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Chapter 1: Shantytown Women and Dictatorship
How do shantytown women experience and struggle against repression and poverty under dictatorship? How do they come to be involved in resistance? As well as introducing these questions that are central to the book, Chapter 1 opens up the discussion of the ways in which repression and poverty under General Pinochet combined to produce certain experiences for shantytown women, the repression influencing the women’s experiences of poverty and efforts to cope with it, and their poverty affecting their experiences of repression. It also introduces the reader to the ways in which the women’s becoming involved in groups to cope with their poverty produced temporary shifts in the gender regime in their families. The chapter ends with historical background information about Chile under Pinochet and under the Allende government that preceded it, and a visual introduction to the shantytown environment, both indoor and outdoor. A section within the chapter describes in detail how data were gathered and analyzed for the book, and reflects on the dilemmas and constraints involved in the gathering and analysis of visual data in particular, as well as on the decisions involved in integrating images into the text and balancing images and text.
Chapter 2: Living with Repression
Shantytown women experienced both direct physical repression and non-violent repression under dictatorship. Direct physical repression consists of targeted repression, in which a person is singled out for persecution, and generalized repression, which affects everyone in a neighborhood indiscriminately. Soldiers shooting at people outside after curfew, the occasional menacing presence of soldiers in the streets at other times, soldiers throwing stones at the windows of homes and raiding all the shantytown homes in a neighborhood, and helicopters sometimes buzzing overhead were the main forms of generalized repression that shantytown women endured. Most shantytown women only experienced generalized repression, but some were also at the receiving end of targeted repression, which took the form of harassment, a raid on the targeted person’s home but not on other homes nearby, arrest, torture, beatings, disappearance, murder, exile, internal exile, and men’s losing their jobs because they were affiliated with leftist groups that the dictatorship wished to eliminate.
The repression inspired considerable fear in the women. They were afraid to walk outside at certain times, afraid neighbors might denounce their leftist husbands, afraid to join groups, afraid to participate in protests, afraid to speak out in their group about particular instances of repression they had witnessed, and afraid to be in contact with certain groups that they saw as “more political.” They experienced both endemic fear (a pervasive sense of fear) and specific fear (a fear that something bad such as an arrest would happen to them or their family members as a consequence of something they did).
Repression, poverty, and gender worked together to shape women’s experiences of dictatorship. The poverty that caused the women to have to live in a shantytown, for example, affected the forms that the repression took. Conversely, the repression increased many shantytown women’s levels of poverty by leading to their husbands’ loss of a job. The women experienced both the repression and the poverty as women and mothers. The ways in which these ills affected their children, for example, shaped how they felt and did about it.
Chapter 3: Unemployment and Exacerbated Poverty
The dictatorship brought with it unemployment for many of the women’s husbands, often for extended periods or recurrently, until the mid-Eighties. This unemployment came about because the Pinochet government introduced neo-liberal economic policies very suddenly, resulting in first one and later a second economic crisis. Husbands also lost jobs because companies began firing leftists. The unemployment of the main family breadwinner meant increased impoverishment, which women experienced in ways affected by the shantytown gender expectation that women be responsible for feeding the family, caring for the children, and keeping the house in order. To women, the unemployment meant not having enough food with which to nourish their children properly, not being able to finance their children’s schooling or clothing needs, not being able to pay water and electricity bills whereupon these services would be cut off, having to live with relatives in many cases because of not being able to afford a home of their own, and not having access to adequate medical care.
Chapter 4: Surviving Poverty in the Shantytowns
The women employed varied and creative ways to cope with their exacerbated poverty. These included joining income-earning and food-procuring cooperative-like groups, working in government emergency employment programs, working for private employers, and making and selling food and drinks entrepreneurially. Women also cut back on spending for the household, engaged in reciprocal exchanges with neighbors and family members, and sought the help of their local priest. The focus of this chapter is on the groups that women joined. These were mainly craft-making workshops, small laundry enterprises, community kitchens for children, community kitchens for all members of the community, joint purchasing groups, collective gardens, and groups aimed at solving access-to-housing problems. Many of these groups received support from one of Chile’s main human rights-cum-humanitarian organizations under the dictatorship, the Committee for Cooperation for Peace in Chile [Comité de Cooperación para la Paz en Chile], which in 1976 became the Vicariate of Solidarity [Vicaría de la Solidaridad]. The groups also received considerable support from Chilean exiles, human rights groups, and churches abroad.
What the women did to cope with their poverty was a radical departure from their previous existence. Because of shantytown gender expectations, opposition from husbands, and the issue of childcare, in their pre-dictatorship lives the women interviewed tended not to have worked for an income outside the home, and not to have been members of groups. Most of their time had been spent taking care of the house and children, an existence that many described as “between the four walls,” connoting constraint. Their husbands’ unemployment and the repression, however, pushed them into income-earning or food-procuring groups, and into employment and entrepreneurship.
Motherhood was also a driving force for women’s entry into groups. As women were responsible for feeding their children, when their husbands lost their jobs, were in prison, or were ill, they felt obliged to find ways of acquiring food or money for their offspring. They could take their children along with them to many of the groups, and so in their minds the groups were an ideal way of earning an income. There were still other reasons for joining groups, however, such as wanting to get out of the house, to cease feeling lonely, to become more independent of husbands, to enjoy the company of other women, and to learn something new.
