Vocation : Politics : Public office

Olga Maturana Espinosa (October 10, 1906 – July 16, 1973) was a Chilean politician born in Santiago. Maturana worked as Councillor of Pichilemu in 1950, and became the first female Mayor of Pichilemu in 1951.

Germán Ignacio Riesco Errázuriz (1888 – November 11, 1958) was a Chilean political figure, who served several times as minister between 1919 and 1950. He was of Basque descent and a member of the influential Errázuriz family.
He was born in Santiago in 1888, the son of President Germán Riesco and of First Lady María Errázuriz Echaurren. He graduated as a lawyer from the Universidad de Chile on April 21, 1910. He was Minister of War and Navy of President Juan Luis Sanfuentes between 1919 and 1920; and Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1948 and 1950, under President Gabriel González Videla. He married Rosa Barceló Pinto but they had no children.

Alfredo Duhalde Vásquez (June 30, 1898 – April 10, 1985) was a Chilean politician who served twice as provisional president in 1946.
Duhalde was born in the city of Río Bueno, the son of Pedro Duhalde and of Zoila Vasquez. After completing his primary schooling in his natal town, he completed his secondary education at the Liceo de Aplicación in Santiago, where he graduated in 1916. He then studied law at the Universidad de Chile. He married Yolanda Heufmann, and together they had 6 children: Yolanda, René, Sara, Carmen, Marta and Sonia.
He joined the army and was commissioned as a Cavalry Lieutenant. Later he dedicated himself to work his lands in the areas of Río Bueno and La Unión. He was one of the founders of the Banco Agrícola (Agricultural Bank). He joined the Radical Party and was elected a deputy in 1924 for Llanquihue and Carelmapu. In 1933 he was re-elected, this time as a deputy for Valdivia, Osorno y La Unión.
In 1939, President Pedro Aguirre Cerda appointed him Minister of Defense, position he held until 1940, and then again between 1942 and 1944 under President Juan Antonio Rios. In 1945 he was elected a Senator for Valdivia, Osorno, Llanquihue, Aysén, Chiloé and Magallanes. On September 26 of the same year, he was appointed Minister of the Interior, and assumed as vice president during the absence of President Rios, who had travelled to the United States. President Ríos returned and reassumed power on December 3, but by then he was already very ill and had to hand over his powers to Duhalde again a little more than a month later on January 17, 1946.
Duhalde assumed as vice president again until the death of President Rios, on June 27, when he became Acting President. On August 3 of the same year, he stepped down once again in order to run in his party's primaries for the upcoming presidential election, which he lost to Gabriel González Videla, who went on to win the general election later that year. He resumed as vice president on August 13, having been replaced in the interim by Vice Admiral Vicente Merino, and continued in office until October 17, when he finally stepped down completely, being replaced by his minister of the Interior, Juan Antonio Iribarren.
He remained a Senator until 1953, when he retired permanently from politics. Duhalde also was director and president of the Banco Osorno- La Unión (1960–1966), Presidente of the Athletic Federation of Chile, partner of the Duhalde, Dibarrant and Co. and honorary director of Colo-Colo F.C. He died in the city of Santiago in 1985.

