ABSTRACT

FROM STRONG MOTHERS TO INDEPENDENT WOMEN: TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILEAN FEMINIST IDENTITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY On July 25, 2018, another wave of feminist political action crashed onto the

Chilean shore. Taking to the streets of Plaza Italia, a public space in the capital city of Santiago where protestors often gather, thousands of women sought to demand the reform of Chile’s strict anti-abortion laws.

Yet Chilean women have not been strangers to collective resistance. Throughout Chile’s rich history, women have played a critical yet underestimated role as political activists. Women were instrumental in the rise and fall of Chile’s most infamous leaders,

Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). This thesis analyzes the development of a Chilean feminist identity in the twentieth century, tracing women’s transformations from strong mothers during the first wave feminist movement, to independent women in Chile’s second wave feminist movement. By utilizing the latest research in gender studies and analyzing how gendered discourses have shaped identity, social, and political institutions, I argue that Chilean women continue to be critical historical authorities, and their engagement in Chile’s political process has helped dismantle old, and create new, gendered relations of power. Finally, this work will examine how women’s political involvement has shaped contemporary feminism and the feminist revolution currently taking place in Chile.

Patricia Deanne Brito May 2020

FROM STRONG MOTHERS TO INDEPENDENT WOMEN: TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILEAN FEMINIST IDENTITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

by Patricia Deanne Brito

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History

in the College of Social Sciences California State University, Fresno

May 2020 APPROVED For the Department of History:

We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree.

Patricia Deanne Brito Thesis Author

William Skuban (Chair) History

Maria-Aparecida Lopes History

Daniel Cady History

For the University Graduate Committee:

Dean, Division of Graduate Studies AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER’S THESIS

X I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must be obtained from me.

Signature of thesis author: Patricia Brito ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It does not seem possible to acknowledge everything that so many people have done for me over the years, not only as a graduate student, but during my undergraduate career as well. However, I will do my best to give these people the appropriate recognition they deserve. I hope that one day I can be as much a mentor and support system for someone else as they all have been for me. First, to my committee chair, Dr. William Skuban: to you I extend a great amount of thanks. Your insightful comments and suggestions helped me as I was trying to manage what I can only describe as an idealistic feat at the beginning of my graduate program. Through many conversations and outlines, you helped me produce something that I am extremely proud of. Thank you. To Dr. Daniel Cady: I have learned so much through your unconventional teaching methods. I greatly respect your willingness to “tell it like it is.” Thank you for offering both your time and support. To Dr. Maria-Aparecida Lopes: I owe you my deepest gratitude. I had the extreme good fortune to learn so much from you as an undergraduate and graduate student. I cannot thank you enough for your willingness to share not only your knowledge, but your research with me as well. The opportunity to work with you has impacted me greatly, and I am beyond thankful for all your support. And finally, to Dr. Maritere López: Your incredible honesty and wicked pen have not only challenged me to be a better writer, but an overall better learner. After seeing the amount of time and dedication you commit to students, I am in awe of your work ethic and generosity. I am immensely grateful for your guidance and encouragement. To my family and friends: I would need a whole chapter to extend my thanks. My appreciation for all the love and support I have received is beyond me giving a simple thank you. Your words and presence have given me so much comfort throughout this v v process, and for that I am eternally grateful. To my mom and dad: I dedicate this thesis to you. I would not be the woman I am today without the love and opportunities you have given me. I love you. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Historiography ...... 3

Sources and Methodology ...... 15

Organization ...... 16 CHAPTER 1: FEMINISM IN DEVELOPMENT: THE CHILEAN MIDDLE- CLASS AND FIRST-WAVE FEMINIST IDENTITY (1900-1949) ...... 18

The Making of a Chilean Middle-Class ...... 19

Women in the Rise of Middle-Class Reformers ...... 22

Women and the Popular Front ...... 25

Paving the Way: First-Wave Feminist Leaders ...... 28

Chilean Feminism in Transition ...... 34

Conclusion ...... 35 CHAPTER 2: CHILE IN TRANSITION: THE RISE OF ALLENDE AND THE LEFT AMID THE COLD WAR (1950-1970) ...... 37

The Effects of Cold War Tensions ...... 39

The National Appearance of Allende: The 1952 Presidential Election ...... 42

A Shift in Tone: Arbenz and Guatemala ...... 44

The Presidential Election of 1958 and the Cuban Lesson ...... 48 Not the Third, but the Fourth Time a Charm: 1964 and 1970 Presidential Elections ...... 50

Conclusion ...... 54 CHAPTER 3: SECOND WAVE FEMINISM: WOMEN’S STRUGGLE UNDER SALVADOR ALLENDE (1970-1973)...... 55

Women and Allende’s Presidential Campaigns of 1964 and 1970 ...... 57

Women and the Popular Unity Years ...... 65 vii vii Page

Conclusion ...... 73 CHAPTER 4: FORMING A PROGRESSIVE FEMINIST IDENTITY: SECOND WAVE FEMINISM AND AUGUSTO PINOCHET (1973-1990) ...... 75

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Women and Pinochet ...... 76

Women’s Mobilization Against Pinochet ...... 80

The Crucible: Forging a Women’s Movement ...... 83

Chile’s Transition to Democracy ...... 89

Conclusion ...... 92

CONCLUSION ...... 94

EPILOGUE ...... 98

Chile Despertó ...... 102

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 104

INTRODUCTION On July 25, 2018 another wave of feminist political action crashed onto the

Chilean shore. Taking to the streets of Plaza Italia, a public space in the capital city of Santiago where protestors often gather, the contentious issue this time revolved around abortion rights. According to law, Chilean women are only permitted to obtain an abortion in three cases: a risk to the life of the mother, an unviable fetus, or a pregnancy that resulted from rape and no more than 12 weeks of gestation have passed.1 Protestors chanted “aborto libre, seguro, y gratuito. No bastan 3 causales,” all the while sporting their green pañuelos – a symbol of solidarity adopted by their neighbors in Argentina in the fight to win what many claim is a fundamental human right, full access to abortion.2 Chilean women continue to find themselves subjected to discriminatory laws, even thirty years after the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990). It was not until 2017 that Chileans confronted the backward policy that criminalized abortion in all its circumstances. With the approval of a bill by Chile’s first elected female president, Michelle Bachelet, abortion became decriminalized in the three cases described above. However, Chilean women continue to fight not only for complete access to abortion, but greater gender equality. They are reaching out in solidarity to other nations in the southern hemisphere, urging them to speak up and challenge the heteronormative gender roles of society.

Yet Chilean women are no strangers to collective resistance. Throughout Chile’s history women have played a critical role as political activists and have occupied a fundamental place in the political dialogue. However, as in most countries, women’s actions and concerns have taken a back seat in the historiographical conversation because

1 Charis McGowan, “Triple Stabbing at Chile Abortion Rights Rally Sparks Outcry”, The Guardian, July 29, 2018. 2 “Legal, safe, and free abortion. Three reasons are not enough.” 2 2 of the socially constructed ideals that claim women’s lives did not reach outside the confines of the home. Since the 1980s however, recent trends in gender history have dramatically affected the way scholars have examined the past. Gender historians have started to analyze meaning and symbolic representation through discourse. Relying heavily on Michael Foucault’s observations of how discourse constructs identity, scholars have increasingly explored how knowledge on gender and sexuality are socially and historically constructed over time. The methods of gender history include deconstructing gendered discourses and uncovering how they have shaped identity, social and political institutions, and social relations.3 It is through these recent trends in historical analysis that scholars have studied the development of twentieth century women’s movements in Chile, and the role female agency served in Chile’s social and political sphere. Thus, this thesis builds on that conversation and analyzes the development of a Chilean feminist identity in the twentieth century, tracing women’s transformations from strong mothers during the first-wave feminist movement (1919-1953), to independent women in Chile’s second-wave feminist movement (1970-1991). By outlining women’s historical agency throughout the administrations of Pedro Aguirre Cerda (1938-1941), Salvador Allende (1970-1973), and Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), this thesis illustrates the advancing of a progressive feminist identity within shifting political atmospheres. Further, by utilizing much of the latest research in gender studies, this work argues that Chilean women continue to be critical historical actors, and their engagement in Chile’s political process has helped dismantle old, and create new, gendered relations of power. Finally, this scholarship will

3 Caroline Hoefferle, The Essential Historiography Reader (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2011), 220- 221. 3 3 examine how women’s political involvement has shaped contemporary feminism and the feminist revolution currently taking place in Chile.4

Historiography Initiating the discussion on gender history as a method of analysis was Joan Scott in the 1980s with her ground-breaking work, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.”5 Scott argues that prior to her study, existing theoretical explanations of the inequalities between men and women failed to address the relationship between gender and power. In order to do so, Scott sets out her own definition of gender: “Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes…and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power. Changes in the organization of social relationships always correspond to changes in representations of power.”6 In Chile, like many other places, women are assigned their role in society in relation to the men in their lives. In Latin America specifically, there is the perception of women in relation to the idea of marianismo, which labels women as pure and saint like. This is largely because in Latin American countries, like Chile, Catholicism plays an overwhelming role in society. Thus, the Catholic Church, over hundreds of years, has reinforced the concept of a “traditional” female gender role. As a result, Scott’s work seeks to discover a new history that will disrupt the notion of fixity that surrounds the idea of gender. Gender, she argues, is implicated in the “conception and construction of power itself.” Therefore, she claims the relationship between gender and politics is the ideal setting to deconstruct gender, as it is a virtually

4 Paulina Sepúlveda Garrido, “Feminismo chileno vive su revolución más importante en 40 años,” La Tercera, 20 May 2018. 5 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review vol. 91, no. 5 (December 1986). 6 Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category,” 1067. 4 4 uncharted territory. Scott’s statement that “politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics” is a fitting description of twentieth-century Chile, as regimes constructed their political ideologies with gendered concepts and fortified them through policy.7 Scott’s research paved the way for gender to be used as a category for historical analysis, with scholars even contending that “[g]ender history has become enormously influential since that time and is arguably one the fastest growing and most innovative areas in historical research,” Scott asserts that male and female opposition must be treated as problematic rather known.8 The concept of gender is both contextually defined and repeatedly constructed, and it is the job of historians and scholars to deconstruct preexisting notions of gender. In 1991, Sandra McGee Deutsch relied heavily on Scott’s 1986 work in her article, “Gender and Sociopolitical Change in Twentieth-Century Latin America.”9

Deutsch employed the idea of gendered rhetoric and policies in order to analyze how together they could symbolize and express important facets of the desired political and social order, both male and female roles. Having closely studied Scott’s work, Deutsch hoped to expand on the idea of how politics constructs gender, and how gender constructs politics. To do so, Deutsch used four different case studies: Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, and Chile. In her analysis of Chile, Deutsch deconstructs the rhetoric used by Salvador

Allende and his socialist political party Unidad Popular (UP) in relation to women. UP leaders recognized the importance of incorporating women into their political parties,

7 Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category,” 1072. 8 Hoefferle, The Essential, 221. 9 Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Gender and Sociopolitical Change in Twentieth-Century Latin America,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 71 no. 2 (1991). 5 5 with Allende even stating that “the fate of the government would rest in female hands.”10

Yet, men of all classes still disapproved of female integration into the labor force and female political participation. Although Allende pushed through progressive reforms for women in the early months of his presidency, the UP was unable to rally women fully behind his cause. Allende may have pushed through policies that gave women slightly more autonomy, but he still regarded men as the true subjects of the socialist revolution. Allende used gendered language to attract support to his party, and he would often send men to recruit women through the “traditional” means of seduction.

Further, as Chile moved closer to socialism, women were only slightly getting better at developing and expressing their needs as women. As this thesis will discuss, this was a result of the Popular Unity administration’s failure to move away from using gendered rhetoric and facilitating gender roles. For example, Chilean author Virginia

Vidal stated that machismo had condemned women to frustration, isolation, subordination, and sexual dissatisfaction.11 Thus, gender analysis is a useful means of determining the true character of a particular regime, movement, or society.

Helen Icken Safa also built off Scott’s work in, “Women’s Social Movements in Latin America.”12 In her article, Safa documents the increasing participation of poor women in social movements in twentieth century Latin America, with emphasis placed on women’s involvement on human rights and collective consumption issues. Safa examines what pulls women from the lower social strata into what has been historically considered the (male) public sphere, and how women proceed in challenging the state. Further, she expresses the importance of collective action and how it serves to create a

10 Deutsch, “Gender and Sociopolitical Change,” 294. 11 Deutsch, “Gender and Sociopolitical Change,” 301. 12 Helen Icken Safa, “Women’s Social Movements in Latin America,” Gender and Society: Women and Development in the Third World, vol. 4. no. 4 (1990). 6 6 greater consciousness of gender subordination among women. As women’s social movements have increasingly become a new form of “doing politics” (nueva forma de hacer política), Safa channels Scott’s conclusions that gender and politics go hand in hand. Yet, Safa complicates her argument when she states that most women’s movements have taken place outside the traditional political realm because of the long- held notion that politics are part of the male sphere, a thought particularly true of poor women. Poor women do not consider their activity in social movements as political, as their primary concerns within the movement are closely related to their identities as wives and mothers. Often these women are directing their demands for provisions of public services—running water, electricity, transportation, etc.—to the state because their reproductive role as housewives and mothers are deeply ingrained and they feel like it is their duty. Thus, many women entered the women’s movement because of problems or complaints within their domestic role. Yet within the movement, women were surrounded and introduced to many other types of female activists.

As a result, Safa argues the collective action of women changes the individual themselves. So even if not done consciously, women of the lower strata challenge their place in the private sphere by joining the women’s movement. Safa concludes that although lower strata women’s demands are confined to domestic issues—and in turn pose less of a threat to power structures—when women continue to gather and make their demands heard, they will move away from “practical interests” to “strategic interests,” which have more of a feminist agenda.13

Further studying the workings of women and social movements in Latin America was Lynn Stephen, in Women and Social Movements in Latin America: Power from

13 Safa, “Women’s Social Movements in Latin America,” 363. 7 7

Below.14 Stephen researched women’s organizations in Latin America during the emergence and strengthening of the feminist movement in the 1980s. During this period in Latin American history, most countries were going through economic restructuring. It is at this time, she argues, that social movements had an important ideological influence on how women framed their demands in the future. The early social movement challenged dominant cultural ideologies about women’s proper place in the family and home, and Stephen’s work attempts to compare the common elements within these different movements.

Similar to Deutsch, Stephen relies on case studies of Latin American countries to examine the emergence of significant social movements within each and compare their inner workings. In Chile she examines labor union activism, feminist movements, and the struggles for abortion and reproductive rights. Stephen draws upon the work of James

Scott, who states that scholars must look at the everyday forms of resistance taken by women in the early stages of a collective movement.15 Further, she asserts that economic, political, and analytical structures, and networks of power, cannot be ignored in scholars research. In order to study women’s organizations and their activism at a grass roots level, it is necessary to examine the larger structures of power in conjunction with group process and identity building. Women have found ways of redefining marginality, struggling, and resisting within society, and by doing so they are actively bringing agency to themselves as historical characters. Finally, feminist movements at their core are allowing women to break into the public sphere and gain access to arenas that have long

14 Lynn Stephen, Women and Social Movements in Latin America: Power from Below (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). 15 James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985). 8 8 been considered masculine or male-dominated. By engaging in the social movement, women were dismantling and challenging oppressive gender hierarchies. Mala Htun also analyzes some of the most controversial issues of gender relations in Latin America in her study, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies.16 Htun focuses on three countries, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, all of which experienced military regimes and then transitioned to democracy. However, as Htun highlights, changes in legislation did not follow a similar pattern between these countries. Laws regarding abortion, family equality, and divorce—all typical demands within women’s movements—have unfolded differently within each. To an extent, this is the point that Htun is trying to make in her work, namely, that there is no general framework that that applies to every country in Latin America.

As scholars of gender in Latin America focus their research on a specific set of issues and then apply it to various countries, they speak of “Latin American women” in general terms. Htun’s study emphasizes the problem with using generalizations in academic analysis. She states that just because these countries underwent transitions to democracy the result was not always a liberalization of gender laws. In fact, she argues that once the countries had fully transitioned to democracy, they still failed to change old laws. Htun credits this to the fact that reform depends more on the separation of church and state than on the transition to democracy—especially in Catholic countries like the ones in Latin America.17

16 Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 17 Htun, Sex and the State, 25. 9 9

Margaret Power offers a different perspective on Chilean women in her work

“Class and Gender in the Anti-Allende Women’s Movement: Chile 1970-1973.”18 Previously, the simple assumption about working women was that they fully supported Allende and his socialist government, as they promised women that their lives would improve under UP leadership. Power, however, shows that many working-class women blamed the food shortages and chaos in the streets on the socialist government, a position thought only to have been taken by middle and upper-class women. Working-class women who were against Allende’s administration have very rarely been the topic of historical discussion because “it does not fit the more popular perception that class defined politics in Chile during the Popular Unity years.”19 Instead, Power demonstrates that class did not serve as an overwhelming barrier that most scholars tend to believe it did when it came to be developing a women’s movement. Rather, women appealed to their gender. By examining electoral data during the Popular Unity years, women’s protests, and interviews with anti-Allende women, Power explored how conservative female organizations used ideas about gender and

Chilean political traditions to mobilize an anti-Allende movement. Power explains the concept of a “female consciousness,” and how it could promote women’s political mobilization. She states that a female consciousness pulls women into politically progressive activity as women deny the validity of class and focus on the all-inclusive reality of motherhood.20 When Allende’s government was unable to fulfill its promise of a better life to working women, middle and upper-class women laid full blame on the socialist government and encouraged women to become the symbol of resistance through

18 Margaret Power, “Class and Gender in the Anti-Allende Women’s Movement: Chile 1970- 1973,” Social Politics, vol. 7, no. 3, (2000).; This work serves as an extension to her book, Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle Against Allende. 19 Power, “Class and Gender,” 289. 20 Power, “Class and Gender,” 303. 10 10 a maternal image. When the military overthrew Allende in 1973, they claimed it was because the “women of Chile had called upon them to do so.”21 In Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile, Lisa Baldez develops Power’s study even further, but at the same time she captures the reasons behind why both right and left women joined the women’s movement in Chile.22 Baldez analyzes two periods of women’s protest, the first being against the leftist government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and the second, when women started to move against Augusto Pinochet’s rule (1973-1990). While acknowledging the vast differences between the two governments, Baldez argues that they shared an important feature: patriarchal culture. Within this context, she states, women would mobilize and try to bring down the government in order to establish a role in the new political order. Setting her work apart from the other scholars, Baldez developed three theoretical concepts to explain why women protest: tipping, timing, and framing. Tipping, she explains, is the moment at which diverse organizations converge to form a women’s movement which will challenge the status quo. It is at this point that individuals and organizations come together to forge a common identity and confront a common enemy. Timing and framing are the two conditions that must occur for a widespread mobilization to emerge among women. Baldez asserts that there must be a partisan realignment, when new coalitions form among existing political parties, and lastly, women must make the decision to “frame realignment in terms of widely held cultural norms about gender difference.”23 The only way a women’s movement will take form is if female participants respond to realignment in gendered terms. Gender identity has the power to bridge

