Communist Party of Chile

The party's forerunner, the Socialist Workers' Party (POS), was founded by the typographer Luis Emilio Recabarren after he left the Democrat Party. The sources give different founding dates: the English-language source says 4 June 1912, while the Spanish-language source says Recabarren founded it on 24 May 1912 at the La Cholita nitrate works with about 30 nitrate workers and employees. The Spanish-language source treats the present Communist Party as founded on 2 January 1922, whereas the English-language source dates the party's foundation to 1912. On 2 January 1922 the POS's Third Congress in Rancagua accepted the twenty-one conditions for joining the Comintern and renamed the party the Communist Party of Chile. The party soon won congressional seats and spread from the nitrate workers to the coal, textile and port unions. Recabarren took his own life on 19 December 1924.

According to the Spanish-language source the party was outlawed under Carlos Ibáñez's government (1927–1931). Closely tied to the Soviet Union and the Comintern, it took part in the Popular Front government of 1938, grew rapidly among organised workers in the 1940s and held cabinet posts under Gabriel González Videla (1946–1947). With the onset of the Cold War, however, it was outlawed again in 1948 under the Law for the Permanent Defence of Democracy and regained legality only in 1958. Meanwhile it backed Salvador Allende in the 1952 presidential election and again, as candidate of the Popular Action Front (FRAP), in 1958 and 1964. By the 1960s the party had become a political subculture of its own, supported by artists and intellectuals such as Pablo Neruda and Violeta Parra.

With the victory of Popular Unity (UP) in 1970 the party joined Allende's government. According to the English-language source it sided within the coalition with Allende and the moderates, favouring gradual reform and compromise with the Christian Democrats, a line opposed by the radical wing of the Socialist Party and the far left. When the coup of 11 September 1973 overthrew Allende the party was outlawed. Its secretary-general Luis Corvalán was arrested, and most Central Committee members went into exile in Eastern Europe, Cuba and elsewhere. In 1976 two successive internal leaderships were captured, and according to the English-language source around 500 members were murdered under Pinochet's regime.

Around 1977 the party changed course and accepted armed struggle. In the early 1980s its leadership adopted the slogan of "all forms of struggle against the dictatorship", and the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) was formed; the English-language source says the party set up this guerrilla organisation around 1977, while the Spanish-language source says the FPMR began operations in December 1983 and was the party's armed wing from 1983 to 1987. The arms landing at Carrizal Bajo and the attempt on Pinochet's life in 1986 both failed, and in 1987 the party leadership broke with the FPMR. The party belonged to the People's Democratic Movement (MDP) from 1983 to 1987 and, after the 1988 plebiscite, supported the single opposition candidate Patricio Aylwin. It was legalised again when democracy was restored in 1990.

After the transition the party long remained without seats. In the 1999 presidential election Gladys Marín, the first woman to run for president of Chile, won 3.2%, and in 2005 the party won 5.1% of the vote but no seats under the binomial electoral system. It returned to Congress with three deputies in 2009, joined the New Majority coalition in 2013 and supplied ministers to Bachelet's government of 2014–2018. In 2021 it backed Boric within the Apruebo Dignidad coalition, and in March 2022 it joined his government. According to the Spanish-language source it had about 45,000 members as of May 2026, the third-largest membership in Chile.