The Public and Private Life of Communists in Twentieth-Century Chile
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Exemplary Comrades: The Public and Private Life of Communists in Twentieth-Century Chile Alfonso Salgado Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Alfonso Salgado All rights reserved ABSTRACT Exemplary Comrades: The Public and Private Life of Communists in Twentieth-Century Chile Alfonso Salgado This dissertation studies Chilean communists’ public and private lives. It examines the experience of being a communist and the Communist Party of Chile’s efforts to shape that experience, both in the street and at home. To what extent did communists follow party principles regarding public and private life? To what extent did communism succeed in challenging the public-private divide so dear to liberalism? These are the questions I seek to answer in this dissertation. I argue that communism was lived quite intensely, but that it would be an exaggeration to claim that most party members lived and breathed communism. Communists lived a bifurcated life: one life lived to the fullest in the public sphere and another life lived less intensely at home. Notwithstanding communist discourse, the practices fostered by the party led communist men to think of public and private as separate spheres. This dissertation provides a detailed portrait of communist men and their relations, both at home and in the street, in order to understand how they came to inhabit and expand the Chilean political sphere. Communist ideology and activism helped men reaffirm their masculine sense of self and claim a space in the public arena, but self-sovereignty came at the cost of family life. Communism strengthened the gendered public-private divide by pulling men from their homes and imbuing them with a strong sense of mission. Communist men’s intense involvement in public affairs was to the detriment of their wives, who ended up confined to the domestic realm. Table of Contents List of Charts and Illustrations ii Abbreviations iii Acknowledgments v Dedication ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Respectable Workers and Good Husbands: Communist Rhetoric, Male Sociability, and the Problem of Morality (1935-1946) 26 Chapter 2. The Rearguard of the Vanguard: Wives and Children Take to the Streets (1935-1946) 69 Chapter 3. In the Bosom of the Party: Surviving González Videla’s War on Communism (1946-1952) 129 Chapter 4. The Party Comes First: Combining Family Life with a Career in Politics (1952-1973) 176 Chapter 5. The Social Life of Young Activists: Making Friends and Making Out in the Communist Youth (1952-1973) 225 Chapter 6. Challenging Dictatorship: Human Rights Activism and the Armed Struggle (1973-1990) 279 Conclusion 342 Bibliography 349 i List of Charts and Illustrations Image 1: Communist advertisement 51 Image 2: The massacre of Plaza Bulnes 112 Table 1: Distribution of injured demonstrators (Plaza Bulnes, January 28, 1946) 113 Image 3: Letter to the authorities by the daughter of a communist in confinement 159 Image 4: The Corvalán family 194 Image 5: Luis Corvalán and wife Lily Castillo 195 Image 6: Young communists chanting in celebration of a JJCC congress 249 Image 7: Yayita Denis 269 Image 8: Communists and rodriguistas in Carrizal Bajo 329 ii Abbreviations AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional AFDD Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos AJS Archivo Judicial de Santiago ARNAD Archivo Nacional de la Administración ART Archivo Regional de Tarapacá CEDOCMMDH Centro de Documentación del Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos CODEPU Corporación de Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo CNI Central Nacional de Informaciones CPPVG Corporación Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CTCH Confederación de Trabajadores de Chile DIBAM Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos DINA Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional ECLA Economic Commission for Latin America FASIC Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas FEDEFAM Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos FER Frente de Trabajadores Revolucionarios FPMR Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez FPMR-A Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez - Autónomo iii FUNVISOL Fundación de Documentación y Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad ICAL Instituto de Ciencias Alejandro Lipschutz JJCC Juventudes Comunistas de Chile MEMCH Movimiento Pro-Emancipación de las Mujeres de Chile MINT Ministerio del Interior MIR Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria NARA II National Archives and Records Administration, College Park OAS Organization of American States PCCH Partido Comunista de Chile POS Partido Obrero Socialista UN United Nations iv Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the