Humberto Mendoza Bañados
Humberto Mendoza Bañados (12 December 1903 – ?) was a Chilean agronomist, diplomat, and politician associated with Trotskyism.
He served as Minister of Agriculture during the final months of President Juan Antonio Ríos' administration in 1946 and the subsequent vice presidencies of Alfredo Duhalde Vásquez and Vicente Merino Bielich.
Family and education
Mendoza was born in Valparaíso on 12 December 1903, the son of Oscar Mendoza and Tulia Bañados. He completed his primary education at the San Rafael Seminary in Viña del Mar and his secondary education at the Engineering School of the Chilean Navy.
He subsequently entered the Agronomic Institute of the University of Chile, graduating as an agronomist. He later studied law at the same university for two years.
He married Haydée Rojas, with whom he had six children: Miriam, Jorge, Sergio, Maribel, Oscar, and Estela.
Political career
Although Mendoza did not belong to any political party during his student years, in the second half of the 1920s he joined the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh). In 1929, he was expelled from the party because of his radical and Trotskyist tendencies. Together with other former members, he founded the Communist Left in 1931. He later joined a faction that left the organization and entered the Socialist Party of Chile (PS) in 1936.
Within the PS, he headed its International Department and served as a member of the Central Committee, becoming one of the party's political theorists. During this period, amid the economic crisis, he worked for the water utility inspecting meters and also served as a mechanical engineer for the Chilean Navy.
Mendoza entered public service in 1939, when Radical president Pedro Aguirre Cerda appointed him director of the Directorate of Statistics and Control of the Agricultural Colonization Fund. The following year, he supported a prospective presidential candidacy by Socialist politician Óscar Schnake, which ultimately did not materialize.
On 3 February 1946, President Juan Antonio Ríos appointed Mendoza Minister of Agriculture. He remained in office following Ríos's death on 27 June of that year, continuing to serve during the vice presidencies of Alfredo Duhalde Vásquez and Vicente Merino Bielich.
During the administration of President Gabriel González Videla, he was appointed Chilean consul in Chicago, United States, in 1948. He continued his diplomatic career during the second presidency of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, when he was appointed consul general in Panama. In 1959, during the administration of Jorge Alessandri, he assumed the same position in Honduras. He concluded his diplomatic career serving in Paraguay and returned to Chile in 1967. He died six months after his return to the country.
Among his other activities, Mendoza directed the Santiago-based magazine Rodó and authored numerous articles and research papers. He also contributed to the magazines Repertorio Americano of Costa Rica and Cuba Contemporánea of Havana, Cuba.