Héctor Herrera Cajas

Héctor Enrique Herrera Cajas (13 September 1930 – 6 October 1997) was a Chilean historian and scholar who specialized in Byzantine studies. He is remembered as a polyglot and as the teacher of two recipients of Chile’s National History Prize: Gabriel Salazar and Eduardo Cavieres, both noted scholars of economic and social history.

Herrera was a disciple of the Greek historian Fotios Malleros, and is regarded as the first Byzantinist in Latin America. His scholarship on the history of Byzantium focused particularly on Byzantine foreign relations and art. At the Universidad de Chile, his alma mater, he taught regular courses and co-founded the Universidad de Chile Center for Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies, the only institution of its kind in the subcontinent. He later served as professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso (PUCV) and, from 1954 onward, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC).

Among his most significant works are Tacitus' Germany: The problem of the meaning of the shield (1957) and "Res Privata–Res publica–Imperium" (1977). The former is considered a pioneering contribution to the history of mentalities in Chilean historiography. In it, Herrera examines Tacitus’ account to analyze the symbolic meaning of the shield among early Germanic peoples and explores its implications for the transition toward medieval history. José Marín remarked that Herrera makes “the source speak in a really remarkable way, since Tacitus himself says little about the subject in question”.

His article "Res Privata–Res publica–Imperium" "conceptually examines the trajectory of Roman institutions from their foundation until the fall of the Western Empire", and analyzes the relationship between the private sphere and public institutions, arguing that by the end of the Empire these institutions socially re-privatized themselves. Herrera maintained that this process resulted from the influence of Germanic peoples and their private institutional structures, rejecting both rupture and continuity theories as explanatory models between the Roman and post-Roman worlds.

From 1958 until his death, Herrera devoted sustained research to the foreign affairs of the Byzantine Civilization, examining themes such as the formation of its imperial ideology, its relations with the Church, its artistic expressions, and the symbolism of imperial power in relation to the Frankish Kingdom and the Abbasid Caliphate.

Herrera served as head of the Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación (UMCE) from 1986 to 1989, where he also founded its Classical Studies Center. A few days after his death, the Finis Terrae University inaugurated the Jornadas de Historia Héctor Herrera Cajas. In 1989, he was admitted as a full member of the Academia Chilena de la Historia and, since November 1997, the main lecture hall of the PUCV History Institute has borne his name.

Among those influenced by Herrera, Salazar stated that he valued him “for his human quality and his way of teaching”. This admiration did not obscure their antagonistic political positions, as Salazar was a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), whereas Herrera opposed the rebel movements of the 1960s. Likewise, from the beginning of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973–1990), Herrera aligned himself with the doctrinal orientation of the Ministry of Education under the military regime.