Gladys Marin
| Gladys Marín | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Chile | |
|
In office 1994–2002 |
|
| President of the Communist Party of Chile | |
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In office 2002–2005 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
16 July 1941 Curepto, Chile |
| Died | 6 March 2005 (aged 63) Santiago, Chile |
| Spouse(s) | Jorge Muñoz Poutays |
Gladys del Carmen Marín Millie (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈɡlaðis maˈɾin]; July 16, 1941 – March 6, 2005) was a Chilean activist and political figure. She was Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh) (1994–2002) and then president of the PCCh until her death. She was a staunch opponent of General Augusto Pinochet and filed the first lawsuit against him, in which she accused him of committing human rights violations during his seventeen-year dictatorship.
Marín was born in Curepto, in the Maule region to Heraclio Marín, a farmer, and school teacher Adriana Millie, later moving with her family to Sarmiento, and then to Talagante. At the age of eleven she settled in Santiago.
Marín joined the Communist party while studying at pedagogy faculty in Santiago. She was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1965, and again in 1970, representing a working-class district of Santiago.
Following the 1973 coup d'état, Marín first went underground and then, at the PCCh's insistence, took refuge in the Dutch embassy in Santiago, where she remained for eight months before being allowed to leave the country to East Germany. Her husband Jorge Muñoz disappeared in 1976, while Marín was out of the country, travelling in Costa Rica. She returned to Chile, clandestinely, in 1978 and fought from the underground for the return of democracy.
In 1997, Marín ran for a seat in the Senate and obtained the eighth largest national majority, but was not elected due to the nature of the Chilean electoral system, which favours the two dominant parties or coalitions. She ran for president in 1999 and achieved less than four percent of the vote, mainly due to fear from leftist voters that the right-wing candidate Joaquín Lavín could defeat Socialist Ricardo Lagos.
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