Chile: The Feminine Side of the Coup or When Burgueois Women Take to the Streets
Mattelart, Michele
Introduction The following article was written by Michele Mattelart, a European who spent many years in Chile. It first appeared in the January 1975 issue of Casa de las Americas. She has written...
...Among the well-to-do sectors, in ad- dition to exercising an indisputable authority in the home with the help of one or more maids,1 3 women also were active in the public domain, though this was always within the discriminatory, if little disputed, framework of what was considered a woman's work: social services, pedagogy, interior decorating, secretarial work or paramedical ser- vices...
...We have been harassed and persecuted for defending our sons, for supporting our striking husbands, for taking to the streets to stir up the sleeping consciousness of so many people...
...They begged us for three years," said Pinochet the day after the coup, offering thanks to the "democratic" mass media and emphasizing the ef- fectiveness of women's constant pleas in this new program for psycho-political struggle...
...the woman as reproducer of labor power...
...One observation must be made, however...
...And by now the active role of women in counterinsurgency is practically a doctrine in the field, though he seems to reveal it for the first time when he says: Women are the mod effective political weapon...
...It remains important to analyze the process that unfolded during the years of the Popular Unity (UP) government...
...Therefore, when we consider the characteristics of women's participation in the process of production, we realize that Chilean women from the popular sectors, and particularly from the petit-bourgeoisie, are most affected by the mechanisms of socialization and participation which exist at the community level...
...While the Christian Democrats still appeared to be the main opposition force (until October 1972) the Right organized several demonstrations of pobladoras (inhabitants of the shanty-towns...
...The photo to this caption showed a child looking dishevelled and crying in front of his house in a poor neighborhood...
...This so-called "democratic" sector "naturally" sought to defend the traditions and values of "justice" and "liberty" which mask the oppressive course of bourgeois order...
...This separation, once unconsciously present in every individual (as is the case with all collective symbols), allowed the bourgeoisie to present the woman's new activity as devoid of political content and to have it accepted as such...
...Both points proceed from the same definition of the woman...
...Dressed in a bathing suit, she paraded on horseback through the streets of Santiago, no doubt to symbolize--assuming we want to *Actually, Alessandri ran as an independent in the 1970 elections...
...So much so, in fact, that some have claimed a matriarchy exists in Chile...
...Eva was transformed in two major areas: A welter of intellectual references were cited and all aspects of daily life were politicized...
...Besides truckers, professionals (doctors, engineers, lawyers), merchants, bank employees and others halted their activities, demanding changes which would have meant a fundamental reorientation of the government's popular programs...
...They revived all the stereotypes of femininity (sweetness, sensitivity, a natural inclination to peace and order) in order to cover their seditious movement with a veil of innocence and to imply or reinforce the idea that the order that women approved of and would defend when "compelled" by circumstances, was the appropriate order for the country, the order sought by all respectable Chileans...
...There are already quite enough examples to confirm this...
...More than once, the struggles which were fought there favored the progressive forces...
...It was necessary for women to become active, organizing and mobilizing themselves to defend "democracy," becoming in the process its living symbol as woman-spouse, womanhousewife, woman-Homeland...
...Chile's second independence" went hand-in-hand with the "liberation of the housewife...
...8 The bourgeoisie was able to hide its class interests behind the protests of mothers and housewives, behind demands which appeared unrelated to class strategy because they encompassed areas traditionally marginalized from the political sphere such as the home, family organization, rearing and education of children...
...However, when the State changes hands and bourgeois control is threatened, women, who are under the influence of a daily reinforced bourgeois ideology, tend to resent the conflict, seeing it as a desertion of "virile elements" from the institutions which usually protect them...
...Tell me, Cazota, is everything in your country as beautiful as its women...
...The three years of popular rule in Chile enable us to expose in action the profoundly anti-liberationist basis of a women's movement for political emancipation promoted by a bourgeoisie which saw its class interests threatened...
...The strike, which took place mostly among white collar workers, was aimed at damaging Chile's crucial export earnings...
...At that time Allende won only 32 percent of the women's vote, against 45 percent of the men's...
...know that Chile's reonstruction will be a task worthy of a disciplined and patriotic people...
...At the base level, women were mobilized for the first time to break out of their historic situation and begin to incorporate themselves into struggles for control of their own lives, that of their children and of the society at large...
...Under the facade of "participation," they drew women away from any political action or affiliation which went against the system...
...willful deterioration of the national economy by amassing stockpiles (whose size varied with social category since "hardships" had failed to bring about the miracle of levelling differences in incomes...
...Acting on the basis of that imaginary community of interests which supposedly unites housewives of all social classes, this household opposition constituted the everyday side of the demonstrations which periodically invaded the streets...
...The effectiveness and scope of these measures, however, were limited.This was due, in part, to the fact that women were not incorporated into the production process in any great numbers, so that the material basis of their marginalization was not challenged.Side of the Coup or Take to the Streets...
...Even when these women do not work they have maids: in 1968, 85 percent of non-working married women had at least one maid...
...The first part was interspersed with comments such as: "Before, goods could be purchased...
...In order to help agitate and organize their potential constituency, the media's messages were aimed at specific fronts: owners' associations, professional associations (journalists, doctors, lawyers, engineers), youth and, last but not least, women...
...next a considerable number of petit-bourgeois women, and, finally a minority of women from the poorer districts (and shanty-towns) and the lumpen...
...7. Song of the folkslnging group, Quilapayun, "The Right Has Two Pots...
...this cannot happen in the factory because we hold meetings, there is a higher level of consciousness and they cannot deceive us...
...The content remained the same with one important exception...
...It even expanded it, creating magazines and newspapers like Tribuna which daily spit out headlines insulting the President...
...This was a clear-cut example of the fact...
...Thus, the role of the Chilean Left-and the role of women within that sector-is only peripherally mentioned...
...The marchers themselves denounced this treatment, and the following day the same newspaper carried the sensationalist headline: "Although We Were Women, They Beat Usl" Women threw themselves body and soul into this new activity which, for many, replaced the sacrosanct Wednesday or Thursday "tea parties" (te canasta...
...Eva (Santiago, Chile), January 1974...
...The Right's first mass demonstration was carried out by women...
...This is particularly true for the radio which literally follows working-class women around in their domestic work, making their "exile" sweeter and more gratifying, reproducing and highlighting the conditions which led to their defeated state...
...Women's Power" protected *Corporativism is a particular ideological and organizational form which is associated with fascism, particularly as it developed in Portugal and Italy...
...The importance of Mattelart's analysis clearly transcends the particulars of Chile...
...When a person is healthy, she is agile...
...3. In General Pinochet's last declaration of principles (March II, 19741, the matter of a "Parliament" was no longer raised...
...Women will act more effectively if they know what is going on and what the Communists, Christian Democrats, members of the National Party and the MIR are thinking...
...Channel 13's director, a priest named Hasbun, now relieved of his function by the Junta-an indication of the exorbitant nature of the Junta's demands-was also the spiritual director of the magazine Eva, which we will discuss later...
...Not until the last months of the popular regime, however, did Women's Power* come to control the women's front...
...The "tam-tam" of the empty pots was to the Right what the "yu-yu" was to the women of the liberation forces of Algeria...
...While true in times of peace, this is doubly true in times of war when direct calls to action and the slow distillation of psychosis replace melodrama and lukewarm sentimentality...
