José Miguel Infante y Rojas (March 1778 - April 9, 1844) was a Chilean federalist politician who was a leader of the federalist movement in Chile, as well as several times deputy and presidential candidate. During the period of independence he briefly held the position of President of the Government Junta from August 23, 1913 to January 11, 1914.
His main heroic act was having promoted a bill in 1923 for the total abolition of slavery in Chile, which was approved by Congress and included in the constitution, making Infante the main person responsible for abolishing slavery in Chile.
Biography[]
He was the son of Agustín Infante Prado and Rosa de Rojas y Ortuguren. After finishing his secondary studies, he began to study law and became a lawyer. He liked to read political philosophy and classical reading, so his uncle José Antonio de Rojas, a Creole independentista, allowed him to use his library. When the war of independence broke out, Infante joined the revolutionary cause and, due to his intellectual capacity, held several important positions, such as being one of the members of the First National Congress.
After temporarily taking refuge in Argentina, Infante returned to Chile in 1817 and was appointed finance minister by Bernardo O'Higgins. After the independence of Chile, Infante was a deputy on several occasions, and began to promote the ideas of federalism inspired by the United States model.
José Miguel Infante quickly found several followers of his federalist ideas and in 1826 he managed to get the congress to include federal laws in the new constitution, dividing the country into eight provinces with the aim of decentralizing power in the country. His federal ideas were welcomed by the governments of Manuel Blanco Encalada and Ramón Freire, but there were several problems during their implementation which made the later president Francisco Antonio Pinto decide to discard them. The federalist ideas no longer had the possibility of being applied after the rise to power of the conservatives Joaquín Prieto and Diego Portales.
Infante was a presidential candidate several times but never got enough votes to win. He died in 1844 at the age of 65.