Elías Lafertte

Elías Lafertte Gaviño was a Chilean worker in saltpeter mining and a communist politician. Lafertte ran in the [1931 Chileans|Chilean presidential election|1931] and 1932 presidential elections ending in third and fifth place. He was senator from 1937 to 1953.

Biography

Lafertte was born into a working-class family. He started working in a nitrate mine at the age of eleven. In 1911 he met Luis Emilio Recabarren. With him and other members of the Democrat Party, Lafertte founded the Socialist Workers' Party in June 1912, which was renamed the Communist Party of Chile in 1922.
After a strike in Antofagasta in 1914 he was imprisoned for the first time. In 1917 he worked for La Vanguardia in Valparaíso. A member of the board since 1923, Lafertte Gaviño was treasurer of the Federación Obrera de Chile trade union from 1924 to 1926, and from 1926 its general secretary. In 1929 he was elected to the Central Committee and in 1936 to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Chile.
[file:Elías_Lafertte_caminando_por_una_población.jpg|thumb|250px|Elías Lafertte walking through a poor neighborhood.]
During the dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, Lafertte was arrested and banished several times. In 1927, 1931 and 1932 he was a candidate for the presidency of the Communist Party. From 1939 to 1961 he was chairman of the Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party. From 1937 to 1953 he was a member of the Senate for Tarapacá and Antofagasta.