21 Power, “Class and Gender,” 304. 22 Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 23 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 5. 11 11 women’s differences and permits women of all backgrounds to organize under a common agenda. Following up on her own study in 2003, Baldez published “Women’s Movements and Democratic Transition in Chile, Brazil, East Germany, and Poland.”24 When she wrote her previous work in 2002, Baldez had hoped to apply her theoretical concepts of explaining why women protest to other countries, not just Chile. Baldez tests her theory on other countries that had undergone democratic transitions. Baldez seeks to answer the question of when women will mobilize based on their gender identity. She claims that there are three factors that determine the moment of women’s mobilization: the availability of resources, the way women frame their issues, and the exclusion of women from the agenda-setting process within the opposition. The resources that lead women to participate in a gender-based organization include preexisting formal or informal networks that cater to women’s needs. Second, in order to frame their movement as a women’s movement, women need direct contact with the international feminist community. And, finally, the exclusion of women allows them an opportunity to unite in a coalition based on a collective identity.25 Yet, Baldez states that these windows of opportunity do not last. The peak of a protest is the moment when consolidation occurs within the movement, and when female agency finally attracts the attention of male political leaders. When these make leaders acknowledge women’s agency, and incorporate their demands into the political agenda, then the movement itself will be prolonged. However, as the “peak of unity” appears, Baldez states that it is hard to sustain because conflict among the participants breaks out not long after. Nevertheless, the conflict does not undermine the strides women have

24 Lisa Baldez, “Women’s Movements and Democratic Transition in Chile, Brazil, East Germany, and Poland.” Comparative Politics, vol. 35 no. 3. (April 2003). 25 Baldez, Women’s Movements and Democratic Transition, 253. 12 12 already made. It is once male leaders observe that women are capable of mass mobilization, they will waste no time in trying to harness that towards their own political support. Focusing more squarely on Chile, Susan Franceschet in 2005 published, Women and Politics in Chile, in which she addressed the marginalization of women in Chilean politics under democracy.26 Quickly becoming an important work regarding gender and politics, Franceschet highlights women’s participation in society and the gendered nature of Chile’s democratization. By broadly examining women’s political participation throughout the years, Franceschet focuses on three arenas of political participation: electoral participation, gender policy, and the demands of women’s movements. Building on Scott’s theory, she successfully argues that gender cannot be separated from the political discussion, quoting Scott’s statement, politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics. Indeed, the gendered dichotomy of the informal and formal political sphere is something that Franceschet deconstructs in her work. The formal political arena, predominantly male, includes everything connected with governing, such as the State bureaucracy, political parties, and interest groups. In contrast, informal involvement, which is not considered “political” by its female participants, includes community activism, movement politics, and self-help or survival-oriented activities. As a result, the formal and informal arena produce gender privilege because women and their demands are not represented in the governing body. Franceschet claims that the perceptions of the informal and formal arena are not constant but shift over time according to context, as was the case in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship when the informal and formal sphere blurred. Once Pinochet banned political parties in Chile, political bodies had no choice but to turn to the informal sphere as a

26 Susan Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile (Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005). 13 13 means of political resistance. Hence, political leaders (men) made the informal (feminine) arena political and gave women more agency. Moreover, for women who seek more political agency, Franceschet identifies two strategies that have historically been taken, autonomy and double militancy. Women tend to value autonomy over affiliations/participation via political parties as they feared co- optation. During Chile’s first wave of feminism this strategy allowed for women to create a multi-class movement in an era where political party affiliation was class based. Second wave feminism however, engaged in double militancy due to political parties being much weaker. The benefit was that they could now have political support and push their feminist agenda. Thus, cementing their role as active historical agents in Chilean society.27 While the previous works discussed what draws women into participating in women’s movements, Donna Maureen Chovanec aims to convey what women take out of being engaged in a women’s movement. In her dissertation, “Between Hope and Despair: Social and Political Learning in the Women’s Movement in Chile,” Chovanec explains how social movements have often been known to be sites of profound learning.28 These sites, she argues, are where “knowledge itself is contested and constructed, where identities and subjectivities are defined and redefined, where citizens are formed, and where oppression is named – ultimately, where people ‘learn to know differently and to act differently.’”29 However, Chovanec claims that participants in the movements often do not recognize this growth in consciousness as it becomes ingrained in the day-to-day activities.

27 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 35. 28 Donna Maureen Chovanec, “Between Hope and Despair: Social and Political Learning in the Women’s Movement in Chile,” PhD diss., University of Alberta, Edmonton, 2004, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing (NQ95918). 29 Chovanec, “Between Hope and Despair,” 2. 14 14

It is this idea that drew Chovanec to ask, “How did women learn their way out of victimization to become oppositional activists against the dictatorship?” Focusing her research on Chilean women’s movements, Chovanec observed how Chilean women played a central role in the country’s social and political struggles, and by studying the educational and consciousness-raising strategies—or “political learning”—used throughout the movement, she concludes that the growth in feminist consciousness was a catalyst for change and female mobilization. Julieta Kirkwood’s publication of Ser política en chile: las feministas y los partidos, however, represented a truly groundbreaking moment for Chilean feminism and gender studies.30 This scholarship clearly illustrated the goals of the women’s movement, the history of feminism in Chile, and the problems of sexual identity and gender. By examining how women politically organized in the twentieth century, Kirkwood put into words the radicalization of feminist thought. Further, she argues that although women have long occupied an important place in Chilean society, they must continue to assert themselves into the political dialogue. In making her argument, Kirkwood calls for women to reclaim their bodies, stating that a person whose identity is subjected is not necessarily free to exercise domination over another or to cultivate its passions. Therefore, Kirkwood’s work calls into question the relationships between gender and power. She argues that in order for women to reclaim their historical agency, their stories must be brought to the forefront of the women’s movement. Women, she states, are the cause of their own liberation and their oppression. If they do not take the necessary steps to consolidate their movement, who else will? Women need to initiate the discussion on the relationships between gender, politics, and power.

30 Julieta Kirkwood, Ser politica en chile: las feministas y los partidos, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, 1986. 15 15 Sources and Methodology This project relies on multiple forms of primary sources, such as newspapers, personal testimony, and visual images, all of which may be accessed through the Biblioteca Nacional Digital de Chile, Memoria Chilena, and the Museo de la Memoria y Derechos Humanos. The collections consisted of more than two hundred and forty-three thousand digitized objects from Chile’s National Library, as well as many more from the other sites. In addition, this study relies on interviews conducted by scholars with women who were active participants in the second wave feminist movement. Although these interviews often took place around Chile’s transition to democracy, much of the details concerned women’s participation in both Salvador Allende’s and Augusto Pinochet’s administrations. While some of my sources came from digitized Chilean databases, written in

Spanish, I found it necessary to also include primary sources written in English. Adding this component allowed me to have an alternate perspective of the women’s movement and the development of female agency. The databases that provided the most useful material were The Times and New York Times, which I accessed through the Henry

Madden Library. The overall focus of this work’s topic has shifted and evolved as I furthered my research. Initially I categorized my thesis as women’s history, but as I learned, some consider women’s history to only include the feminine voice. This was problematic to me since I wanted to understand the role of women in a broad societal and political context, and how they participated in their national history. It is only by incorporating the feminine voice in relation to men that women can reclaim their agency in the historical record. As such, this then led me to categorize my topic as a type of gender history. Gender historians wish to examine the way social actors see the topic of gender and gender relations and make it into more of an analytical category. This form of history 16 16 seeks to explain the inequalities that exist between men and women, and the relationship between gender and power. Thus, my research explores the dynamics of gender and power, and the development of feminist movements in twentieth-century Chile, with attention placed on the Aguirre Cerda, Allende, and Pinochet administrations. Within Chile’s first and second-wave feminist movements, I analyze women’s relationships to the political culture of Chile, class relations, and the shifting political atmosphere that shaped feminist consciousness and collective identity. Further, my research examines the important role women served by engaging in social movements. By establishing themselves as a united force and demanding a greater platform in politics and society, I explored how women gained and utilized their political agency throughout a patriarchal society.

Organization Women play an increasingly important role in Chile’s history. In tracing the impact of female agency, this work analyzes the development of a Chilean feminist identity throughout the twentieth century. In chapter one, the analysis of the relationship between middle-class women and progressive demands reveal that a form of proto feminism took place under the political administrative years of the Popular Front President, Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Women throughout Aguirre Cerda’s administration found ways to link themselves to those in positions of political power. As first wave feminists fought for the right to national suffrage, I examine how women simultaneously embraced and utilized their traditional roles as both mother and domestic to further their political advantage.

Chapter 2 traces the rise of Salvador Allende Gossens and the political left throughout the international context of the Cold War. During this period, the relationship between Latin America and the United States became problematic, severely 17 17 compromising Chile’s alliance with the North. As the United States pledged to fight the spread of Communism, dealing with Allende proved to be a challenge. In order to demonstrate stability in the country, Chilean administrations utilized the image of the woman as a good wife and mother. However, as Allende became the voice of the left, his political conviction led him to securing the presidency in 1970.

Chapter 3 examines the administration of Salvador Allende beginning in 1970. I analyze the ways Allende spoke to and incorporated women during his time in office. Additionally, as second wave feminism began to take form, women continued to reflect and utilize the importance of their maternal identities. However, as Allende’s government began to directly affect women’s abilities to successfully carry out their domestic roles, this resulted in women coming together through mass mobilization to help carry out the overthrowing of Allende and his Popular Unity administration.

Chapter 4 discusses women’s crucial roles during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. I argue that the new women’s movement in Chile served to unite women in a similar manner as the anti-Allende movement did during the 1960s and early 1970s.

During Pinochet’s regime, women successfully reconstructed their identity as political actors, and challenged traditional gender roles. Lastly, my study concludes with a contemporary look at Chile, as it elected its first female president in 2006, Michelle Bachelet. During her first term in office Bachelet obtained an approval rating of 84 percent. However, as her term ended in 2010, and unable to run for reelection, Sebastian Piñera won the presidential election, the first right- wing President in 52 years. As Chile elected two ideologically opposite leaders back to back, with Bachelet winning the Presidency in 2014 and Piñera again in 2018, how does this speak to the current political environment in Chile? How have women been organizing? And is Chile experiencing a new wave of female activism, as current Chilean feminists claim to be igniting a feminist revolution in the wake of a national uprising.

CHAPTER 1: FEMINISM IN DEVELOPMENT: THE CHILEAN MIDDLE-CLASS AND FIRST-WAVE FEMINIST IDENTITY (1900-1949)

“We Chileans…had a long and solid democratic tradition and we were proud of being different from other countries of the continent, which we scornfully referred to as ‘banana republics,’ where every other day some caudillo took over the government by force.” – Isabel Allende31

“Que nos brinden a todos justicia, libertad, democracia y bienestar y que permitan a la mujer laborar de igual a igual que el hombre en el logro de estas ansiadas y queridas esperanzas.” – Amanda Labarca 32

Across the Andean Mountains from Argentina lies Chile, a nation that stretches across more than two thousand miles of Pacific coast with a geographic profile that is one of the most unique in the world. For much of their history, Chileans have embraced a notion of exceptionalism, claiming that their country was different from other Latin

American nations. Beginning in 1833 Chile became one of the most politically stable Latin American countries, sporting a long democratic tradition with only two constitutions, a strong presidency, and a vocal Congress.33 Aside from being relatively politically stable, Chile prospered economically after the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) when nitrates became its most important export and fueled a new economic prosperity in the country. During the relative political stability and economic prosperity of the late nineteenth century, a middle-class emerged that began to advance its own interests,

31 Isabel Allende, My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 155.

32 Amanda Labarca, “Dia internacional de la mujer: frases de mujeres que han hecho historia,”

Meganoticias, 2015.; “That they will provide us with justice, freedom, democracy and well-being and allow women to work as equals to men in achieving these long-awaited and dear hopes.”

33 Simon Collier and William F. Sater, A History of Chile, 1808-1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 149. 19 19 politically changing the country’s social structure and promoting progressive development as the twentieth century approached. Throughout the early 1900s, middle-class Chilean women appeared on the political and social scene and were the first and most productive group in organizing a political community. At the forefront of change, these women were arguably the first

“feminists” of their time and the pioneers of a feminine political voice.34 However, many politically moderate Chilean women did not actively seek the equality of the sexes and even opposed the label of feminist.

Thus, this chapter aims to examine the relationship between middle-class women and feminist identity in Chile from the early twentieth century to the mid-1900s, focusing on the years of the Popular Front under Pedro Aguirre Cerda (1938-1941) until the passing of national suffrage to women in 1949. By doing so, this study argues that these proto feminists set the stage for second-wave feminism.

The Making of a Chilean Middle-Class As Chile gained its independence in 1810, the opening of trade with the North

Atlantic regions resulted in a relative prosperity and early political stability. In the late nineteenth century, Chilean congressional representatives became increasingly attracted to parliamentary ideas, meaning “diminution of executive power, congressional control of the cabinet, and free elections.”35 However, in 1886 Jose Manuel Balmaceda, through less than democratic means, was “elected” president of Chile.36 Balmaceda faced deep resentment by his second year in office, mostly stemming from the parlamentarios, the

34 When considering the definition of feminism, historical context is critical to an accurate understanding of the term. Although women during the first-wave feminist movement in Chile were not what we would consider a feminist today, they held increasingly progressive beliefs for their gender and identity as women. 35 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 149. 36 The preceding president handpicked Balmaceda, thus, he ran unopposed. 20 20 individuals who favored a parliamentary government. Not long after his inauguration,

Congress agreed that Balmaceda was no longer fit to govern Chile, and drafted the Act of Disposition, which called for his removal. Thus, by 1891, for the fourth time in Chile’s history, a civil war was at hand. The Chilean Civil War of 1891 lasted nine months and was a showdown between the navy, which sided with Congress, and the army, which had remained loyal to Balmaceda. Quite obviously, the two forces could not inflict that much damage to one another, one controlling land and the other sea. Yet, the Chilean fleet was a powerful force, and it gave Congress the upper hand. Balmaceda, seeing that defeat was inevitable, took refuge in the Argentine legation and Congressionalists seized power. Being too proud to surrender, Balmaceda shot himself through the head and the parlamentarios started organizing a new parliament-centered system of governance.37

The Parliamentary Republic in Chile (1891-1925) marked a period in which political life became controlled by political parties and nationalism became “ingrained into the political dialogue.”38 After the Civil War of 1891, resumption of constitutional government took place quickly; Congressional elections were held that same year, and not long after Chile inaugurated a new president. However, the old ways of governing and doing politics had changed; the president no longer had a wide range of powers, instead the real control rested with the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Further, it did not directly interfere in elections as the executive power had in previous years; political parties became the main arbiters of who was to hold positions of power. By allying themselves with one another and forming coalitions in order to get their

37 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 150. 38 Patrick Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile: Cultural, Political, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 72. 21 21 candidates and reforms recognized, the political system in Chile began to take a different form. During the Parliamentary Republic three major parties emerged and formed the core of Chile’s political scene: the Partido Liberal (PL), Partido Conservador (PC), and the Partido Radical (PR). The Partido Radical was at the center of the political spectrum and took on a fundamental role in stabilizing the new government. The PR took a moderate and middle stance, managing to form alliances, negotiate some legislative compromises, and ultimately guide the way for a peaceful transition out of the parliamentary years.39 Radicals rejected the use of violence and chose to focus on the ideals of order and progress, maintaining republican institutions and public liberties. Yet, as Chile continued politically under the parliamentary regime, not all sectors of society were content with those in charge. Although the new government was meant to push

Chile toward prosperity, it was governed by elites who refused to address the growing “social question” throughout the country.40 After its victory in the War of the Pacific, Chile gained access over the nitrate- rich region of the Atacama Desert, essentially becoming a regional power and a “serious contestant to world power.”41 The next three decades saw a cycle of renewed export-led growth based on the strength of the trade in nitrates, and although Chile’s traditional copper mining industry remained strong, it was nitrates above everything else that became the motor for Chilean economic success for nearly half a century. As historians Simon Collier and William Sater state, “Between 1875 and 1907 the population of the Norte Grande—where nitrates, silver, and copper deposits have been exploited—grew

39 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 127. 40 The relationship between workers and the everyday person with those in power. 41 Julie A. Charlip and E. Bradford Burns. Latin America: An Interpretive History (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2016) 261. 22 22 from 2,000 to 234,000. Iquique, the principal nitrate port and commercial entrepot, became Chile’s fourth largest city.”42 New capital flooded into the country and foreigners were among some of the most active operators alongside Chileans themselves. By 1924 nitrates generated about 6.9 billion gold pesos, and a very high proportion of that remained in Chile.43

However, as Chilean economic prosperity grew, wealth and profits were unevenly distributed. The growth of urban centers in the northern nitrate regions and the accumulation of thousands of workers and their families in poor living conditions led to the development of new ideologies and numerous people becoming resentful of their economic standing. As a rift between the Chilean elite began to expand, a new middle- class emerged that contributed significantly to the shaping of a modern Chile during the Parliamentary Republic all the way through the era of the Popular Front presidency of

Pedro Aguirre Cerda.44 This group of individuals and the cultural and political changes they brought with them would establish the platform and foundations in which early Chilean feminists identity took form.

Women in the Rise of Middle-Class Reformers The Partido Radical in Chile proved to be a considerable political force. Founded by “radical” liberals in the mid-nineteenth century, it became the dominant group by the

1930s.45 This new urban middle-class political party, included intellectuals, educators, bureaucrats, and politicians, and together they sought to renew the way in which Chileans thought about themselves and their nation, knowing that to do so they had to address the

42 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 163. 43 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 164. 44 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 19. 45 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 3; Radical refers to those who thought their beliefs were rooted (from the Spanish verb Radicar) in the soil of Chile; the true representatives of the nation. 23 23 social question.46 The first decade of the twentieth century was plagued by social unrest, the growing frustrations of the poorer classes, and the problem of worsening living conditions in major cities, all no doubt precursors to a possible social revolution. If left unaddressed, as the Parliamentary Regime had been doing, the middle-class reformers feared that Chile would fall into violence and chaos. As a result, the reformers took on a form of cultural politics along with nationalistic principles to re-educate the nation.47 The Chilean middle-class, or mesocracy, in the early-twentieth-century was made up of people who would later become the leading reformers of Chilean politics, including

Arturo Alessandri, who will transition Chile from the end of the Parliamentary Republic in 1925 to the Popular Front era; Aguirre Cerda, future president of the Popular Front; and Salvador Allende, the first democratically-elected socialist president. At the heart of their movement was the idea that public education should be free, obligatory, and secular, and that there should be an improvement of the legal condition of women and laborers.48 For this reason, the Radical party consisted of the many dominant female voices of the era, women who would be paving the way for feminist thinking and action.

One area in which women influenced society and politics was through education. The middle-class reformers during the parliamentary republic insisted “illiteracy was one of the social ills that slowed national development and also crippled the advancement of social unity.”49 As a response, they founded the National Education Association (AEN) in 1904, with the goal to make common primary schools in which children of all socioeconomic backgrounds could take part. Among those attached to the project were

46 The social question refers to the grievances of the lower or wage-earning classes, and how those with power can provide a solution or address the issue. 47 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 79. 48 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 28. 49 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 154. 24 24

Amanda Labarca, Aguirre Cerda, Alessandri, and Gabriela Mistral, many of the same names that would prove influential during the Popular Front era. It was through the association with the AEN that women like Labarca and Mistral found space to educate and gain access to opportunities that were not open to many women. For example, in 1918 Aguirre Cerda—who was serving as Minister of Education under the Parliamentary presidency of Juan Luis Sanfuentes—assigned Mistral a director’s position at a liceo (high school) in Punta Arenas. Similarly, when the AEN decided to extend educational opportunities to adults who could not attend classes during the day, Labarca became a director, heading the new program and ensuring that it functioned as a “means to expand and carry through action in the bosom of the working- class community, creating closer ties between it and professors, and to give an exclusively superior character to the…University of Chile.”50 Thus, the AEN served as a pathway between the middle-class and the working class, providing Radicals with the support they needed to overcome the existing aristocracy and their governmental control in the next presidential elections.

