Artigo Revisado por pares

Urban Pioneers: The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago, Chile, 1935–1946

2004; Duke University Press; Volume: 84; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-84-4-661

ISSN

1527-1900

Autores

Richard J. Walter,

Tópico(s)

Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America

Resumo

When Socialist Ricardo Lagos assumed the presidency of Chile in January 2000, he named five women to his 16-member cabinet. While these five appointments were primarily to ministries that dealt with “women’s issues” such as education and health care, he also named Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear to the prestigious post of minister of foreign affairs.1 Two months later, he also appointed lawyer Patricia Carrasco as a kind of “super mayor” (alcalde mayor) to oversee social development in the largely urban province of Santiago.2 Soon thereafter, former first lady Marta Larraechea de Frei, the wife of ex-president Eduardo Frei Jr. (1994–2000), announced that she would run for the office of mayor of Santiago.3 At the same time, Gladys Marín Millie served as the head of the Communist Party and had been a first-round presidential candidate herself in 1999.4 Countless other women occupied important positions through-out the nation’s local and national administrations. In January 2002, Lagos named Michelle Bachelet as his minister of defense—the first woman to assume that post in Latin America—making her, along with Alvear, a potential presidential candidate for 2006.5The prominence of women in Chilean political life reflects, in large part, their electoral influence. In 1949 Chilean women achieved the right to vote in national elections, and they have been crucial in both right- and left-wing campaigns (although more the former than the latter) ever since. Half a million more women than men voted in the 2000 presidential election, and it was incumbent upon both major candidates to make special appeals to their female constituencies.6 In the democratic transition following the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990), all political parties have paid increasing attention to women’s issues and to women’s participation in the political arena.7 Chilean women have been important actors at the local level as well. Legislation enacted in 1934 granted them the right to vote in municipal elections, and they were also allowed to run for local administrative positions starting in 1935. From that time forward, women made their presence felt in various municipal governments, serving most commonly as elected members of city councils or, on occasion, appointed or elected as mayors of several major Chilean cities.8There is a recent and growing literature on the role of women in Chilean national life in general, and in the political sphere in particular.9 While much of this literature examines women’s suffrage and political role at the local and national levels, no one has yet studied female elected officials’ actual performance in office.10 I aim to fill this gap by examining women’s initial participation both as voters and as city council members and administrators in Santiago, the nation’s capital and largest city. In the process, I will address particular questions with larger implications.What were the constraints and challenges that women faced in this form of political participation—not just as voters, but as elected officials? On the one hand, as the first women to participate in municipal government—in a sense, as “urban pioneers” for their gender—they faced a more intense scrutiny than did their male colleagues in order to prove their ability to function effectively in a highly competitive and partisan arena. While it was rarely stated openly, undoubtedly many skeptics believed that women would not be up to the task. On the other hand, some argued that the presence of women in municipal government would mean sweeping change. Repeating a familiar trope of Southern Cone feminism, this camp alleged that women’s innate virtue (especially as wives and mothers) would bring a badly needed morality to city governments notably lacking in this regard.11 Moreover, as Margaret Power has argued, Chile’s male-dominated political parties allowed the extension of voting and office-holding rights to women at the local level with the understanding that the municipality was “an extension of the female domestic sphere [that] . . . primarily dealt with local neighborhood issues . . . [and] did not violate a woman’s primary role as wife and mother.”12 To what extent were Santiago’s first female officeholders able to transcend these expectations and implied limitations in order to address issues of broader concern? Second, how did their male colleagues react to the presence of women in offices and institutions that previously had been their exclusive preserve? Moreover, what was the relationship between the changing role of women at the local level and Chile’s increasingly polarized, complex, and male-dominated political party system in the late 1930s and early 1940s? Third, what does this experience reveal about the general workings of municipal government in Santiago at this time (a subject that has received little attention to date)? Were women able to effect any significant changes in a local administration that was often seen as inefficient, inept, and ineffectual?Finally, while Chile was not among the first nations in Latin America to grant suffrage to women in national elections, it was among the first to open up educational opportunities for women and to produce a substantial group of middle-class professional women who pushed for equal rights and improved conditions for their gender from the late nineteenth century on.13 Chilean women were the first in the Southern Cone to win the right to vote and to serve in municipal office, and in 1939 (as will be seen) Santiago had the first female mayor of any Latin American capital. Therefore, examining women’s role in Santiago’s municipal administration during the first decade