Eduardo Frei Montalva

Eduardo Nicanor Frei Montalva was born on January 16, 1911, in Santiago. Graduating in law from the Catholic University of Chile, Frei was a pioneering intellectual of progressive Christian humanism, co-founding the National Falange and later the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) in 1957.

Elected President in 1964 with an absolute majority, Frei launched the ambitious 'Revolution in Liberty' program: redistributing agricultural estates through the landmark Agrarian Reform Act, purchasing state equity in American copper mines (Chilenización del Cobre), and incorporating over a million rural peasants into unions. In the late 1970s, as the foremost democratic opposition leader to Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, he was assassinated in Santa María Clinic in 1982 via chemical toxins injected by DINA agents.