Eduardo Cruz-Coke Lassabe (April 22, 1899 – March 18, 1974) was a Chilean political figure, the conservative candidate in Chile's 1946 presidential election and the principal creator of the Chilean health system.
Cruz-Coke was born in Valparaíso, Chile, the son of Ricardo Cruz-Coke and of Celeste Lassabe. He completed his secondary studies at the Padres Franceses in Santiago, and later graduated as a medical doctor from the Universidad de Chile in 1921. While still a student, Cruz-Coke together with classmate Emilio Tizzoni, founded the National Association of Catholic Students (Spanish: Asociación Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos) (ANEC) based on the Catholic social teachings. Cruz-Coke became its first president, and in 1920 he joined the Conservative party.
After working as a microscopy assistant to professor Juan Noé, in 1925 he became professor of physiology and pathology at the same university, a position he retained until 1955. The same year, he travelled to Berlin to a sexology congress and remained in Europe studying for a year. At his return, he founded the Society of Biology of Santiago in 1928. Between 1927 and 1937 he was Chief of Medicine at the San Juan de Dios Hospital.
Between 1937 and 1938 Cruz-Coke served as Minister of Public Health, Social Assistance and Welfare appointed by President Arturo Alessandri. During his tenure, Cruz-Coke implemented a health program based upon a strictly scientific (as opposed to politic) approach to tackle the main health challenges, particularly maternal and infant mortality. He was the force behind Law 6026 (for Mother and Child) and Law 6174 (of Preventive Medicine). He set up a "National Food Council" (Spanish: Consejo Nacional de Alimentación) that defined innovative policies to improve the alimentary weaknesses, particularly among the low-income sectors, and organized the Preventive Medicine Services to diminish labour sickness. The measures had a positive impact in Public Health indexes and were followed by its successors.
In 1941, Cruz-Coke was elected a senator for Santiago and was reelected in 1949. In 1946, he was proclaimed presidential candidate by the Conservative party, but a split of his voting base between him and Fernando Alessandri resulted in the triumph of Gabriel González Videla, with Cruz-Coke finishing in second place. In 1948, Cruz-Coke founded the Social Christian Conservative Party.
After the end of his senatorial term in 1957, he decided not to run for reelection. In 1958 he was named Ambassador to Peru, where he remained until 1960. In 1963 he was named the first president of the newly established National Committee on Atomic Energy (Spanish: Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica), and in 1965 produced the first plan for the use of nuclear power in the mining industries of the north of Chile. He died in Santiago, in 1974, at the age of 74.

Carlos Sylvestre Begnis (30 August 1903 – 22 September 1980) was a medical doctor and politician, born in Alto Grande, a village near Bell Ville, Córdoba province in Argentina. He was a rural physician and worked as a surgeon in hospitals of the city of Rosario, province of Santa Fe.
He entered politics through the Radical Civic Union. In 1958 he was elected governor of Santa Fe, following a period of de facto military rule (after the Revolución Libertadora, which had ousted president Juan Perón three years before). He became a part of the Intransigent Radical Civic Union (UCRI), and then formed part of the leadership of the Movement for Integration and Development (MID). His term was ended by a federal intervention.
In the 1970s, Sylvestre Begnis moved to the Justicialist Party (Peronism), and was elected governor again in 1973 (Argentina had just emerged from seven years of military dictatorship). The Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel, which joins Santa Fe and Entre Ríos under the Paraná River, was built during his administration, and then officially renamed after him and Entre Ríos governor Raúl Uranga. The Brigadier Estanislao López Highway, linking Rosario and Santa Fe (the two largest cities in the province), was also built at this time. Sylvestre Begnis followed the policies of desarrollismo, sponsored by the national government of president Arturo Frondizi, devoting a large share of the provincial budget to public works (schools, roads, electric power lines, hydraulic works).
Sylvestre Begnis again could not complete his term, being removed from office in 1976 as a result of the military coup that started the dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process. He died of acute leukemia in 1980, at the age of 77.
His son Juan Héctor, also a politician, was a candidate for vice governor and served the Justicialist government of Jorge Obeid as Minister of Health, and is a national deputy for the Front for Victory. He chairs the Health Committee of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. In 2007 he campaigned to be mayor of Rosario.

Marco Manuel Avellaneda (18 June 1813 – 3 October 1841) was the governor of Tucumán Province in Argentina, and father of the Argentine President Nicolás Avellaneda.
He was executed after an unsuccessful revolt against the Federal government, and his head was displayed on a pike.

Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (28 December 1855 – 3 November 1931) was an Uruguayan epic poet and political figure. He is referred to as the "National Poet of Uruguay".