Francisco Javier Cuadra

Francisco Javier Cuadra Lizana (born 23 June 1954) is a Chilean lawyer, academic, and politician. He was a minister under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, dean of the Faculty of Law, and later rector of Diego Portales University.

Francisco Javier Cuadra
Minister Secretary General of Government
In office 6 November 1984 – 11 July 1987
President	Augusto Pinochet
Preceded by	Alfonso Márquez de la Plata
Succeeded by	Orlando Poblete
Personal details
Born	Francisco Javier Cuadra Lizana 23 June 1954 Rancagua, Chile
Political party	Independent National Renewal (1987–1995)
Spouse(s)	Francisca Montero Matta
Residence	Santiago, Chile
Alma mater	Pontifical Catholic University
Occupation	Lawyer, politician, academic

Biography

The son of Francisco Javier Cuadra Cornejo – lawyer of El Teniente mine – and María Cristina Lizana Alvear, Francisco Javier Cuadra spent his childhood and adolescence in his hometown of Rancagua with his brothers Cristián, Juan Pablo, Gonzalo, and José Miguel.[1] There he studied at the Instituto O'Higgins[2] and then went to university in Santiago: he first entered Adolfo Ibáñez University, where he took five semesters of Commercial Engineering, but after the coup of 1973 he changed to Law at the Pontifical Catholic University,[3] where he received a degree in that discipline.

Recently graduated, he worked at the now-defunct Banco Continental, the only one to be the subject of an intervention by the Superintendency of Banks at the time. One of the delegates of this era was Pablo Piñera, but on 31 January 1983, he was dismissed after a conflict related to the manner in which negotiations with the entity's workers were handled.[3]

Public life

That same year Cuadra began to work in the Office of Special Affairs of Government – which was in charge of relations with the Holy See and which provided political analysis to Pinochet – led by Sergio Rillón. To the latter, Pinochet offered the Ministry General Secretariat of Government in November 1984, a post that he refused, but for which he recommended Cuadra, his second-in-command. He thus obtained his first important position in the military dictatorship,[3][4] which he held from 1984 to 1987. He was then ambassador of Chile to the Holy See until the end of the regime (1987–1990).

After the return to democracy, he devoted himself mainly to the academic field and political analysis.

In an interview with the magazine Qué Pasa, in its 13 January 1995 issue, Cuadra said that there were "parliamentarians and other people who exercise public functions who use drugs." For this he was prosecuted under the Law on Security of the State, and was eventually sentenced to 540 days in prison.[5][6] The incident led him to renounce National Renewal (RN), the party to which Andrés Allamand had brought him (and in doing so, he had appointed him director of the Liberty Institute).[2]

In 2004 Cuadra was appointed rector of Diego Portales University,[7] where he had worked sporadically as a teacher since 1983, and where two of his eight children, José Francisco and José Antonio, had studied.[8][9] On 14 November 2005, he was forced to resign that position[10] due to pressures exerted by certain sectors of Chilean society, especially by the student community of that house of studies. His departure came after some statements Cuadra made to Diario Siete, in which he claimed that under Pinochet, for whom he was minister, some people were detained - particularly Ricardo Lagos, after the 1986 attack on the general[8] – to save them from falling into the hands of the feared Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI, successor to the DINA).

The statements that detentions were made under dictatorship to prevent other repressive agencies from eliminating opponents of the regime meant that those representatives, the authors of such preventive detentions, were aware of the human rights violations that were taking place at that time. Hence, Judge Hugo Dolmestch, who was in charge of the investigation into the killings of four leftist militants committed by the CNI, ordered the interrogation of several of the members of Pinochet's cabinet, including Cuadra.[11][12]

Cuadra was an advisor to Horacio Cartes, elected president of Paraguay in 2013, since he was a precandidate to lead the country for the Colorado Party.[13]

Cultural references

Cuadra was featured as the main character of the novels Baila hermosa Soledad (1991) by Jaime Hales and La patria (2012) by Marcelo Leonart.[14]

References

1. "Francisco Javier Cuadra Cornejo, de la" (in Spanish). Genealogía Chilena en Red. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
2. Pérez Villamil, Ximena (14 September 2010). "Por la boca muere Cuadra" [By the Mouth Cuadra Dies]. El Mostrador (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2018.
3. Arancibia Clavel, Patricia. "Cita Con La Historia – Francisco Javier Cuadra". Vimeo (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2018.
4. Mönckeberg, Maria Olivia (1 July 2011). "Ballerino y Gónzález Errázuriz". Karadima: El señor de los infiernos [Karadima: The Lord of the Underworld] (in Spanish). Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. ISBN 9789568410551. Retrieved 1 May 2018 – via Google Books.
5. Toro Agurto, Ivonne (23 July 2013). "El fantasma del caso drogas que explica por qué Allamand no quiere confrontar a Evelyn Matthei" [The Specter of the Drug Case That Explains Why Allamand Does Not Want to Confront Evelyn Matthei]. The Clinic (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2018.
6. Paz, Miguel (21 April 2011). "El histórico conflicto Allamand-Matthei que le pasó la cuenta al fallido director de Aduanas Mario Zumelzu" [The Historic Allamand-Matthei Conflict That Passed the Bill to the Failed Director of Customs Mario Zumelzu]. El Mostrador (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2018.
7. Macari, Mirko (17 January 2004). "La clase de Cuadra". La Nación (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2018.
8. Olivares, Lilian (16 March 2013). "Francisco, el ex embajador ante el Vaticano, habla de las señales de Francisco, el papa" [Francisco, the Former Ambassador to the Vatican, Talks About the Signs of Francisco, the Pope]. La Segunda (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2018.
9. Pérez Villamil, Ximena (3 December 2005). "Jamás me habría jugado por la continuidad de Cuadra" [I Would Never Have Played With the Continuity of Cuadra]. El Mercurio (in Spanish). Retrieved 2 May 2018.
10. "Francisco Javier Cuadra renunció a la rectoría de la U. Diego Portales" [Francisco Javier Cuadra Resigns from the Rectorship of Diego Portales University] (in Spanish). Radio Cooperativa. 14 November 2005. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
11. Valenzuela, Carolina (3 November 2005). "Dolmestch cita a ex ministros" [Dolmestch Cites Ex-Ministers]. El Mercurio (in Spanish). Retrieved 2 May 2018.
12. "Ex ministros de Pinochet son citados a declarar por crímenes de la CNI" [Ex-Pinochet Ministers are Summoned to Testify for Crimes of the CNI]. El Mercurio (in Spanish). Santiago. AFP. 2 November 2005. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
13. Artaza, Francisco (1 July 2012). "Francisco Javier Cuadra: 'Los paraguayos son muy contrarios a la presión extranjera'" [Francisco Javier Cuadra: 'The Paraguayans are Very Opposed to Foreign Pressure']. La Tercera (in Spanish). Retrieved 2 May 2018.
14. Rodríguez, Ana (3 January 2013). "Marcelo Leonart y su novela sobre Francisco Javier Cuadra" [Marcelo Leonart and His Novel About Francisco Javier Cuadra]. The Clinic (in Spanish). Retrieved 2 May 2018.