...While ruling class culture has integrated the values which sanctify the subordinate status of women (as in all capitalist societies, and taking into account the particular characteristics of Latin America), in practice women play a central role in the economics and organization of the family...
...All "cor- porations" were under the control of a very strong state apparatus...
...Furthermore, these centers developed norms and habits of coexistence between bourgeois and proletarian women, cultivating the traditional relationship with the patrona...
...Furthermore, Chile provides us with a model for the utilization of women, at both the political and ideological levels, that can be applied not only to other Latin American countries, but also to the metropolitan countries where leftist forces may be presented with the historic possibility of reaching the government by virtue of the rules of the democratic game...
...This situation is particularly clear in the proletariat...
...After that famous night of December Ist, the echo of pots resounded in all the residential neighborhoods of all Chilean cities...
...She who is speaking to you is but another mother who knows you can do much for peace and understanding among Chileans...
...However, once the coup occurred, the clerical tendency took on the scope of an invading force, attempting to restore order to the Chilean home by assigning to everyone, particularly women, the place traditionally allotted them...
...Love...
...The Brazilian engineer, mentioned earlier, pointed out the daily influence that a woman can exert on those around her, noting that the military, like everyone, have wives and homes, and are not free from that influence...
...They are stealing our cars...
...These episodes enable us to define the social composition of the female population that was opposed to Salvador Allende...
...Right-wing propaganda, on the other hand, made much of the food shortages that they themselves had helped to induce through massive hoarding, the famous truckers' strike of October 1972, bosses lock-outs and active sabotage of the people's markets...
...The bourgeoisie not only retained its communications apparatus intact...
...During the period of the Popular Unity government, these publications still accounted for 80 percent of the women's press with 200,000 copies printed biweekly...
...How distant are the hate and maliciousness aimed at Allende before the bullets struck him down...
...See Michele Mattelart and Mabel Piccini, "La television y los sectors populares," Comunicacion y Cultura ( Buenos Aires), No...
...Religious sympathies were brought into play during the period when the great theme of mobilization against the popular regime was the planned teaching reform-the National Unified School (ENU) Project...
...We demand justice...
...March of the Pots and Pans, December 197117 We come upon the bourgeois women once again when the opposition parties openly began to woo the Armed Forces...
...We taught the Chileans to use their women against the Marxists...
...One exception to this occurred...
...however, also fulfills a more important purpose...
...In order to struggle against a usurping "Marxist authority" (synonymous with chaos), they appealed to the principles of respect for authority (synonymous with order...
...And even fewer...
...Women: cripples...
...We must be careful not to give the participation of working class women In the bosses' strikeand, therefore, In the counterrevolution organized by the Right-a numerical Importance which t simply did not have...
...Two years ago his administration was violently overthrown in one of the bloodiest coups in the history of Latin America...
...We are the people...
...On the one hand, all the essential traits consecrated by the dominant ideology in order to build and reproduce the "feminine" order were, in effect, present: respect for private property, non- participation in politics, the so-called feminine inclination to see and understand everything, and confinement to discriminatory interests and tasks...
...These words of Louise Philippe to the new Chilean Am- bassador to France were reported by a chronicler at the beginning of the century.12 He went on to say, "Throughout this country's history, women have held a position of honor in society, whatever the means by which they exercised the loving influence of their superior spirit...
...Women who continue to believe that they need at least five pairs of shoes, more than ten dresses, etc...
...Among these organizations were the centres de madres* (women's centers-a type of workshop set up in the poorer neighborhoods) and the juntas de vecinos (neighborhood boards for the administration of local matters, composed of both men and women and strongly influenced by the women...
...Whereas previously the magazine had rigorously limited its content to sentimentality and love life, the euphoric advertising of modernity, motherly concerns and care for the home, it now introduced items which were supposed to "inform" women about national politics and "open their eyes" to the antagonisms between the two conflicting ways of life...
...The meager professional qualifications of petit-bourgeois women and their resultant fear of change make them even more vulnerable to the Right's blackmail...
...Democratic" defense was the authorized response to supposed Marxist aggression and repression...
...Traditional symbols and values which unequivocally defined the meaning of women's behavior were relied upon to legitimize these demonstrations...
...There is a feminine specialization and function just as there is a specialization to all official groups...
...Did they not, in fact, help the bourgeoisie legitimize, "naturalize"--we could almost say "sanctify"-their seditious plan against the popular regime...
...Recipes and menus of the "good old days" were in the other column...
...These women were particularly active in the people's markets that were set up to distribute the food controlled by the State sector (28 percent of the total) and in the campaign to increase State control of that sector...
...There is a great similarity between the tactics used by the Balaguer regime in the Dominican Republic and those of the Chilean Right...
...Of course, darling, go out and demonstrated" But, although such activities were not foreseen by Emily Post, the code of femininity was still enforced, guaranteeing women a privileged status in all matters, and all of their prerogatives...
...The right-wing women's organizations and parties ceaselessly proselytized these women...
...One hundred percInt of the ruling classwomen who work have maids, 30 percent had at least two maids In 1968...
...The number of strikers' wives, sisters or daughters who marched on Santiago on June 26, 1973 was no greater than the total number of strikers...
...If the principal attack dealt with a lack of food, the principal focus was hoarding...
...VaniaiBambirra deals with aspects of this question for the subsequent period in two, articles: "La mujer chllena en la transition al socialismo," Punto Final (Santiago, Chile), June 22, 1971, and "Liberacion de la mujer y lucha de classes " Punto Final, February 1972...
...The bourgeoisie lost some of its power only in the area of television media because the State network (the only national network) was automatically controlled by the new government...
...Worried that, in the long run, women might acquire bad habits in the streets, such as the taste for political power, the bourgeoisie was even more eager to lock their women into clearly defined specialities and functions...
...The remainder is divided among professionals and skilled workers (16 percent) and employees of the state or private enterprise (25 percent) as secretaries, saleswomen, etc...
...24 on city walls, in newspapers and on the airwaves...
...Since women were given the right to vote in Chile, men and women have voted at separate booths, and their votes are tallied separately...
...How many hours of radio and television programming, soap operas and radio serials, have as their primary objective the production and satisfaction of demands which grow out of a woman's own sense of alienation...
...In exchange for their services, the bourgeois women gained electoral support for their candidates...
...Since 1964 when Frei was campaigning against Allende, the Christian Democrats broadcast the voice of Juana Castro, a leader in the Cuban exile movement and Fidel's half sister, to convince Chileans to fight communism...
...Throughout their entire period of opposition to the popular regime, the bourgeoisie cultivated this notion of the natural corporativism of women, a conception which was implicit in the presentation of the women's movement as a democratic movement...
...Moreover, the employment sectors which they enter, because of tradition and a lack of real choices, further reduce the possibilities of their being exposed to a different orientation than that prevailing in the above described organizations...
...Moral Strength: We must not forget that sacrifice molds willpower...
...The short-lived Movement for Women's Emancipation, which followed, was attacked for its "communist tendencies," although it was not linked to any leftist ideology...
...It is not by chance that these tactics are based on mechanisms of participation similar to those instituted by the Christian Democrats in Chile and are based on the same conception of women's role in the society...
...The Right claimed that Allende had destroyed "freedom of the press" in Chile by even suggesting nationalization...
...The Brazilian engineer...
...2) the existence of earlier mechanisms for the participation and organization of women...
