| Office: | Ambassador of Chile to the Netherlands |
| Term Start: | 1947 |
| Term End: | 1950 |
| President: | Gabriel González Videla |
| Birth Name: | Carmen Vial Freire |
| Birth Date: | 28 March 1904 |
| Birth Place: | Santiago, Chile |
| Death Place: | Puente Alto, Chile |
| Children: | Luis Fernando Vial Browne |
Carmen Vial Dows (Carmen Vial Freire, formerly Carmen Vial Browne and Carmen Vial de Señoret) (March 28, 1904 – January 1978) was a Chilean diplomat who served as the Ambassador to the Netherlands.
Carmen Viale Freire was born in Santiago, Chile on March 28, 1904, into an aristocratic family and was educated by English and French governesses. She was one of eight children born to Donna Carolina Freire Valdés and Don Pedro Daniel del Carmen Vial Carvallo. Her father was a founder of the La Granja, its first mayor, and deputy for San Fernando from 1906 to 1909.
Her paternal grandfather was Alejandro Vial Guzmán, the Chilean Minister of Finance from 1856 to 1857 under Manuel Montt. Through her mother, she was a great-granddaughter of Ramón Freire, the first President of Chile. Her maternal grandfather was Francisco Freire Caldera, the Minister of Foreign Affairs under José Manuel Balmaceda.
Upon the death of her second husband in 1941, Carmen joined the Chilean Diplomatic Corps and she began serving as Cultural attaché in the Embassy of Chile, Washington, D.C.[1] before becoming consul in Boston a year and a half later.[2] While in Boston, she studied Economics and International Trade at Harvard University.[3]
In 1944, she was a Chilean representative to the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, the gathering of 730 delegates from all the Allied nations to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.[4]
In 1947, during the presidency of Gabriel González Videla, she was appointed the Chilean Ambassador to the Netherlands, serving in The Hague until 1950.[5] She later served in her country's delegation to the Plenary Session of the United Nations.[6]
Carmen was married three times. Her first marriage was to Chilean architect Luis Browne Fernández (1898–1944), best known for designing the Presidential Palace of Cerro Castillo. Before their divorce, they were the parents of:
Her second marriage was to Octavio de Señoret, who was a governor and parliamentarian. He was the son of Manuel Señoret Astaburuaga and María Mercedes Silva. In 1939, he was appointed Chilean Ambassador to the United Kingdom and they moved to London where they lived through World War II and she joined the Red Cross. They remained married until his death in 1941 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Her third marriage was in 1950 to Stephen Olin Dows, a muralist who had been a fine‐arts consultant in the Roosevelt administration.[10] [11] A son of Alice Olin Dows, her husband owned a large home in Rhinebeck, New York known as Glenburn, and they maintained a home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
After a long illness, Dows died in January 1978 at her family's farm in Puente Alto, Chile.[12] Olin Dows died in 1981.[13]