Arturo Jirón
Arturo Humberto Jirón Vargas (6 December 1928 – Santiago, 30 October 2014) was a Chilean surgeon, academic and politician. He served as Minister of Public Health during the government of President Salvador Allende between November 1972 and August 1973, and survived the 1973 Chilean coup d'état at La Moneda Palace.
Family and education
Jirón was the son of Gustavo Jirón Latapiat—personal physician to President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, academic and Radical Party senator for Santiago—and Emma Vargas. He studied at the Instituto Nacional and then at the University of Chile Faculty of Medicine, graduating as a surgeon in 1952 with the thesis “Contribución al estudio de la anatomía normal del pulmón en el recién nacido y en el adulto.”
He married María Angélica Silva Morales, with whom he had three children: Ricardo Antonio, Arturo and Patricia. During exile in Venezuela he later married Gisela Cordero Saldivia.
Professional and political career
Jirón taught medicine at the University of Chile and worked at the San Juan de Dios Hospital; among his students there was Beatriz Allende, daughter of Salvador Allende. After Allende assumed the presidency on 3 November 1970, Jirón—along with cardiologist Óscar Soto—served as the president’s personal physician, a role both had already performed during the 1970 campaign.
Despite not belonging to any political party, on 3 November 1972 Allende appointed him Minister of Public Health. Jirón resigned on 28 August 1973 amid internal disputes within the health service and the ministry among factions of the Popular Unity coalition. He was succeeded by the Radical Party politician Mario Lagos Hernández, but continued as Allende’s physician.
On 11 September 1973, during the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, Jirón was inside La Moneda. He survived the assault, was detained, taken to the Military Academy and later transferred to the Dawson Island detention center. On 7 May 1974 he suffered a perforated duodenal ulcer and the next day was moved, with other political prisoners, to the Air Force War Academy (AGA). He later spent time under house arrest until January 1975, when he went into exile in Caracas, Venezuela, where he worked at the Central University of Venezuela.
He returned to Chile in 1989 and resumed teaching at the University of Chile. In December 2008 he received the “Condecoración de Honor de la Orden Médica Chilena” from the Colegio Médico de Chile.
Jirón died on 30 October 2014, aged 85, at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago.