Jorge Prat

Who was Jorge Prat?

Jorge Prat Echaurren was a Chilean nationalist politician.

Prat was born in Santiago, Chile. A veteran of the nationalist political scene, he was first associated with the National Socialist Movement of Chile or Nacists, albeit as a low level member. During the late 1940s he led his own group, the Estanqueros, based around corporatism and strong support for the regimes of Francisco Franco and António de Oliveira Salazar as well as militant anti-communism. It sought the creation of a highly disciplined hierarchy in society and government with a strong charismatic leader and an elite rulering class in an ideology that Prat called current portalismo after Diego Portales. His movement published its own weekly newspaper, Estanquero, between 1949 and 1954. Later the Estanqueros would be subsumed into the Chilean Anti-Communist Action a more militant group associated with rightist former President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo.

Prat would himself become associated with Ibáñez and served as Minister of Finance in his second government from 1954 to 1955.