Marcos Chamúdez

Marcos Chamúdez Reitich, also known as Marcos Chamudes (16th January 1907 -  25th June 1989 ) was a Chilean politician, photographer and journalist.

Family background

Marcos Chamúdez Reitich was born born in Santiago on January 16, 1907, into a family of Sephardic Jews, son of Oscar Chamúdez and María Reitich. He studied at the National Institute and at the Barros Arana National Board (INBA).

Political career

Chamúdez excelled as a youth leader and in 1929 joined the Communist Party of Chile (CPC). Subsequently, he devoted himself to journalism and founded the newspaper Frente Popular and the magazine Qué Hayo. He participated in the beginnings of the Communist Party of Peru and played a part in the Communist Party of Chile, being elected deputy for the Sixth Provincial Grouping of Valparaiso and Quillota for the  period 1937-1941 in the 1937 parliamentary elections.  He was a delegate in the Permanent Commission of Interior Government, in Constitution, Legislation and Justice, and in Labour and Social Legislation and a member of the Permanent Commission of Public Education. He participated in passing laws authorising a loan of up to $ 25,000,000 in bonds to the National Airline, LAN, a fiscal guarantee for purchase of equipment and radio-communications stations. However he was expelled from the party on 29 September 1940 for unknown reasons, and consequently became a staunch opponent of communism in later life, and joined the Radical Party where he served as head of press and information.

Photographer and journalist

On November 14, 1941, Chamúdez moved to the United States with his wife Marta Vergara Varas, a prominent journalist and activist for women's rights. There he began his photographic activity, studying at the private School of Modern Photography, New York City, in portraiture, commercial and colour photography, then dedicating himself to a career as a photographer.

During World War II Chamúdez volunteered for the US Army and was accepted as a war correspondent. He photographed on the European front where his best-known stories covered the release of prisoners from concentration camps and US military activity in Germany under the command of General George Patton. He was decorated and subsequently was made a United States citizen.

After the end of the war, Chamúdez settled in Washington D.C. to work as a freelance photographer and received commissions from the Chilean Embassy in the United States. His activity as a war photographer continued in 1947 as a reporter for the United Nations and he traveled to Europe to cover border conflict in the Balkans, and unrest in Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. From 1946 to 1949 he worked at the International Refugee Organization. During this period, while covering events in different parts of the world, he also made portraits of important artists and writers; Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Rufino Tamayo and Jorge Amado.

Chile

Chamúdez returned to Chile in 1951 where he served as a photojournalist for the Economic and Social Council and as the official photographer of President Gabriel González Videla, while also setting up his own studio and gallery. As a columnist and radio broadcaster he heads the news program "Beware, do not deny me!" on Radio Agriculture, until in 1954 he moved to Radio Cooperativa Vitalicia with the program "Marcos Chamudes reports and comments." For Magnum in 1952 he travelled travel to Bolivia to cover the National Revolutionary Movement. From this work, one of his images, an heroic Portrait of a Bolivian Miner is selected by Edward Steichen and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA) in the 1955 exhibition The Family of Man which want on to tour the world and was seen by an audience of 9 million.

From 1956 Chamúdez was a correspondent of the magazine Visión in Buenos Aires, reporting from Argentina, Uruguay and with visits to Bolivia and Paraguay. Turning from photography to dedicate himself to journalism, on May 1, 1959, Chamúdez was appointed director of the newspaper La Nacion until 1961, when he edited the southern area of ​​the magazine "Visión". In 1963, he founded and directed the weekly Politica, Cultura e Economia (PEC), the main anticommunist tribune of the time.

Chamúdez encountered opposition from the CCP which accused him of being a traitor and in response, in 1964, he published his autobiography entitled El libro blanco de mi leyenda negra (The white book of my black legend).

After the victory of Salvador Allende in the elections of 1970 he emigrated to Buenos Aires where he lived until 1973 and where he died on June 25, 1989.

Legacy

Most of his photographs are in the archive of the National Historical Museum of Chile.