When long time reformer Arturo Alessandri won the presidency in 1920, his administration promoted the basic tenets of the Radical Party platform: order, progress, social evolution, reform, justice, and democracy.51 His years as president represented a departure from politics under the Parliamentary Republic by shifting power back to the executive. Unfortunately, the 1920s were a less than stable time for Chile; although the elections served as a transition period, the “intensification of class conflict, the ousting of Alessandri in 1924, the president’s resignation in 1925, the resignation of an ineffective successor in 1927, the four-year dictatorship of Carlos Ibanez del Campo, and the

50 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 166. 51 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 205. 25 25 proclamation of a short-lived Socialist Republic in 1932, made these years some of the most chaotic in Chilean history.”52 But through the turbulence, the Popular Front party emerged, a new coalition between the Radical, Socialist, and Communist parties, that was—as one Radical member stated—a national movement in the defense of democracy.

Women and the Popular Front In the fourteen years between 1938 and 1952, Radical party presidents consecutively governed Chile. Initiating this new political trend was Pedro Aguirre Cerda, the acting president of the Radical party, who had previously served under different presidents during the parliamentary regime. Aguirre Cerda and the Radicals, having pulled their support for Alessandri during his second executive term, decided to join the new Popular Front (FP) coalition in 1936. The Popular Front, or frentismo, was inspired by the strategy of other popular fronts that led to center-left coalitions gaining power in France in 1935 and Spain the following year.53 Established in Chile by the Communist party, frentistas founded the coalition on the basis that a broad progressive force could defeat the conservative-wing in the upcoming elections. The Radical party quickly became the axis of the coalition, determining the platform and actions that were going to be taken in the future. Soon after Aguirre Cerda won the presidential election in 1938, he and the FP set off on their mission to instill a new sense of what it meant to be

Chilean and who was going to be allowed representation in his new administration. The establishment of cultural politics under Aguirre Cerda influenced the tone of his administration. Having ran in the presidential elections under the slogan “Gobernar es Educar” (to govern is to educate), Aguirre Cerda’s determination to structure chilenidad led him to turn to sectors of society that had been traditionally left out. As a result,

52 Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile, 106. 53 Frente Popular, Memoria Chilena, September 21, 1936 (accessed May 2019). 26 26

Aguirre Cerda made the excluded groups feel like they belonged and were contributing to the formation of a new Chile, one in which Chileans dedicated themselves to the betterment of the nation. Among the sectors that Cerda sought to include were women. Women during Chile’s first-wave feminism were molded by their identities as mothers, they came together to pursue social reform and female suffrage by appealing to the qualities by which society respected and labeled them. Women learned to manipulate and take advantage of their gendered roles so that they could gain more autonomy, blurring the lines between the social and political spheres. Throughout the 1930s, the first-wave feminists laid the groundwork for—albeit limited—incorporation into a “political system dominated by male-led political parties,” and further helped women develop a greater sense of their own value.54 At the same time, this generation of feminists did little to change the overall image that kept women out of politics, supporting the gendered notion that women brought something different to the political sphere than their male counterparts, for example, being immune to the effects of politics and adding a

“purifying” influence to political life.55 Similarly, it is important to note that women did not win the right to vote on a national level until 1949 in Chile, meaning that throughout Aguirre Cerda’s Popular Front presidency women were not yet enfranchised as political citizens. This lack of national political representation influenced many of the strides made by the leading female voices of the time, as they sought social reform on the behalf of women. Therefore, first-wave feminists challenged their subordination in society to a certain

54 Susan Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile (Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005), 20-21. 55 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 21; Women in many Latin American cultures are assumed to be naturally endowed with superior moral character due to their equation with the Virgin Mary, also known as Marianismo. 27 27 extent. They agreed that women’s concerns deserved a place in the political dialogue, but many continued to be drawn to their realm in the home. As historian Asunción Lavrin describes in her work, women asked for citizenship rights based on their identities as mothers, creating a type of compensatory feminism, because while it did not challenge women’s social roles, it did question the deprivation of women’s political rights based on their social functions.56 Additionally, the 1930s saw the formation of a number of women’s groups and networks that aimed to improve the condition of women: Feminine Action, associated with the Chilean Women Party; The Movement of Chilean Women; and the most influential, the Movimiento Pro-Emancipación de Mujeres de Chile (MEMCH, Chilean Women’s Proemancipation Movement), which flourished under the FP government.57 It was through these connections and communities created by women that mobilization and representation finally emerged and women contested their gendered status. Women’s mobilization peaked with the formation of the Popular Front in 1935. Female participation, although not complete inclusion, in politics placed many of the existing political parties in competition with one another in order to gear women towards their side. After obtaining the right to vote in municipal elections in 1931, many of the political leaders knew that it would not be long until women gained access to the national ballot. As such, women engaged on the political front, giving themselves accessibility to power that they had not yet had. Aguirre Cerda understood that women’s abilities to create collectives held the potential to unite Chileans across classes and help develop his governmental programs. Among the many women who claimed a leading role in developing a feminist identity during the FP, three stand out specifically as pioneers who

56 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 40. 57 Judy Maloof, ed., Voices of Resistance: Testimonies of Cuban and Chilean Women (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 118. 28 28 contributed to the growing community of first-wave feminists: Amanda Labarca,

Gabriela Mistral, and Elena Caffarena.

Paving the Way: First-Wave Feminist Leaders Chileans recognize Amanda Labarca as one of the foremost thinkers and educators of the twentieth century. Her impact on Chilean culture and numerous academic achievements led her to become one of Chile’s leading feminists. Labarca expresses that she owes much of her feminist inspiration to the models portrayed by women she observed in the United States while she was at school at Columbia

University. Her early years in the United States helped structure her later beliefs and perspectives on the role of women. As she once explained, “I confess that when I arrived in the United States for the first time I was far from the convinced feminist I have been since. It was the example of the North Americans that impelled me to drive and struggle until I obtained more civil and political rights for my feminine compatriots.”58 In this respect, Labarca appears to be moved by the mobilization and action of women in North America; nevertheless, when she returned to Chile she recognized that her country’s path to female inclusion would have to be molded according to the customs and culture of her own country. Additionally, although Labarca would go on to develop a voice that critiqued patriarchal society, her stance on a women’s place was still deeply connected to gender ideology. For example, in a Chilean magazine, Labarca commented, “We do not ask for our civil equality in a tragicomic effort to be exactly like you [men]. We know that our functions are different…but our spirit is equal…We dislike equally the man who

58 Amanda Labarca, “From Chile,” in Franz M. Joseph, As Others See Us: The United States Through Foreign Eyes (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1959), 316. 29 29 feminizes himself and the woman who adopts the deportment of a man.”59 Hence, while she defended the right to divorce, full civil rights and equal access to education throughout the Popular Front era, she also maintained the notion that the role of women was to shape and uphold the spiritual atmosphere of the home. Chilean gender ideology prescribed behavior that kept women in the private sphere as the keeper of the home and family, and unfortunately kept reinforcing sexual divisions within the political realm. On the other hand, Labarca appeared on the public stage before many women of the century did. After studying in both the United States and France, she devoted herself to teaching all her life, claiming many prestigious positions and influencing the way in which education unfolded in Chile. Further, upon her induction into the Academy of Social, Political, and Moral sciences in 1970, she finally began to shed her belief that a woman had to be attached to the home. In her acceptance speech she declared, “Today’s home, gentlemen, is not the one you knew in your youth. In the present, the woman feels that it is her right to write in the notebook of her life her own poem, one that translates her aspirations, who can rise up, if she wishes, to the conquest of the cosmos.”60

During the Popular Front years, Aguirre Cerda aimed to establish a sense of national identity throughout Chile. To do so, he gave the utmost attention to the value of culture and education. This resulted in his comprehensive strategy for nationalist instruction called the Plan de Chilenidad. It was within this atmosphere that Aguirre

Cerda turned to the leading authors and poets of the time, incorporating and supporting their work so that it would reflect well on Chile and bring Chileans pride in their homeland. Among these authors was Gabriela Mistral, a poet, educator, diplomat, and eventually, the first Latin American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in

59 Labarca, “From Chile,” 316. 60 “La Chile en la Historia de Chile: Amanda Labarca,” Palabra Pública, Universidad de Chile, No. 1, 2016. 30 30

1945.61 Education and reform were constant focuses of Mistral throughout her career, having had the opportunity to travel and expose herself to different cultures and people as an educator, her poetry began to gain international attention. In line with the Popular Front’s aim to bridge the gap between the classes, especially the poor and working class, Mistral was the ideal person to have in the FP’s corner. Having taught in schools throughout her country, Mistral developed a strong connection and commitment to the poor in Chile—especially the children. She believed that through education more opportunities would allow the lower classes to increase their chances of having a better life. Thus, the Popular Front administration believed Mistral’s work distinguished itself from other poets because the fact that she was a woman. Her identity as woman enabled her to feel and convey maternal emotions from a different, more accurate point of view than her male colleagues.

As a result, Mistral has been viewed in a traditional gendered stereotype as the “mother of Chile” because of the maternal and religious themes in her poetry, as well as her verses for children, and her work as a teacher. Interestingly, the dictatorship of

Augusto Pinochet promoted this conservative and gendered image of Mistral, as it sought out national-cultural figures to counter the political left.62 Yet, despite the traditional mother figure image that society attached to her, Mistral promoted feminism many times in her life, mandating social and political change through activism, and alluding to it in her work, particularly her essay on female suffrage. In the piece entitled “Women’s Suffrage” (1932), she makes a somewhat traditional but promising argument for women’s broader participation in the political arena, contending that women will bring their

61 Elizabeth Quay Hutcheson, Thomas Miller Klubock, Nara B. Milanich, and Peter Winn (eds)., The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, Duke University Press, 2014), 48. 62 Hutcheson, The Chile Reader, 267. 31 31 superior virtues into politics envisioning a time in which these same virtues will help propel a woman to the presidency of Chile.63 Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, a progressive feminist movement solidified. This movement was closely aligned with Aguirre Cerda and his Popular Front administration. Among those who rose to prominence was Elena Caffarena, a co-creator of one the most influential organizations which later became known as the Popular Front’s feminine arm, the Chilean Women’s Proemancipation Movement (MEMCH).64 In 1935, women of the left formed MEMCH. The latter proposed radical social change to improve the female situation. As the first organization to mobilize women massively through large rallies and public events, it described its mission as a “wide organization of national character that groups women of all ideological tendencies that are disposed to struggle for the social, economic, and juridical liberation of women.”65 As a middle-class woman, Caffarena was no stranger to the public sphere; she became a lawyer and later represented a new group of educated women who entered law, education, and social work. Further differentiating Caffarena from other leading female voices was her stance on a woman’s role and place. She did not feel that women needed to be the center of the home and instead she made new claims to the legal and political equality for women, a position that became the foundation for her organization. Not only was MEMCH influential due to its ability to organize women successfully, but it was also an extremely progressive organization for its time. Among some of MEMCH’s demands were issues like access to birth control, legalized divorce, legal protections for working mothers, and a series of reforms to address the problems of

63 Hutcheson, The Chile Reader, 268.; Gabriel Mistral stated in her essay, “But now that we have the right to vote, that is a direct vote and not a whisper in men’s ears. Now is the time, side by side with men who ‘represent’ us, to represent ourselves in body and soul.” 64 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 43 65 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 44 32 32 working-class women.66 Yet one of its most important achievements was the fight for the right to vote. Although women did not win national suffrage until fourteen years after the organization’s genesis, Caffarena and her followers continued to mobilize and seek government support. In an interview conducted right after the end of the Popular Front, Caffarena commented on the importance of women’s groups for winning feminist demands. She stated, “Not only do I think they are logical tools, but I consider them indispensable for achieving women’s liberation. I think that if in Chile we have not gone farther toward winning feminist demands, it is because of a lack of unity and combativeness in women’s organizations.”67 Similarly to Labarca, Caffarena references the women’s movements in the United States, emphasizing that if Chile had been more like the U.S. and developed a militant and combative feminism, the pace of female liberation could have taken place more quickly.

Moreover, Caffarena and the MEMCH organization placed a significant amount of responsibility on women for the oppression they faced in society. Although they were living within the confines of patriarchal norms, women needed to take the initiative and liberate their own thinking. If they refused to mobilize and stand up to existing gendered roles, nothing would change their situation. Caffarena’s co-founder of MEMCH, Marta Vergara—an equally influential leader—acknowledged this sentiment when she stated:

We have always believed that the last retreat of the reactionary forces is and will be that of the relations between men and women…it will have to be us women, and only us, who push this intimate liberation forward, this revolution that has to take place in the head of every single woman.68

66 Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 25. 67 Hutcheson, The Chile Reader, 317. 68 “La liberación de la mujer será obra de la mujer,” La Nueva Mujer, (August 9, 1936), 2. 33 33

Thus, MEMCH became known as a successful feminist organization in Chile that aimed to create a cross-class organization under one collective identity. For this reason, after the fall of the Popular Front, MEMCH retained such an influential voice within the political sphere while promoting women’s rights. In 1941, Aguirre Cerda resigned as president of Chile and died of tuberculosis not long after. However, prior to his death, the Popular Front party had already begun to lose traction among politicians as internal disputes between the existing parties exploded and fractured the coalition. With the onset of the Second World War, Socialist-Communist ties began to turn hostile and the Radicals felt like Aguirre Cerda had begun to drift too far to the right. As a result, the Front ended, but the success of political alliances continued. It was not until June 1941, when Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, that the Socialists re-forged their alliance with the Communists and Radicals and eventually incorporated the Democratic Party and the Workers’ Socialist Party.69 This new coalition, Alianza Democrática de Chile, aimed to bring their presidential candidate Juan Antonio Ríos to victory in the 1942 presidential election to continue the promise of

Aguirre Cerda in representing and including all Chileans. Yet, Chile continued down a road of political unrest as party alliances continued to dissipate. Women nevertheless continued to make strides through the chaos. The Chilean Women’s Proemancipation Movement (MEMCH) maintained their role as the leading mass women’s organization up until the late 1940s, when partisan tensions began to tear it apart from the inside. When Chilean President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla (1946-1952) outlawed the Communist Party in 1948, MEMCH members mobilized against his actions. Unfortunately, this led to the group’s political exclusion, as

69 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 244. 34 34 many began to equate them with the Communists.70 Yet, their struggle was not in vain, the organization had gained a strong following and in cooperation with another umbrella group, Federación Chilena de Instituciones Femeninas (FECHIF), and the mass mobilization of women for political rights took off. Despite both groups’ differences, in 1949 Chile finally passed a bill granting women the right to vote and be elected to national positions.71 After women obtained political enfranchisement in Chile, some gained access into the political sphere as candidates for national positions. Many attempted to keep pushing for legislation directly aimed at women, but unfortunately Chilean gender ideology and the gendered nature of politics proved to be a challenging obstacle to overcome. Chilean feminists too often alluded to their superiority in politics due to their natural moral character, but when they finally came face to face with operating the political arena, they were left with no choice but to adhere to existing parties’ platforms, where women’s initiatives took a back seat to class and partisan issues. It is for this reason that Chile’s first-wave feminist movement, like many other countries who had experienced a first- wave feminist movement, began to dissolve after achieving suffrage. Women no longer connected under one collective identity, but divisions across class and party became stronger than the original movement itself.

Chilean Feminism in Transition The years between 1938 and 1952 witnessed the successful implementation of Center-Left coalitions and the first attempts at feminist mass mobilization. Nonetheless,

70 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 43. 71 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 44.; Many of the FECHIF activists drew on women’s maternal identities and moral compass, versus MEMCH female workers who argued that women’s political rights should be “granted by virtue of the fact that many women were essentially performing roles and labors similar to those of men.” 35 35 as Chileans suffered from the instability of rotating presidents in the mid-1900s, they began to lose faith in their Radical political leadership and sought a change. The presidential election of 1952 ushered in a new period of politics, as politicians were facing a strongly opinionated and educated public. Although Carlos Ibáñez del Campo won the presidential election, this marked the first campaign for the future Socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Allende, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, played a critical role in reaching out to the masses that Chilean society and politics had long overlooked and left out. Running as a Leftist candidate for the Socialist Party in 1952,

Allende had a less than impressive following in his first of three presidential runs. It was not until 1956, when the Socialist, Democratic, and Communist Parties formed the Frente de Acción Popular (FRAP), that Allende’s popularity emerged. Further, the growth of the Left throughout the years between 1952 and 1970 not only accelerated a turn in the political tide, but the development of what it meant to be a feminist in Chile began to shift as well. Both the Right and Left took women and their role in the political sphere more seriously, as political parties tried to win their allegiance in order to become the most influential political party in the country. In this context, women found room to flourish, but it also brought to the surface deep divisions between those who favored a more conservative feminism as opposed to the growing progressive one of the Left.

Conclusion This chapter has analyzed the development of Chile’s first-wave feminist movement in the years between the Popular Front government of Aguirre Cerda and the granting of national female suffrage. By focusing on the understanding of class, gender, and politics I have argued that women, despite being highly influenced by the gendered patterns of the time, were able to construct a type of proto-feminism that embraced their 36 36 traditional roles as both mother and domestic, all the while using that image to their political advantage. First-wave feminists, in large part middle-class women, sought to make their presence known in the political arena and the only way to do that was to come together as a collective unit under one shared identity and cause. For most of these women the fight was for the right to vote, first at the municipal level and once again nationally. However, once they gained access to the national ballot, the collective identity that once brought these women together across class began to disappear, and the question became for some, “what do we fight for now?” Despite this fact, first-wave feminists paved the way for the reemergence of a women’s movement during the onset of second wave feminism in the 1970s. It is during this period that women will begin to challenge gendered language and customs, further creating the form of contemporary feminism practiced today.

In sum, I have presented one aspect in the rise of first-wave feminist leaders and the creation of a feminist identity. My next chapter will explore the transition period between first wave and second-wave feminism, and the growth of the Left. Further, it will focus on the rise of politician Salvador Allende in the international context of the Cold War, and the role he will play for radical progress in Chile.

CHAPTER 2: CHILE IN TRANSITION: THE RISE OF ALLENDE AND THE LEFT AMID THE COLD WAR (1950-1970)

…there was more fear of U.S. interventionism than that of Guatemalan communism. The pressures we brought to bear were resented and the scars remain– Louis Halle, State Department’s Policy Planning Staff72

Yo tengo fe, profunda fe, en la honradez, en la conducta heroica de cada hombre y de cada mujer que hizo posible esta victoria – Salvador Allende73

Following World War II, the two superpowers of the twentieth century, the

United States and the Soviet Union, battled in a war for supremacy. The U.S. had a deep mistrust of their former war allies, as they feared their communist ideals. At the close of the second World War, the U.S. concern was controlling or “containing” the threat of a communist campaign to take over the minds of individuals, thus giving them an upper hand in the power race against the Soviets. The United States took the stance that non- intervention was no longer a policy they could pursue regarding foreign relations. Throughout the nineteenth century, U.S. intervention in Latin America was apparent, often to secure capitalist interests or to hinder Left-wing and popular democratic leaders from coming into power. During the late 1940s and 1950s, when the Cold War began to impact the southern hemisphere, Latin America became an important asset and U.S. policymakers were determined to keep Communism out. In doing so, the

United States targeted any perceived threat as a justification to interfere in domestic policies of other nations. For many, U.S. complicity in the overthrow President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán of Guatemala on June 27, 1954, sparked the downfall of U.S.-Latin

72 United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, The American Republics, Vol. IV, Document 457. PPS files, lot 65 D 101, “Guatemala”. May 28, 1954. 73 Salvador Allende, Biblioteca Virtual Salvador Allende Gossens, 5 de septiembre de 1970 (accessed November 2019).; “I have faith, deep faith, in the honesty, in the heroic conduct of every man and woman who made this victory possible.” 38 38

American relations within the region.74 Further, the actions of the U.S. government against Guatemala went on to deeply affect the relationship between the United States and Chile, and radicalized the movement against imperialism in Cuba, which influenced other Latin American nations to take a stance against North American interventionalist policies throughout the region. This chapter aims to trace the rise of Salvador Allende Gossens and the political Left throughout the international context of the Cold War. It will argue that the relationship between the United States and Latin America became severely compromised during this period, with major repercussions for the future of Chilean politics. In turn, as Allende assumed more political authority and united Left-wing factions and parties, right wing Chilean politicians and presidents attempted to maintain an image of stability and anti-communism internationally. In their mission to save face among international powers, political leaders looked to Chilean women during this transitional period of first wave to second-wave feminism. It was in the context of the Cold War that upper- and middle-class women came together and formed “apolitical” organizations that called for the banning of Communism in their country.75 As the fight against Communism proceeded, conservative male politicians used the image of women to demonstrate stability in the country through the perception of the good wife and mother. Thus, as women were now full-fledged political citizens, predominantly male parties and coalitions politicized the domestic image of women to gain votes and political momentum.

