83.4deutsch

7/27/2019 83.4deutsch

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/834deutsch 1/4

Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle

against Allende, 1964-1973 (review)

Sandra McGee Deutsch

Hispanic American Historical Review, 83:4, November 2003, pp. 769-771

(Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Universidad de Granada (31 May 2013 13:35 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hahr/summary/v083/83.4deutsch.html



7/27/2019 83.4deutsch


lives. Tinsman is concerned with the ways in which government policies, church

projects, the union movement, and the ideological polarization of national politics

changed, or failed to change, relations between men and women in rural Chile. She

concludes that although the agrarian program of the Christian Democrats bene-fited women in a number of ways, their model of “‘family uplift’ translated gender

inequalities and sexual hierarchies into national policy as natural facts” (pp. 207–8).

The subsequent Unidad Popular’s “patriarchal stance toward women coexisted

with visionary plans to revolutionize female roles” (p. 219).

Tinsman is clearly correct that the literature on the Chilean agrarian reform,

the rural labor movement, and the breakdown of the Chilean political system in

1973 has neglected the role of women. Likewise, there is no question that policy

makers and analysts were little concerned with “patriarchy and what makes it tick.”

Her study leaves no doubt that women’s activities mattered to the agrarian reform

and that many women benefited from it, despite the simultaneous reinforcement of

certain aspects of traditional, patriarchal gender relations. More generally, Tins-

man creatively tells an untold story: the many ways that agrarian reform changed

gender relations and how these changes reverberated in national and local politics

and society. What is not convincingly demonstrated is that these two Chilean gov-

ernments attempted to refashion gender relations as Tinsman suggests: that their

agrarian reforms had a “gendered mission,” either to reinforce existing gender rela-

tions or to revolutionize them. Most Chileans, including government officials and

policy makers, did not associate agrarian reform with changing family relations or

questioning patriarchy. In fact, one reason that Tinsman’s work is so welcome is

that “government officials and union leaders rarely mentioned women” (p. 8), as is

also true for most previous research on the agrarian reform.

brian loveman, San Diego State University

Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende,

1964–1973. By margaret power. University Park: Pennsylvania State

University Press, 2002. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Appendixes.

Bibliography. Index. xxii, 311 pp. Cloth, $65.00. Paper, $25.00.

Women’s critical role in the 1973 ousting of Salvador Allende has long been recog-

nized, but their actions, motivations for participation, and foreign ties remained

obscure. Many believed that only privileged women, manipulated by rightist men,

mobilized against Allende’s government, but Margaret Power’s examination of the

gendered aspects of rightist political participation and electoral campaigns answers

these questions and dispels the myths.

In the nineteenth century, women pressed for suffrage in order to protect thechurch against liberal anticlericalism. Once women attained the right to vote, they

were mobilized by rightists attempting to attract a popular base. The 1964 electoral

alliance between the rightist Partido Nacional (PN) and the centrist Christian Demo-

Book Reviews / National Period 769

7/27/2019 83.4deutsch


crats (PDC) used the “Scare Campaign”—convincing women that a leftist victory

would mean destruction of the family—to help defeat Allende. The PN used this

strategy again in 1970, but Allende won the three-way race. Power demonstrates

that the United States covertly supported the “Scare Campaign” and Chileanrightist women. The United States had already encouraged both Operation Peter

Pan, which sent the children of anti-Castro Cubans to the United States, and the

women’s mobilization against Brazilian president João Goulart. These campaigns’

tactics and rhetoric about gender and the family heralded those of Chilean activists.

PN women were among the first to denounce Allende’s triumph. They joined

with women of the PDC and other opposition groups to organize the famous

March of the Empty Pots and Pans to protest Fidel Castro’s visit in December

1971. In early 1972 they created Poder Femenino (PF), which demonstrated and

petitioned against the government, aided the striking copper miners of El Teniente,

and helped meld the anti-Allende forces agitating in favor of a military coup.

