Most Powerful

• #1 Augusto Pinochet
  Chile MilitaryParty State ControlPolitical Cold War and Globalization Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean army general who led the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973 and then dominated Chile’s government as head of a military regime.
• #2 Diego de Almagro
  ChilePeruSpain Colonial AdministrationMilitary Early Modern Conquest & TributeTrade Routes Power: 100
  Diego de Almagro (1475 – 1538) was a Spanish conquistador and expedition leader active in Central America and the Andean conquest during the early sixteenth century. He became a principal partner in the campaigns that overthrew the Inca state, then turned into a rival within the Spanish factional struggle over land, titles, and the right to extract wealth from the new colonies.Almagro’s career shows how conquest translated into political economy. Military victory opened access to tribute, forced labor, and mining prospects, but the distribution of rewards depended on royal grants and on the ability to hold territory by force. Disputes among Spanish leaders repeatedly escalated into civil conflict, and Almagro’s final years were defined by a contest with the Pizarro faction over control of Cuzco and jurisdictional boundaries.He is remembered both for launching an arduous expedition south toward Chile and for the internal Spanish warfare that followed the initial conquest. The violence of that period fell heavily on Indigenous communities, who faced expropriation, coerced service, and the collapse of existing political and economic structures.
• #3 José de San Martín
  ArgentinaChilePeru MilitaryMilitary CommandPolitical Early Modern Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  José de San Martín (1778–822) was a military leader associated with Argentina and Chile. José de San Martín is best known for organizing campaigns that dismantled imperial control in southern South America. This profile belongs to the site’s study of military command and state power, where influence depends on controlling systems rather than possessing money alone. In the early modern period, rulers and financiers increasingly worked through maritime trade, imperial administration, court patronage, chartered privilege, and expanding fiscal systems.
• #4 Andrónico Luksic
  Chile FinancialFinancial Network ControlResources 21st Century Finance and Wealth Power: 62
  Andrónico Luksic (born 1954) is a Chilean businessman and leading figure in the Luksic Group, a family-controlled conglomerate that has been among the most influential corporate networks in Chile. Through holdings in banking, mining, industrial manufacturing, and consumer businesses, the group represents a model of power built from diversification and strategic control of “real economy” assets paired with financial infrastructure. Luksic’s long association with Quiñenco, the group’s holding company, placed him at the center of portfolio strategy and governance for businesses that connect commodity extraction to capital allocation.
• #5 Iris Fontbona
  Chile IndustrialResource Extraction ControlResources 21st Century Finance and Wealth Power: 47
  Iris Fontbona (born 1942 or 1943) is the Chilean matriarch of the Luksic business empire, the family behind Antofagasta plc, Quiñenco, and one of the most important private concentrations of wealth in Latin America. Unlike more publicly theatrical mining magnates, Fontbona has exercised power through continuity, family stewardship, and holding-company control rather than through a flamboyant founder narrative. After the death of her husband Andrónico Luksic Abaroa in 2005, she became the central family figure associated with a diversified fortune built on copper, finance, beverages, shipping, fuel distribution, and industrial participation across Chile and beyond.