of local electoral participation provides a point of comparison for others studying similar phenomena in Latin America and elsewhere—where, by the latter decades of the twentieth century, women were found in increasing numbers on municipal councils and in the mayoral offices of major cities.The struggle to achieve rights for women in Chile was, as in most countries, a long and difficult one. It began in earnest in the second half of the nineteenth century with the establishment of organizations and periodicals that advocated equal access to education for women, equal legal footing with men, and the extension of suffrage. The movement gathered steam in the early twentieth century, with much of the impetus coming from upper-class women’s groups associated with the charitable efforts of the Catholic Church and particularly concerned with social ills such as prostitution, alcoholism, child abandonment, and infant mortality. In 1919 Amanda Labarca, a member of the anticlerical Radical Party, created the National Council of Women (Consejo Nacional de Mujeres) as a platform to push for women’s rights independent of conservative and church influence. She also was married to party leader Guillermo Labarca Hubertson, who would serve as Santiago’s alcalde from 1932 to 1935.14When Arturo Alessandri was elected president as the candidate of a Liberal Alliance (Liberals, Democrats, and Radicals) in 1920, Amanda Labarca and others pushed him to extend the suffrage to women, but to no avail. After four frustrating years, a military coup in September 1924 removed Alessandri from office, at least temporarily. One of the results of that coup was to replace the elected government of Santiago with a junta de vecinos (citizens’ committee) appointed by the national government. The junta de vecinos varied in number from as few as two to as many as ten members and governed the nation’s capital from 1924 to 1935. The elected city council (municipalidad) had been established as part of a national reform in 1891. In the years prior to 1924, the capital had been governed by a 13-member city council made up of regidores (councilmen) elected on a citywide basis every three years. They, in turn, elected three alcaldes, the first of which served, in essence, as the chief executive of the city. This system was the result of reforms initiated in 1908 by upper-class elements who were concerned, among other things, with what they perceived to be the excessive partisanship and resulting inefficiency and ineptitude of the local administration.15 This poor administration, in turn, was seen as largely responsible for the city’s uneven development, evidenced in stark contrasts between the neighborhoods and living conditions of the rich and poor, appalling public health problems, and insufficient and inadequate municipal services in all areas.16The reforms, however, did not produce the changes that their proponents had desired. Prone to the same conflicts that plagued the national congress and administration in these years as a result of the nation’s complex multiparty system, contention and stalemate continued to cripple Santiago’s government after the reforms were enacted.17 Moreover, several administrations of the period became mired in criminal scandals that involved regidores and alcaldes of various parties. When the city councils were dissolved in 1924 and replaced by the juntas de vecinos, U.S. ambassador William Collier reported back to Washington: “This drastic reform is generally commended by newspapers as terminating governments that were inefficient and corrupt.”18 That was certainly the view of the nation’s leading newspaper, El Mercurio, an early proponent of the juntas de vecinos. The paper hoped they would end a municipal regime constantly preoccupied with partisan considerations and replace it with one directed by “respectable and responsible citizens.” The announced change, it said, had “produced an excellent impression among the public at large,” and the passing of the old system, it claimed, was welcomed by all.19Both the juntas de vecinos and the elected systems they replaced excluded women from any form of direct participation. It was against this background that on December 20, 1924, a delegation of women from among Santiago’s most distinguished families met with the leader of the national governing junta at the time, general Luis Altamirano Talavera.20 At that meeting, they presented to him a petition, signed by over a hundred women, urging a thoroughgoing change in the way the capital was governed. Without setting a definite timetable, they recommended a return to an elected city council, but under provisions that would assure that it would focus on administration and not on politics. Just how this would be achieved was not too clear, but they suggested that municipal elections be held every four years, that they be distinct from national elections, that voters be restricted to taxpayers, and that the position of first alcalde (who would be elected directly) be endowed with greater authority than had been the case in the past. The most important aspect of their proposal, however, came at the end. While denying that the main purpose of their effort was to promote women’s rights, they concluded that women, as taxpayers, had a right both to vote in future city elections and to present themselves as candidates.21 Such roles, they argued, would be “particularly beneficial” to local administration, because “[t]hey [women] would crack down on vice with much more tenacity than men. They would [for example] supply to the poor honest entertainments, while at the same time caring for the ornamentation and beautification of the city.”22 As mentioned, the idea that women would add a dose of morality to what many considered a notoriously corrupt system of city government was repeated frequently.There was little action on this issue over the next several years. A major breakthrough occurred, however, in May 1931, when president Carlos Ibáñez (1927–31) issued a decree that paved the way for a return to