Óscar Acevedo Vega

Óscar Acevedo Vega (Curicó, 10 September 1899 – Santiago, 20 March 1973) was a Chilean lawyer, judge, academic, and politician who served as a minister of state during the second government of President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo.

Family and education

He was born in the Chilean city of Curicó on 10 September 1899, the son of Herminia Vega Torrejón and Juan Bautista Acevedo Guajardo, a pharmacist, military officer—who served in the War of the Pacific, fought between 1879 and 1884—and politician, who served first as a councillor and later as mayor of Curicó for twenty-four years, representing the Liberal Party (PL).

He completed his primary and secondary education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana. He subsequently attended the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile and was admitted to the bar before the Supreme Court on 13 November 1922.

He married researcher Marta Uribe Mandujano, who participated in the medical study Contribución al estudio de las enfermedades sociales.

Public career

He practised law and held a succession of judicial posts throughout the country. He served as a clerk at the Special Court of Appeals from 1 September 1909 to 30 June 1912; secretary of the Court of Tocopilla from 17 December 1925; presiding judge in Villarrica from 1 September 1926; judge in La Ligua from 1 June 1927; secretary of the Court of Appeals of Iquique from 1 November 1930 and subsequently as a rapporteur of the same court from 1 March 1932; judge of the First Court of Temuco from 1 May 1935; judge of the First Court of Talca from 1 April 1937; and judge of the First Civil Court of Santiago from 1 October 1939.

He subsequently attained his highest position within the Chilean judiciary on 1 April 1946, when he was appointed a justice of the Court of Appeals of Santiago.

He was also active in academia, serving as a teacher at the Liceo de Hombres de Iquique for three years; as a teacher at Santiago's Liceo No. 6 de Hombres; and, from 1954, as a professor at the Instituto Técnico Pedagógico of the Technical University of the State.

In politics, during the second government of President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, he was appointed Minister of Lands and Colonization on 24 July 1958. On 14 October, while retaining that portfolio, he was also appointed Minister of Justice. He held both offices until 3 November of that year, when the Ibáñez administration came to an end.

He died on 20 March 1973, aged 73.