Ruíz Tagle Portales, Francisco (?–1860)

Francisco Ruíz Tagle Portales (d. 23 March 1860), Chilean political figure. A prominent creole landowner, Ruíz Tagle played several public roles as a patriot during the Chilean Patria Vieja (the period, 1810–1814, before the Spanish reconquest). He nevertheless found no difficulty accepting municipal office under the restored Spanish colonial regime (1814–1817), although his collaborationism won him a 12,000-peso fine after the liberation of Chile. In the 1820s, easily adapting to the new order, he served as a member of the legislature and as a minister during the presidency of Francisco Antonio Pinto. When the Conservatives seized power in 1829–1830, Ruíz Tagle became interim president of Chile (18 February 1830). But his ruthless cousin Diego Portales, leader of the Conservative regime, found him insufficiently zealous and forced him to resign only a few weeks after he assumed office (31 March 1830). Ruíz Tagle's days as a trimmer were over: he played no further public role.

See alsoPinto Díaz, Francisco Antonio .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Additional Bibliography

Cardoso Ruíz, Patricio. Formación y desarrollo del estado nacional de Chile: De la independencia hasta 1930. Toluca: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, 2000.

Collier, Simon, and William F. Sater. A History of Chile, 1808–1994. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Stuven, Ana María. La seducción de un orden: Las elites y la construcción de Chile en las polémicas culturales y políticas del siglo XIX. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 2000.

                                  Simon Collier