elected city councils through the formation of new voter registries and the scheduling of local elections. The most dramatic features of this decree were provisions to extend the vote to literate women over the age of 25 who were either property owners or professionals, and to foreign males who were legal residents. The implications were substantial. While the number of foreign voters was small, the inclusion of women could potentially at least double the electorate, and it seemed logical that suffrage at the local level would be extended in the not-too-distant future at the national level as well.As it happened, Ibáñez was himself overthrown in July 1931, and the decree became moot. After a turbulent interlude, Arturo Alessandri was again elected president in late 1932, and a certain stability was restored.23 Municipal elections had been scheduled on various occasions in 1931 and 1932 but, due to the turmoil of the period, never took place. Soon after his presidential election, Alessandri made clear his desire to hold these elections as soon as possible. Once the new congress was assembled, he sent it a message urging the early consideration and passage of the legislation necessary to give the vote to women. The national Chamber of Deputies began consideration of such a measure on February 13, 1933. During the debate, which lasted several weeks, representatives of various women’s organizations filled the galleries and lobbied hard for inclusion of women’s suffrage in the final provisions. That issue dominated the discussion with most speakers, especially representatives of Chile’s proclerical Conservative Party, strongly supporting the cause. A prominent line of argument was that suffrage had been granted to females in Europe, the United States, and other Latin American countries, and that Chile should not lag behind in this regard.24 The strongest objections came from Rolando Merino Reyes of the newly formed Socialist Party, who argued that extending the vote to women was not a pressing “social necessity,” that the campaign for its passage was being promoted by a well-intentioned but self-interested minority, and that it only dealt superficially with the real problems of women. The entire electoral process, he charged, was corrupt and venal, and, until it was cleansed, the “stain” of such venality should not be spread to include females.25 These and other arguments from the Left had little effect in a congress where Conservatives and Liberals, both of whom strongly favored the municipal suffrage law, held large majorities. On March 9, the chamber, by ample margins and with little real disagreement, approved the new law concerning municipal elections and governments, with provisions for extending the vote to literate females and foreigners (male and female) over the age of 21 who had lived in the comuna (voting district) where they were to vote for at least five years. The property-owning provisions included in the first proposals were dropped.26 After several months of debate and some compromise, in October the senate also approved the legislation by a wide margin.27President Alessandri signed Law no. 5357 into effect on January 15, 1934. The registries were opened on May 15, and the first election was scheduled for April 7, 1935.28 In Santiago, the law called for the election now of 15 regidores (two more than previously) to serve three-year terms and to be elected, as in the past, citywide. There had been some sentiment in congress for an elected alcalde, but the capital’s chief executive would remain (as had been the case under the juntas de vecinos) appointed by the president of the republic. Clearly, the most important innovation was the provisions allowing women to vote, to run for office as regidores, and even to be named mayors. While many continuities prevailed, local politics and government in Santiago would never be quite the same as a result.Preparations for the April 7, 1935 elections were slow and deliberate. Soon after Alessandri signed the enabling legislation, the minister of the interior began the process of inscribing the newly eligible foreigners and women into the electoral registry. This was a registry separate from that for adult Chilean male voters. This effort was not completed until the end of 1934. Once the registration had been completed and a definitive date was set, various observers expressed hope that the inclusion of formerly excluded groups, especially women, would change the tone and improve the quality of local government. An editorial in El Mercurio, for example, expressed the belief that the excessive partisanship afflicting previous elected municipalities would be “neutralized with the intervention of women and foreigners, a political experiment that, fundamentally, is associated with the highest expectations.”29 Another commentator stated optimistically, “The new law of municipal elections provides the remedy to the ancient defect of politically formed city councils with the promise of the vote to women and foreigners. We can only hope that this measure will improve the quality of communal representation and will spare us the well-established corruption that has been a true affront to more than one city in Chile.”30 The popular magazine Zig-Zag suggested that women would enter the city council “disposed to manage the city as they have managed their homes. For most, a city well swept, well lighted, and with its hygienic services in order will have the same agreeable aspect as a well-appointed house at tea time when the daughter nervously awaits the visit of her fiancé.”31 These remarks again underscored the “special qualities” that women were expected to bring to their roles in the public sphere.As the date for the elections approached, a dozen parties (most of which by this time had created, or were in the process of creating, feminine branches) selected a total of 93 candidates for Santiago’s 15 regidor positions. Most attention focused on the female candidates. The first to declare was writer Luisa Zanelli of the Partido Liberal