Paulina Eliana Veloso Valenzuela (born in Concepción,

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, February 14, 1957) is a

an lawyer and

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of t ...

politician who served as the Minister Secretary-General of the Presidency of Chile (also rendered as the president's Chief of Staff in English) from March 11, 2006 to March 27, 2007.

Family

Velaso is the daughter of the ex- intendant of the

Biobío Region The Biobío Region ( es, Región del Biobío ), is one of Chile's sixteen regions (first-order administrative divisions). With a population of 1.5 million, thus being the third most populated region in Chile, it is divided into three provinces: ...

, lawyer Adolfo Veloso Figueroa (

) and Felicitas Valenzuela, an academic with the

Universidad de Concepción Universidad (Spanish for "university") may refer to: Places * Universidad, San Juan, Puerto Rico * Universidad (Madrid) Football clubs * Universidad SC, a Guatemalan football club that represents the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala ...

. She is a cousin of the intendant of

, María Soledad Tohá Veloso. She is also the mother of

Nicolás Grau Nicolás Andrés Grau Veloso (born 9 April 1983) is a Chilean business manager, economist and politician who has been as Chile's Minister of Minister of Economy, Development and Tourism since 11 March 2022. Biography Grau is the son of Francisco ...

, who was the president of the Students Federation of the Universidad de Chile (''Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile'').

Life under the Pinochet regime

After the Chilean coup d'état of

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...

on September 11, 1973, Veloso's fiancé at the time (and later husband), Alexei Jaccard Siegler, was detained and tortured by agents of the DINA. In 1974, the two escaped together for an exile in Switzerland. On May 15, 1977, during a trip to

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, Jaccard was detained in the name of

Operation Condor Operation Condor ( es, link=no, Operación Cóndor, also known as ''Plan Cóndor''; pt, Operação Condor) was a United States–backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of op ...

for Chilean and Argentina, Argentine agents. He was moved to the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics, ESMA internment camp, tortured, and later Forced disappearance, was disappeared. Paulina Veloso lived in Switzerland for many years, where she obtained dual nationality, and finally returned to Chile in 1979. Veloso studied law at the

, graduating with the highest distinction. She was sworn in as a lawyer before the Supreme Court of Chile in 1987. Principally dedicated to the academic life, she has served as the chair of Civil law (area), civil law at the Universidad de Chile School of Law in Santiago, Chile, Santiago from 1991 until the present. She also served as member of the Council of the Faculty.

Government service

With the return of democracy to Chile at the beginning of the 1990s, Veloso began to work in various public offices, including Undersecretary of Labor and chief of staff in the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (Chile), Ministry of Labor and Social Security (''Ministerio del Trabajo y Previsión Social'') from 1990-1994, Deputy Director of the National Women's Service (''Servicio Nacional de la Mujer'') from 1994-1997. In 2002 the President appointed Veloso to be a court-assisting attorney for the Court of Appeals of Santiago. In 2005, she was elected a councilor of the State Defense Council (''Consejo de Defensa del Estado''). Veloso was appointed Minister Secretary-General of the Presidency by President Michelle Bachelet, and she assumed the post on March 11, 2006. This appointment made her one of the 10 women appointed to Bachelet's historic half-female, half-male cabinet. On March 27, 2007 Velaso was replaced as minister by the Socialist Party of Chile, Socialist lawyer José Antonio Viera-Gallo as part of Bachelet's rearrangement of the cabinet in the midst of fallout over the handling of Transantiago.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Veloso, Paulina 1957 births Living people People from Concepción, Chile Chilean people of Galician descent Socialist Party of Chile politicians Chilean Ministers Secretary General of the Presidency 20th-century Chilean lawyers Academic staff of the University of Chile Chilean exiles University of Concepción alumni Chilean agnostics Chilean women lawyers Women government ministers of Chile 21st-century Chilean politicians 21st-century Chilean women politicians