Luis Emilio Recabarren

Luis Emilio Recabarren Serrano (July 6, 1876 – December 19, 1924) was a Chilean political figure. He was elected several times as deputy, and was the driving force behind the worker's movement in Chile.

Recabarren was born in the port of Valparaíso in 1876, to José Agustín Recabarren and Juana Rosa Serrano. He was of Basque descent. His family was very impoverished. From a very early age, he started to work as a typographer to help with the family finances. Even though he had very little formal education, he was a very voracious reader and was self-taught. He married Guadalupe del Canto, with whom he fathered two children. After the death of his first wife, he married Teresa Flores, who helped him with his political activities.

After a trip to Antofagasta, Taltal and , Recabarren became aware of the extreme poverty and near-enslavement of the nitrate workers. He decided to act. In 1894, he joined the Democrat Party of Chile. He became an ardent public speaker and founded several organizations and newspapers to foment solidarity within the workers. He initially focussed his political activities on the city of his birth, where he became director and editor of El Trabajo (Work) newspaper. Due to his harsh criticisms of governmental labour policies, he was jailed for eight months. In 1905 he moved with his family to Antofagasta, where he became the publisher of La Vanguardia (Vanguard) newspaper.

On May 15, 1906, Recabarren was elected as a deputy for Tocopilla to the National Congress representing the Democrat Party. He was prevented though from assuming his position because he refused to be sworn on a bible, based on his atheism. He moved his family to Iquique. Heavily involved in the labour movement, organising workers both politically and industrially, as a consequence of which he was re-prosecuted by the government and had to escape to Argentina. In that country he joined the Socialist Party of Argentina and in 1908 he travelled to Europe (Spain, France and Belgium), finally returning to Chile at the end of that year.

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