Conservative Party

Other than possessing a commitment to maintaining social order and preserving property rights, the original Conservative Party (Partido Conservador) did not hold its first convention until 1878. Lacking an ideology for their first forty years of existence did not seem to trouble the Conservatives. Emerging victorious from the Battle of Lircay (1830), the Conservatives happily turned power over to Diego Portales, who created a strong centralized government wielding enough power to keep order. Once the Conservatives lost control of the Moneda (government house), they tried to reduce the power of the central government and enhance political liberties. Paradoxically, they still insisted that the state support the Catholic Church's desire to deny Protestants religious freedom. Even after losing the presidency, the Conservatives continued to hold ministerial posts. In the 1870s, however, the Conservatives broke with the other parties over the issue of the role of the Roman Catholic Church and did not participate in government until after the 1891 revolution.

Although numerically small, the Conservative Party remained highly disciplined. It managed to preserve its share of the seats in the legislature largely because most of its members were large landowners who cynically forced their inquilinos (tenant farmers) to vote for Conservative candidates. The so-called reforms produced by the 1891 revolution enhanced the Conservatives' power base by permitting local governments, not the Moneda, to supervise the electoral process. This power, plus the fact that rural communities were overrepresented in the legislature, breathed new life into the Conservative cause.

At its 1901 party convention some Conservatives, under the influence of Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, began to advocate social and economic reforms: the construction of housing for the poor, improvement of working conditions, and increased educational opportunities. Social and economic reform continued to be one of the party's concerns.

The party managed to survive, but when it turned to the right, in the early 1930s, it lost several of its brightest members, some of whom bolted to form what became the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). After 1945, those who remained within the Conservative Party split into two groups: the Social Christian wing and the traditionalists. Later the Social Christians would join the PDC. The party managed to retain wide support, often outpolling the Left. Changes in the election process and a refusal of the inquilinos to accept passively their patrons' control led to a collapse of the Conservative Party's base of support. In 1965, for example, the Conservatives won only 5 percent of the vote in the congressional elections, losing all its places in the Senate and retaining only three places in the lower house. In order to unify the right wing and not dissipate their power, the Conservatives, in league with the Liberals, formed the National Party in 1966.

The Conservative Party retains its faith in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. While it does not question democracy, it wishes to reduce the power of the central government. Economically, it favors the free-enterprise system, but admits that private property rights can be subordinated to the needs of society. It remains an elitist, upper-class party, whose members are large provincial property owners. Needless to say, these elements resisted attempts at agrarian reform, which they often denounced as a U.S. plot.

The National Party continued its opposition to the Allende administration, working in league with the Christian Democrats in crucial by-elections and in supporting various antigovernment labor actions. The Nationals fielded candidates in the 1989 congressional elections but elected none.

See alsoAgrarian Reform; Allende Gossens, Salvador; Leo XIII, Pope; Portales Palazuelos, Diego José Pedro Víctor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fredrick B. Pike, Chile and the United States, 1880–1962 (1963), pp. 250-256.

Federico G. Gil, The Political System of Chile (1966), pp. 245-252.

Germán Urzúa Valenzuela, Los partidos políticos chilenos (1968), pp. 102-134.

Ben Burnett, Political Groups in Chile: The Dialogue Between Order and Change (1970), pp. 161-170, 178-181.

Karen L. Remmer, Party Competition in Argentina and Chile (1984), pp. 12-15, 72-74, 76-80, 117-120.

Additional Bibliography

Pereira L., Teresa. El Partido Conservador, 1930–1965: Ideas, figuras y actitudes. Fundación Mario Góngora, 1994.

Scully, Timothy. Rethinking the Center: Party Politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Chile. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.

                                         William F. Sater