Grove Vallejo, Marmaduke (1878–1954)

Marmaduke Grove Vallejo (b. 6 July 1878; d. 15 May 1954), Chilean army officer and Socialist Party leader. Grove was born in Copiapó. He enrolled at the Escuela Naval in 1892, was dismissed in 1894, but two years later entered the Escuela Militar. Upon graduation in 1898, Second Lieutenant Grove entered the artillery. In 1901 he became a first lieutenant and was assigned to the staff of the Escuela Militar. Four years later he was sent to Germany and spent time in an artillery regiment and at the Charlottenburg Artillery Training School, where he received a diploma. In 1910 he returned to Chile a captain. He studied at the Academia de Guerra (staff school) from 1912 to 1914. He married Rebeca Valenzuela in 1915.

As a young officer, Grove was known for his advanced social and political ideas. In 1918 he was promoted to major, served on the Division I staff, then on the general staff, and the next year was appointed subdirector of the Escuela Militar in Santiago. For his outspoken criticism of war ministry activities in 1920, Grove was transferred out of Santiago, but he moved back to the Escuela Militar in 1921. He was a key figure in the military-political activities of 1924–1925. Then after quarreling with army strongman Carlos Ibáñez Del Campo (president, 1927–1931), he was posted to Europe on a mission for Chile's fledgling air corps, which he had helped found. There he plotted against Ibáñez and tried unsuccessfully to overthrow him, for which he was exiled to Easter Island. He escaped and, following Ibáñez's ouster in 1931, was appointed air commodore. Grove became a key figure in the 1932 Socialist Republic, was exiled again, and was elected to the Senate (while in jail) soon after his return, serving from 1934 to 1949. He was an early leader of the Socialist Party, and the party's contender for the Popular Front presidential candidacy in 1938, before giving way to Radical Pedro Aguirre Cerda.

See alsoChile, Political Parties: Socialist Party; Ibáñez del Campo, Carlos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jorge Grove V., Descorriendo el velo: Episodio de los doce días de la República Socialista (1933).

Jack Ray Thomas, "The Evolution of a Chilean Socialist: Marmaduke Grove," in Hispanic American Historical Review (February 1967): 22-37.

William H. Beezley and Judith Ewell, The Human Tradition in Latin America: The Twentieth Century (1987), pp. 41-57.

Additional Bibliography

Brncic I., Moira. Marmaduke Grove: Liderazgo ético. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Tierra Mía, 2003.

                                  Frederick M. Nunn