By Latin-American standards, Chile has enjoyed a remarkably stable government. Yet, there have been significant intervals of political unrest marked by violence and internal disorder. At both the beginning and the end of the nineteenth century, Liberals and Conservatives clashed in bloody battles, opening wounds that festered for many years. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the military revolted three times in the space of eight years (1924-1932) in order to promote social reform. Marmaduke Grove Vallejo figured prominently in these events, first as a participant in the January uprising of 1925, later as an opponent of the dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, and finally as a leader of the military forces that overthrew the government of Juan Esteban Montero Rodríguez and established the Socialist Republic of Chile.