Abstract
The cover of Gwynn Thomas’s exciting new book shows a black and white image of a Chilean family: husband, wife, and three kids. The husband, guiding “his” little group, holds the colorful Chilean Flag in his right hand, simultaneously raising his left fist high against the sky. The father’s gesture conveys action, dedication, and leadership, and the first son, by his father’s side, eagerly raises his small fist just the same. The woman, wife and mother, walks behind her husband. With an expression of quiet concern on her face, she offers protective cover to her daughter and younger son. The image succinctly portrays what is central to Thomas’s analysis: the nuclear patriarchal family, at the heart of Chilean political struggles and contestations over citizenship rights and obligations. Key to the history of this family image is its usefulness as a metaphor in the discourses of both the political left and the right. Family rhetoric has long made or unmade politicians and parties, and it has also contributed to the reproduction of gender inequalities and the construction of male leaders and female followers. Here, a fresh look on family rhetoric as a political lens offers new and rewarding insights on the dramatic changes that shaped Chilean politics from 1970 to 1990, ranging from the short-lived government of a socialist president (1970–73), to dictatorship, to the beginning of redemocratization (1988–90).
In “real life,” the image on the cover of Thomas’s book was used by an influential organization of Chilean women, Movimiento de Mujeres Populares (MOMUPO), which publicly identified with feminist causes (p. 193). In response to the violence of dictatorship, MOMUPO brought together women from poor neighborhoods, promoted human rights and women’s rights, and became by the late 1980s known as one of the most active voices in campaigns in favor of women’s political participation. For MOMUPO organizers, the image of the idealized family served to draw public attention to the contrast between the harmonious picture the military dictatorship used in government propaganda and the harsh reality of family life under military rule. In this period, human rights abuses and economic difficulties contributed to domestic difficulties where male breadwinners were often unemployed or absent, or where domestic violence and alcohol abuse shattered the hope for familial harmony. In awareness-raising campaigns, MOMUPO activists appealed to women’s concerns for their families’ welfare. Reference to family ideals helped to bring women into the streets, contributed a new sense of political responsibility, and urged women to mobilize in defense of their families. Thomas convincingly illustrates the success of MOMUPO’s campaigns that also helped convince fellow women that their domestic tribulations, their inability to keep their families together, and the economic conditions that made it difficult to feed their children did not stem from their individual failure, but from the shortcomings of a larger political system implemented by the military. The history of MOMUPO supplies one powerful example of women who employed familial appeals in defense of citizenship rights, but Contesting Legitimacy also contributes new understandings to multiple alternative uses of familial appeals to foster political and social agendas.
Strikingly, the patriarchal family served as a useful tool in the rhetoric of both the political right and the left. The political turmoil of the late twentieth century has led some scholars to speak of Chile as a nation of enemies, shaped by clearly distinguishable political fronts on opposite sides of seemingly irreconcilable goals. Yet, familial discourses reveal a more complicated picture of the political negotiations at the time. In 1970, Chilean voters elected the first socialist president in Latin American history, Salvador Allende. His coalition government, the Popular Unity (UnidadPopular), led the country on a peaceful road to socialism, within the margins of the constitution. Only three years later, a military coup ended the peaceful experiment and interrupted Chile’s long democratic tradition. A military junta, and shortly thereafter General Augusto Pinochet, presided over a new political order that disintegrated only when economic crisis and political protests led to a plebiscite in 1988. The first democratically elected president of a new era, Patricio Aylwin, took office in 1990.
In the midst of the radically different political views of democratic leaders and the military in the period under study, all leaders shared similar concern over the destruction of what they referred to as the traditional family: a man, a woman, and children produced in the union of marriage. In the political uses of family, opposing sides deeply disagreed about the origins of threats to old family norms, about what could lead to the further increase of nontraditional families, and about how to respond to such “unwanted” families. Nonetheless, all agreed that alternative family forms, either single-parent households or nontraditional unions, represented political and social problems that threatened the nation. Left and right, as well as men and women, mobilized in defense of the same idealized, traditional family, yet in different ways.
In the initial period under study, President Allende’s Popular Unity government, we see the first evidence of new patterns of women’s mobilization. In 1973, in response to economic crisis, to a lack of access to basic consumer goods, and to growing insecurity as a result, Chileans witnessed the largest public mobilization of women at the time. Angry housewives, many of them from the better-off neighborhoods, marched in the streets of downtown Santiago, the Chilean capital, effectively interrupting the everyday routine by banging empty pots and pans. The message was clear: a government that does not allow women to feed their families needs to go. The now-famous March of Empty Pots and Pans was dominated by politically conservative rhetoric, and was most effectively used by women and men of the political right who contributed to the end of President Allende’s rule. Yet, it set precedence for a new pattern of women’s political mobilization based on family values, capably presented in Thomas’s book: women’s focus on familial ideals implied both continuity and change, and conservative understandings of family could contribute progressive patterns of political participation.
In the subsequent political order, conservative mothers’ political protests, predominantly from the middle and elite sectors of Chilean society, were replaced by those of other groups of women from all spheres of society. Under dictatorship, women responded to new threats to the family: under General Pinochet, human rights abuses, and economic troubles jeopardized familial harmony. Women, mothers, and wives, now braved the streets to find missing husbands or children. They also exposed the contradictions of the family rhetoric under dictatorship: the regime destroyed the same harmonious family it publicly claimed to defend. MOMUPO, and a wide range of other women’s groups, took action in defense of the family. Some of them expanded their demands, and linked family to human rights and even feminist concerns. Feminine and feminist organizations gave their support to campaigns in the 1988 plebiscite that asked Chileans to vote yes or noto either extend or end Pinochet’s regime. The campaigns on both sides of the dictatorship, once again, appealed to the need to protect, or save, the traditional family, but severely disagreed about the best ways to provide this protection. The no-campaign won by a narrow margin, voted Pinochet out of office, and embarked on a new political road.
Contesting Legitimacy illustrates that widely shared familial beliefs provided an undeniable continuity in Chilean politics, and contributed to the crafting of new political goals under redemocratization. Under dictatorship, many women accepted new responsibilities of political participation, and expanded their role in traditional families to include political participation for the sake of their families. Yet, a close look at the politics of redemocratization reveals that the same use of familial rhetoric that opened up some new spaces for women also contributed to the closing of those spaces that potentially threatened the old familial order. As women contributed to the shaping of the Concertación, the coalition government under Christian Democratic leadership that would lead redemocratization in the 1990s, only moderate women, whose political demands remained rooted in the traditional family framework, were allowed to increase their interpretive power and contribute to the shaping of politics. Those who deviated from the norm, who dared to adopt an independent, feminist rhetoric that threatened traditions, remained active mostly in nongovernmental organizations and removed from party politics. Social conservatism, confirmed and reproduced through familial discourse, has remained as one of the keystones of political negotiations on the long road to democratization.