ABSTRACT
In the 1920s and 1930s, Chile was one of the most modernized of the Latin American nations. As all Chileans know, the "Lion of Tarapaca" was Arturo Alessandri Palma, the dynamic, charismatic politician who swept to political power in that country in the 1920's, riding the wave of a burgeoning political consciousness in the middle class and the Chilean "rotos," the urban proletariat. The nation had always considered itself apart from and superior to much of the rest of Latin America, emphasizing in its unofficial myths the European nature of its population, the literacy of its people, and the orderly nature of its political, social, and economic institutions. In a sense, Alessandri was a child of his political times; for he grew up in a Chile marked by the byzantine political alliances of the Parliamentary era, when leaders and parties coalesced and split with bewildering frequency.