74 Mark T. Hove, “The Arbenz Factor: Salvador Allende, U.S.-Chilean Relations, and the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala”, Diplomatic History, vol. 31, no. 4, 2007. 75 Women perceived their organizations as apolitical because they felt that as women their higher moral standards were above the messy politics of men. However, with hindsight, these organizations were very much political entities. 39 39 The Effects of Cold War Tensions In 1946, one year after the end of World War II and three years before Chilean women obtained the right to vote on a national level, Chile conducted its twenty-fourth presidential election. Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, who became the last Radical Party president, began his administration on a different note than any previous president of the past, including in his cabinet radicals, liberals, and for the first time in the country’s history, Communists.76 This was a questionable move in a post-war climate, as the Cold War was increasingly becoming an international conflict. Within six months of Videla’s inauguration, the radical coalition crumbled due to outside pressures, and his cabinet along with it. In 1947, Videla lost the support of his Communist Party (PCCh- Partido Comunista de Chile) allies and he expelled them from their cabinet positions. This marked the genesis of measures that restricted Communism domestically, reflecting the integral relationship between the Cold War, American foreign policy, and Chile. President Videla, popularly known as “el pato loco,” passed the Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia (Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy, 1948) which banned Communism in its entirety in Chile, eliminating roughly 26,000 voters from the electoral registers, and causing many popular Communist figures to either go underground or flee the country.77 Included among the exiles was the outspoken

Communist Pablo Neruda, an influential character in Chilean cultural, political, and social life. Neruda would return to Chile during Allende’s administration, becoming a major political voice, and in 1971 represented Chile on an international platform when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The second Chilean to do so after Gabriela Mistral.

76 Simon Collier and William F. Sater. A History of Chile, 1808-1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 149. 77 Hamlet, “Gonzalez Videla y el Premio Nobel,” Archivo de Referencias Criticas/Coleccion General, (Santiago, Chile) no. 84 Oct. 1972. 40 40

A short year after Videla passed the ban on communism women gained the right to vote nationally (1949), adding 475,000 voters to Chile’s register.78 This was a long- fought battle for Chilean women, who had won access to the municipal ballot in 1934. The delay was primarily due to the fact that politics had long been, and still remained even after, a gendered institution in Chile. Many of the men who belonged to the Center and Leftist parties feared that if women had access to the ballot it would disturb the political balance of the country, and they were right.79 Due to the influence of the Catholic Church on women’s lives, women had a strong tendency to vote conservatively.

In the municipal elections of 1952, women’s votes supported the Church-affiliated Conservative Party.80 However, it is important to note, that although women were most likely influenced by their gendered roles and the Catholic Church, which spoke to women directly about their crucial roles as mothers and wives, the importance of class played an even larger part in the political nature of the country. Despite having the right to vote, the majority of women did not have access to the political world. Chilean women who had the most knowledge of politics were those with husbands affiliated with political parties, meaning the men of the upper and middle classes. As a result, women’s views were reflective of their husbands’, skewing the way in which women voted and made up their own political tendencies. The United States perceived Chile as its “diamond in the rough,” a stable, inclusive and “contained” political democracy, a model for other nations in the southern cone. After World War II, the Cold War drew United States agents and diplomats directly into Chilean politics in efforts to influence elections, manipulate labor organizations,

78 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 149. 79 Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 25. 80 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 149. 41 41 disseminate American policy perspectives, and defend American investments.81 The

American Ambassador to Chile, Claude Bowers (1939-1953), wrote the secretary of state that “Chile is [a] key country in the struggle against Communism, and I feel that we should make every effort to overcome present impasse.”82 Moreover, the Harry Truman administration (1945-1953) highly favored Chile between 1949-1952 so that his administration could prevent the loss of their Chilean ally to the authoritarian General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. Right-wing authoritarianism embodied by Ibáñez was a regional threat, and it had the power to ruin Chile’s long democratic history. Further,

Ibanez’s authoritarianism and his ties to Argentina’s Juan Peron troubled U.S. officials, and as Bowers stated to the Secretary of State, “[Chile] is entitled to our most sympathetic consideration.”83 During this period, Salvador Allende merited little concern by U.S. officials because of his Socialist Party’s hostility to fascism and Communism. However, Allende did not alienate Communists altogether since he was more interested in uniting the floundering Left-wing parties. Between the years 1948 and 1952, Chilean politics experienced a major transition. Not only was suffrage extended to women, but the Right- Left axis that had been a staple of Chilean politics since the 1930s was beginning to fall apart. As political parties began to fracture, the Right-Left dichotomy realigned as the Right, the anti-Communist, and the Marxist Left.84 Further, when Videla passed the Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy, or popularly known as “La Ley Maldita” (the

81 Brian Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 201. 82 Mark T. Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy: Salvador Allende and U.S.-Chilean Relations, 1945-1970,” PhD diss., University of Florida, 2009, ProQuest Dissertation Publishing. (accessed December 2019). 83 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 110. 84 Richard Muir and Alan Angell, “Commentary: Salvador Allende: his role in Chilean politics,” International Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 34 no. 4 (August 2005), 739. 42 42 damned law) Allende and his mixed group of center and leftist parties known as FRAS

(Falange, Radical-Democrat, Agrarian Labour, and Ampuero-Allende Socialists) was one of the few who opposed its passage. Allende argued to his colleagues that one could not “defend liberty by restricting liberty,” and the proposed law “persecuted ideas, it exclude[d] a political party, it restrict[ed] suffrage, it attack[ed] the most basic right of the working class.”85 Allende’s willingness to speak out and provide a voice for the everyday Chilean cemented his political foundations as a prominent leader of the Popular Socialist party (PSP- Partido Socialista Popular) and new senatorial position brought him to the national stage during the 1952 presidential election.

The National Appearance of Allende: The 1952 Presidential Election During the 1952 election, party splintering led to the emergence of four presidential candidates, and the first presidential run by Allende. The prominence of presidential candidates initially sparked concern from the United States, as they feared increasing Chilean political instability. Ibáñez became a quick front-runner during the election, much to the surprise and opposition of U.S. officials. As part of Ibáñez campaign, he adopted the symbol of a broom to represent his mission to “clean out” corruption in Chilean politics and government. Further, making his appeal to women, Ibáñez focused on the effects of inflation on buying food for the home. The United States

Embassy noted that large numbers of women attended Ibáñez’s rallies, and that “one doesn’t have to be too politically wise to understand” why.86

85 Salvador Allende speech in the Senate, “Defensa permanente de la democracia. Proyecto que declara fuera de la ley al Partido Comunista”, June 18, 1948, in Obras Escogidas, 1933-1948 Vol. 1 (Santiago: Gráfica Andes, el Instituto de Estudios Contemporáneos, 1988). 86 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 114. 43 43

Allende’s Popular Socialist Party split over whether to throw their support behind

Ibáñez, as all party members did not like the relationship he shared with Person. Because of an internal party disagreement, Allende eventually resigned the Vice Presidency of the Senate and joined the Socialist Party of Chile (PSCh- Partido Socialista de Chile). The PSCh endorsed Allende as their candidate for the 1952 election, also gaining the support of the Communist Party, and formed the People’s Front coalition (Frente del Pueblo). Ironically, U.S. officials welcomed Allende’s presidential candidacy. This was in large part because Allende shared their dislike of Ibáñez as the future leader of Chile, but also because they considered Allende an ally, describing him as “an uncompromising foe of communism.”87 However, the Communist vote proved incredibly important to the outcome of the 1952 election, so much so, that ambassador Bowers explained that “no public man will…utter a word of criticism of the Communists.”88 The Communist vote was sought not only by Allende, but Ibáñez and Senator Eduardo Frei Montalva, who ran as the candidate for the Falange. Of all candidates though, the United States had high hopes for Allende to undermine Ibáñez, all the while favoring Pedro Enrique Alfonso— the Radical Party candidate—for president. As the candidate for a small party, few believed that Allende would last in the presidential campaign. As such, others tried to convince him to instead throw his support and coalition behind a more secure candidate, such as Pedro Enrique Alfonso.

Nevertheless, due to political disagreements, Allende decided to see the campaign through to the end. Near the end of the 1952 election, the United States was still considerably distrustful of Ibáñez and the path he would take Chile down if elected as president. For

87 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 116. 88 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 117. 44 44

Allende, this first presidential campaign helped him gain greater recognition as a prominent politician as well as doing his part to try and keep Ibáñez from gaining the vote. Unfortunately, on September 4, Ibáñez easily won the presidential candidacy, receiving 47% of the votes, while Allende finished last with only 5.5%.89 The United States took the results as a considerable blow for not only Chile, but Chilean-U.S. relations, with Ibáñez promising nationalization and opening trade with the Soviet bloc. The U.S. ambassador to Chile compared the situation with Ibáñez to Iran and Mossadegh who was threatening to nationalize the oil industry. Only a short year later, in 1953, the

United States conducted a covert operation in Iran that went on to set the precedent for the invasion of Guatemala in 1954, an event with major repercussion for U.S.-Latin American relations.

A Shift in Tone: Arbenz and Guatemala June 27, 1954 marked the downfall, or shift, in the relationship between the United States and Latin American nations. The U.S.-sponsored overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala came as an incredible blow to many Latin Americans, and in the case of Chile, altered the way in which both governments would conduct foreign policy with one another in the future. As the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, John Moors Cabot, would later explain, “[the United States] ha[d] paid a price in terms of prestige and good-will for its opposition to Arbenz.”90 Further, there was massive resistance and protests in Chile to the action of the United States, some even referred to Chile as the most violent [nation] in Latin

89 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 149. 90 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 134. 45 45

America.91 This is of considerable interest when taking into account that only a couple years prior, the United States described Chile as the model nation for other Latin American countries. In a way, however, that is exactly the role in which Chile ended up playing for other nations in the southern cone after the coup in Guatemala. Chileans, particularly Allende, rethought their relationship with the U.S. government under the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961). Chile’s attitude towards the U.S. government would go on to influence the revolutionary fervor taking place in Cuba only five short years later. The political shift by Chile represented its concerns with U.S. policy towards Arbenz, and Chile’s unwillingness to be a puppet to U.S. political schemes. Further, as an outspoken politician to the events taking place in Guatemala, Allende garnered a bigger support system during this period. As Eisenhower and his administration took greater action against Arbenz, Allende became one of the prominent voices of the Chilean Left which was becoming increasingly vocal against the United States. Yet, when Eisenhower entered the White House in January 1953, he was determined to conduct relations with Latin America as delicately as possible, not wanting to alienate the region, especially their long-time ally, Chile. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Cabot, even stated, “Chile was the first urgent item on [his] agenda.”92 Ibáñez’s administration was dealing with an economic crisis, which the new

U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Willard Beaulac, feared threatened Chilean solvency and the stability of its political institutions.93 Further, U.S. policymakers did not view Ibáñez as fit to navigate the Chilean’s difficult road ahead, and their growing concern for their

91 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 641; The United States considered the Chilean public’s reaction in terms of massive protests as violent. 92 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 627. 93 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 141. 46 46

Latin American ally proved justified. As inflation rose in the country so did public dissatisfaction. The United States foresaw that a potential social revolution could be just around the corner, and if the Chilean government did not address the majority’s concerns and demands for reform, the people could overthrow Chile’s democracy. In response to the climate that was taking hold in Chile, Allende—reelected to the Chilean Senate to represent the Far North region in 1953—declared:

If the President of the Republic does not consider himself capable of resolving [Chile’s] problems and fulfilling the promises he made, he would do well to take the democratic course of calling the country to resolve the problem through new elections.94 Although Allende did agree with the United States about the Ibáñez administration’s lack of efficiency, he felt that Ibáñez should only have to leave the office through democratic elections.

However, in 1953, the United States decided to act against Guatemala, as they were convinced Communism had completely corrupted the country under Arbenz. President Eisenhower and his administration, along with the CIA, initiated Operation

PBSUCCESS. Yet Chile, which contained one of the largest Communist organizations in Latin America, did not come off as a threat to the United States—in large part due to the Communist ban passed in Chile (1948). In 1954 during a meeting of Organization of American States (OAS), the United States sought to gain support for their action in

Guatemala. Instead, although the United States did find some support, Chile and the political Left and Center overwhelmingly opposed U.S. policy.95 One of the leaders of the Radical party, Luis Bossay, insisted that Chile should not even have attended the conference because “any nation that respects the principles of liberty, social justice,

94 Ernesto Würth Rojas, Ibañez, Caudillo Enigmático (Santiago: Editorial del Pacifico, 1958), 281. 95 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 144. 47 47 and…free development of the human individual” would also disagree with the U.S. government. Continuing in the same tone as Bossay, Eduardo Frei Montalva stated:

I do not believe that the Department of State would be so bold as to suggest, least of all, an intervention into the internal affairs of [Guatemala] which is at liberty to determine freely its own destiny. If [the Department of State] did, all democratic forces of America would rise up to repudiate the aggression and to make common cause with Guatemala.96 Unfortunately for the United States, Frei had accurately foreshadowed what was to come only months later. After the United States received approval of their anti-Communist resolution at the OAS conference, Allende quickly spoke out against U.S. propaganda that painted Guatemala to be a threat to neighboring nations. Instead, Allende claimed that Guatemala was paving the path for “progress and liberty [in] the nations of America,” and Chile should have done more to stand with them in opposition to the United States.97 Further, Allende’s comments reflected the new shift in tone towards U.S. policy, and Chileans rejected U.S. propaganda. When Guatamalan forces, supported by the CIA, invaded their country on June 17, 1954, Chileans took to the streets in protest. An article in the New

York Times explains that three days after the coup, Chilean Leftists, with “Communists in the front row,” spurred an attack on the United States.98 Students burned the U.S. flag in the plaza and shouted their support of the Guatemalan government. When the Chilean

Senate addressed the atmosphere in Chile, Senators Allende and Frei voiced their upmost disdain with the United States for intervening in Guatemala, and even led a march— along with Pablo Neruda and Baltasar Castro—through downtown Santiago in solidarity with Arbenz.

96 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 147-148. 97 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 658-659. 98 “Chile’s Left Scores U.S. on Guatemala,” New York Times, June 21, 1954. 48 48

In the aftermath of the events in Guatemala, many Chileans continued to oppose

U.S. policy. As a result, the tone and perception of Chile by the U.S. government also started to shift. In a subsequent article written in the New York Times titled “Latin Reds Find Fertile Ground: U.S. Survey Lists Communist Danger Points in South and Central America,” the State Department divulged that Chile was a country in which

“Communism comes nearest to being a menace now.”99 Additionally, Allende gained a greater place on the U.S. radar when he accepted an invitation for a six-month trip to the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Europe. This proved to be a successful trip for

Allende, as he recognized and highlighted on his return both the good and the bad that he saw in each of his destinations. Particularly, he admired the way in which Mao Zedong and the Communists “mobilized the Chinese people for national development and how the Chinese people seemed committed to the effort.”100 It was in this light that the

Eisenhower administration began their propaganda campaign drawing their own conclusions that Chile pointed down the same path towards Communism as Guatemala, all the while being led by a man they once considered a valuable ally. For the United

States, Salvador Allende and Communism became the biggest political threat in Chile.101

The Presidential Election of 1958 and the Cuban Lesson Beginning in the mid-1950s, U.S. policymakers started to view Allende as one of the biggest threats in Chile. As Allende and his Communist-Socialist coalition, The Popular Action Front (FRAP- Frente de Accion Popular, 1956), took a leading role in the Chilean Left, the United States broke off all communication. However, the United States

99 “Latin Reds Find Fertile Ground: U.S. Survey Lists Communist Danger Points in South and Central America,” New York Times, June 21, 1954. 100 “Allende: Posibilidades concreta de comerciar con el mundo Socialista,” El Siglo, December 28, 1954, 1, 3. 101 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 663. 49 49 still saw the necessity of keeping a close eye on Chile, as they country’s economic situation continued to worsen under Ibáñez. Eisenhower and his administration recognized the importance of the 1958 election and could not risk the possibility of Allende winning the campaign. In 1956, the Popular Action Front began to gain steam in Chile. During the municipal elections that same year, FRAP finished second among all political parties, demonstrating the growing strength of the Left and Allende.102 As a predominant voice of the Left and national politics, FRAP overwhelmingly nominated Allende as their candidate for the 1958 Presidential Election. Other candidates running included the Radical patry’s Luis Bossay Leyva, Eduardo Frei of the Christian Democrats, and the Liberal-Conservative coalition’s Jorge Alessandri.103 The United States observed that the main candidates for the election were Alessandri, Frei, and Allende, and they worried that

Allende and the FRAP may very well secure the election due to the surprising strength of his campaign. During a rally of “more than sixty-five thousand supporters,” Allende expressed, “The Department of State insists upon a policy that is odious and anti- popular…We [Chileans] demand the right to seek our own solutions and to follow the roads the best suit our habits and traditions.”104 Yet, despite Allende’s political momentum in the concluding months of his campaign, in September 1958 Jorge Alessandri, the son of former President Arturo Alessandri, snatched the election with

31.6% of the vote to Allende’s 28.9%--roughly a margin of 33,000 votes.105

102 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 253. 103 Collier and Sater, 256; The Christian Democratic Party consisted on the Falange and Social Christian Conservatives, forming a moderate Left party. 104 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 661. 105 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 258. 50 50

Coinciding with the rise of Allende during the presidential election, Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara took power in Cuba only four months later in January 1959. The United States could not help but draw similarities between the revolutionaries and Allende, the only difference being Allende was not igniting a revolution to achieve his goals, but continually called for change through democratic means. However, when John

F. Kennedy became president in the United States (1961-1963) he referred to Latin America as “the most dangerous area in the world,” fearing that “the United States may not win the Cold War in Latin America, but it certainly [may] lose it there.”106

During the following years, Allende observed the revolution of Castro and Guevara in Cuba, appreciating the way in which they were mobilized and organized. Allende acknowledged that Cuba was acting and responding in such a way so that they could gain and consolidate full political, economic and social independence. Thus, although he admired the steps taken by Castro and Guevara, Allende realized that Chile’s path would have to be a peaceful one conducted with the ballot box, and not done through revolution.

