Jorge Eduardo Alessandri Rodríguez (Latin American Spanish: [ˈxoɾxe aleˈsandɾi roˈðɾiɣes]; 19 May 1896 – 31 August 1986) was the 26th President of Chile from 1958 to 1964, and was the candidate of the Chilean right in the crucial presidential election of 1970, which he lost to Salvador Allende.

He studied at Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera, prestigious public high school of Santiago, and University of Chile, and after graduating in 1919 worked there as a lecturer.

After the fall of the parliamentary republic, he lived in European exile with his parents from 1924 to 1925, but returned to his native land where he was elected to parliament as an independent from a Santiago constituency in 1926.

He withdrew from public life in 1932 to concentrate on business interests, becoming president of the mortgage bank, Caja de Crédito Hipotecario until 1938 and running the Paper and Cardboard Manufacturing Company.

In the event of no candidate securing an overall majority of the popular vote, the choice of president fell to Congress, which duly chose Alessandri, who had a coalition of Conservatives, Liberals and Radical Party congressmen behind him.

Alessandri initially focused, unsurprisingly, on economic issues, particularly on controlling inflation and balancing the state budget, and he liberalised Chile's tariff régime.

On 3 November 1965, in the press published a letter, supported by 900 firms, where directed to Alessandri to analyze the general reality and highlight his public action, thus starting his second presidential candidacy.

Publishing in the press in September 1968, a manifesto to the country -subscribed by Guillermo Feliú Cruz, historian; Hugo Galvez Gajardo, former Minister; Adolfo Silva Henríquez, farmer; Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz, university leader; Eduardo Boetsch G. H., engineer; and Jorge Delano Frederick, reporter requested adhesions to promote the presidential candidacy of Jorge Alessandri.

On one occasion he said of the Chilean people: "I perceived, and necessarily, the rumor growing tide of discontent, despair and anxiety, inevitable product of just awakened but unsatisfied aspirations."

[3] His nephew Arturo Alessandri Besa stood as presidential candidate for the right-wing Alianza in 1993, losing to the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle of the Concertación center-left coalition.