Pascual Barraza

Pascual Barraza Barraza (17 May 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a Chilean trade-union leader and politician from the Communist Party of Chile. He served as Minister of Public Works and Transport from 1970 to 1972 in the government of President Salvador Allende.

Biography

A lifelong communist militant (since 1925), Barraza was a CTCh union leader (1937) and later served on the Communist Party's Central Committee. Under the “Defense of Democracy Law” he was banned from office and interned between 1948 and 1950, including in the Pisagua camp. He later managed the El Siglo newspaper and other publishing houses.

He was elected councillor (1960) and then mayor (1961–1970) of La Granja, and briefly acted as Minister of Housing and Urbanism (10–17 September 1971) in an interim capacity while serving as Public Works minister.

After the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, he lived semi-underground, was periodically detained, and remained active in opposition spaces and labor defense bodies.