Not the Third, but the Fourth Time a Charm: 1964 and 1970 Presidential Elections In the beginning of 1961, President Kennedy announced the creation of the Alliance for Progress, a program that intended to establish more prosperous and democratic societies throughout Latin America. Using the example of previous administrations, Kennedy viewed Chile as the showcase nation for the Alliance program. Again, citing their history as a stable and democratic country within Latin America, the

United States favored Chile and used them as their model country. Over the next few years, the United States provided Chile with the largest amount of aid under the Alliance

106 Stephen Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 19. 51 51 for Progress of any other Latin American nation.107 For very specific reasons, the United

States elevated Chile among other nations, one of the most significant being the United States felt that if they lost Chile to Communism, it “could be a more dangerous and effective Cuba.”108 Further, with Chile’s next elections just around the corner, U.S. policymakers focused on making Chile’s economic situation better so that the people would not turn to Allende and the FRAP, thus giving them a greater following for the next election. However, the November 1963 assassination of Kennedy threw off more than a years’ worth of political planning for Chile’s election in 1964. Up until that point, U.S. policymakers debated whether or not to put their support behind Eduardo Frei or the Radical party’s Julio Duran, with Kennedy’s administration settling on Frei. Yet, with Kennedy’s death, Lyndon B. Johnson’s (1963-1969) support shifted ever so slightly towards Duran. However, when Duran pulled his nomination that same year, Johnson went to work on helping Frei win the election. The Johnson administration spent millions of dollars and propaganda efforts to support Frei and provide him with whatever services he may need to counter Allende and the FRAP. Interestingly though, Frei questioned the amount of aid he received from the United States, stating that because U.S. sentiment in Chile was so skewed, strong ties with them would be damaging to his campaign.109 Further, the United States formulated plans if Allende ended up winning the election in

’64. If Allende broke from Communism or limited Communist officials in his government, the United States would work towards establishing a relationship with him. Contrastingly, if Allende did not acknowledge U.S. concerns, the “policy [would] be to do all [they] can to prevent Allende form conducting a successful administration and to

107 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 310. 108 Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area, 28. 109 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 316. 52 52 ensure that he does not obtain control over the police and military forces,” even initiating a coup if necessary.110 Nevertheless, Frei came out on top in September 1964, winning 56.1 percent of the vote, Allende receiving 38.9 percent, and Duran 5 percent.111 Seen as el mal menor (the lesser evil) to some Chileans, the victory of the Christian Democrats in the presidential election represented “for the first time in the Chilean history,…a serious new party with a serious new agenda [rose] in less than a decade to break the mold of traditional politics.”112 Yet, for Allende, the loss was a significant blow. Accepting that he was not going to win weeks before the votes were in, Allende used the results of the election to help reframe how he was going to build his campaign for 1970. When Allende began his campaign for the 1970 presidential election, he had completely restructured the way in which he envisioned not only the future of Chile, but

Latin America. As a long-time supporter of Fidel Castro’s and Che Guevara’s attempts to transform Cuba, Allende promoted himself as a socialist revolutionary, and that Chile’s path to the future led through the via pacifica, the peaceful road to socialism.113

However, Allende acknowledged that this route was not for every country. In the case of Cuba, for example, actual revolution (via armada) was necessary due outside forces making that the only option some countries had left. Moreover, because of Allende’s determination to bring Chile to socialism through democratic means, he lost followers among his Socialist Party. Thus, in October 1969, a new Left-wing alliance formed under the name Popular Unity (UP, Unidad Popular). This new coalition consisted of Socialists, Communists, and Radicals, along with three other

110 Hove, “The Arbenz Factor,” 316. 111 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 262. 112 Hove, “Losing a Model Democracy,” 221. 113 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 326. 53 53 smaller parties.114 However, when it came to nominate a candidate for the 1970 presidential election, consensus evaded the new coalition. For some, the obvious choice was Allende, who was by far the most recognizable name the party had. On the other hand, the New Left argued that Allende was what the Left used to be, and that they needed to put up a new face to secure the presidency.115 Ultimately Allende chose to represent the Popular Unity coalition, but his task was not an easy one. Due to Allende’s history with the United States, Richard Nixon’s administration (1969-1974) and the CIA did their part in trying to derail Allende’s presidential campaign. By funneling anti-

Allende propaganda and close to one million dollars into a scare campaign, Nixon directed the CIA to ensure Allende would not be victorious this time around. Nixon and the CIA failed to stop Allende. On September 4, 1970, Allende won the presidential election by a slim margin. Receiving 36.3 percent of the vote to Jorge

Alessandri’s 34.9 percent. The election ultimately came down to the National Congress deciding between the two candidates. As Allende’s long fought battle for the presidency had finally reached fruition, he greeted his supporters on November 5, 1970 and declared,

“At last the day has come when we can say: Basta! Enough! No more economic exploitation. No more social inequality. No more political oppression…Today we come together here to celebrate our victory in Chile and to mark the beginning of our liberation.”116

114 Stefan de Vylder, Allende’s Chile: The Political Economy of the Rise and Fall of the Unidad Popular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 327. 115 Vylder, Allende’s Chile, 328. 116 Salvador Allende Gossens, Chile’s Road to Socialism, trans. J. Darling (Maryland: Penguin Books, 1973) 52. 54 54 Conclusion This chapter has analyzed the rise of Salvador Allende and the political Left in the context of an international Cold War. By focusing on the way in which Communism effected the political tone of U.S.-Latin American relations, I have argued that the United States and their foreign policy deeply impacted Chilean politics. By continually referencing how the United States perceived Chile to be the model democracy in Latin America, I have examined how both countries interconnected throughout this period and why that had positive and negative effects. Further, considerable consideration is placed on the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala because this event, before Castro and

Guevara in Cuba, shifted the tone in Latin American relations with the United States, especially in the case of Chile. As a result of Guatemala, Allende became a prominent voice of the Left and that launched his national political career. The chapter ends in 1970 as Allende, after three attempts, finally secured the presidency in Chile and promised the Chilean people a peaceful transition towards socialism. Moreover, my next chapter will begin in 1970 and extend through 1973, examining Allende’s administration. It will analyze the way in which Allende spoke to and incorporated women during his time in office, as well as tracing the shift in feminine consciousness and identity throughout this period of second-wave feminism. Specifically, I analyze the importance of class and gendered notions of feminine identity and how that played a critical role in determining how one experienced and understood feminism.

CHAPTER 3: SECOND WAVE FEMINISM: WOMEN’S STRUGGLE UNDER SALVADOR ALLENDE (1970-1973)

“Yo soy cada día más partidario de las mujeres.” – Salvador Allende Gossens117

“Ahora (después de la asuncio de Allende) ha habido por primera vez un cambio en Chile el gobierno de Allende tiene gran importancia histórica para Chile y para el continente latinoamericano” – Pablo Neruda118

Prior to obtaining the presidency in 1970, Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity (UP- Unidad Popular) coalition made many promises to not only the Chilean people, but to other political parties as well. To the UP coalition, former President Eduardo Frei’s administration represented a new government of the bourgeoisie, in the service of national and foreign capitalism. This resulted in insufficient social change leading to economic stagnation, a rising cost of living, and violent repression of the people. 119 For this reason, Allende determined that Frei’s reformism was not the way for Chile. To solve

Chile’s problems, Allende argued, for a peaceful transition to socialism. However, the peaceful road to socialism did not please everyone. To ensure that Allende’s incoming administration would not completely alter Chile’s existing political framework, the

Christian Democrats demanded constitutional guarantees from the UP coalition. Some of the guarantees among others included maintenance of civil liberties and freedom of the

117 Salvador Allende, Biblioteca Virtual Salvador Allende Gossens, 5 de septiembre de 1970 (accessed November 2019).; “Every day I support women more and more.” 118 Pablo Neruda, “De Allende hablo Neruda en suecia,” La Nación (Stgo.,1971), Biblioteca Nacional de Chile Digital (Accessed November 2019).; “Now (after Allende’s inauguration), there has been a change for the first time in Chile. The administration of Salvador Allende has great historical importance for Chile and the Latin American continent.” 119 Brian Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 246. 56 56 press, protection for the armed forces against political purges or the creations of militia, and the continuation of the multiparty system.120 Yet, as the Christian Democratic alliance was bargaining with the UP, other opposing groups such as the Right-wing extremists Patria y Libertad (“Fatherland and Freedom”) and the American CIA were already plotting on how to keep Allende out of office.

Despite great efforts, Allende entered the presidential palace, La Moneda, proclaiming that with his victory, the people (el pueblo) of Chile had finally made it.121 Unfortunately, Allende’s short administration faced an uncompromising Congress, and an increasingly impatient and hostile society. The Chilean economy suffered as the United States sought to cut off credit in hopes of destabilizing Chile’s economy, and ultimately the UP administration. Significantly, women played a key role in undermining Allende’s government. As Chile’s economic situation worsened, women across class lines took to the streets protesting the lack of necessities available to them, stating that Allende’s policies made them fail their maternal duties and responsibilities.122 Thus, by the time Chile’s armed forces overthrew Allende in 1973, the peaceful road to socialism was already in disarray, and many women welcomed the conservative general, Augusto Pinochet. The period of the Pinochet dictatorship represented a moment of considerable importance to the development of a second wave feminist identity. Although Pinochet supported and pushed the image of women as dependent wives and mothers, he also inadvertently opened the door for the development of a more progressive feminist movement in the 1980s.

120 Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 248. 121 “Victoria Marxista en Chile,” La Prensa Libre, Sept. 10, 1970.; Allende’s campaigned to the lower and working classes. In this way, the people finally felt like Allende would represent their voices in the political sphere. 122 Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 60. 57 57

This chapter outlines the development of second wave feminism throughout the

Allende administration. Further, it will examine the ways in which women included themselves into Allende’s political campaign and policies, and how the concept of a feminist identity manifested during this period. Finally, it will connect the impact of second wave feminism to the experience of Chilean women’s gendered realities.

Women and Allende’s Presidential Campaigns of 1964 and 1970 Pre-women’s political experiences in Chile have long been fraught with gendered conceptions. Politicians tended to view women as crucial swing voters, often monopolizing women’s mobilization during election time, but ignoring them once the campaigns ended. During Chile’s presidential elections in 1964, when Allende ran against Eduardo Frei, women played a large part in securing Frei’s presidency. Women’s involvement in the anti-Allende movement during the 1960s deeply impacted the way in which the centrist Christian Democrats and center-right parties used propaganda to dismantle Allende’s image. The focus on women was central to reigniting the declining strength of the right, as women were now an important asset in the growing electorate. In the right’s attempt to connect Allende to Communist Cuba and a “communist takeover in Chile,” the parties and alliances launched a media campaign known as Campaña del Terror (The Scare Campaign).123 The campaign, aided by the newly formed elite women’s group Accion Mujeres de Chile (Women’s Action of Chile, 1963), targeted conservative women. Frei knew that women, more so than men, had a stronger tendency to vote conservatively, and they were showing up in larger numbers to the voting polls.

Thus, in many of the Scare Campaign’s ads, propaganda depicted women in their roles as mothers, emphasizing the importance of that figure to Chilean national identity. Ads

123 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 36. 58 58 aimed at middle and upper-class women claimed that an Allende victory would mean

“the loss of their children, the destruction of their homes, and the end of motherhood as they knew it.”124 Women therefore became more involved and included in the political struggle, as politicians tried to win their support through appeals to their maternal identities.

However, maternal collective identities, while supported by the center and right, were not inherently conservative. Second wave feminism in Chile drew on women’s identities as mothers across class and party lines. The term “mobilized mothers,” used by political scientist Susan Franceschet, accurately depicts the collective identity in which women came together during this period.125 As most women considered their maternal role their primary concern, it came as no surprise that the majority of female voters were a part of the anti-Allende movement. In their eyes, Allende represented a shift to communism, and along with it, the loss of Chile’s traditional familial values. If women became subverted by communism, they would lose their femininity, which meant they could no longer be good wives and mothers. Referencing the women who fought alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra in Communist Cuba, anti-Allende supporters claimed that “Communism desexes women and converts them into dull robots…they no longer spend their time loving their husbands and children and making themselves appealing to men.”126 The opposition depicted Cuban women as everything the traditional Chilean mother and woman was not. Gendered assignments no longer existed in Cuba, and it resulted in social chaos. Thus, anti-Allende groups claimed the same would happen to Chilean women under Allende’s administration.

124 Margaret Power, Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle Against Allende, 1964-1973 (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 81. 125 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 8. 126 Power, Right-Wing Women, 82. 59 59

The anti-Allende movement’s propaganda directed towards women during the

1964 presidential campaign, emphasized that a vote for Frei was the only hope women had on keeping their families together and femininity intact. Further, on September 3, the eve of election day, the opposition sought to solidify their campaign against Allende by airing a message from Juana Castro, Fidel Castro’s anticommunist sister, to the Chilean people. Even though Chilean law prohibited the airing or printing propaganda on the eve of election day, Juana Castro entered the homes of Chileans in her radio broadcast. In her message she warned people not to believe the promises of Allende, and that Chilean mothers would surely not vote to “allow [their] small children to be taken from [them] and sent to the Communist bloc,” they must “Be alert!...[and] Remember their families. Remember their children.”127 Countering Juana Castro’s statement, Allende spoke out against the anticommunist lies that the Scare Campaign ignited during the presidential campaign. Specifically, Allende knew that he had to reach out to his female audience. In his final speech before the election, Allende declared that “the Chilean woman understands clearly what her position is in this struggle…I know that she will act…according to her own conscience.”128 Unfortunately for Allende, the 1964 Scare Campaign proved successful in pushing women towards Frei. Only a day after the election, newspapers in the United States were already reporting on Frei’s victory claiming that he “rode to a landslide victory…in Chile’s presidential election, setting back a serious Communist threat to the copper rich Latin American republic.”129 With 63.1 percent of the female

127 Power, Right-Wing Women, 83. 128 Power, Right-Wing Women, 83. 129 “Pro West Chilean Wins Presidency,” The Republican, September 5, 1964. 60 60 vote going to the Christian Democrat, compared to the male 49.6 percent vote, women clearly played a decisive role in the struggle for power against Allende.130 Throughout Frei’s six-year presidency, women continued to play a critical role for his administration. The Christian Democrats mobilized women in such a way that when they reflected on their experiences under Frei, they described him as “their idea of what a political figure and a Catholic gentleman should be.”131 Frei’s government created programs that aimed to enhance women’s political participation and boost his administration. Programs such as the Centros de Madres (Mothers Centers) and the juntas de vecinos (neighborhood communities) allowed President Frei to incorporate women, all the while emphasizing their gendered roles. The Mothers Centers represented a space in which a “coexistence of a cultural patriarchy model” existed along with the “egalitarian integrative spirit that characterized the era.”132 It is within these organizations that Frei mobilized women around their role as mother and caretaker, learning traditionally feminine skills that could be used to support the family. By the time Frei ended his presidency in 1970, he claimed to have created 20,000 organizations that allowed for previously disenfranchised groups to join the political sphere. Of these, 6,000 were Mothers Centers with an estimated 450,000 women taking part.133 Although these spaces did not intend to alter the gendered and patriarchal dynamic of society, they did allow women to come into direct contact with the government and women from different economic classes. This resulted in women learning how to better organize themselves and providing a place in which they could come together and express their shared concerns about the political climate. Thus, women

130 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 37. 131 Power, Right-Wing Women, 123. 132 Franceshet, Women and Politics, 24. 133 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 39. 61 61 created a political space born out of a gendered reality, resulting in an even stronger opposition to Allende during the presidential election of 1970. When Allende won the 1970 presidential election, it was by no means a result of the female vote. Although support for the left had significantly increased since the last presidential election, with an upsurge of “leftward trends of political thought,” and a

“continued undertow of anti-United States feeling,” the Christian Democratic Party remained the largest and most powerful in Chile.134 However, when the Christian Democrats named Radomiro Tomic as their candidate, many center and right leaning women threw their support behind the Partido Nacional (National Party) candidate Jorge Alessandri, an independent conservative and former president of Chile. Despite the backing of Frei, Tomic appealed more to the center and non-Marxist left, with some even claiming that his program was in many respects identical to that of Allende. Hence, the rightists who heavily voted for Frei in 1964, now supported the 74-year-old Alessandri and his “reform with tranquility” agenda.135 Alessandri embodied the image of a vigorous leader and appealed to voters “who [saw] in his austere, somewhat autocratic manner a defense against recent increases in violence” in Chile.136 Further, despite Alessandri receiving the conservative vote, he realized that the campaign against Allende would be a close one. As a result, Alessandri learned from the 1964 presidential election,

134 Malcom W. Browne, “Castro, on TV, Aids Marxist Candidate in Chile’s Sept. 4 Presidential Election, New York Times, 1970. 135 Intelligence Memorandum. “Chile’s Election—The Candidates and Their Programs,” July 6, 1970. 136 Juan de Onis, “Chile Votes for a President Today Amid Uncertainty,” New York Times, Sep. 4, 1970. 62 62 and made sure to prioritize women in his presidential campaign so that he could ensure a victory.137 Closely resembling Frei’s strategy, Alessandri advocated programs that appealed directly to women. Funded by both the Chilean upper class and the U.S. government, publicity and propaganda asserted that Alessandri was the ideal candidate for Chile.

Additionally, the Women’s Action of Chile organization sponsored several ads for Alessandri’s campaign against the UP. The use of gendered propaganda served to mobilize women against the threat Allende posed to the family, echoing the Scare

Campaign in 1964. Leaders of the Women’s Action group used a series of ads to warn women not to vote for Allende because he would take fathers and husbands away from their families. Yet appealing to women’s identities as a caregiver and wife was not the only way in which Alessandri reached out to women. During his campaign, Alessandri promised to incorporate women into positions of power within his government, claiming that they would make up the base of his administration. Women quickly responded by publishing a statement directed at both the people and Alessandri himself. Rightest women published an ad in the right-wing newspaper, El Mercurio, that stated:

Jorge Alessandri has promised that women will have better opportunities to participate in his government and better security. We [women] demand a place working to direct great events in the public interest. Women have a different scale of values, different understanding of the priority of public issues and our own criteria about the importance of events…The words with which Jorge Alessandri has encouraged women will not be a vain illusion in his government, because we will have a place at the table where decisions are made.138

137 Alessandri’s biggest appeal rested with the Chilean upper class. However, relying on the wealthy vote would not be enough, as the rich made up the minority of the population. Thus, women served to fill the gap, as they represented the majority of the Chilean population. 138 El Mercurio, August 2, 1970.; El Mercurio is a conservative leaning Chilean newspaper. The paper occupied a fundamental role in mobilizing people against Allende and advocated for the instillation of military rule. During Allende’s administration, the CIA used El Mercurio to disseminate its anti- communist propaganda. 63 63

Thus, women who fought to get Alessandri elected not only tried to ensure traditional familial values would remain intact, but they wanted a voice in the political realm. There was a realization and understanding that although they participated politically by voting, women’s issues did not shape the political agenda. By using a public media platform to relay their message, middle and upper-class women directly incorporated themselves into a political dialogue. Contrastingly, although the center and right proved to be the most successful in rallying women to their political coalitions, Allende and the Popular Unity did have some success among female voters. In the 1970 election, Allende received only 30 percent of the vote among women. However, his support among working-class women was substantially higher than with upper- and middle-class women. Figures taken strictly from working-class neighborhoods reveal that men and women gave a majority of their vote to Allende, as he promised the working-class that their lives would improve with the Popular Unity government. With his long tenure in politics, Allende was well known for dealing with issues such as social security, health measures, and women’s rights.139 Yet, as scholars have recently established, not all working-class women were pro-Allende. Referring to the anti-Allende campaign as strictly an upper- and middle-class movement disregards the considerable number of working-class women who also mobilized. Even though the largest proportion of women in the anti-Allende movement were not from the lower-classes, the movement was successful in creating cross-class alliances. Class did not define women’s political allegiances, but more accurately, their interpretations and identities as mothers and wives did.

