Gabriel González Videla

Gabriel González Videla (1898 to 1980) was a Chilean lawyer and politician who served as the twenty-fifth president of Chile from 1946 to 1952. Before reaching the presidency he sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1930 to 1941 and then in the Senate for Tarapacá and Antofagasta in 1945 and 1946. He was a long-standing member and leader of the Radical Party, which he left in 1971 in protest at its backing of the socialist president Salvador Allende. From 1973 until his death he took an active part in the government of Augusto Pinochet, serving as vice president of the Council of State from 1976, and in that role helped to draft the Chilean constitution of 1980. His career therefore runs from the Radical tradition to participation in a military government.