...Mattelart's work, then, should not be interpreted to demonstrate the inevitable consequences of women's marginality nor the entire reality of what occurred during the UP years...
...See "Feminismo Balaguerista: A Strategy of the Right," NACLA's Latin America & Empire Report, Vol...
...Statement published in El Mercurio, September 14, 1973...
...It is not logical to invest money in gambling when it is needed for the cause-to keep free radios on the air or to help Channel 13 withstand governmental pressures...
...Women's new civic duties are quite clearly defined in those pages: "No housewife, no neighbor, no person who is presently capable of action or expression, has any right to wait for others to defend the freedom of this country.19 Community, school, workplace and other organizations ought to receive the support of these democratic masses...
...For a fuller discussion of corporativism and fascism, see Nicos Poulantzas, Fascism and Dictatorship: The Third International and the Problems of Fascism (London: New Left Books, 1974), 165-167 ff...
...They have time...
...This message penetrated the rest of the magazine in a more diffuse fashion, entering every article dealing with the daily concerns of the housewife...
...5. To commemorate this event, the Junta decided to proclaim June 26th as the "Day of the Working Woman...
...In recognition of this, the popular government passed a bill which granted unmarried women family allowances...
...Every child of this land was born from us...
...itself with the same democratic facade as corporativist power which brings together and joins individuals ac- cording to their speciality...
...The women, it seems, had accused Chilean men of being somewhat "lily slivered " 4. In 1964 the great majority of women (63 percent) supported the candidacy of Frel...
...THE CORPORATIVISM* OF WOMEN The constitution promised by the military Junta the day after the coup was to guarantee representation to women in "Parliament" along with corporations, the Armed Forces, youth and political parties...
...Paradoxically, the particular element which the Right was counting on, and which it used with impunity, arose precisely from a sacred part of the dominant ideology-the division between women and politics...
...All the recipes, the fashion pages, interior decorating advice, the horoscopes, jokes, humor, every advertisement, every commentary helped spread the psychosis of hunger and shortages...
...Mattelart's article, through close examination of the tactics employed by the Right, analyzes how the dominant bourgeois ideology served to reinforce a mythology of what was described as the "natural" attributes of women...
...Organized by the Democratic Women's Front, which joined together the female masses of the National and Christian Democratic parties, this demonstration was the first opportunity for the Right, still hesitant and indecisive about which strategy to adopt, to measure the effectiveness of these street actions...
...But when we come home we are faced with something else and, sometimes you cannot convince them...
...Here is a sample which attempts to discredit the social organization of socialist countries in the eyes of the female public...
...The threat which "Marxist totalitarianism" represented for the home, the survival of family ties and the education of children, were and continue to be, the arguments used to stir up world-wide anti-communism...
...By examining the ideological mechanisms used by the Chilean right, we can avoid the misconception that the right's mass mobilization of its feminine contingent could lead to a definitive breakdown of the traditional image of women...
...It is clear that all the factors which contributed to and explain the formation of a right-wing women's front resulted from one important determinant: the relationship between women and the State in a capitalist society...
...In the end, Papelera was never nationalized, but it did become a rallying point for opposition forces both inside Chile and among the bourgeois media abroad...
...However, the leaders of the women's movement against the popular regime seemed to be successors of what was previously called "The Ladies' Club" rather than this handful of young suffragettes or the Women's Civic Party...
...This article examines one aspect of this ideological offensive, specifically the ways in which the Chilean bourgeoisie was able to use women as a source of support and agitation for the forces of reaction...
...15 Until that time, however great their energetic and strong temperaments, and however much they appeared to seek independence and "liberation," these rulingclass Chilean women had always acted along lines prescribed by male authorities...
...Manufacturer de Papeles y Carones-PAPELERA (Paper and Box Manufacturing Company) was controlled by the conservative Alessandri family...
...By offering women the opportunity for obtaining real popular power, the JAPs mark the starting point of a movement for women's emancipation and par ticipatlon...
...At a time when the majority of Chileans were struggling for the basic necessities, these women complained...
...This information was given a feminine slant, involving certain standards of selection and a special analysis of the significant aspects of the subject matter...
...Then the abusive tongues were quick to harp on the distance between "social stations," a distance to be overcome only within the limits set by the bourgeoisie...
...Women's Power" seems to be nothing more than women's natural disposition towards passivity...
...2 (1974), 3.75...
...September is an important month in the current history of Chile...
...The majority of the female electorate preferred the candidates of the Right: 68.3 percent of women voted for Alessandri of the National Party* (38.4 percent) or Tomic of the Christian Democracy (29.9 percent), while Allende won only 30.5 percent of the women's vote...
...The government, however, had to allow pluralistic access to all other sectors of national opinion...
...This child cannot wait until 1976...
...Women must fight and we must help them, stimulate them, educate them...
...They created the illusion of neutralizing or overcoming the effects of marginalization felt by poorer women, thereby diffusing the explosiveness of the situation...
...One of the calls to what was to be the last demonstration lists all the sectors of the female population that the opposition claimed to represent...
...The corrosive force of the women's demonstrations erupted eight days before the coup of September 11, on the occasion of the biggest march organized by the Chilean Right...
...They created a mass-produced "Pasionaria" who leads men into combat, is not content simply to wait for the soldiereher sons, husband or father--to return from war, but who is by no means a singular heroine, in the style of Inez de SuBrez, lover of the conquhtador Pedro de Valdivia, who singlehandedly 16 defended the fort of Santiago against the "savages...
...The last sentence shows us that, according to the logic of sedition, mass demonstrations of the right-particularly those expressing women's opposition-are no more than new forms of old campaigns designed to stir up public opinion towards one final objective: to set the military side of the plot into motion...
...We have no clothes to keep ourselves warm...
...will be able to work honorably, with due consideration to the weakness of their sex and with enough time to carry out their household and family functions...
...Allende fulfill his promise...
...Many women withdraw from paid labor because of marriage and family duties and, contrary to what occurs in more developed countries, they do not reintegrate themselves into the work force at a later date...
...At times the magazine preferred to use that classic method of salvation which the bourgeoisie calls upon to discount people and systems who reveal the class character of their thinking...
...When the Left cannot or does not develop a coherent strategy which takes account of the special oppression of women, the tactics of the Right will fill the vacuum...
...The right's ideological battle against the popular regime, carried out for the "conquest of souls" to use its own expression, was not only implemented through propaganda leaflets...
...They launched the same kind of open aggression on policemen stationed at the JAP locations, raining insults, jeers, even coins upon them, to leave no doubt about their contempt for those who had "sold out" to the popular government...
...Today, in the Junta's more recent declarations, there is more caution, and even a reluctance, to bring up this issue,3 though the generals, who increasingly postpone handing over power to their civilian accomplices in the coup, have not discarded "feminist" proclamations, in which they emphasize that women are one of the pillars of "national reconstruction...
...Weakness...
...The local magazine, Eva, originally owned by a group of Christian Democratic publishers, underwent the most spectacular shift...
...That was the showy side of the women's opposition to the Popular Unity government...
...1 4 Although, strictly speaking, there was no feminist movement in Chile, a small group of women from the ruling class distinguished itself in the early decades of the century in the struggles it waged for political and civil rights...
...It is estimated that, of a total of 50,000 workers at El Tenleate mine, only 5,000 white and blue collar workers followed the strike order issued by the opposition...
