The Ministry of the Interior and Public Security (Spanish: Ministerio del Interior y Seguridad Pública) is the cabinet-level office of home affairs in Chile, in charge of "maintaining public order, security and social peace" within the country. It is also charged with planning, directing, coordinating, executing, controlling, and informing the domestic policies formulated by the President of Chile. As responsible for local government, the minister supervises all non-elected regional authorities.
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The current Minister of the Interior is Mario Fernández Baeza. His Undersecretary of the Interior is Mahmud Aleuy Peña y Lillo and the Undersecretary of Regional Development is Ricardo Óscar Cifuentes Lillo. In the absence (because of travel, death, or other impediment) of the President of Chile, the Minister of the Interior becomes Vice President.
History
During the first days of the independence movements, the senior "secretary" of the respective Junta would function as the Secretary of Government. The office officially first came to be on October 27, 1812, when it was one of the two secretariats created by the Constitutional Norms approved on that date. It was then named Secretariat of the Interior. It was abolished in 1814 by the Spanish authorities when, after the Battle of Rancagua, they re-asserted royal power.
In 1818, after independence, the secretariat was re-established, but this time as a "Ministry of Government" (1817–18) later renamed "Ministry of the Interior and Foreign Affairs" (182971). During this period, its functions normally subsumed the future Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was separated as an independent government administration in 1871. This ministry has undergone several reorganizations during its long history, reflected in its different names:
The function of chief of government was unofficially assumed by the Minister of the Interior and Public Security (1891–1925).