139 “Unlike Fidel or Ho, Allende: A Different Marxist,” The Fresno Bee, Sept. 20, 1970. 64 64

When Allende won the 1970 presidential election through a plurality of the votes, women quickly mobilized against his confirmation by Congress.140 Although historical precedent assured that Congress would confirm Allende within the following seven weeks after the election, women decided that they had to put forward their best effort to keep Allende from taking office.141 On September 8, three days after the election, roughly 30 women came together in front of the presidential palace La Moneda, dressed in all black to mourn the death of democracy. Police broke up their protest only for them to organize again two days later. On September 10, the women marched from the presidential palace toward Congress; however, this time they encountered pro-Allende counter protestors who both physically and verbally assaulted them.142 Further, the protest also suffered from a lack of publicity. One anti-Allende activist claimed that if men had taken part in their protests Chilean society and political parties could have drawn a stronger following. For instance, when women joined with the Movimiento Cívico Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Liberty Civic Movement), their demonstration known as the ‘Great March of Silence’ met a greater audience. Pablo Rodriguez Grez founded the movement in opposition to the Popular Unity party and Allende, as a result, many ultra conservative Chileans supported the organization. Nevertheless, despite anti- Allende women’s cooperation with Movimiento Civico Patria y Libertad, and the success of the ‘Great March of Silence’ to keep Allende from the presidency, Congress ratified

Allende on October 24, 1970. 143

140 Power, Right-Wing Women, 141.; Since neither Allende nor Alessandri received enough votes to constitute a majority, the Chilean Constitution of 1925 requires that Congress select one of the two candidates in a runoff within fifty days of the election. 141“Marxist Wins Chile’s Presidential Election,” The Fresno Bee, Sept. 5, 1970. 142 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 58. 143 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 59. 65 65 Women and the Popular Unity Years After Congress confirmed Allende, many right and center parties and coalitions experienced a period of disarray. The thought of a “pro-Communism” president ruling the country for the next six-years sparked fear for many who belonged to the middle- and upper-classes.144 However, in an interview with la Prensa Libre, Allende declared that with his win “We [Allende and his supporters] will create a new society and a new consciousness” and his administration would “not imitate either the Soviet Union or Cuba or China. [Chile is] going to look for [its] own way.”145 Yet, a powerful opposition made Allende’s first year in office less than simple.146 Adding to Allende’s difficult road ahead, by the end of his first year in office, inflation rates grew considerably and economic chaos ensued. By December 1971, “inflation had been at 119 percent for over a year. It rose to 138 percent during the following year, and 314 percent the year after.”147

Thus, opposition to Allende, and specifically women, staged protests against the Popular Unity government for their failure to live up to their promises of a better Chile. Women argued that Allende’s failure affected them more than men because of their role as mother and housewife. Due to the shortage of food, many could not afford to feed their families. Middle- and upper-class women had to buy food on the black market. Still, this was not an option for working-class women, who recall “las colas,” the long lines, they had to wait in just to receive the necessities they needed to survive. As such,

Allende’s government recognized the severity of the shortages and created centers known as the juntas de abastecimiento y precios (JAPs, food and price committees), but those

144 Richard Wigg, “Dangers of Close Vote in Chile,” The Times, Aug. 27, 1970. 145 “Allende Discusses Intent as Chile’s Next President,” La Prensa Libre, Oct. 8, 1970. 146 Raul Mendoza, “Las Elecciones en Chile,” La Nueva Voz, Oct. 1, 1970. 147 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 62. 66 66 who opposed Allende claimed that the centers were full of corruption.148 Moreover, scholars have argued that the Popular Unity government failed long before the military overthrew Allende. In large part, this was due to outside influences like U.S. direct involvement in Chilean affairs, but also because the UP was unable to satisfy its female constituents.

While in office, the UP government fell short on their promises of inclusion because it continued to ignore women’s issues. Allende organized women primarily through the Mothers Centers that Frei had used during his presidency, and he did not appoint a woman to his cabinet until two years after he was elected. According to Chilean sociologist and political scientist Julieta Kirkwood, Allende strictly viewed women as wives, mothers, daughters, or sisters of the working-class.149 For being a radical left- wing coalition, the UP government did not challenge the traditional gender roles, but kept them in tact through programs like the Mothers Centers. This conception further supports the view that when Allende campaigned to the working-class about a future in which their voices would matter, he was arguably speaking to his male audience. The Popular

Unity’s program helped increase male worker’s wages and their benefits, and propaganda often depicted men as the key to the peaceful road to socialism. Thus, the inability of the UP to mobilize women drew them closer to the coalitions of the center and right, who were far more successful than Allende in gaining female support.

Several factors help explain why women were more likely to align with conservative factions, one of the most crucial being that anti-Allende female organizers were strategic in the way they reached out to women across class lines. As mentioned, a

148 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 65-67.; Women complained that to receive the benefits of the JAPs, you had to be pro-Allende. Further, those who took part in the JAPs stated that corruption was rampant due to officials giving more food to certain families or taking the food they were supposed to be distributing and selling in on the black market. 149 Julieta Kirkwood, Ser política en chile: las feministas y los partidos, 40-41. 67 67 majority of women identified with their gendered role as a mother and wife. This understanding of what it meant to be a woman, was more important than one’s political affiliation and social standing.150 When Allende’s government threatened the ability of women to fulfill their domestic duties, they responded in such a way that accentuated the importance of their identity as mothers and housewives.151 To women, political activity was not political at all, they were simply responding to protect their familial values. However, Allende and his Popular Unity administration did not attempt to reach out to women of the middle- or upper-classes, often referring to them derogatively. As a result, when middle- and upper-class women worked to strengthen their movement against Allende, they did not highlight class, but their image as mothers, thus creating “a multiclass and all-inclusive” women’s movement whose platform overlooked class and spoke to their identity as women, mothers, and wives.152

Additionally, the center and right-wing coalitions gained considerable support in dismantling Allende’s government from the United States and the Chilean upper classes. As early as September 15, 1970, President Richard Nixon informed the CIA Director

Richard Helms that Allende’s administration would not be acceptable to the United States. In a meeting held at the White House between Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Helms, Director Helms took handwritten notes reflecting Nixon’s intention for Chile, “Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action.”153 Thus, President Nixon gave

150 Chilean gender ideology holds to the idea that women possess higher moral qualities. Women’s main function was to protect the essence of the family and the home. 151 Margaret Power, “Class and Gender in the Anti-Allende Women’s Movement,” Social Politics, vol. 7 no. 3 (Fall 2000). 152 Power, “Class and Gender,” 297. 153 Senate Report, “Alleged Assassination plots involving foreign leaders,” An interim report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operation with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate. November 20, 1975. 94th Congress, 1st Session. Serial Set Vol. No. 13098-8, Session Vol. No. 3-8. 227 68 68 clear orders to the CIA to organize a coup in tandem with the Chilean military before congress confirmed Allende to the presidency in October.154 CIA agents were under strict orders to only inform the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Kissinger.155 Nevertheless, the CIA failed to provoke the Chilean military to join them. This then put the White House in a difficult position, concluding that “the [CIA] [would] continue keeping the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight—now, after the 24th of October, after 5 November, and into the future.”156 And, to ensure success in doing so, the U.S. government refused to assist Chile economically.

As Chile and the United States had a long history of working together economically, with Washington being considerably more open-handed with Chile in economic and social assistance than with most Latin American nations, the Chilean economy had become deeply tied into and dependent on U.S. goods.157 When the U.S. government stopped selling necessary products to Chile and extending loans, a growing amount of shortages affected women across class lines. Further, the Chilean elite classes joined the United States in choking the Chilean economy. By refusing to produce goods, destroying their crops, or selling on the black market for exaggerated amounts of money, landowners hoped to sway Chileans into thinking that the Popular Unity government was solely responsible for the people’s suffering.158 As such, women from all classes agreed that Allende’s policies not only suffocated the economy, but made it progressively worse.

Women’s dissatisfaction with the UP government, coupled with the growing strength of

154 Senate Report, 225. 155 Senate Report, 225. 156 Senate Report, 242. 157 Margaret Power, “Women and Pots and Pans: Chile Then and Venezuela Today,” Democratic Association of America, September 16, 2004.; Jeremiah O’Leary, “US will stop all aid to Chile unless decision to seize copper companies is changed,” The Times, Oct. 22, 1971. 158 Margaret Power, “Class and Gender,” 301. 69 69 the anti-Allende movement, played pivotal role in shaping the future of the Allende administration. On November 10, 1971 a significant moment in the opposition’s movement against Allende occurred. President Allende welcomed Fidel Castro for an extended three-and-a-half-week state tour. It had been rumored for quite some time that the Cuban revolutionary leader was planning a visit to Chile; however, not everyone welcomed his presence.159 Center and right-wing supporters declared that by allowing Castro into Chile, Allende sent the message that they condoned the censorship and restrictions of civil liberties taking place in Cuba. Further, campaign ads published by anti-Allende activists cautioned women not to forget the “conditions to which they would be subjected under communism” if Allende chose to follow the Cuban model.160 Thus, in protest to Castro’s visit and the shortcomings of the UP government, women organized one of the most historic marches in Chilean history, La Marcha de las Cacerolas (The March of the Empty Pots). On December 1, 1971, as Castro’s state tour was coming to an end, thousands of women gathered at Plaza Italia and began to march towards La Moneda. As women from the upper, middle, and lower classes marched, they banged on their cacerolas vacías (empty pots and pans) to symbolize the lack of food and destruction of the Chilean home, problems which the Allende government had yet to effectively address. Women claimed that their march was apolitical in nature and was simply an “extension of women’s domestic roles.”161 When middle and upper-class organizers reached out to women to attend the march, they did so as concerned women and mothers who were not only

159 Richard Wigg, “Chile Aims Fresh Blow at US with Castro Visit and Santiago Arms,” The Times, Oct. 17, 1971. 160 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 77. 161 Power, Right-wing Women, 152. 70 70 defending children and the home, but the nation itself. As children represented the future of Chile, women stressed the importance of their role in raising and shaping the future of their country. However, more importantly, the march signaled the beginning of a strong women’s opposition movement against Allende. A statement by a Washington Post reporter, Marlise Simon, expresses this sentiment when she wrote, “We knew Allende’s days were numbered when the women took to the streets.”162 Moreover, The March of the Empty Pots represented the genesis of a powerful opposition movement that women led against Allende’s administration during his next two years in office. The mass mobilization of women that organized through ‘apolitical’ groups increased and included the Frente Democrática de Mujeres (Women’s Democratic Front), El Poder Femenino (Feminine Power), and the Organización Cívico- Familiar “Solidaridad, Orden, y Libertad” (Civic-Family Organization for Solidarity,

Order, and Liberty).163 Women drawn into these organizations in most part opposed the government and aimed to unify women across the growing anti-Allende campaign. Of considerable influence was Feminine Power, whose name itself constituted a play on the central slogans of the Left in the late 1960s: power to the people, youth power, and black power.164 With organizations such as these, women continued to grow in leadership roles and gain experience in mobilizing on a national level. In large part, women of the middle- class led the way in shaping the influence of the movement, as they could tilt either left or right. Thus, having their support in the anti-Allende women’s movement added strength in numbers. From the moment of The March of Empty Pots and throughout the UP- administration’s years in office, women successfully lead more protests in opposition to

162 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 89. 163 Fraceschet, Women and Politics, 52. 164 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 87. 71 71

Allende. When people marched again only a month later in a “march for Chile’s democracy,” approximately 250,000 people were on the streets shouting for President Allende to call for a plebiscite so that the people could decide if the UP government should go on.165 A middle-class woman told a reporter, “Please tell the world Chile wants to stay democratic like England and rejects the communist yoke.” This was a typical comment made throughout a “crowd…made up of people of all ages but [where] women predominated.”166 Further, because of the success of the marches, the way in which men and political parties viewed women also changed. In the past, women merely represented a source of votes, now, the center and right recognized women as an essential and proactive voice in the collapse of the UP government. Women continued to bring their empty pots and pans to protest marches, which became the symbol used by women, and intensified their anti-Allende activity up until the military overthrew the UP government on September 11, 1973. Since 1970, the shortage of food and other consumer goods had grown, and the black market flourished. In 1973, the Minister of the Interior, General Carlos Prats, stated

“Chile’s difficult economic situation at home and abroad has led the nation to work more and face austerity for consumers.”167 Thus with the Congressional elections taking place in 1973, opposition parties sought to resolve the existing deadlock between the government. The opposition parties, the Christian Democratic Party and National Party, intended to increase their strength for the Congressional elections when they created the political alliance, Confederación Democrática (CODE, Democratic Confederation), which aimed to win women’s votes by introducing bills that promoted women’s

165 Richard Wigg, “250,000 Chileans in Protest March Against Allende Government,” The Times, Jan. 1972. 166 Wigg, “250,000 Chileans,” The Times, Jan. 1972. 167 “‘War economy’ to be imposed in Chile,” The Times, Jan. 1973. 72 72 rights.168 Additionally, both parties within the coalition nominated women from opposition groups as candidates for congressional office. However, the Congressional elections failed to win enough candidates for the opposition to impeach Allende. It was from this moment that women and the opposition began to look to the military for assistance in their endeavor to topple Allende.

In the final weeks of the UP administration, it was becoming clearer that “Chile appear[ed] to be heading rapidly towards a military coup by the conscious decision of civilians who [felt] the armed forces [were] the only solution to the [existing] anarchic state of affairs.”169 Women’s groups like Feminine Power printed a series of statements calling out to the military to intervene and “save the nation”. The senior military commander, Augusto Pinochet, released a statement in 1973 declaring that the “[military] shall act once the politicians have run out of solutions” and that “politics has brought

Chile to total crisis.”170 Thus, on September 7, President Allende warned the right-wing National Party that it was “playing with fire” by calling on its members to strike against the Popular Unity government. He claimed that in previous years, when the left was the opposition in Chile, they never resorted to methods that had the potential to “take [Chile] to civil war”.171 However, only four days later, reports from Santiago came in declaring that the armed forces attacked the presidential palace and were forcing Allende out of office. The armed forces declared martial law throughout the country and combined air and ground attacks, dropping at least 17 bombs on La Moneda.172 Further a broadcast over the radio announced that a military junta had been formed, and that “the press, radio

168 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 107. 169 Florencia Varas, “Chile at a standstill, waiting for a coup?” The Times, 1973. 170 Varas, “Chile at a standstill,” The Times, 1973. 171 “Dr. Allende condena el llamado de la oposición a la huelga,” La prensa libre, Sept. 8, 1973. 172 “Suicide of Dr. Allende is reported as Army attacks palace and claims control of Chile,” The Times, Sept. 12, 1973. 73 73 transmitters and television channels of the Popular Unity must suspend their informative activities or be assaulted by land and air.”173 Ultimately, by the end of the coup, Allende had committed suicide, the military successfully overthrew the UP government, mass arrests of UP supporters began, and the genesis of a seventeen year regime was ignited.

Conclusion The beginning of second wave feminism in Chile reflected the importance of maternal identities to women. During the 1970s and early 1980s, women did not see themselves as political actors, but simply as protectors of their families and traditional values. The failure of Allende and his Popular Unity government to sufficiently address issues that directly affected women’s ability to carry out their domestic roles, resulted in middle-class women, and some lower-class women as well, to speak out against the UP government. Through mass mobilizations and cross-class unity, women proved themselves as critical assets to overthrowing Allende and the Left. By fostering a relationship with existing women’s groups, the Right successfully politized and utilized women’s motherhood roles to their advantage.

In gaining the support of women, opposition politicians were able to portray Allende as not only a threat to the Chilean home, but the future of Chile itself. Thus, women represented an important asset to political parties. Women’s success in the anti-

Allende campaign brought together a cross-class and thriving movement, which only grew during the Pinochet years. Moreover, the next chapter will highlight women’s participation during Chile’s dictatorship. In contrast to women’s apolitical identity during the beginning of the second wave feminism under Allende, women increasingly found themselves as the main political body under Pinochet. Although still deeply rooted by

173 “Suicide of Dr. Allende,” The Times, 1973. 74 74 their identities as mother’s, women during this period begin to take on a more progressive version of feminism.

CHAPTER 4: FORMING A PROGRESSIVE FEMINIST IDENTITY: SECOND WAVE FEMINISM AND AUGUSTO PINOCHET (1973-1990)

[Durante la dictadura] la violencia sexual sobre las mujeres fue furiosa, desquiciada. Hay escenas simplemente inexplicables, que desbordan nuestra imaginación sobre la condición humana. – Daniel Hopenhayn, periodista174

Me considero un ángel. Reflexionando y meditando, soy bueno. No tengo resentimientos, tengo bondad. No me considero un dictador, sino un ángel patriótico que no tiene pedir perdón a nadie. – Augusto Pinochet175

General Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile as a dictator for seventeen years.

Throughout this period, Pinochet’s legacy created a myriad of opinions as to the effect and manner in which he governed. The Pinochet dictatorship had the support of as much as one-third of the population, as many credited him for bringing Chile into global modernity. Between 1973 and 1990, Chile became the “world’s first poster child for neoliberal restructuring,” leading many countries to view Chile’s success as an economic miracle and model for other developing nations.176 However, as Pinochet refused to return Chile to democracy, and with the brutality of his regime’s methods, others considered this period a dark spot in Chile’s great history. Despite this, a more

174 Daniel Hopenhayn, Así se torturó en Chile: Los testimonios estremecedores de un guión macabro, La Copa Rota, 2004.; “During the dictatorship, sexual violence against women was excessive and deranged. There were scenes that were simply inexplicable; scenes that would defy our own imaginations as human beings.” 175 Augusto Pinochet, Entrevista al canal 22 de Miami, 24 de noviembre de 2003.; “I consider myself an angel. Reflecting and thinking about it, I am good. I harbor no bad feelings, I am good. I do not consider myself a dictator, only a patriotic angel that does not owe an apology to anyone.” 176 Heidi Tinsman, Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 2. 76 76 progressive feminist identity grew in Chile under Pinochet’s rule.177 Although Pinochet’s military regime portrayed women as primarily mothers and wives, the opening of the economy allowed for a reentry of women into to the workforce, and in some cases, permitted women to be the sole financial supporter of the family. Further, in the 1980s, a women’s movement emerged to counter the repressive practices of the Pinochet government and the assaults on human rights. In this chapter, I argue the new women’s movement served to unite women in a similar manner as the anti-Allende movement did during the 1960s until the overthrow of the UP in 1973. As women united across class lines yet again to call for the return to democracy, they declared they wanted “democracy in the streets and in the home,” and women were prepared to risk it all yet again.178

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Women and Pinochet When General Pinochet seized office, he immediately directed women, including those who led women’s groups like Feminine Power, to return to their homes. Little by little, the organizations like PF ceased to exist. However, the women who had struggled for so long against Allende did not put up any kind of resistance, as they were grateful to the military for saving their country from communism and looked to them to restore order, respect, and patriotism.179 Yet, within six months of the coup, the same respected military annihilated the leaders of the Left through disappearance, torture, and murder, and “an estimated 200,000 persons, including political refugees and their families went

177 By using the word “progressive” I acknowledge that this holds different weight depending on the context in which I am referring. Thus, in this thesis, I conflate progressive with how we see contemporary feminism. 178 Margaret Power, “Gender and Chile’s Split Culture: Continuing Contradictions in Women’s Lives,” ReVista Harvard Review of Latin America, 2004. 179 Power, Right-Wing Women, 242. 77 77 into exile.”180 Further, the more conservative women who participated in the anti-

Allende movement simply ignored or supported the military’s use of repression. When reflecting on their role within the coup years later, pro-Pinochet women clung to the belief that Allende and the Left would have been the destruction of Chile and the military preserved Chile’s freedom.181

Pinochet cited this mutual support from women to legitimize his rule. Women played a crucial part in the campaign against Allende, and Pinochet argued that women “sought the protection of a strong and severe authority, [which] would restore order and the moral public sphere” in society.182 Thus, conservative women became a strong foundation for support of the regime. One way in which Pinochet could harness and monitor women was through the Centros de Madres (used under Frei and Allende) and the Secretaría Nacional de la Mujer (SNM- National Women’s Secretariat) created during the dictatorship. These organizations, although aimed at aiding mostly the lower- class, allowed Pinochet to use upper- and middle-class women to control and further instill gendered ideology towards women’s roles in society. When determining who was eligible for receiving the benefits of the Centros de Madres, such as access to clinics and daycares or shopping in stores with reduced prices, one had to attend every meeting and event put on by the Centros. As the meetings highlighted the advantages of the dictatorship for women, this meant that Pinochet’s regime only aided those who left themselves open to indoctrination, hoping to strengthen women’s support for the military’s rule.183

180 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 125. 181 Power, Right-Wing Women, 241. 182 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 60. 183 Franceschet, Women and politics, 72. 78 78

Contrastingly, some of the women who mobilized against Allende and welcomed the coup believed that the military would only be a temporary means of reestablishing order. This belief was supported by General Pinochet who stated that once “Chile [had] recovered, [and] when the ‘malignant tumor of Marxism’ [was] gone...all the country’s liberties [would] be restored.”184 When this did not happen, many of the women who tended to lean to the center, or the lower-class, were now pervaded by a real sense of fear as to the future of their country. With “military tribunals dispensing justice, armed patrols on the streets and highways,” Chileans knew that the situation in their country was not normal, and that an internal state of war existed.185 Further, the elevation of Pinochet to the sole position of leadership in June 1974 and his transparency regarding the potential duration of the military regime reflected his growing sense of power and intention to lead Chile for the foreseeable future. Pinochet stated the “military regime might remain in power for as long as 20 years if that was necessary to achieve its aims.”186 Propelled by a need to see Chile thrive as a country under his rule, Pinochet ignited a radical privatization of Chile’s economy through his neoliberal policies.

