Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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against the state are precisely those that socio-cultural codes and/or
historic necessity have defined as womens primary responsibility.
Lack of food, potable water, shelter, and clothing affects the entire
community, but when it comes to mobilizing around these issues it is
commonly women who are at the forefront. In addition, human rights
abuses, while clearly not gender specific, are also often denounced
most visibly by groups primarily made up of women.
This is not to say that men do not participate in communitybased groups or human rights groupsthey do and in great numbers
but when reviewing the literature on social movement groups in Latin
America it is impossible not to get the sense that the primary motor of
resistance is female. While this may be due to the feminist movements
influence on the social sciences and new currents within various
disciplines that seek to uncover subaltern actors, social movement
literature has attributed womens primacy in these groups to a number
of other factors: (1) men are more likely to be persecuted for any
activities even minimally political; (2) men, as breadwinners, have
neither the time nor the financial freedom to take on time-consuming
acts of resistance, many of which may take place during the workday;
and (3) women, by nature, are somehow more adept at communicating
with authoritarian state officials, and, if rebuked, are better able to
mobilize gender-based strategies to shame a regime into making
concessions. These gender-based strategies have even been identified
by some scholars as signaling not only a new approach to resisting and
contesting authoritarian rule, but also as a means of reconceptualizing
civil society and citizenship in democratic nation-statesa third
way that goes beyond male-dominated representative democracy
and patriarchal authoritarian mores. Discussion of this third way
was prevalent in many texts dealing with social movements in Latin
America in the 1980s, but fell from grace within academic circles as
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life, i.e., be released from detention alive) and defied the state with
Dnde estn? (Where are they?).
Furthermore, Agrupacin participated in hunger
strikes, romeras (pilgrimages to politically charged sites), and
encadenamientos (demonstrations in which members chained
themselves to public buildings) during the 1970s and 1980s. The first
two hunger strikes took place in June and December of 1977 at the
Santiago offices of the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin American
and the Caribbean and at the centrally located, colonial San Francisco
church. The most famous hunger strike, known as La Huelga de
Hambre Larga (the Long Hunger Strike), took place in response to the
1978 Amnesty Law, which guaranteed impunity to anyone guilty of
crimes committed during the state-of-siege periods between September
11, 1973, and March 10, 1978. Agrupacin began the hunger strike
with a press statement: We cannot accept more aberrations; we
cannot put up with more waiting. We declare this new hunger strike
convinced that risking our lives is the most extreme method that, by
demonstrating our unreserved love for our [loved ones], will allow us
to reach the truth.7 The hunger strike lasted for seventeen days until
the Catholic Church intervened on behalf of the protesters, whose
health had badly deteriorated, and persuaded them that the goal of
raising public awareness had been achieved. When the hunger strike
ended, 186 people in thirteen different locations in Chile had joined in,
together with sixty hunger strikes held abroad in solidarity.
Like the hunger strikes, encadenamientos also represented the
sacrifice of the Agrupacin members body in an effort to publicize the
cause and to pressure the military into disclosing the desaparecidos
whereabouts. The most renowned encadenamiento took place on April
18, 1979, when fifty-nine Agrupacin members chained themselves
to the National Congress in downtown Santiago in protest of the
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reasons (they had to put food on the table) or that women were seen to
be taking the symbolic place of activist men who had been disappeared.
Patricia Recabarren Gonzlez, who, like her mother, is active in the
group in the name of five disappeared family members (her father,
two brothers, her sister-in-law, and her sister-in-laws unborn child),12
recalled in 2002, During the dictatorship there was also the idea that
a woman was softer, that if a man went [to protest] he was going to
be taught better [by the military regime]. It was a way of protecting
the men. For example, in my family it was my mother who took up
the banner of those who had disappeared. There were four sons in
my family and two disappeared, and neither of the other two is in
Agrupacin.13 Patricias mother, Ana Gonzlez, expressed her feelings
to me about her involvement in the group slightly differently: I was
left alone to search for them. First with anguish and desperation and
a tremendous abandonment Where could they be detained, and
whats more, could I save their lives? It was a desperate, anguished
struggle, but also one full of courage. It didnt even matter to me
whether or not I lived; it was a question of love.14 Throughout the
interview Doa Ana repeatedly and emotionally talked about her
commitment as a mother and as a wife, although she also talked about
her previous experience in neighborhood political organizing during
the time of Allende and activities as an Agrupacin member, which
often took her out of the home to protest in the streets of Santiago and
abroad.
The experiences of Doa Ana and Doa Patricia, and of others
in the group whom I had the privilege to interview, point to a number
of conclusions concerning the women of Agrupacin. First, while some
women in Agrupacin were not previously politicized, many others
(even mothers!) were already at least minimally involved in politics
when the 1973 coup took place. Whether militants in left-leaning
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Notes
1
H.E. Chehabi and Juan J. Linz, eds., Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns
The most glaring exception comes from the former Soviet Bloc countries,
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where women were also vigorously incorporated into the workforce. However,
even in these countries it is possible to detect a similar pattern of subjugating
women to the idealized concept of Woman who sacrifices herself for the nation
and serves as the states vessel for transmitting its value system. In effect, the
only difference was that she was now responsible for living up this image not
only at home, but also at her place of work.
4
Agrupacin members commonly said this during interviews I did with them
their members see their website, www.afdd.cl, and Viviana Diaz Caro et al.,
Un camino de imgenes: 20 aos de historia de la Agrupacin de Familiares
de Detenidos Desaparecidos de Chile (Santiago: Corporacin Agrupacin de
Familiares de Detenidos Desparecidos, 1997).
6
order to verify statements made that human remains had been found there. In
December 1978 it was found that the remains belonged to fifteen men who
had disappeared in 1973. This led to an investigation and burial process that
provoked massive outrage with the governments attempt to cover up evidence
of wrongdoing. On April 4, 1979, the case was handed over to the military
courts, which was then a virtual guarantee that no further action would be
taken.
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11
Manuel Guillermo Recabarren Gonzlez and his pregnant wife, Nalvia Rosa
Mena Alvarado, were taken by the DINA on April 29, 1976. The following
day Manuels brother, Luis Emilio, and his father, Manuel Segundo, were
also disappeared. For the full story, as well as the stories of many other
desaparecidos, see the Agrupacin website.
13
14
15
Agrupacin members usually work within in the Socialist Party (PS), the
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the transition: Political rhetoric and practices remain traditional, and there
is no social recognition of the need to integrate women politically. Instead,
there is some general support for women on the grounds that women dignify
politics because of their superior ethical standards. With this bias, for women
to play this political role in arenas where ethical standards are not highly
honored means by definition that they will be marginalized. Women and the
Democracy Project in Chile, in Ibid., 7.