Femenino. While concerned specifically with women’s issues, she promised to defend the interests of all the capital’s citizens. She saw as top priorities the need to lower the cost of basic necessities, to eliminate a 2 percent sales tax, to create institutions to protect the family, and to encourage the construction of workers’ housing.32 The two candidates of the Acción Nacional de Mujeres, Adela Edwards de Salas and Elena Doll de Díaz, promised much the same emphasis. For her part, Edwards de Salas, from one of Chile’s wealthiest families and a prominent figure in the struggle for women’s suffrage, argued that Chilean women should enjoy the same rights as women in various European countries and the United States, and she felt that the current feminist movement in Chile was motivated in part by the failure of male politicians and government officials to focus adequately on matters of particular concern to women. She pointed specifically to what she called halfhearted efforts to control white slavery and to regulate prostitution as pertinent examples.33 Natalia Rubio Cuadra, representing the Acción Patriótica de Mujeres de Chile, a splinter of the Acción Nacional and one of the main groups organized to mobilize women voters and support women candidates, made many of these same arguments.34 Seeking to ally with these candidates and to attract women’s votes to his own party, Conservative president Horacio Walker Larraín, in a lengthy radio address, argued that within the program of his party could be found “the most solid defense of the stability of the family, of social peace, and of Christian morality.”35The election itself proceeded smoothly. Separate polling places were established for women to cast their ballots, apparently not only to reinforce the fact that they were restricted, at the time, to voting only in municipal elections but also to keep men and women from mingling in an unsupervised environment, a practice that continues to the present day. Women were in charge of these polling places, and by all accounts they handled their newfound responsibilities with skill and enthusiasm (see fig. 1). In Santiago, the Acción Nacional de Mujeres had listed central locations in each of the capital’s main voting districts where female voters could go for information. It also urged them to vote early and to mark their ballots carefully. All reports indicated that the contest was remarkably free of the fraud and bribery that usually accompanied Chilean elections. A feminist interviewed by Zig-Zag attributed “the tranquility of the electoral act to the presence of women,” an assertion that would be difficult to prove, in that men voted separately in areas presumably removed from such influences.36Whatever the reasons for the “tranquility” of the contest, the results were clear—a major triumph for the parties of the Right. Nationwide, Conservatives and Liberals took 47.2 percent of the total vote (see table 1) and candidates of the Right captured about two-thirds of the open seats. The big losers were the divided Radicals, who gained only 18.5 percent of the total. Turnout was high—better than 86 percent—but it should also be noted that, nationwide, only 35.6 percent of all eligible males and only 9 percent of all eligible females were actually registered to vote.37The Conservatives benefited most directly from the women’s vote, gaining almost half of it nationwide. Moreover, of the 25 female candidates elected to Chile’s city councils in 1935, 16 were either from the Conservative Party or affiliated with the Acción Nacional de Mujeres. In Santiago, Adela Edwards de Salas was the capital’s leading vote getter, with 5,417 tallies. While trailing far behind in number of votes, Natalia Rubio Cuadra and Elena Doll de Díaz were also elected as the first women to serve as Santiago councilwomen. According to one careful analysis, while the candidates themselves were of the upper class, they drew most of their support from the middle and lower classes, especially “from women who were associated as employees, clients, and/or members of the social beneficence and union-like organizations that they led.”38In discussing these results, Margaret Power suggests that the greater energy and attention that the Conservative Party devoted to mobilizing the women’s vote was an important factor in developing this broad appeal. Moreover, the Acción Nacional de Mujeres, tied to the church and the Conservatives and created by Edwards de Salas and others in 1934, had been particularly effective in crafting a program that promised specific benefits for working-class women.39 Another analysis emphasizes the poor organizational efforts of the center and Left to attract women’s votes and the failure of most women, voting for the first time, to appreciate the importance of their ballot, implying a kind of “false consciousness” on the part of those from the lower classes who supported the Conservatives. This analysis also mentions bribery (cohecho) as a factor in the balloting, although contemporary accounts (as noted above) labeled this a relatively “clean” contest.40 Finally, literacy provisions and a complex voter registration process meant that many women of the lower classes were, in essence, disenfranchised and hence unavailable to vote for parties of the center and Left, presuming that those parties were interested at this time in attracting the women’s vote.41Whatever the reasons, the conservative press was predictably enthusiastic about these results. El Mercurio proclaimed, “Taking her first political steps, the Chilean woman has inclined toward the side of forces that desire progress within a climate of social peace.”42 The Catholic and conservative El Diario Ilustrado saw things in virtually the same terms, claiming that the female voter “has placed, in general, her vote at the service of order, social peace, and political honesty and has shown respect for the conscience of the country and its democratic institutions.”43 The Left, of course, was much less enthusiastic about the outcome and the role women