The Last Years

Abstract

Diego Portales’ official link with the central government continued even after he retired from the governorship of Valparaíso. On 29 May 1833 he was appointed to the first Consejo de Estado under the new constitution. It is interesting to note that also included with him were Manuel J. Gandarillas and Juan Egaña. Obviously Gandarillas’ recent constitutional skirmishes with Mariano Egaña did not set him at odds with the administration. But Portales was not active again until 1835. During 1834 he was confronted by two especially irksome problems. Not only was he still far from financial solvency but the government decided that he owed it thirty-seven hundred pesos which supposedly he was not authorized to allocate during the revolution of 1829. Whatever influence he allegedly possessed was ineffective now; he had to pay the sum. “Goodbye my silver!” he wrote to Antonio Garfias in 1834.¹ Bothersome also was the incessant pressure directed at him from Santiago to encourage him back into government. President Prieto was having trouble with his ministers, and many people already assumed that Manuel Rengifo would run against him in the 1836 presidential election. But it was difficult to sway Portales. To Prieto he wrote at the end of May 1834 that he was convinced the best service he could perform for the country would be “not to mix in public matters...”²