83.4deutsch
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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
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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
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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
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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