...The vast majority of women who belonged to the centres, however, were married...
...4 ** During the period between the elections and the date when the popular forces took office, a group of the oligarchy's women dressed completely in black, like birds of illfortune, surrounded the Moneda in a funeral procession, mourning "the disappearance of democracy in Chile...
...Through the news, the headlines, the radio programs, everywhere, reactionaries (momios) speak to the women who, at times, not23 understanding very much, believe these lies and begin to talk against the government...
...Women served as a "democratic" front for the brutal coup in the same way professional and employer's associations did...
...The day after the coup, when the Right flooded the market with the goods it had stockpiled, its newspapers and magazines described the tears of joy shed by housewives at the sight of the renewed abundance...
...The only change produced by the war-time conditions was-that they only manifested their haughtiness explicitly when they confronted poorer women who refused to join the ranks of bourgeois women...
...A year and a half later another woman from the oligarchy stationed her horse in front of the same Palace, protesting the threatened expropriation of her large landholding...
...At that time, "concern for their homes and families made them leave the tranquility of the household and awakened in them the instincts of a she-wolf who saw her off-spring attacked by the Popular Unity government...
...and creating public opinion research centers...
...When Fidel Castro announced his visit to Chile, the extreme right-wing publications proclaimed: "The tyrant of the Caribbean is coming to steal the bread from your children's mouths...
...But this spokesman for the Brazilian reactionaries is not a man to overlook the possible implications of this type of experience...
...NACLA-East "When we saw the women of Chile on the march, we knew that Allende's days were numbered...
...Chilean women: Mr...
...In other words, its mass political strategy was reflected in the mass media...
...12 Emile Poirier, Chile and the Panamerican Exposition I Buffalo: 1901...
...Its leadership and program were drawn from Fatherland and Liberty and the National Party...
...In times of peace, the ruling class tries to avoid identifying the power of the State with the power of men, so as to leave women with the illusion that they, just like every citizen, are equal before the law, and can maintain a democratic relationship with the State...
...But a mixture of ideas based on a corporativist ideology was already implicit in the creation of this front...
...You cannot day dream...
...Crown Zellerbach held a minority interest in Papelera...
...It described them as great thinkers and inventors, but figures for the museum of ideas who were irrelevant to present times and conditions...
...But working class women participated with exemplary enthusiasm and combativeness in the Left's demonstrations, which were organized without discrimination by sex, always bringing together a more or less equal number of men and women...
...Allende has led this country to catastrophe...
...Starting with a truckers' strike in the southern province of Aysen, the offensive quickly spread throughout the country and into many other sectors controlled by the Right...
...The women will play as important a role as the trade associations, the armed forces and the political parties...
...This took shape in the course of the struggle and crystallized as a conceptual and practical response to Marxism, proposing to remake society on the basis of corporativist power...
...As historical and not "natural" beings, women do not have static identities or characteristics, thus positing not only the potential but the necessity of change as the historical conditions themselves develop...
...The following is an example from the November 23, 1972 issue: All the military forces in the world train their members...
...While the bourgeoisie waited until 1949 to reluctantly grant women the right to vote (a right which they had demanded since 1898) and never favored their petitions for civil rights, under war-time conditions they suddenly rushed to open a loophole in their implicit codes...
...The Right was Movement for the Emancipation of Women in Chile, 1935...
...And, when the supplies ran out, inflation quickly demonstrated the emptiness of their rhetoric...
...Five years ago Salvador Allende, leading a coalition of Leftist parties, unexpectedly won the presidential election which ushered in a period of reform and pre-revolutionary struggle...
...Two weeks could not pass without the metallic meeting-call being sounded on the street corners, between eight and ten at night...
...that to these militant women supporters of the bourgeois order, control of the State was an affair for males and guaranteed their legitimate authority over women...
...With the proven support of imperialism, reactionary forces used all of their powers to recover some of the ground they had lost...
...The call also shows how, bolstered by this sudden "popular" majority created by sleight of hand, the bourgeoisie painted its most violent calls to counterrevolution in democratic colors...
...Even though women of diverse social sectors coexisted in the ranks of the Right, they did so in widely differing proportions, a fact which these invitations had no interest in revealing...
...It is not by chance that these three words, these three principles, were precisely those of Fatherland and Liberty's program, which today gives guidance to the putschist generals...
...In the chronology of violence published by El Mercurio (June 1, 1972) under the heading "1971-72: A Year of Violence Under the Popular Unity," we read: December 1: the largest demonstration of women remembered in the country's history ended in criminal aggression against the women . . . by brigades of Popular Unity count'r- demonstrators...
...The demonstrations were repeated regularly...
...We want them to par- ticipate in the administration of this country...
...Demonstrations were seen as the spontaneous reaction of the most apolitical sector of public opinion, brought together and activated by a natural survival instinct...
...It was not until 1970 that the participation of women from the bourgeoisie ceased to revolve around a few individuals and took on real significance...
...Another powerful issue was the defense of children from the "Marxist yoke...
...In view of Mattelart's specific purpose a context should be provided that remembers and emphasizes the progressive and revolutionary actions of many Chilean women...
...This month marks two years of military dictatorship and two years of growing Resistance by the Chilean people...
...Centros de madres (women's centers): Although literally translated as "mothers' centers," these organizations were composed of women without children as well as mothers...
...The women were no longer afraid to transgress their "code of feminine discretion and modesty...
...That famous first protest, the "March of the Empty Pots and Pans" which took place in December 1971, was one of the factors which led Fidel Castro, then visiting Chile, to declare in his last speech in the National Stadium: "During this first year, the reactionaries have learned more, and more quickly, than the revolutionaries...
...The particular importance of these activities to the bourgeoisie and the ideological and political benefits which they extracted from them were made clear in the conservative press accounts of demonstrations like the march of the "empty pots...
...Lacking a "responsible" father, the bourgeoisie granted itself the right to represent and defend all the meek and oppressed of God's earth...
...Consumption-that necessary ritual of the bourgeois woman-usually directed towards luxury goods, was put forth as an issue of survival based on the needs of bare subsistence...
...Its collective action usurped the banners of the poor people, for whom the price of bread is always what matters most...
...Finally, recall the harassment inflicted by an upper-class woman on General Prats, who was accused of holding the Army to its constitutionalist heritage.* That individual protest took on a collective dimension after the frustrated coup of June 29, 1973, when groups of officer's wives (the same ones who offered their jewels and wedding rings to the Junta to save the Treasury and begin the process of "national reconstruction") demonstrated under General Prats 'windows to make his position more intolerable and thereby erode his moral strength...
...During the years of the Allende government, in particular, the Chilean Right turned the isolation of women within the family and women's isolation from the social relations of the work place, to their own political advantage...
...An indication of the extent of their exploitation is the fact that less than 45 percent of these women are registered by their employer for social security benefits...
...The mass media became the favorite launching pad for the bourgeois offensive...
...Mattelart counters this argument by asserting that women are, in fact, formed by the society and culture in which they live, as well as by the class to which they belong...
...Women's Power (Poder Feminino) was the main right-wing women's organization formed after Allende's election to mobilize women into militant actions against the government...
...The Brazilian Connection," Washington Post, January 6, 1974...
...By helping to clarify the lessons to be learned from the temporary success of the Right in Chile, her article highlights one important factor...
...The same procedure was applied to women who were told to return to their kitchens...
