Ana Lya Uriarte

Ana Lya Uriarte (born 17 July 1962) is the current Chief of the Cabinet of The Presidency elected by Michelle Bachelet in her second presidential period. She was also the Minister of the Environment for Chile from 2007 to 2010.

Biography

Uriarte was born in Santiago on 17 July 1962, she was the only child of a middle-class family. Uriarte became a mother when she was twelve^[1] and her mother and grandmother had to support her. She says that the family savings were spent on buying her a caesarian operation^[1] After a difficult time at school facing discrimination as a single mother, Uriarte continued to succeed.^[1] She studied law at the University of Chile. She went on to be a student political activist during the 1980s building up the Student Federation of the University of Chile into an important organisation.

She trained as a lawyer and was called to the bar in 1988 in Chile.^[2]

When the Catholic church founded the Vicariate of Solidarity to support work in defence of human rights^[3] she worked with Alfonso Insunza helping the victims of General Pinochet as a lawyer. Early in the 1990s she went to Germany for two years where her then husband was studying International law.^[4]

Uriarte returned to the University of Chile where she became a Professor of Environmental Law. She taught on the Masters course in Environmental Law.^[5] She worked on a human rights programme for the government from 1993 to 2003.^[2] She became the Minister of the Environment for Chile in March 2007 and she served until March 2010 under President Michelle Bachelet. One of the controversies that was debated during her ministry was a proposal to dam rivers to flood land and create hydro electric power.^[6] She replaced by María Ignacia Benítez.

In 2012 she was a partner in a Chilean Law firm still specialising in the Environment.^[2]

References