Chilean Feminism and Pinochet’s Regime Creating Bachelet

Yasmin Ibarra

Professor Malik

INT 202

Chilean Feminism and Pinochet’s regime creating Bachelet

This essay is analyzing roles, experiences, and positions of women in relation to Pinochet’s dictatorship. Women rising up to the array of positions of leadership in Chile was a consequence from Pinochet’s autocracy. It was a time when the government began to focus on achieving greater equality and social inclusion in Chile. Chilean women, in particular, played a distinctive role in Pinochet’s reconstruction of Chilean society. These women were physically and mentally tortured into believing they were tarnished for what was done to them, as if they were responsible for what had happened to them. Women came to understand their experiences would mold them into leaders. In 2006, Chile elected its first female president, Michelle Bachelet.

Keywords: Chilean, women, Pinochet, political, leaders

Latin American female leaders’ rising up to the political and social sphere was no surprise to the world. After the late 1900s, a new political and social actor began to emerge: trailblazing Chilean women. Michelle Bachelet was one of them: an influential leader who later on became the president with the aide of female empowerments throughout the Chilean state. Researching Chilean women presented a different stance: all of Pinochet’s effects on women helped them see that they could make a difference for their lives and for the next generation of women. By looking at these women, we can see through a gendered lens the prominent contributions of human and political rights they have molded and guarded in Chile.

Occurrences in a Chilean women’s life during and after Pinochet’s regimen, pushed for the first female president elect.  The coup of General Pinochet was able to impede the political and social independence for Chileans. His government created a world of fear. The military dictatorship under Pinochet’s rule had thousands detained, tortured, and executed for reasons ranging from having opposing political views to being caught in the crossfire.

Sufferings of particular women helped the development of the future trailblazers of Chile. Authoritarian officials routinely used dehumanization in prisons and concentration camps on women. The women were tortured physically and psychologically during Pinochet’s regime. Throughout the research it was commonly seen that military officials would use their authoritative aura to bring the women down. Nieves Ayress, a victim, told her story with the help of her mother and other women, Inger Agger, Paz Alegria, and many more who had similar experiences (Agger, 1989). They took their experiences and created organizations and groups that helped women who experienced similar situations. “Women in the concentration camps of Latin America experienced a form of gender distortion that exaggerated the sexuality that they had been socialized to hide,” states Agger. These women were being silenced. According to Agger (1989), women are made to feel guilty because the torture they suffer “is the activation of sexuality to induce shame and guilt.” Women were being shamed into believing what occurred to them was from their own wrongdoing. The sufferings are later on used as a tool that empowers the women into halting the wrong doings of all women and men.

The women began to use their experiences of oppression as a point to detach from the pain and put themselves into the leadership arena. Women groups arose by organizing and analyzing the capitalism ways of their state also included more analysis on women’s freedom in the political activity. The women created three groups: the Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights, Women of Chile, and Movement of Shantytown Women (Jaquette, 1994). Women continued to put in effort to try to end Pinochet’s rule and to advocate for the democratic government by preserving the citizenship rights of both women and men.  The influence of, “Feminist ideas and feminist organizing,” began to take its place (Enloe, 2014). Inclemency influenced rose in modernism, and women throughout Latin America began to develop into who they are now, leaders. These women joining together as organizers and critical thinkers were beginning to change a rightist world. Female employees, students, and professionals were the first to organize against the dictatorship and in defense of human rights. In 1983, feminist generated the motto for their protests, "Democracy in the country and in the home" (Franceschet, 2014). Which was a possible turning point for all Chilean women to fight for what was right. Women worked endlessly to stop the dictatorship and bring forth the absence of democracy.

The struggles of scarcity and marginalization arose groups that encouraged the idealistic understandings of women’s self-education and self-empowerment. The women created several groups; these two were called “ollas communes” and “comprando juntas” (Jaquette 69). Community roles in society and in the political sector began to be taken on by women who were being pressed by the increase of feminist groups wanting to rise up to make a change. A woman started to become an authoritative figure inside and outside her home, which was one of the important consequences of Pinochet’s ruling. These women realized that they were able to gain power like a man and lead it back to a democratic state.

The rebellion against the regime was ineffectively accomplished by the multitudes organized in opposition to Pinochet. But these people continued on to fight. Paul Shafer was one of the many followers of Pinochet that created detention camps that tortured those who were against Pinochet’s rule; many women, children, and political individuals especially those who were in a leftist mindset were imprisoned in a camp called, Colonia Dignidad (Mark, 1998). These locations, in the camps, prisons, and stadiums were abusing many human rights. Another ploy that Pinochet implemented was the control of inhumane strategies such as shooting unarmed civilian protestors and those who wouldn’t comply with their rules (Huntington 155). Pinochet used this strategy to erase those against his ruling to create a new state of submissiveness. As like the women on the political frontier who were not being heard or seen but they continued on by forming and conversing about possible opportunities to construct changes. The majority in the end, voted in support of their philosophies and requests against Pinochet’s dictatorship.