had played in it. Socialist and Radical publications attacked the Catholic Church for what they alleged was undue influence over female voters and claimed that a disproportionate number of nuns had been mobilized to account for the triumph of the Right. Interviewed soon after the election, Radical Party president Pedro Aguirre Cerda stated that while his party favored women’s suffrage in general terms, at the moment it now advocated postponing its extension to national elections, while a group of Radical women went to the extreme of going on record as opposing such an extension altogether.44 The Left, however, recognized the importance of these results. Radicals, Socialists, and Communists all had created women’s branches early on and were proponents of the kinds of social reforms aimed to appeal to them. Increasingly after 1935, they began to organize more carefully to push for women’s rights and to enlist and prepare female candidates of their own to compete in upcoming contests.Cartoons in the irreverent humor magazine Topaze illustrate differing reactions to the presence of women in the capital’s local administration. Figure 2 shows the president of the Conservative Party, Horacio Walker Larraín, clinging to the skirt of Adela Edwards de Salas as she makes her way up the steps of city hall, underscoring the importance of the women’s vote to the party’s triumph. The relative size of the respective figures also suggests the predominant role women might be destined to play within the new municipality. Figure 3 displays Aguirre Cerda and the Radical Party decapitated (and perhaps even emasculated) by the feminine vote. Figure 4, showing alcalde Absalón Valencia Zavala sweeping up the city hall using a broom (“There is no new broom that does not clean well”) with Edwards de Salas’s head superimposed on it, reverses gender roles but also reinforces the idea that women would have a special vocation to put the municipal house in order.The official installation of Santiago’s newly elected city council took place on June 9, 1935. As was customary, spokespersons for each party made a brief speech outlining their program of action. Representing the three regidoras was Elena Doll de Díaz. During her remarks, she assured her male colleagues, “The feminist movement does not imply a struggle of the sexes or the supplanting of men by women. This movement consists of the union of all women who, feeling themselves sisters and understanding their mutual necessities, anxieties, or desires, work to achieve a greater well-being, a greater social justice, a worthy recognition of the rights, and of the participation that correspond to them in all the activities of collective life.” And, she continued,Doll de Díaz’s opening statement brought a rejoinder from Socialist Party regidor Ricardo Latcham, one of two members of that party elected to the new city council. In his own remarks, he pointed to what he considered a certain irony in the regidora’s emphasis upon teaching “domestic economy to a people who do not have enough to eat.” He underscored the Socialists’ critique of the charitable efforts of the Catholic Church and of the women’s organizations with which Doll de Díaz and the other regidoras were associated—which viewed them as only papering over and ignoring the profound inequities in Chile created, as they saw it, by the capitalist system. Conservative Jorge Richard Barnard came to Doll de Díaz’s defense, saying that Latcham had twisted her meaning to score political points.46 The matter was not pursued, but the brief exchange foreshadowed future clashes and disagreements between the regidoras and the representatives of the Left that would continue as a significant leitmotif of the new city council.Although women comprised only 3 of the 15 council members, their numbers remained significant within a city council that was, as was common, divided among various parties, especially if they voted en bloc. Also elected in 1935 were four members of the Conservative Party. While the three regidoras had run separately from the Conservatives and promised to adhere to an independent and nonpartisan position within the council, their connections and sympathies with that party were well known. The four Conservatives, the three regidoras, and two members of President Alessandri’s Liberal Party gave the Right a solid majority in the council. On the Left were two Radicals, two Socialists, one Democrat, and one member of a minor party, the Unión Repúblicana.47Hopes that the restoration of an elected city council and the inclusion of women in the process would produce better results than in the past were soon dashed. Despite having alcaldes (first Absalón Valencia Zavala and then Augusto Vicuña Subercaseaux, both Liberals) appointed by and enjoying the confidence of President Alessandri, and with a solid majority on the Right, the council almost immediately became bogged down in partisan squabbling and in-fighting, which led to stalemate, inaction, and frustration. The two Socialists were prominent in this regard, raising objections to and resisting many measures emanating either from the alcalde or the regidores of the Right. Complicating matters at the local level were national developments that resulted in a growing polarization between the forces of the Right, grouped around President Alessandri and his conservative minister of finance and would-be successor, Gustavo Ross, and a leftist Popular Front composed of Radicals, Socialists, and Communists.48Within this larger framework, the three regidoras played a relatively active role within the Santiago city council. From the beginning, they participated fully in debate and did not hesitate to make their positions known on various important matters. Edwards de Salas, initially the best-known of the three, made her first major intervention on July 29, 1935, with a lengthy exposition on the subject of prostitution. She began by arguing that the current system, which sought primarily to regulate prost

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