Observers have assumed that PF members spurred military officers into action by

questioning their manhood, but Power suggests that their actions may have been

part of an opposition plan to legitimize a golpe that was in the works. In fact, PF had

already weakened Chilean democracy by denigrating politics and exalting its “apo-

litical” role. The military regime it helped bring to power disbanded PF because it

had accomplished its mission and represented an autonomy that the generals did

not want women to exercise.

PF insisted that women could “transcend class” (p. 172) to unite the nation.

Indeed, it recruited some lower-class women, partly through the Centros de Madres

established in impoverished communities by the Frei administration. Many poor

women agreed that Unidad Popular policies kept them from feeding their families

and joined the anti-Allende cause. Yet upper-class prerogatives and assumptions

infused PF: its affluent members equated the national interest with their class inter-

ests, and they relied on their telephones, servants, cars, and access to money and

powerful men to push forward their agenda. The gold pots-and-pans pins of elite

anti-Allende activists distinguished them from the less-privileged women who

wore copper pins. It is telling that wealthy PF members could supply Power with

names of their upper- and middle-class colleagues but could not recall the names of

working-class ones.

PF shared many characteristics with rightist women in other Latin American

countries and time periods. Most such groups have presented themselves as apolit-

ical mothers motivated by the desire to protect their families against leftist assault.

They defended existing gender roles, although their activities may have subtly

challenged them. Leftists have claimed that rightist men manipulate their female

allies, ignoring the possibilities of women’s agency and the genuine appeal of right-

wing platforms. Some rightist movements have recruited women to help them

attract a multiclass following. Rightist women have also cited Catholicism as a

motive, yet religion did not influence PF to the same degree as the rosary-carrying

770 HAHR / November

7/27/2019 83.4deutsch


Brazilian women who marched against Goulart. Furthermore, PF seemed more

combative and tolerant of violence and torture than rightist women in other con-

texts, except for Somocista and Contra women in Nicaragua. Future research is

needed to explain these differences and pinpoint other variations between rightist women’s movements in the region.

Scholars will appreciate this study’s rich detail, extensive documentation, and

careful examination of diverging interpretations and the pitfalls of memory. The

discussion of background issues, portraits of activists, and anecdotes gleaned from

interviews make the book accessible to students. Both audiences will appreciate

Power’s insights into women’s history and Chilean politics in a crucial period.

sandra mcgee deutsch, University of Texas at El Paso

Children of Facundo: Caudillo and Gaucho Insurgency during the Argentine

State-Formation Process (La Rioja, 1853–1870). By ariel de la fuente. Durham:

Duke University Press, 2001. Tables. Figures. Bibliography. Index. xiii, 249 pp.

Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95.

In 1863, Domingo Sarmiento commissioned a photograph of the defeated follow-

ers of Angel Vicente “Chacho” Peñaloza, leader of one of the last Federalist insur-

rections in the Argentine interior. By the time the blurred portrait of some 70

bedraggled gauchos was taken, the Unitarian governor of San Juan province hadalready ordered the execution of their leader and exhibited his head on public dis-

play. Doubtless Sarmiento, biographer of Juan Manuel de la Rosa (the other

famous caudillo from that troublesome province), found in the picture of barefoot

peasants, seemingly impotent without their charismatic hero, confirmation of his

hope that this act of exemplary violence by a new generation of liberal state

builders had finally closed the chapter on local warlords and prepared the path for

national unity.

This evocative photograph graces the cover of Children of Facundo, a pioneer-

ing exploration of the popular experience of state-formation. Focusing on 1860s LaRioja, de la Fuente analyzes the mobilization of rural inhabitants of this poverty-

stricken province in what would be a final challenge to political centralization as

they defended their homegrown version of federalism. Nineteenth-century liberal

historiography frames many of the central questions of this work. Yet, while those

historians triumphed the achievements of nation building and thus were only too

willing to dismiss and criminalize the rural “fanaticism” that hindered their goals,

this study examines agrarian power relations, the culture of patronage, and provin-

cial folklore in order to comprehend the fervent loyalty of local people to their

chosen leaders.In La Rioja, party conflict and identity were nurtured by land tenure patterns.

Examining tax and census records from the 1850s, the monograph presents a closely

Book Reviews / National Period 771

83.4deutsch

Documents