...In fact, only the militancy of the great majority of Chile's workers was able to defeat the October offensive...
...She had travelled by horseback the long distance between the capital and her farm in the South, gathering support from the constituency of right-wing parties along the way...
...7 "There's no meat, there're no eggs/In this new Chile," shouted the women of the Right in front of the Moneda, while daily, like seditious ants, they participated in the * The Cia...
...As we can see, sedition is a school...
...During the march, the women shouted slogans demanding Allende's resignation...
...For example, it was due to the cooperation of many of the women's centers that the supply and price control committees (JAPs), of which we spoke earlier, were able to function in the poorer neigh- borhoods.1 6 Generally speaking, however, these community-level organizations, particularly within the poorer communities, were organized according to the principles of aid to "marginalized" people...
...Moreover, the theorists of Chilean Christian Democracy participated in the planning of the so-called Cruzada del Amor (Crusade of Love) to organize women after the U.S...
...only a very few will benefit from extra food rationing stamps and an extra few yards of material for their homes...
...Soldiers train by doing gymnastics, exercising and attending theoretical classes, which helps them to fight...
...Her purpose is to emphasize the strategy of the bourgeoisie, in activating primarily their own class in defense of their own class interests...
...We should point out, however, that the women's centers, as well as other grass-roots organizations, were to become battlegrounds between the Right and the Left...
...By using this repertoire of arguments and symbols based on mother and child, the Right hoped to legitimize the overthrow of the popular government by any means possible: "Your mother is waiting in line...
...The women's demonstrations were always carried out in the same way...
...At the same time that the Chilean experience reveals the elasticity of the bourgeois concept of "femininity," it also shows the limitations of "liberation" movements based on these concepts...
...The bourgeoisie also broke with the traditional format of the women's press in order to further stimulate the active opposition of women.1 9 In addition to weekly soap operas and serial publications, the Chilean bourgeoisie controlled three magazines...
...We cannot live wars for only a few hours a day...
...Recipes and menus based on "products that could be found" in "times of war" were in one column...
...In the petit bourgeoisie, 88 percent of working women are helped in their household tasks, but only 40 percent of those who do not work have help...
...and 3) the characteristics of women's integration into the production process...
...The main impact of the whole terror campaign was aimed primarily at women...
...Moreover, they reveal very correctly why women respond differently from men...
...In that case I congratulate you...
...On the other hand, and in violent contrast, the bourgeoisie overnight proposed that its women adopt those aspects of themselves which con- stituted "another" feminine reality: women in politics, women in the violent streets, streets which were no longer for window-shopping...
...Allende says he will submit his resignation if the working people request it...
...The whole counter-revolutionary potential of its feminine constituency, converted into an army of mass activists, was thrown into the fray...
...I have declared war on the Popular Unity...
...The children of Chile need a solution now...
...To understand the full meaning of this phenomenon, we must consider not only the qualitative rupture between the newspapers that supported the popular government and the media controlled by the Right, but also have to take into account the purely quantitative aspect...
...They were first formed during the government of Eduardo Frei (1964-1970...
...or, "Everyday it is harder to be a good housewife...
...This child cannot wait until 1976...
...Today, Wednesday the 5th, at 5 PM, in front of the Catholic University and in every Chilean city, women will make Mr...
...Defenselessness...
...A conflict atEl Teniente, the world's largest underground copper mine, affected copper production in Chile from late April to June 1973...
...From the Ministry of Education they demanded schools and overcame material scarcity by proposing that old buses be converted into classrooms...
...During the years of the Popular Unity...
...In other words, they were based on norms of participation and ideological frameworks which, given a climate of constant confrontation and the aid of right-wing parties, made them effective tools in the mobilization of women in favor of the traditional system...
...With this ability one can carry out more forceful actions, mobilize tirelessly and use time more effectively...
...The "emancipation" of ruling-class Chilean women rests, in fact, on the exploitation of poor women who migrate from rural areas...
...are not partaking in this struggle...
...Take, for example, the case of the women who threw corn at soldiers as if they were chickens...
...It does not affect us men as much because we do not listen to the radio all day...
...TOWARDS THE DISCOVERY OF SOME PRECEDENTS We will highlight three of the many factors which help to explain how the Chilean Right was able to mobilize the important and effective woman's front when needed: 1) the presence--both mythical and real--of certain features in the personality of Chilean women...
...The articles encouraged women to intensify their combativeness and even gave them precise instructions...
...In effect, a movement of double mystification was in operation...
...A Brazilian engineer (who acknowledged that he had other interests than those of his profession) made this declaration to a journalist from the Washington Post in January 1974.1 During the same interview he claimed that direct responsibility for mobilizing the women belonged to far- right wing organizations and Brazilian bosses...
...The other way in which working-class and petit-bourgeois women participated was in demonstrations in support of the strike movement involving their husbands, sons and brothers...
...Nevertheless, an important question remains to be an- swered: what happened to the conception of women in the dominant ideology...
...Women are not active if they do not promote the collection of funds and registration in work groups, whether for social work (Hogar de Cristo, Mi Casa, La Gota de Leche, the Red Cross), or Dolitical action.25 This chronicle closed by calling on women to sign up for training in the "regular armies" (the political parties), the "fifth column" (infiltration in the enemy's ranks) or in the guerrilla movement (direct action used against Marxists...
...We have no medicine for our sick...
...The loss of the code of gallantry, although women were the first to break it, was hailed as the first sign of the total destruction of civilization obstinately sought by Allende...
...It no longer relied solely on a few minds capable of turning out propaganda...
...or "So and so invited me to a meeting," etc...
...These words, which could have been spoken by a con- temporary, go beyond the anectote and the tourist's myth that in Chile, the beauty of women is only equalled by the warmth and body of the wine...
...But this opposition also had an everyday side, the incessant traffic in rumors carried out in the home or among groups of friends in the neighborhoods...
...No woman can fail to be present today at 5 PM...
...They helped activate every reflex against the "popular regime" by nurturing a nostalgia for the good old days, by drawing a bleak picture of the future and making the government look inept and the situation unbearable...
...Macho semantics appear throughout the favorite list of insults which the women used against the popular masses and against the forces of order which remained loyal to the government...
...It was initiated after the Right was defeated in the bosses' lockout of October 1972* and continued to appear regularly under the title, "Women's Plan for Action...
...This intellectual nourishment will clarify why we are struggling...
...These women's centers brought together a group of mothers to carry our specifically women-oriented tasks...
...The words used in another call to the last right-wing demonstration show how the bourgeoisie claimed to represent the working people by means of the womanmother symbol (i.e...
...and organizing and feeding the black market...
...We must remain in the trenches, as an exaniple to others, with sacrifice, engaging in action during the whole day...
...government, a state of heightened class war existed, that spurred the rapid expansion of women's consciousness, especially among working class and poor sectors...
...The concept of women which cloaked the ruling-class ideology was used, in effect, to avoid class antagonisms and to obscure the understanding that class, not individual contradictions were primary...
...Gymnastics...
...The ghost of hunger and the specter of Marxism were slogans that constantly appeared Los Nifios Chilenos Necesitan una Solucion AHORA OJARPA Ad placed in El Mercurio by Sergio Onofre Jarpa, the head of the National Party, for the March 1973 Parliamentary elections: "His mother is waiting in a line...
