Rengifo Cárdenas, Manuel (1793–1846)

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Rengifo Cárdenas, Manuel (1793–1846)

Manuel Rengifo Cárdenas (b. 29 December 1793; d. 16 March 1846), Chilean trader and politician. At the age of fifteen he went to work for a Spanish trading house in Santiago, later undertaking numerous commercial ventures of his own. In the late 1820s he became a close associate of trader and politician Diego Portales (1793–1837). With the Conservative triumph in 1830, he served as the new regime's finance minister (1830–1835). Rengifo systematically reorganized Chilean finances and implemented policies to promote the commercial predominance of Valparaíso in the Pacific. His presidential aspirations were ruthlessly checkmated by Portales in 1835. Rengifo returned to the finance ministry for a second period (1841–1844), during which his main achievement was the settlement of the long-standing debt arising from the London loan of 1822. His brother Ramón Rengifo (1795–1861) was the author of the still-popular patriotic "Canción de Yungay" (Song of Yungay).

See alsoChile: The Nineteenth Century; Portales Palazuelos, Diego José Pedro Víctor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Osvaldo Rengifo, Don Manuel Rengifo, su vida y su obra (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Sagredo B., Rafael. "Chile, 1823–1831: El desafío de la administración y organización de la hacienda pública." Historia 30 (1997): 287-312.

                                                Simon Collier

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Rengifo Cárdenas, Manuel (1793–1846)

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