help and support of many people and institutions. Let me begin by thanking the men and women who opened their homes and shared their personal stories with me—an outsider. I am deeply grateful for their generosity. This dissertation is as much theirs as it is mine. Over the six years it took me to graduate and defend this dissertation, I became indebted to a great number of great scholars. At Columbia University, Nara Milanich, Caterina Pizzigoni, and my advisor, Pablo Piccato, offered sound academic advice and commented thoroughly on this dissertation. In addition, they made me feel at home in such an impersonal city as New York. For that I can never repay them. Several other scholars helped me while studying in the United States. Peter Winn and John Coatsworth encouraged me during the research process and took time out of their busy schedules to serve in my defense committee, for which I am thankful. I also benefited from conversations with Barry Carr, Michelle Chase, Mary Marshall Clark, Charly Coleman, Matthew Connelly, Isabella Cosse, Raymond Craib, Paul Gillingham, Tanya Harmer, Alice Kessler-Harris, Annick Lemperiere, Claudio Lomnitz, José Moya, Vania Markarian, Paul Mishler, Eugenia Palieraki, Karin Rosemblatt, Heidi Tinsman, and Genevieve Verdó. Circumstances prevented me from personally meeting Gerry Casey, Brenda Elsey, and Jody Pavilack, but I want to thank them for their encouragement as well. My classmates at Columbia University provided much needed feedback and friendship and deserve to be named individually: Westenley Alcenat, Yesenia Barragán, Sarah Beckhart, Amy Christensen, Andre Deckrow, Julia del Palacio, Fabiola Enríquez, Marianne González, Eric Frith, v Romeo Guzmán, Sara Hidalgo, Paul Katz, Daniel Kressel, Ariel Mae Lambe, Daniel Morales, Rachel Newman, Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez, Allison Powers, and Elizabeth Schwall. Special thanks to Elizabeth, who read drafts of every chapter of this dissertation. At the same time, I was incredibly lucky to have met, and counted on the support of, a handful of Chileans who happened to be studying in other programs and departments at the same university: José Miguel Cabezas, Andrea Insunza, Rodrigo Mayorga, Liliana Morawietz, Daniel Talesnik, Roberto Velásquez, and Giancarlo Visconti. In conferences and workshops, I also received feedback and made friends with students at New York University, Stony Brook University, Cornell University, Yale University, and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. I only wish I could have built even stronger relationships with all of them. I will never forget the help I got from the staff at Columbia University’s Writing Center either. Sue Mendelsohn welcomed me from start to finish, and Daniella Gitlin, Matthew Rossi, and others commented on pages and pages of drafts. In addition, this dissertation benefited from the guidance and encouragement of several scholars and friends in Chile: Rolando Álvarez, Roberto Céspedes, Gabriel Cid, Andrés Estefane, Joaquín Fernández, Luis Garcés, Alberto Harambour, Carlos Huneeus, Diego Hurtado, Sebastián Hurtado, Manuel Loyola, Víctor Muñoz Tamayo, Patricio Navia, Pablo Neut, Valentina Orellana, Rafael Pedemonte, Fernando Purcell, Sebastián Quintana, Alfredo Riquelme, Claudio Robles, Jorge Rojas, Sol Serrano, and Olga Ulianova. Special thanks to Rolando and Olga, whose kindness and knowledge of Chilean communist history is unparalleled, and to Sol, who invited me to her home to discuss life and academia every time I was around. vi José Manuel Baeza, Diego Vilches, and Cristine Molina helped with the research, and I am pleased to record my indebtedness to them. Let me extend my gratitude to a great many archivists and librarians who helped my while doing research in the following institutions, and to those who granted me access to some of these institutions as well: Rodrigo Sandoval, at the Archivo de Música Popular Chilena, Instituto de Música de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; César Espíndola, Lautaro Pizarro, and Rocío Dantagnan, at the Archivo del Comité Exterior del Partido Comunista de Chile, Instituto de Ciencias Alejandro Lipschutz; the staff at the Archivo Electoral General, Servicio Electoral; Carmen Gloria Valladares and Bernardo Astudillo, at the Archivo Histórico, Tribunal Calificador de Elecciones; the staff at the Archivo General Histórico, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores; the staff at the Archivo General, Servicio de Registro Civil e Identificación de la República de Chile; Emma de Ramón, Pedro González, and so many others in the Archivo Histórico Nacional; Adelita Ravanales, Francisco Leiva, and Jorge Rozas, at the Archivo Judicial de Santiago; the staff at the Archivo Nacional de la Administración; Elizabeth Godoy, at the Archivo Regional de Tarapacá;