Historian Heidi Tinsman argues that the fruit-export industry was a prime example of the regime’s economic success. However, in creating their success, Tinsman states that “Chilean fruit exporters [were] predicated on extensive repression and exploitation,” much of which consisted on the exploitation of low-paid workers, including unprecedented numbers of women.187 Yet, despite this fact, the mass employment of women allowed for them to take on new roles as wage laborers, and changing the gendered dynamic between men and women, especially in traditional or campesino

184 David Wigg, “When Confidence returns to the people,” The Times, Sept. 21, 1973. 185 Florencia Varas, “Make or break phase for the Chilean regime,” The Times, 1973. 186 Peter Strafford, 20-year Army rule in Chile ‘if necessary,’” The Times, Sept. 5, 1974. 187 Tinsman, Buying into the Regime, 2. 79 79

(peasant) families. Many female fruit workers insisted on maintaining control over at least half of their earnings, allowing for women to increase their bargaining power relative to men. The increased need for women’s wages to maintain the household led to a rapid decline of men’s power over women. Thus, as Tinsman notes, women’s greater participation in the workforce under Pinochet led to a redistribution of power, as women had the means to be more independent of men. Additionally, with increased employment opportunities, women had the chance to leave the private sphere of the home and liberate themselves through work, becoming more involved in the act of consumption, which, Tinsman argues, represented a highly political act. In her words, “because of women’s historic responsibilities for families, women [were] more often found in social spaces and political movements involving consumption,” as was the case under Allende’s administration. During the military rule, working women’s wages became as important as men’s for buying the things that families needed, and women increasingly made decisions about money independent of male control.188 Moreover, the new consumer practices challenged gendered relations and eroded men’s authority over women. Women’s ability to take part in both the private and public spheres, granted them a separate space where they could shed their sole identity a dependent housewives and mothers.

On the other hand, as women became an increasingly large part of the work force in Chile, their political participation also reignited. As Pinochet’s military regime became more violent and repressive, with the creation of DINA (replaced by the National

Information Center, CNI, in 1977) and the banning of political parties, the Chilean Center and Left attempted to unite against Pinochet’s military rule. Yet this was not an easy task,

188 Tinsman, Buying into the Regime, 85. 80 80 as divisions between the two political parties still existed as a result of the political conflict during the Popular Unity years. Nevertheless, the two opponents of Pinochet slowly mended their relationship and began to mobilize against the regime. The formation of a front against Pinochet would not have been possible without the incorporation and organization of women. Although women helped bring Pinochet to power, they too provided the necessary strength to remove him years later.

Women’s Mobilization Against Pinochet Many women began to mobilize against Pinochet’s regime immediately after the coup. From 1973 through 1977, military forces successfully consolidated their power, destroying existing political institutions and eliminating any political competition. However, amid the chaos, women were the first to take to the streets in opposition to the dictatorship and, unfortunately, many suffered as a result. Women’s resistance organizations existed in many forms throughout Pinochet’s rule, and one of the first groups to appear was the Agrupación de Mujeres Democráticas (Democratic Women’s Group). These mainly middle-class women mobilized to combat the unjust arrest of political prisoners, track human-rights abuses, and petition international organizations for help.189 In reaction to the extreme political repression and clear abuse of power, many women began to understand that Pinochet’s regime went beyond what they had envisioned for Chile’s future after Allende. As the military and Pinochet continued to enhance their power, women continued to work behind the scenes in opposition. Although women did not publicly mobilize until a few years after the coup, they continued to come together through their organizations to defend their families. Mirroring the reasons why women mobilized against Allende, women felt that Pinochet’s regime threatened the family and the home. Male family members, and female as well, went

189 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 128. 81 81 missing as a result of the Chilean secret police, DINA. In their attempt to defend their families, and despite threats made on their lives, women formed the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos (AFDD- Association of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared). This group became (and till this day remains) one of the most popular organizations that worked against the human rights violations committed under Pinochet. Viviana Diaz Caro, director of the AFDD, recalls the story about how DINA detained her father and threatened her family if they continued to look for him. In her testimony she states that her mother had to send her brother into exile to keep DINA from arresting him, and ultimately all that remained of her family were three women. Feeling like there was nothing left to lose, Diaz Caro, her mother and sister joined the AFDD. The organization participated in hunger strikes, chainings, and street protests.190 Several women experienced the reality of detainment and physical assault, but Diaz Caro argued that these women no longer feared the military government as they had already taken everything from them.191 The dictatorship supported the gendered division of society, with women in the private sphere and men in the public. However, as a result of the regime’s tactics, it not only created the foundations for a feminist ideology but opened the door for women’s political involvement. Through organizations like the AFDD women increasingly took over critical leadership roles that men traditionally occupied. Since Pinochet had banned political parties, many of them went underground and struggled to find ways in which they could end Pinochet’s regime and restore democracy. Due to fear of persecution, politicians (in large part men) had no other choice but to turn to women and the success

190 Chainings refer to women chaining themselves to together so that the Chilean police could not separate them during their protest. 191 Emma Sepulveda, ed., We, Chile: Personal Testimonies of the Chilean Arpilleristas, trans. Bridget Morgan (Virginia: Falls Church, 1996). 121-126. 82 82 of their organizations. Although women did not initially view their cause as political, the lines between formal and informal politics became blurred. Women’s activism emerged as a critical opposition to the military regime, and the female leaders of the organizations saw a window to include their concerns into the political discussion. Thus, as Pinochet appealed to women to stay in the home where it was safe, his regime’s methods left them with no choice but to take to the streets against him and his policies. This increased mobilization and networking led to women becoming more connected, and many began to question their traditional roles in society.

Although the period between 1977 and 1982 saw the institutionalization of Pinochet’s economic reforms and the passing of the new 1980 Constitution, which enhanced presidential powers, an economic downturn marked the beginning of the end for Pinochet’s hold on Chile’s political power. A serious economic crash struck in 1982 to 1983, as a result, Chile’s economy floundered. The economic crash allowed politicians to question publicly the success of military rule and opened an opportunity for the opposition to bring Pinochet’s administration down. Protests erupted and Chileans once again banged their empty pots and pans. The people recognized the caceroleo as a symbol of the power of the people to bring down the government and recognize one’s allies in a highly monitored and censored climate. Simultaneously, the economic and political environment welcomed the birth of a consolidated women’s movement against the military regime. This new movement continued to see women construct their identities upon their responsibilities as mothers. However, as Chilean women began to make significant connections between state repression and oppression in the home, a new mentality emerged out of second wave feminism that permitted women to become more aware of their overall subordination in 83 83 society.192 As such, the women who identified with feminist ideology set the foundations for a more progressive feminism in the women’s movement. Gender related issues increasingly became part of the political dialogue, and women emphasized their abilities to pursue a life outside of the home.

The Crucible: Forging a Women’s Movement Julieta Kirkwood, one of the leading Chilean feminists during the dictatorship stated, “No hay democracia sin feminismo.”193 This was the attitude that shaped the women’s movement during the 1980s until the end of the Pinochet regime. Kirkwood, considered to be one of the main leaders of second wave feminism and the founder of gender studies in Chile, influenced generations of feminists with her critical works and struggle for the rights of women in the home and public sphere. In 1982, the Facultad

Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences) published Kirkwood’s groundbreaking work, Ser politica en Chile: las feministas y los partidos. This publication clearly illustrated the goals of the women’s movement, the history of feminism in Chile, and the problems of sexual identity and gender. In her analysis of Chilean society, Kirkwood argued that the “root of authoritarian culture lie[d] in the patriarchal structure of the family,” thus, it was not solely the military regime that established an authoritarian discourse, but Chilean society as well.194 Further, Kirkwood’s scholarship identified the principles of “feminist work,” which she referred to as action research, by looking at social movements and theorization.

192 Judy Maloof, Voices of Resistance, 124. 193 “There is no democracy without feminism.” 194 Judy Maloof, Voices of Resistance, 126. 84 84

Kirkwood argued that the dimension of the body becomes a space of control and autonomy from which the female subject and her identity are effectively constructed.195 Theory such as this radicalized feminist thought in Chile. Until the publication of Kirkwood’s work, in Chile at least, few works had called for women to reclaim their bodies and overtly assert themselves into the political dialogue. The deconstruction and re-thinking of space and place in relation to gender allowed for women to demystify the notion that they were solely meant to be in the home.196 Further, in Kirkwood’s work, Tejiendo Rebeldías, she explains her intention to bring women’s stories to the forefront of the women’s movement, “Tengo ganas de sacar de los archivos de escondidas historias femeninas, sus gustos, sus prisas, y su ira…”.197 Kirkwood firmly believed that not only was female oppression historically invisible, but so was the history of the struggles and efforts that women collectively undertook in search of their liberation.198

Thus, Kirkwood and her work established a foundation for Chilean second wave feminism and the political shifts that took place beginning in late 1983, as many women’s organizations looked to her words as guiding principles for the emerging women’s movement. The increase in political mobilization represented the moment in which people began to comprehend they had the power to change the political narrative of their country. The possibility of taking Pinochet out office became a reality, and women’s organizations played a vital role in securing Chile’s democracy.

From 1983 to the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship, women’s organizations became increasingly potent and political forces. As political scientist, Susan Franceschet states,

195 Kirkwood, Ser política en chile, 44. 196 Kirkwood, Ser política en chile, 142. 197 Patricia Crispi, ed., Tejiendo rebeldias: escritos feministas de Julieta Kirkwood (Stgo; CEM, La Morada, 1987), 31; “I want to reveal from the archives hidden female stories, reveal their likes, their urgencies, and their anger.” 198 Kirkwood, Ser política en chile, 148. 85 85 after 1983 women became more united and visible in their opposition to Pinochet. In their mobilization efforts, Franceschet argues that unlike women during the first wave feminist movement, who chose to distance themselves from established political parties, second wave feminists took up a “double militancy” stance. This term, used by Franceschet, meant that women were open to and even insisted on working with traditional political actors (male politicians) so that gender issues appeared on the agenda during the potential transition back to democracy. Women felt that if they and their organizations worked closely with political parties then Chile’s gendered patterns of citizenship would lead to a more inclusive democracy.199 However, as divisions within the existing political parties increased, women’s organizations were presented with both an obstacle and opportunity. By the mid-1980s, the democratic opposition split into two different factions: the centrist Alianza

Democrática (AD, Democratic Alliance) and the leftist Movimiento Democrático Popular (MDP, Popular Democratic Movement). Both groups sought women’s support, yet they had opposing visions on which way would best bring down the dictatorship. The

AD believed that oppositional forces only needed to organize enough to bring the regime into negotiation, and then they would utilize the 1980 constitution to move towards the transition to democracy. Contrastingly, the MDP felt the more successful strategy would be to sustain a popular mobilization that would lead to the collapse of the dictatorship.

The conflicting ideas between the two parties led women to take up the cause on their own and mobilize on the basis of their identity as women. Their shared conviction to bridge the divisions between the coalitions within a chaotic atmosphere of disagreement allowed women’s groups to unite as a force against Pinochet.

199 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 69. 86 86

Some of the most significant groups that emerged and obtained incredible influence in the 1980s were the Movimiento Pro-Emancipación de Mujeres de Chile [MEMCH] ’83 (Chilean Women’s Proemancipation Movement ’83) and Mujeres por la Vida (MPLV, Women for Life). MEMCH’83 was one of the leading umbrella organizations during the dictatorship. Paying homage to MEMCH, the women’s organization that successfully fought for women’s right to vote during the 1930s, MEMCH’83 brought together twenty-four women’s groups that wanted a return to democracy in order to promote women’s equality.200 Playing a critical role in organizing and coordinating women’s organizations, MEMCH’83 prided themselves on their ability to create change. In an interview regarding the work women did as members of MEMCH’83, Paulina Weber, a leader in the organization, describes its three main principles: “the struggle for democracy, protection of women’s rights, and solidarity.”201

Weber further elaborates that as a self-proclaimed feminist within MEMCH’83, she defined feminism as:

…the cultural, and the political, absolutely. It is a proposal for social change that goes through changing the roles, rethinking everything…It is a lot more profound than simply trying to make some improvements for women in society.202

Thus, the emerging feminist movement in the 1980s represented not only a change within Chile’s existing institutions, but a complete rethinking of gender roles and attitudes.

However, once traditional political parties began to reconstruct themselves, the overall tone of the conversation began to shift away from women’s demands. The visibility and

200 Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest, 150. 201 Julia Denise Shayne, “The Revolution Question: Feminism in Cuba, Chile, and El Salvador Compared (1952-1999),” PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000. ProQuest, 164. 202 Shayne, “The Revolution Question,” 165. 87 87 importance once given to female social organizations waned, and a growing divide reemerged over women’s roles as political activists or informal political activists.203 Although MEMCH’83 could be considered the leading coordinating organization throughout the 1980s, it was by no means the only group influencing political change. Mujeres por la Vida, formed in November 1983, began as an organization that spoke to major societal concerns like human rights violations, the banning of death penalty in the case of political prisoners, and the cost of living.204 In describing their mission, the MPLV stated, “son mujeres, todas distintas en edades, opciones políticas, formación, que se dedican, ‘con toda seriedad’, a una actividad casi exclusiva de los hombres: la política.”205 As such, spanning such a wide political spectrum, from the far left to the center, women engaged in MPLV were able to come together with one collective goal— to end the dictatorship and restore Chile’s democracy. One way in which women facilitated unity within the movement was with events. On December of 1983, MPLV held a massive rally, considered the most unified act that the opposition would organize against the regime, the caupolicanazo.206 Held in the Caupolicán Theater in Santiago, this rally intended to represent oppositional unity on a national level. Yet, in the midst of their political struggle against the military government, women like Graciela Borquez, co-founder of MPLV and a long-time member of the Christian Democrat party, declared,

203 Franceschet, Women and Politics, 74. 204 Mujeres por la Vida, “Le lleva organización trabajo y unidad,” 15 mayo 1987, Biblioteca digital: Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (accessed March 5, 2020). 205 Mujeres por la Vida, “Le lleva organización trabajo y unidad”, 15 mayo 1987, Biblioteca digital: Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (accessed March 5, 2020); “We are women, all different in age, political affiliation and opinions, who dedicate themselves, in all seriousness, to an almost exclusive activity for men: politics.” 206 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 156.; Arguably, by holding the rally in the Caupolicán Theater, MPLV were drawing similarities between their struggle against the dictatorship and the Mapuche warrior Caupolicán’s struggle against the Spanish Conquistadores. Both the MPLV and Caupolicán represent people who were leading the fight for Chile’s freedom. 88 88

“no podemos volver a querdarnos sin voz después de la dictadura.”207 Chile’s new democracy would not revert to the way life was before the dictatorship, and women would work to ensure that. In an interview entitled, “Libertad de Chile, Libertad de Mujer” Maria Antonieta Saa, a member of the Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria (MAPU, Popular Unitary

Action Movement) and one of the founding members of the Women’s Agreement for Democracy, provides a clear illustration of women’s demands and desires. After the military government detained Antonieta Saa for 38 days due to her political affiliations, she felt that the movement not only aimed to free Chile, but to liberate women so that they had greater visibility in the political decision-making process. Further, Antonieta Saa states that women have a great sense of strength when it comes to the defense of human rights, as they have demonstrated an immense capacity to be united both physically and intellectually.208 When asked about the democracy envisioned by the women’s movement and the work women still need to do to establish a sense of gender equality, Antonieta Saa explained that first and foremost, democracy is not only a way governing, but a way of life. Women must question the relations of power that occur in all the structures of society. Specifically, she emphasized the one structure that influences and shapes women the most: the family and the home. Women, she argues, need to make greater claims for society to see the private world as a political sphere, as there will always be women who inhabit these spaces. The government, the state, and society need to recognize that the

207 Patricia Moscoso, “Mujeres Chilenas” El Porteño, March 1986.; “We cannot go back to being voiceless after the dictatorship.” 208 Patricio Acevedo, “Maria Antonieta Saa, consejera de la AC: Libertad de Chile, Libertad de Mujer,” Análisis, 8 de septiembre 1986, Biblioteca digital: Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (accessed March 5, 2020); “I cannot conceive of a future democratic government in which sex discrimination does not imply a total change in a social structure that qualifies as patriarchal.” 89 89 term democracy extends to the country and to the home.209 Additionally, Antonieta Saa explained that the responsibility to free Chile from Pinochet’s grasp not only falls into women’s hands. She called on society, stating that groups like the MPLV are working to bring political parties together in a political climate in which Pinochet has declared war on the opposition. However, she ended the interview on a positive note, declaring that despite the government’s efforts, the opposition is alive and will keep fighting until they restore Chile’s democracy.

Chile’s Transition to Democracy Beginning in the latter half of the 1980s, the opposition started to look towards the 1980 Constitution as the answer to removing Pinochet from power. After an assassination attempt on Pinochet’s life in 1986, Chile became increasingly violent and unstable. As a result, the U.S. Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliot Abrams, argued that a failure to return democracy in Chile would not only lead to an increase in violence, but significant polarization of society.210 As such, President Ronald Reagan and his administration initiated talks with Pinochet, stating that the time had come to start the transformation of his military regime into an acceptable form of democracy. However, Pinochet did not take to Reagan’s request, and the polarization that had already plagued Chilean society worsened. Soon the only thing that concerned

Chileans was whether or not society supported Pinochet’s regime. Luckily for the opposition, the 1980 Constitution called for a national plebiscite to take place in 1988, which had the potential to strip Pinochet of his presidential power.

