullet wounds.
His murderers were members of the left-wing terrorist group Frente Patriotico Manuel Rodriguez (FPMR), Ricardo Palma Salamanca y Raúl Escobar Poblete, however the operation is believed to have been planned by the leaders of the movement Galvarino Apablaza, Mauricio Hernández Norambuena y Juan Gutiérrez Fischmann.[3] whom had been planning the murder of Guzman sine the decade of the 80s.
Hernadez (also known as "Commander Ramiro" was the only one arrested and tried for the murder of Guzman, but after serving less than 3 years in a Chilean prison escape and sought refuge in Cuba. In 2002 Hernandez was arrested in Brazil for the kidnapping of Brazilian businessman Washington Olivetto. He is currently serving a 30 year sentence in the Brazilian prison of Catanduvas.
Apablaza, lives with his wife and three sons in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2010 Argentina's Supreme Court granted a request of extradition by the Chilean Government, however this request was later overturned by the Argentina's national Commission for Refugees ("Comisión Nacional de Refugiados"), being freed in September 2010.