Abdón Cifuentes

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Abdón Cifuentes Espinoza (16 May 1835 – 14 April 1928) was a Chilean politician, lawyer, teacher, and writer. He was one of the most important Catholic conservative politicians in Chile during the 1800s. He was the first Chilean political leader to call for women’s voting rights in a public speech on 16 August 1865.

Cifuentes was born in San Felipe, Chile, to José Maria Cifuentes Olivares and Paula Espinoza Pinto. He married Luz Gómez and had 13 children. He studied at the National Institute (Instituto Nacional) and earned a law degree from the University of Chile in 1861. He worked as a teacher at Colegio San Luis and at the Instituto Nacional. In 1882 he joined the Faculty of Philosophy & Humanities at the University of Chile, and in 1889 he became a professor of constitutional law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Politically, he was elected to Parliament as representative of Rancagua in 1867 and was reelected five times. He served as a senator for Llanquihue in 1892, for Aconcagua in 1894, and for Santiago in 1904. In 1871 he was named Minister of Public Instruction by President Federico Errázuriz Zañartu. He pushed reforms that limited exams in private (mostly Catholic) schools and moved such testing to the colleges themselves. A law signed on 15 January 1872 and another on 30 January 1872 allowed students to study different branches of law. These actions drew opposition from lay professors, and the controversy contributed to changes at the Instituto Nacional, including the resignation of its director Diego Barros Arana and a temporary closure of the school to restore order.

Cifuentes participated in the deposition of President Balmaceda in 1891, helping administer the oath to the signatories since he was not in Congress at the time. In 1919 the Vatican awarded him the Order of St. Gregory the Great, the highest honor a layperson can receive. He died in Santiago at the age of 92 on 14 April 1928.