209 Patricio Acevedo, “Maria Antonieta Saa, consejera de la AC: Libertad de Chile, Libertad de Mujer,” Análisis, 8 de septiembre 1986, Biblioteca digital: Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (accessed March 5, 2020). 210 Philip Jacobson, “Violent ambush for Reagan’s hopes in Chile,” The Times, 1986. 90 90

According to the 1980 Constitution, the plebiscite gave the people two options, the Sí vote, or the No vote.211 If voters cast their vote for yes, Pinochet would take office for an eight-year mandate, allowing him to remain in power until 1997. If voters casted a no vote, Pinochet would remain in power for one more year, and new presidential elections would take place in 1989. As leading scholars have noted, the opposition faced many challenges. The military destroyed the Electoral Registry in 1973, leaving people with no choice but to re-register to vote. This alone was a difficult process, as obtaining a voter registration card was expensive and time consuming. Many Chileans simply did not feel like it was worth going through the struggle to register since Pinochet would more than likely win the plebiscite.212 Further, women registered at a considerably lower rate than men. In response, leading women of the opposition formed an organization that sought out female voters. Their mobilization was so successful that by October 1988, 92 percent of all eligible voters registered, the highest number in Chilean electoral history, with women out-registering men by more than 200,000.213 As a result, both sides positioned the female vote as a critical part of their campaigns.

Ultimately, the majority of women found themselves a part of the Concertación de Partidos por el No (Coalition of Parties for the No), what would later become the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Coalition of Parties for Democracy), the political alliance that took back power in 1990. Throughout the No campaign, the importance of PR was substantial. Knowing that Chileans already feared the political environment surrounding the plebiscite, with the military subjecting citizens to threats, arrests, bribery, and outright fear tactics, the No vote had to show Chileans that a change

211 When Chile replaced their constitution in 1980, the new constitution mandated a single- candidate presidential referendum in 1988. Pinochet planned on the plebiscite to legitimize his continued rule for an additional 8-year period. 212 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 169 213 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 380; Baldez, Why Women Protest, 170. 91 91 was potentially just around the corner.214 Thus, their slogan was “Chile, la alegría ya viene,” with a rainbow logo that symbolized the calm after the storm and the colors of the United Opposition Party.215 By once again calling out for unity across party lines and mobilizing against the violence of the dictatorship, women and their organizations helped pave the way for the opposition’s tremendous defeat of the military regime. On October

5, 1988, Chileans declared their disapproval of the dictatorship, with 55 percent voting for the No and 44 percent for the Sí.216 In response, an enraged Pinochet made a biblical reference when he stated that not long ago another plebiscite made a mistake when the people chose Barabbas.217 Moreover, the Concertación proved victorious and Chile was on its way to have the country’s first presidential elections in almost 20 years. The Concertación elected the PDC candidate Patricio Aylwin, who rose to prominence during the No campaign. The political Right, consisting of the Renovación Nacional and Unión Demócrata Independiente, chose Hernán Büchi. And a third candidate, Francisco Javier Errázuriz, decided to run as ‘a man of the center’.218 For more than half of the 7.5 million voters who cast votes, this represented their first experience of electing a political authority after sixteen years of military government. The preliminary official results, with roughly two- thirds of the votes accounted for, gave Aylwin 55.5 percent, Büchi 29.3 percent, and

214 Lake Sagaris, “Pinochet Image Makers Play Up Marxist Threat,” The Times, 1988. 215 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 172.; “Chile, happiness is coming!” 216 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 380. 217 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 380; Pinochet references Barabbas, a notorious prisoner in the New Testament held at the same time as Jesus of Nazareth. In a Passover custom, popular acclaim could dismiss one prisoner’s death sentence. When it came time to choose, the crowds chose to free Barabbas and crucify Jesus. 218 Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 380. 92 92

Errázuriz 15.3.219 Thus, Aylwin with the support of all 19 opposition parties, took power

March 11, 1990, restoring Chilean democracy.

Conclusion The period examined in this chapter explored the formation of a women’s movement under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Pinochet’s legacy undoubtedly left Chilean society split, as some viewed the military dictator as Chile’s savior, while on the opposite end, people continued to speak out against his notorious human rights abuses and corruption. However, because of the continued feelings of polarization towards

Pinochet and his legacy, his military regime functioned to unite women cross class and generational lines. During his rule, women successfully reconstructed their identity as political actors, shedding their apolitical nature during first-wave feminism. Although some women continued to cling to their roles as mothers, a new progressive identity emerged that challenged traditional gender roles. Chilean women throughout the movement frequently compared themselves to the great women of the first half of the twentieth century, women who struggled for the right to vote.220 Second wave feminists claimed that feminism had always been a part of Chile’s reality, and their movement was simply a continuation, blazing the trail for the next wave of women. Many of the women who became feminists throughout the dictatorship note the influence of Chilean feminist Julieta Kirkwood and the incredible impact she had on disrupting gendered identity and conceptions. One of the women who illustrates the influence of Kirkwood and her lasting impact on feminism in Chile is Fanny Pollarolo. In an interview, Pollarolo gave a definition of feminism that many

Chilean feminists still identify with today. She states feminism is:

219 Lake Sagaris, “Aylwin Victorious in Chile Election,” The Times, 1989. 220 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 164. 93 93 gender consciousness; the consciousness of being discriminated against, of being submitted to a patriarchal vision of the division of roles, of stereotypes, and therefore feminism is the consciousness of recognizing this and seeking to change it. It is the search for the complete democracy through the creation of all of the manifestations and expressions and mechanism that have determined and maintain gender discrimination; it is a struggle, a movement; feminism is a movement of change.221

Thus, Chilean women emerged after the dictatorship with high hopes for Chile’s new future democratic government. They felt strongly that the relationship between gender and politics was shifting in their favor. However, as time would tell, women faced a slow pace of inclusion and increasingly empty promises from government, leaving future generations of women no other choice but to continue the call for gender equality on a national level in Chile.

221 Shayne, “The Revolution Question,” 183.

CONCLUSION

“If, for example, we want peace and democracy, we have to fight for them. Peace must be made…And how could it be established in nations if we don’t find it first in family life and in relationships with human beings?” – Amanda Labarca

The historiographical shadow cast over Chilean women’s subordination throughout the twentieth century ignored the dynamic relationship between gender, politics, and power, a discussion that unfolded with a proliferation of gender and feminist scholarship. This thesis has expanded on that conversation by examining Chilean women’s political participation over the twentieth century, and uncovering how gendered conceptions shape female identity, social and political institutions, and social relations in

Chile. As scholars have noted, Chilean women in large part remained omitted from the historical narrative. Over the last three decades, scholars have increasingly taken part in reclaiming women’s roles as politically active citizens.

By bringing women’s involvement in politics to the forefront, it becomes clear how the concept of gender is both contextually defined and repeatedly reconstructed over time. As gender history emerged as a viable subject of historical inquiry, scholars like Joan Scott emphasized that gender is a “primary way of signifying relationships of power.”222 Gendered relations and power relations are, in her analysis, intertwined. Further, because gender is implicated in the conception and construction of power itself, the relationship between gender and politics is the ideal setting to deconstruct gender and power. Scott’s vastly quoted statement, “politics constructs gender and gender constructs

222 Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category,” 1067 95 95 politics” has provided the foundational lens through which this thesis has examined

Chilean women’s political agency.223 This work has illustrated the development of a progressive feminist identity in Chile. By examining political activity throughout the first and second wave feminist movements, women continued to work as agents of change within a patriarchal culture.

By coming together in times of need, women not only successfully reclaimed, but redefined, their roles in society and galvanized change through mass mobilization. Chilean women’s successful abilities to create cross class and generational lines movements allowed them to break into what scholars refer to as the male-dominated public sphere. By gaining access to venues such as political arenas, largely considered masculine or male-dominated, Chilean women not only dismantled traditional spheres of power, but challenged oppressive gender hierarchies.

Despite the development of a progressive feminist identity throughout the twentieth century, when Chile transitioned to democracy in 1990, women continued to find themselves at the mercy of gendered political institutions and a patriarchal culture.

This then begs the question, what went wrong? After Patricio Aylwin won the presidential election, women were optimistic about their place in Chile’s new government. Yet, as it did after women obtained the right to vote during the first wave feminist movement, the women’s movement fell apart shortly after the transition. Several feminist leaders and activists claim that during the dictatorship women shared a collective identity and mission. Once the people restored Chile’s democracy however, divisions linked to differing perspectives and increasing diversity caused the women’s movement to fracture. Moreover, when President Aylwin declared his all-male cabinet, women, disappointedly, could see no change in party attitudes towards the gendered nature of

223 Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category,” 1072. 96 96 politics. Male politicians continued to leave women out of the political sphere and dialogue. This did not begin to shift until Aylwin created the Servicio Nacional de la Mujer (SERNAM- National Women’s Service), which allowed the agency’s female Director to possess a position in his cabinet.224 Although the state intended SERNAM to improve women’s underrepresentation in politics, the program led to internal controversy. Not only did some conservative women claim that the agency would be used as a vehicle for radical feminist propaganda, but more progressive women believed that it was nothing more than an elitist institution.

Thus, as class once acted as a catalyst for change, it became a barrier to women’s mobilization and collective identity. Scholars have argued that since some women no longer felt like they could depend on the government to represent them, a division occurred among women’s organizations. Groups like the Movimiento Feminista

Autónomo (MFA-Autonomous Feminist Movement) declared that SERNAM and the NGOs that work with them could not be trusted to carry out the true feminist mission. State institutions, they argued, remained solely responsible to the “government’s global policies that are part of the consolidation of the neoliberal system.”225 In the end, the once strong and consolidated women’s movement broke down into tensions over who supported the institucionales (groups like SERNAM) or the autónomas (groups such as MFA).

Gendered obstacles continue to plague the post-transition political atmosphere of Chile. Women, like Antonieta Saa, who have been successful in their pursuit of political careers explain that their political environment remains one of deeply rooted machismo.

Women’s presence in the male-dominated political arena has yet to reach a point in

224 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 182. 225 Baldez, Why Women Protest, 188. 97 97 which women can considerably bring about institutional change. The underrepresentation of women in Chilean politics is not due to the lack of female candidates, but a conservative political culture that is not ready to face the feminist issues that female politicians bring with them. As women involved in politics note, to even accept the label of “feminist” in Chile reduces the likelihood that society will vote you into office. Until the majority of Chilean society come together and address its conservative gendered political institutions, there will continue to be only gradual change towards gender equality.

EPILOGUE

El patriarcado es un juez que júzganos por nacer, y nuestro castigo es la violencia que no ves. Es femicidio. Impunidad para mi asesino. Es la desaparición. Es la violación. Y la culpa no era mía, ni dónde estaba, ni como vestía. El violador eras tú. – Las Tesis, “Un violador en tu camino” 226

In the 2005 Chilean presidential election, the Concertación coalition was ready to carry on its political legacy by winning the fourth consecutive election since the end of the dictatorship. However, in a new turn of events, the coalition put as their candidate Michelle Bachelet, a former Health and Defense Minister. As a socialist, single parent, and agnostic, many Chileans felt that Bachelet defied almost every characteristic of

Chilean culture. In a highly Catholic, conservative, and machista nation, which barely legalized divorce in 2004, Bachelet represented a transition in political terms for Chile. As the daughter of a liberal air force general who supported Allende’s government, Pinochet’s administration detained both Bachelet and her mother and took them to Villa

Grimaldi, the notorious detention center where DINA tortured thousands of Chileans.227 In taking account of Bachelet’s history, Chileans felt that she embodied the desire of society to move forward and reconcile with Chile’s past.

Additionally, Chileans acknowledged the impact of electing the country’s first woman president, only the second in a nationwide electoral process in Latin America.

226 El Mundo, “Un violador en tu camino, el himno global feminista que nació en Chile,” Filmed [November 2019]. YouTube video, 2:45. Posted [December 2019]. The patriarchy is a judge that judges us for being born. And our punishment is the violence that you do not see. It is femicide. Impunity for my killer. It is the disappeared. It is rape. And I am not guilty, not because of where I was or how I was dressed. The rapist is you. 227 Hannah Hennessy, “Single Mother Tortured by Pinochet Set for Presidency,” The Times, December 3, 2005. 99 99

Even though outsiders considered Chile a model democracy, technologically advanced with a showcase economy, in the arena of women’s rights, it seemingly lagged behind its neighbors.228 President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) supported the significance of having a woman candidate when he stated that it would be an “indication of change” in Chile’s political sphere. Yet, when Bachelet campaigned for the presidency in 2005, many media outlets highlighted her status as a woman and mother. In several newspapers, articles written on Bachelet often contained titles such as: “The Face: Mother Courage,” “Single Mother Tortured by Pinochet set for Presidency,” and “Millionaire and Single Mother

Face Showdown for Presidency,” illustrating and further supporting the dynamic between gender and politics that Joan Scott referenced in 1986. However, as a silver lining, by highlighting this fact, Bachelet’s campaign emphasized that women run one third of the households in Chile, hers included. In making this connection, Bachelet painted herself as an everyday citizen who related to groups traditionally marginalized by the political and business elite. When Bachelet entered the presidential palace in 2006, winning 53.5 percent of the electoral vote and defeating conservative Sebastián Piñera, she promised to work for a more equitable society, fighting for women, the middle-class, and Chile’s indigenous population. As a self-made woman, Bachelet appealed to her identity as a female to focus on women’s issues, all the while claiming that she “triumphed through adversity.”229 By the time she left office in 2010, her administration enjoyed an approval rating of 84 percent. Barred from seeking re-election by a consecutive one-term constitutional limit,

228 For example, areas in which women’s rights fell behind were/are in divorce and abortion. Chile’s ultra-Catholic and conservative nature has been a hinderance to progressive policy regarding women’s rights. 229 During Bachelet’s political campaign and presidency, she referenced her identity as a single mother and how she has been able to find success in Chilean politics despite her hardships in life. 100 100

Bachelet was unable to run for office in 2010. As a result, the opposition put a familiar name on the presidential ballot, Sebastián Piñera. On March 11, 2010, Piñera took office as the first elected right-wing president of Chile since 1958. In his triumph over the former president, Eduardo Frei, Piñera ended over two decades of leadership under the center-left coalition Concertación. Although winning by a slight margin of 52 percent to Frei’s 48, Piñera represented a shift to the political right in Chile. By promising change and a boost in economic growth, Chileans seemed ready for new policies and leadership. Analysts, however, predicted that Piñera’s moderate political stance would not produce radical changes in Chile. Instead, his government continued Bachelet’s legacy and made progress in important sectors, even promoting women’s ability to work through a six-month maternity leave period and subsidy for female workers.230 Yet, when the 2011 Chilean student protests occurred, students demanding a new framework for Chile’s education system, this marked a downward spiral for Piñera, dropping his approval ratings as low as 26 percent. Additionally, that same year, Piñera made an overtly misogynistic joke during a state visit to Mexico that caused a national uproar. The joke stated, “when a lady says ‘no’ it means maybe. When she says ‘maybe’ it means yes. And when she says ‘yes’, she is not a lady.”231 Opposition senator Ximena Rincon stated, “Remarks like these are an affront to women and an embarrassment for this country, in terms of gender politics, they set us back some 20 years.”232

230 Prensa de la Presidencia, “Sebastian Pinera Echenique,” (Accessed April 2020) www.gob.cl/en/institutions/presidency/ 231 “Chilean president Sebastian Pinera under fire for sexist joke,” The Telegraph, December 8, 2011. 232 “Chilean president Sebastian Pinera under fire for sexist joke,” The Telegraph, December 8, 2011. 101 101

When the 2013 presidential election arrived, Chileans were seeking a candidate who would provide meaningful structural change. In December, Chile re-elected Bachelet by a substantial 62 percent of the vote for a second presidential term. Running as the candidate for the coalition Nueva Mayoría (New Majority), Bachelet’s voters hoped for reforms that would encompass the social, economic, and political issues of the middle and lower classes. In response, Bachelet promised to “change the functional, institutional and constitutional basics of the nation in order to create a ‘new culture’” in Chile.233 However, by August 2015 Bachelet reached a disapproval rating of 72 percent, exceeding former President Sebastian Pinera’s 68 percent in 2011.234 Brought about by scandal allegations, her administration’s inability to successfully address Chile’s educational inequality, and the unsuccessful implementation of radical reforms, Bachelet adjusted her reform program to reflect more plausible expectations. Taking on the slogan, realismo sin renuncia (realism without compromise), Bachelet’s government worked to re-calibrate their reforms to adhere to a slow economy, the opposition’s anti-reform campaign, and a growing sense of unease.

When Bachelet’s presidential term ended in 2018 and the right-wing opposition candidate Piñera accepted the presidential sash once again, this marked the continuing shift in Latin America towards conservative leaders. Additionally, the back and forth swing between the two political coalitions illustrated the increasing political polarization of Chilean society. One can argue, that until an administration meets voters’ demands for the successful implementation of legislation that will help ameliorate Chile’s growing inequality, Chile will continue the pendulum of liberal and conservative presidencies.

233 Roland Benedikter, Katja Siepmann, and Miguel Zlosilo, “Chile: The Midlife Crisis of Michelle Bachelet’s Second Term. Are Bachelet’s ‘Policies that Change Cultures’ Reaching their Premature End?”, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, March 24, 2016. 2 234 Benedikter, “Chile: The Midlife Crisis,” 3. 102 102 Chile Despertó 235 Only one year into President Piñera’s second term and Chile is experiencing what some call the worst unrest in decades. The nationwide uprising sparked in October 2019 by a three percent hike in subway fares marked the last straw for Chileans who claim that the nation’s inequality levels signify an increasing form of injustice. In Chile, the only

Latin American country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an organization made up of mainly rich nations, one percent of the population earns 33 percent of the nation’s wealth. In turn, many question and blame the neoliberalist policies created under Pinochet as the root of Chile’s inequality.236

Responding to the growing unease and protests, Piñera deployed Chile’s military. For the first time since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, tanks rolled down popular streets in Santiago. Invoking the 1980 Constitution, established under Pinochet, Piñera declared a state of emergency across the country and imposed curfews in Santiago, Valparaiso, and Concepción. Yet Chileans defied curfews and remained in the streets, using social media to share their stories to the rest of the world. In particular, Chilean women have used the recent protests to speak out against gender inequality in the country. As part of their rejection to an indifferent and complicit system that has yet to significantly address issues such as femicide, rape and impunity in cases of violence against women, women are taking it among themselves to mobilize against injustice.

In a popular feminist performance entitled “Un violador en tu camino,” choreographed and written by the group Las Tesis, women publicly blame Chile’s gendered institutions for women’s harsh realities in the country. First performed on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the two-minute protest

235 Chile woke up. 236 Priscilla González, “La desigualdad que despertó a Chile”, diarioUchile, Año XII, 28 de octubre 2019. 103 103 has gone viral in over 5 countries and translated into more than six languages. The universality of the chant rests in the known fact among women that violence due to gender is an extension of patriarchal power structures. The inefficiency of the state to address women’s issues leaves women no other choice but to take up the cause to dismantle male power structures on their own. In an interview, Rita Segato speaks to the emotional reactions that performances like “Un violador en tu camino” provoke, “When I saw it, I cried, and I spent the rest of the day crying. But I also laughed and was happy because it’s such a strong, cathartic thing.”237 Thus, although the chant has found its way into multiple feminist movements across the globe, the genesis of the performance in Chile has added increasing visibility to Latin American feminism and Chilean agency for gender equality. Moreover, as Chile enters into its fifth month of national protest, society is calling on its politicians to draft a new constitution, significantly improve Chile’s growing wealth disparity, answer for the human rights violations committed by the Chilean police and carabineros, and for Sebastián Piñera to resign. Until government agrees to at least majority of the terms demanded by the people, a united Chile will continue to protest inequality and injustice, and women will be at the forefront.

El pueblo, El pueblo, ¿El pueblo dónde está? El pueblo está en la calle exigiendo dignidad ¡Somos caleta, más que la chucha…Somos el pueblo unido en la lucha! ¡Viva Chile, Mierda!238

237 Gaby Hinsliff, “’The rapist is you!’: why a Chilean protest chant is being sung around the world,” The Guardian, February 3, 2020.

238 The people, the people, where are the people? The people are in the streets demanding dignity. We are together, tight as fuck. We are the people united in the struggle. Long Live Chile, Damn it.

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