The political activity of Francisco Antonio Pinto: 1823-1828. Notes for a biographical review

Summary

This article analyzes the public activity of Francisco Antonio Pinto between the years 1823-1828, giving special emphasis to his intellectual and ideological participation during the last phase of the wars of independence and the beginning of the construction of the Chilean republic. Through the study of his life, we intend to present a global vision of the different socio-cultural events of this period, and also an account of the ideas and political projects that this regime put into practice. Pinto's participation in many of the most important public offices, complemented with his intellectual vocation, is a reflection of the conformation of the Chilean governments after the emancipation, and a demonstration of the strategies that the politicians of that time implemented with the objective of establishing the best republican model to fit the reality of the country. In this sense, this article rescues Julio Heises's thesis, in which he challenges the traditional historiography and sees the decades of the 1820's as years of political learning rather than as an anarchic process. The case of the 1828 Constitution, which served as the conceptual and legal basis for the 1833 Constitution, is an example of the above.