Óscar Alfredo Landerretche Gacitúa (born 18 October 1949) is a Chilean politician who served as minister of State. Similarly, he was president of the board of the Chilean state owned-company Codelco.
Biography His father was an officer in the Carabineros de Chile, and his mother was a teacher at the Liceo Nº 1 de Niñas in Valparaíso.La Tercera (Santiago), 25 March 2007, Reportajes, p. 16. He is of Basque descent on both his paternal and maternal sides.
He attended the Liceo Eduardo de la Barra in Valparaíso. He earned a degree in business administration and a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Chile. He later obtained a master's degree in economics from the University of the Andes in Bogotá and a doctorate in political economy from the University of Oxford in England.El Mercurio (Santiago), 3 March 1996, p. B4.
He is married to Trini Moreno and is the father of economist Óscar Landerretche Moreno.
Political career In his youth, he joined the Socialist Party of Chile (PS). In 1971, he received military and intelligence training in Cuba.La Tercera (Santiago), 14 March 1999, Reportajes, p. 12. Following the overthrow of President Salvador Allende in September 1973, he participated in the reorganization of the Socialist Party. The party's first Central Committee plenary meeting after the coup was held in October 1973 at his home in the Villa Aurora neighborhood of Santiago. In the second half of 1974, after taking refuge in the Embassy of Colombia, he went into exile.
While in Colombia, he earned a master's degree in economics from the University of the Andes and served as a professor and researcher there from 1975 to 1976 and again from 1982 to 1990. Between those appointments, he studied in England, where he completed his doctorate in political economy at the University of Oxford. During the second half of the 1980s, he participated in efforts to encourage several guerrilla movements to disarm and enter legal political life, a process that contributed to Colombia's constitutional reform. The Colombian government publicly invited him to serve on the commission of experts that prepared draft proposals for the new constitution, but he declined the appointment because he planned to return to Chile.
After returning to Chile in 1991, he became head of the Productive Development Division at the Ministry of Economy, Executive Secretary of the Interministerial Committee on Productive Development, a state representative on the board of Colbún in 1992, and president of the National Institute for Standardization in 1994.
In 1997, he was appointed Undersecretary of Economy. The following year, he became president of the National Energy Commission (CNE), taking office during the severe energy crisis caused by the 1998–1999 Chilean drought.La Segunda (Santiago), 24 November 1998, p. 2.
He later served as Executive Vice President of the state-owned Production Development Corporation (CORFO),La Segunda (Santiago), 13 March 2003, p. 19. vice chairman of the board of the National Petroleum Company (ENAP), chairman of the board of SERCOTEC, Executive Vice President of the National Mining Company (ENAMI),El Mercurio (Santiago), 28 March 2006, p. B1. and a state-appointed member of the board of the Quebrada Blanca mining company.El Mercurio (Santiago), 1 July 2007, p. B12.
He has served as an academic at the Graduate School of the Institute of Public Affairs, University of Chile, now the University's Faculty of Government. He has also been director of the institute's graduate school, an MBA lecturer at the Federico Santa María Technical University, a visiting professor in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Talca, and a lecturer at the School of Government and Public Management of the University of Chile.
References
External links Profile at University of Chile