Ross Santa María, Gustavo (1879–1961)

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Ross Santa María, Gustavo (1879–1961)

Gustavo Ross Santa María (b. June 1879; d. 5 April 1961), Chilean financier, businessman, and government minister. Born in Valparaíso, Ross, who supported the efforts to depose President Carlos Ibáñez Del Campo, served as minister of finance during Arturo Alessandri Palma's second term of office. Through a variety of sometimes controversial methods, he successfully renegotiated Chile's foreign debt. He also engineered Chile's economic recovery during the Great Depression by stimulating local industries, asserting state control over certain utilities as well as the nitrate industry, and restricting the profits of foreign businesses, particularly the American-owned copper mines. Singularly uncharismatic and identified with the nation's most conservative elements, Ross sought the presidency in 1938. Only the abortive Nazi putsch, which led to Ibáñez's support of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, prevented him from winning the Moneda.

See alsoChile: The Twentieth Century; Nazis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Reese Stevenson, The Chilean Popular Front (1942).

Ernst Halperin, Nationalism and Communism in Chile (1965).

Additional Bibliography

Fermandois H, Joaquín. Abismo y cimiento: Gustavo Ross y las relaciones entre Chile y Estados Unidos, 1932–1938. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 1997.

                                        William F. Sater

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