...All were encircled by helmeted, chain-bearing militants of the extreme Right's paramilitary group, "Fatherland and Liberty," which had an active women's branch and was openly seditious...
...2 General Leigh spoke these words-an unusual addition to the annals of world fascism-in the days immediately following the coup...
...The wives of the strikers of El Teniente copper mine were called "the heroic wives of the miners" by the Right-wing press which was delighted to be able to claim a women's solidarity movement of the kind which had previously belonged exclusively to the Leftist tradition of struggle for the emancipation of the Latin American people (for example, the marches organized by the miners' wives in Bolivia).** The truckers' wives prepared "free communal soup" on the street corners of Santiago to attract the pity of passers-by and to gain the general public's support...
...All of this meant: "you can't get it up," or, in other words, you're impotent...
...The main contingent was made up of bourgeois women of all ages who arrived in automobiles, often accompanied by their maids...
...The bourgeoisie began to define its audience in terms of the role they could play within the counter-revolutionary movement and the particular in- terests which motivated each sector...
...Who do they think they are...
...Spirit of sacrifice...
...These threats are designed to paralyze women and to push to the extreme the conservative features of the dominant feminine culture...
...When the Popular Unity tried to resolve the problem of scarcity of products by creating the JAPs (distribution and price control committees), Right-wing women supported the merchants' opposition to this egalitarian distribution system systematically sabotaging the JAPs (with greater or lesser success, depending on the neighborhood...
...read any dignity at all into this spectacle--the state of deprivation to which the Popular Unity had reduced her...
...They could no longer be openly content with the fact that women were given passive roles-as mothers, spouses, housewives-through which they had traditionally guaranteed the reproduction of society's crucial values...
...These comments were recorded during a study of popular media and television In Santiago in 1972...
...Of course, the popular government was doing everything possible to protect the price and supply of bread...
...This aspect of right-wing propaganda, while complementary to the one previously mentioned, was perhaps characteristic of the more moderate sectors of the right-wing coalition's strategy for opposition to the popular government...
...It came to life in the streets...
...Firstly, they worked with community organizations created by the previous government and in many cases still controlled by Christian Democrats...
...since it was such a strategic industry...
...She followed his car, repeatedly shouting insults at him...
...One should not think that the women of the Right, members of the moneyed class in their vast majority, abandoned their class stereotypes or divested themselves of their sense of superiority when they moved a step closer to the women of other sectors...
...In its place, the reactionary forces developed an image of the universal wornadmothel.--the reproducers of all labor power, the bearers of future generations-which attempted to liquidate all class distinctions and antagonistic interests...
...We will cite them as they come to mind...
...The people who supported it were few in number, and were only captives of violence and fanaticism...
...Since structural changes were not made, the Right was able to defuse much of women's anger, energy and class understandings...
...As we dedicate this issue to women, we also express our solidarity with the Chilean people as a whole...
...In fact, the few professional associations (colegios) in which women were in the majority fully participated in the Central Confederation of Chilean Professional Associations (Confederaci6n Unica de las Corporaciones Profesionales de Chile...
...Education: As physical aspects are not enough, the mind also has to be trained...
...The following observations by two Santiago factory workers 8 indicate that this sector accurately assessed women's particular vulnerability to this strategy of journalistic manipulation...
...Conceived to integrate women from the popular sectors into a "communitarian" society, these centers reinforced a conservative ideology...
...The constant pressure placed on Prats culminated in day-long protests carried out by officers' wives in front of his house...
...Between November 1970 and June 1973, El Mercurio devoted 120 editorials to the women's front...
...At first, the women's front, coupled with such issues as the shortage of supplies, allowed the Right to mobilize women and, through them, the consumer (that anonymous representative of the middle class), against the policies of the Popular Unity...
...We have no bread for our children...
...She has written extensively about women and culture and is presently living in France...
...Finally, on August 23, 1973, Prats succumbed to the pressure and resigned both his positions, thus removing the last barrier to the coup of September I 1. The opposition women's movement was not limited to sectors of the upper and middle bourgeoisie, as the above examples tend to indicate...
...In the period of intensifying class struggle which Chile experienced between 1970 and 1973, women who were dependent on and complicit in bourgeois ideology, reproduced in the face of what they mistakenly understood to be an Institutional crisis the same behavior as that prescribed by the dominant culture in terms of their relations to men...
...The National Party, which represented a merging of the older Conservative and Liberal Parties, was only founded after the elections...
...Published in La Tercera de Ia Hora (Santiago, Chile), September 23, 1973...
...No doubt they thought the "light" burden of their servitude was a thousand times compensated for the advantages they gained: order and comfort inside their homes, relative freedom of movement outside the household and the "veneration" of the "stronger sex...
...Excerptfrom the speech given by the wife of the President of the military Junta to the "Mothers of Chile...
...3 (March 1970), and "Apuntes sobre lo modern: una manera de leer el magazine," Case de las Americal (March-April 1973...
...In 1970 the same operation was repeated, but with greater violence and a different slant...
...This State, represented by the forces of order, had to symbolize a macho among machos...
...It should be noted, however, to limit the application of this comparison, that contrary to Brazil, where the demon- strators marched while reciting their rosaries, the Chilean Right did not so often appeal to its women's sense of religion (a slightly shaky tactic as far as the Chilean urban masses are concerned...
...Eva, February 1973)20 March 22: a demonstration by a group of cripples against the legal red-tape required to import artificial limbs and other implements turned into a heated confrontation with carbineros who carried out the orders of their superiors with excessive force...
...1 0 Listen to the leaders of "Women's Power": Chilean women, whose suffering, humiliation and heroism saved the hope of freedom for Chile...
...The usefulness of women lies in the fact that they can convince the military that they are supported by an important sector of the population...
...In an interview with foreign journalists, its editor admitted her intention to make it an instrument of agitation...
...In terms of the adult family, that figure falls to 11 percent for women...
...Therefore, Women's Power calls upon all Chilean women to demonstrate once again their inexhaustible spirit of scarifice.ll 1 Self-denial...
...The constitutionalist soldiers and the merchants who cooperated with the JAPs were called "cowards," "homosexuals," sodomistss...
...Learning once again to be obedient, many women from the popular sectors were effectively demobilized...
...Women of the shantytowns began to support the Left in direct struggle against the bourgeoisie, particularly around issues of community control...
...On the one hand, they attempted to confiscate the "workers' network" (Channel 9 of the University of Chile) and, on the other, they tried to extend throughout the country Channel 13 (the Catholic University of Santiago's network) which unconditionally supported the seditious movement...
...November 10, 1971) Do we have to say it again...
...When the coup broke out, it was the truckers' wives who were found on the stairs of the Senate in the midst of a hunger strike already several days old...
...The purpose of these accounts and commentaries is to convey the image of a Marxist government as the instigator of violence, chaos, and aggression against women and the community...
...For more information on the situation of women in Chile before the Popular Unity government, see Armand and Michele Mattelart, La muler ctilena an una nueva socidad, an investigative study on the situation and image of women in Chile (Santiago, Chile: Editorial el Pacifico), 1968...
...Quimantui finally able to capitalize on the "social integration" of the population which the "participation-oriented" Frei administration had encouraged...
...they proved them- selves unyielding, ready to defend what was just...
...The Right also had the support of certain working-class and petit-bourgeois women...
...While women mobilized by the Right were banging empty pots, many working class and poor women were mobilizing to demand nationalization of all private food distribution...
...These women increasingly confirmed themselves in and limited themselves to their exclusive role as mothers and wives under the tutelage of women from the middle and even upper bourgeoisie...
...In all of them the symbol and noisemaker was an empty pot beaten with its top or with a cooking spoon...
...Not a heroine because, in the end, these unique women only serve to consecrate the normalcy of a life outside of combat...
...See our analysis of the women's press: "El nivel mitico de la prensa seudoamorosa," Cuadernos de Ia Realidad Nacional (Santiago, Chile), No...
...Crises typically reveal certain features which do not pertain exclusively to them...
...On the other hand, General Leigh, in January 1974, attacked a program produced for Chilean television by a group of women who actively participated in the opposition movement against Allende...
...exclaimed the bourgeois women when they saw the women of the revolutionary masses (their sisters...
...This is described in a song which was sung so many times during popular demonstrations: "The Right has two pots, one very small and one quite large/The first is beaten in the streets, the second is used to hoard and accumulate...
...The concept derives from the medieval guilds or "corporations," and not modern business corporations...
...The convulsive developments in21 the actions of these Chilean women over the last three years was due, in great part, to the particular conditions of women in this country...
...Yet there are limits to this so-called class solidarity...
...The second part, devoted to the fabulous dishes of the past, was intended to underline the meagerness of the present, and pictured the incredible banquets of the landed oligarchy...
...We call all women to a commitment of honor Wednesday, September 5, at 5:00 PM...
...Right-wing women protest the high price of cars during the UP government...
...VII I, No...
...This can be done by reading the newspaper at least three times a week...
...A look at the editorials, a few other sections and the many details spread throughout the magazine is enough to convince even the most inexpert reader of its new character-unheard of in a magazine of this type...
...But we must not forget or lose sight of the fact that reactionaries everywhere, through instinct or the will to survive, are capable of generating an ominous universalization of their methods and strategies...
...By the next day the rumor will be all over the country...
...He revealed that Brazil, in addition to lending paramilitary support, aided the Chilean right in two ways: planning fot the mobilization of women...
...Founded in 1971, it became the first corporativist front against the Popular Unity...
...This same symbolic -point appears-this time even further embellished-in El Mercurio's account of another incident, published in the same chronology of violence...
...On June 27, 1973, two days before an abortive coup, Fatherland and Liberty sent one of its women to harass General Prats, Minister of the Interior and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, as he was being driven to work...
...they an endowed with a great emotional capacity and they mobilize very rapidly...
...At the crux of this change was a new conception of who was listening to their messages...
...On the other hand, within the repertoire of demands which emerged from these demonstrations, the Right tried-its caution diminishing more each time--to move beyond the specific field of women to surreptitiously include, clearly political demands shared with other opposition sectors...
...This relationship was directly tied to a phenomenon which22 grew considerably under the popular government...
...There were two ways in which these women could participate...
...As a sign of gratitude for her services, the Chilean woman was to be rewarded with direct representation in the future "Parliament," together with corporations, the Armed Forces and youth...
...The other order, on the contrary, was full of deception...
...At the same time, their husbands received far more than what they could have earned by working from the imperialists, in return for carrying on their strike...
...Allende does not deserve to be President of the Republic...
...The traditional image of women, which the Junta's rhetoric glorified in its full reactionary sense, emerged safe and sound from this confrontation with history to restore women to their pedestal as titular guardians of Family, Homeland and Property...
...One grotesque detail remains to be mentioned...
...When the food supply problem became a daily concern, it was not uncommon for women from the popular sectors to wait in long lines at the market place to purchase goods at the official price and then sell them at a good price (although not as high as the black market price) to madrinas (patrons) in the wealthier neighborhoods...
...During most of the three years of UP government, the Left demanded that the company be nationalized...
...military and the CIA in this process.1 But the ideological offensive unleashed by the Chilean Right was no less important and only slightly more subtle...
...Paradoxically, the rightwing's ethics repudiated the frivolous softening of women produced by consumer society, that society which this struggle intended to restore...
...The magazine opened its readers to Marx, Lenin and Mao (so they could take on their intellectual adversaries) by focusing on the difficulties suffered by their wives, daughters and companeras...
...Of course, this arrogance and assurance is displayed only now, when sedition has apparently been crowned with success...
...Cor- porativist ideology is highly complex, containing residues of feudal ideology, the nostalgia of petit-bourgeois producers for artisan-like production in the face of increasing industrialization and proletarianization, the concept of class collaboration between "equal partners" working together under the arbitration of a powerful state, etc...
...Innocence...
...WOMEN'S MEDIA IN THE HOUR OF KARATE The most advanced sectors of the working class had a clear understanding of the role which the bourgeois media would play when the bourgeoisie went on the offensive...
...Although It is not our Intention in this article to analyze the Popular Unity's mobilization of women, one aspect of It must be clarified: when the Left organized women's demonstrations in order to respond to the R Ight, they were not as spectacular nor did they assemble as many people as those of the Right...
...Papelera was the largest pulp and paper company in Latin America, and turned out much of Chile's newsprint...
...They participated in vaccination campaigns, sanitation control and the teaching of preventive medicine...
...According to the 1970 census, only slightly more than 19 percent of women above the age of twelve earn wages for work outside the home, compared with 69 percent of men...
...This conception of women (which gained a formidable tactical rationality in the struggle) provided a tangible bond which cut through all social sectors...
...Books by John Le Carre, Leon Uris, Vicky Baum also help illustrate the totalitarian methodology...
...trying to organize food distribution systems in their communities by themselves...
...Mothers, do not allow the children whom you put to sleep or comfort with tenderness and sacrifice to be struck by hate, that evil which turns human beings into beasts who destroy their fellow creatures...
...Among the participants were the Nurses' Association, the Social Workers' Association, the Midwives' Association, the Librarians' Association...
...Economic life under corporativist states was divided into numerous areas (22 in Italy), with a corporation established in each area...
...The last one before the coup was also a women's demonstration...
...In this dispute, the clerical tendency took sides in the classic antagonism between public and private schools...
...Much has already been written about the Right's sabotage in the economic, political and military arenas and the corresponding material support and strategic guidance of the U.S...
...Look at those plebians...
...By putting a few women from the popular classes in the front lines, the bourgeoisie waves the flags of the proletariat...
...We often forget that women's confinement to the home is the constant reference point for television and radio programming...
...invasion...
...Your sons and daughters will be sent to Moscow," "They will be forced to denounce their parents," read the leaflets...
...Listen to Mrs...
...The women usurped thetitle under which their husbands participated in the general movement set into action by corporations, truckers, doctors, etc...
...But in order to fulfill this role, the media had to undergo an important change...
...Women were given the right to enter the University in 1877...
...It was common to hear leisure-class women in their forties comment to each other: "So and so called me up...
...It also indicates the level of hysteria attained by the subversive movement: Chilean woman: Mr...
...If one wishes, for example, to spread the rumor that the President is inclined to drink, or that he has heahh problems, just use women...
...Common law marriages are frequent, and as the men often abandon the home, women become the real pillar of family unity and act in an appropriate fashion...
...Gymnastics: Articles in Eva recommend exercises to lose weight and correct figure defects...
...And, "by the historic 'March of the Empty Pots and Pans' they showed the government that . . . , if necessary, they would leave their cozy kitchens to go on the warpath...
...Women's Civic Party, organized at the same time as the Student Federation in 1920, fought for the right to vote but then lost all popular support when it campaigned to legalize divorce...
...6. The closest translation of "gremialista" is "corporativist...
...They never lowered their heads by ac- cepting something they did not want...
...These areas might be composed of the military, employers, merchants, workers, professionals, peasants, etc...
...In fact the vast majority of the female population remains outside the process of economic production...
...We cannot fail to notice a similarity to the fate of business corporations which were goaded to open political action during the entire counter-revolutionary phase and then restricted to their purely technical functions by the Right once it had regained state power...
...Almost 40 percent of working women are employed as servants or do washing or ironing in private homes, a kind of work which tends to break down the bonds of solidarity with their own class...
...Twenty percent of economically active Chilean women are factory workers of which a very small percentage is unionized...
...As well, beyond the limits of the community, women actively participated along with men in the struggles of the Left...
...Although the Right offered thousands of workers salaries for not working, most rejected these attempts to win their support for the reactionary offensive...
...The UP government proposed to create a Ministry of the Family and did develop a national women's organization, the Patriotic Women's Front, to deal with the problems of women's participation in the political process...
...Later, the Brazilians who helped organize the march compared it to the women's protest in Sao Paulo which preceded the fall of Joao Goulart in 1964 by fifteen days...
...Pinochet piously admonish her counterparts while the Moneda Palace still smoldered and the Mapocho River carried away the first corpses: The cry from your hearts will be the salvation of everyone...
...A CALL FOR GALLANTRY, IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING The pages of El Mercurio, the oldest newspaper of the Chilean bourgeoisie, were filled with testimonies which revealed that the Right was not about to exclude women and the organizations in which they were present, from a strategy to overthrow the popular government particularly when this strategy rested on the mobilization of mass fronts...
...They began to demand that health clinics be set up in the shantytowns and were trained as medics and doctors-helpers...
...The conservative press hailed her as the Amazon of liberty...
...ON FOOT, HORSEBACK AND BY CAR A number of episodes attest to the constant presence of women in the crucial moments of class confrontation during the three years of the popular regime...
...The march of the empty pots" was in- tercepted by police only a few yards from the intersection of the Alameda and Miraflores Street when comaabineros threw tear gas bombs, causing the indignation of the marching women and spectators...
...And, in speeches, women were used to goad men's consciences...
...Two were local publications, Eva and Paula, and the third, Vanidades, was really a Panamerican mouthpiece, conceived in Miami but printed in Santiago for national distribution...
...This issue was brought up mere sporadically, usually through the centros de apoderados (parent-teacher associations) which were organized in national federations and relied on the decisive support of ruling-class and petit-bourgeois mothers...
...1 7 If this were not the case, the reactionary professional associations would not have bothered to incorporate them but would have used them simply in their capacity as housewives...
...moreover, traced the line of continuity between women's demonstrations and rumor and public opinion campaigns...
...Their activities only served to reveal the high price they attached to this order...
...Government and opposition politicians were discredited or praised, according to their physical appearance or their behavior in private life--subjectivity and even lies went a long way-rather than according to the political program which they implemented or upheld...
...The formation of a women's "popular front" (it was no longer a question of relying on spontaneity) was no doubt facilitated by the mechanisms of women's integration instituted by the previous administration...
...now they have to be won by sweating it out in line...
...At that time the women did not take to the streets, but, on January 8, 1948, about 40 women burst into the Chamber of Deputies and forced the men of their own class to grant them the right to vote...
...On several occasions these women were responsible for provoking the Army, stirring up the soldiers' machismo and ambitions of power...
...Chilean reactionaries planned a major offensive against the UP government for October 1972...
...She runs out into the street to demand bread, while she implacably builds up her storehouse...
...Chilean women should follow this method, which has proved so effective the world over...
...In the same issue of November 23, 1972, twenty pages were devoted to food...
...Jarpa esra mucnanao por el OJARPA Typical ad placed by the Right for the March 1973 Parliamentary elec- tions, also for Jarpa, the head of the National Party: "I have hope in the future of my child--Jarpa is fighting for him...
...It is necessary to appraise the full importance of this question accurately, because the traditional image of women, nurtured by the Chilean bourgeoisie (as much or more than any other bourgeoisie), was at the point of breaking down...
...CHILE: THE FEMININE COUP OR WHEN BOURGEOIS WOMEN TAKE TO THE STREETS '1...
...By defining women on the basis of natural rather than historical attributes, the dominant ideology laid the groundwork for the conception of women's corporativism which emerged from the Junta's declaration...
...For example: "The women really taught us, the men, a lesson...
...9. For more on the Chilean bourgeoisie's "mass line" and its evolution after the coup towards a corporativlst fascist regime, see Armand Mattelart, Mdlios masivos de communication, ideologies y movimienlo revoluclonarlo (Paris: Anthropos), 1974 10...
...2. El Mercurlo (Santiago, Chile), September 23, 1973...
...The "Ladies' Club," made up of the most upper-crust aristocrats, clamored against such scandal and, by calling it a threat to good manners and family stability, managed to have the party dissolved...
...They met every challenge with resistance...
...Those actors on the stage of national life who were authorized to enter onto Eva's pages as affable, peaceful and "calming," were the representatives of the Armed Forces...
...Under the headline "Women's Brutal Work," this editorial tried to warn "those women workers and employees who, happy to the point of euphoria, were going to a political propaganda meeting": Only a few of these women will reach management-level jobs or positions at a higher level in the bureaucracy...
...Thus, these figures represent actual voting statistics and not projections from public opinion polls...
...They set up a network of organizations at the grassroots level, such as neighborhood committees, cultural centers and above all, women's centers (centros de madres...
...Most of the centers were organized around handicraft tasks: making lampshades, pot holders, etc...
...It is certainly important to emphasize the particular characteristics of the Chilean case, and likewise the unique aspects of the situation of Chilean women...
...6 Note the proletarianization of the demands of the bourgeois woman...
...This led to a major incident when she later charged that Prats took out his gun and fired at her car...
...It won the support of the ultra- reactionary national organization of large landowners (SNA) and the national association of manufacturers (SOFOFA), not to mention the National Party and Fatherland and Liberty.18 We call on Women transport workers, women of the Papelera,* peasant women, pobladoras, women students and merchants, secretaries, nurses, social workers, housewives, professional women and women of Chile's Gremios...
...As a sign of reproach for what they considered a lack of virility in the Chilean soldiers, these women often threw corn at the walls of the Military Acade- my, as one throws feed to barnyard chickens...
...In March 1972 the Right decided to rely primarily upon its "masses," relegating to a secondary position traditional means of pressure and attack (the Parliament, the courts, the parties, the Comptroller's office-a kind of auditor's office converted into a veritable state within the state...
...Allende was elected with 36.2 percent of the vote on September 4, 1970...
...We have no walls for shelter...
...One particular section blatantly contributed to the task of mobilizing its readers...
...Thanks to the universal character of Nature, the condition of being a woman would guarantee the fundamental unity of interests between all women, over and beyond any social, economic or ideological differences...
...8. El Mercurio, September 4, 1973...
...The children of Chile need a solution NOW...
...For example, in Chile, the Right was trying to divide the women question from all political and class content but they experienced only a temporary success that has been undermined entirely in two years of military dictatorship...
...4 (April 1974...
Vol. 9 • September 1975 • No. 6
