Fernando García Oldini
Fernando García Oldini (21 December 1898 – 1965) was a Chilean politician who served as a minister.
A member of the 1925 Constituent Assembly, he served as Minister of Labour from 1932 to 1934 during the second administration of President Arturo Alessandri. During the administration of President Gabriel González Videla, he again served as Minister of Labour and also headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs between July and November 1952.
Life and career
He pursued his political career as a member of the Democratic Party. During the first administration of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, he represented the Chilean government at the Ibero-American Exposition in Seville, Spain, in 1929.
In December 1932, he was appointed Minister of Labour in President Arturo Alessandri's first cabinet. He remained in office until 1934, when he was appointed Chilean consul and minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. He also served as a member of the Chilean delegation to the League of Nations and as permanent delegate to the International Labour Organization (ILO), being elected to its governing body in 1937. At his initiative, the ILO organised labour conferences in the Americas, a region that had previously received little attention from the organisation. The first of these conferences was held in Santiago, Chile, in January 1936. During his time in Switzerland, he also studied labour law in Geneva.
During the administration of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, he headed the Diplomatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1938 to 1942. During the administration of President Gabriel González Videla, he returned to the Ministry of Labour, serving from 7 to 27 February 1950. During the second administration of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, he served as a member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1953.
His principal literary activity was associated with the weekly magazine Claridad, published by the University of Chile Student Federation (FECh), to which he contributed numerous articles of literary and sociological criticism. He also contributed to Juventud, a magazine published by a group of students. He later joined the staff of the newspaper La Nación, where he wrote articles on international politics. He remained with the newspaper until 1929.
He was married to Sara María Camino y Malvar, with whom he had two children, Fernando and María.