Being in groups not only enabled the women to earn an income or acquire food. They report that it helped them develop self-confidence and self-esteem, and feel more comfortable speaking to people whom they knew very little. It helped them take the difficult step of “emerging from between the four walls” and becoming active in groups. It taught them a great deal. It enabled them to come to understand that their family’s problems, such as unemployment, were not their husbands’ fault but rather were due to the economic policies of the regime. Some women gained a sense of political efficacy. Several women distributed certain domestic duties and child care among other family members, with their husbands doing some of the work that they used to do. Many women became the only family breadwinner; some experienced strain in their marital relationships as a result. The women also gained the friendship and support of other women, and the enjoyment and conviviality of regular group meetings. Many found their group meetings, with the laughter, conversation, and absorption in one’s work that these involved, a relaxing break from the stresses and strains of their daily lives, and they liked their groups’ recreational activities.
Chapter 5: Resistance: Self-Protection and Community Affirmation
Shantytown women’s resistance to the dictatorship was mostly quiet and non-confrontational. Some of it consisted of activities that could be described as mounting an offensive, but most of it was self-protection and community affirmation, both ways of holding one’s ground and refusing to be beaten down, more akin to fighting off an enemy than moving forward with an attack. Self-protection consisted of strategies that women adopted to protect themselves, their families, their groups, and their shantytowns from state violence. These included judiciously using information offered by the resistance community, employing secrecy and disguise, raising the alert, building barriers, and marking territory. Community affirmation involved paying homage to individuals who had died at the hands of the dictatorship, building bridges with other groups, fostering a community of women, celebrating shantytown and group anniversaries, and nurturing the values of solidarity, sharing, equality, and democracy.
For the most part, shantytown women did not set out to resist the dictatorship, but became involved in collective acts of resistance because the groups that they joined to cope with their poverty engaged in resistance activities “on the side;” such resistance was incidental resistance. Part of it was reluctant resistance, meaning that the women engaged in it unwillingly because they were afraid. Group leaders sometimes encouraged the women to participate in protests, for example, but many women were reluctant to do so because they were afraid that they might be arrested and would then not be able to look after their children. Part of their incidental resistance was also solidarity resistance, that is, the women expressed solidarity with other groups and individuals by lending them support during their protests or by going to visit them, for example.
Chapter 6: Mounting an Offensive
As well as fending off the onslaughts that dictatorship brought, some shantytown women mounted an offensive against it. They produced and distributed flyers encouraging people to participate in demonstrations and national strikes and making demands for social services and an end to the repression. They wrote, produced, and distributed bulletins containing articles about their poverty and the repression, and measures people could take to cope. They wrote open letters to ministries describing their situation and sometimes making demands. They drafted public declarations containing criticism of the government. They produced arpilleras, murals, and scrawlings on walls denouncing poverty and repression, expressing discontent, or inciting people to participate in protests. They participated in demonstrations and protest marches. Group leaders created groups, and within them took steps to make the women aware of the links between their difficulties and the regime’s policies. In many of these activities the women used art forms, be it cartoons, drawings, paintings, appliqué work, music, poetry, or theater.
Chapter 7: Ties Between Groups
Shantytown women did not join groups only in order to cope with their poverty. Those who were affected by targeted repression also joined and formed groups in search of support with this repression and its consequences. The most prominent of such groups were the associations of relatives, of which there were several: relatives of the disappeared, of political prisoners, of persons executed for political reasons, of exiles, and of the internally exiled. In these associations, women worked to find out about their loved ones, save their lives or improve conditions for them, and inform the public about what was occurring. There were also health teams that grew in part out of a need to treat inhabitants of shantytowns injured by soldiers’ bullets, discussion groups in which women discussed the repression, women-oriented groups, and political parties (about which the many shantytown women had negative feelings).
The women came to feel that they were members of a community of resistance in which there was unity and all thought alike. This happened because they formed ties with other groups, which consisted of both informal ties and ties institutionalized in the form of coordinating committees that linked between five and a dozen groups in the same area of Santiago or that linked groups in different areas but having the same focus. Often the groups participated in protest marches and demonstrations together.
Chapter 8: Surviving Dictatorship
Shantytown women chipped away at the power of the regime. By creating groups in which they fostered discussion about rights and the causes of repression and poverty, group leaders contributed to the victory of the opposition in the plebiscite that ended Pinochet’s rule. All group members contributed to this victory by building bridges with other groups and participating in resistance activities. Through group participation, thousands of shantytown women came to understand the regime as having policies responsible for the poverty and the repression they endured, and to see themselves as having rights that the regime was violating. The groups also contributed to raising awareness beyond the group itself, namely in the women’s neighborhoods through the dropping of flyers, in the center of Santiago during protests, and abroad via the arpilleras that were sent out. The activities in which women in groups participated helped strengthen ties between groups, and so contributed to the growth of the resistance community and enabled an exchange of ideas between groups, both of which increased the likelihood of a majority vote against the continuation of the Pinochet dictatorship. Ties between groups led, in addition, to expressions of solidarity, which fortified the recipients of this solidarity and boosted their morale, and so helped keep them resisting the regime.
Women’s joining groups also strengthened the resistance community in that it brought about changes in the women that were beneficial to this community. Women said they gained in self-confidence and self-esteem; this made them more likely to join or create still other groups. It gave them a sense of efficacy and thus arguably a willingness to go on resisting. It brought them leadership and group management skills, and the skills required to write public declarations, letters to ministries, bulletins, and pamphlets, all of which enabled them better to engage in resistance activities. Being in groups made the women less afraid, and more likely to participate in resistance activities. From their perspective, it also enabled them to learn how to converse with other women and talk to foreigners and others who might help them.
The personal consequences of joining groups were no less significant. The women gained access to much-needed money, food, and donations, that enabled them to nourish, educate, and clothe their children. The groups brought them conviviality, support, friendship, enjoyment, and relaxation. Some women found both their work in groups and the group meetings therapeutic. The groups brought a sense of belonging to a unified community. Most women felt that they had succeeded in escaping their earlier, constrained lives within the “four walls.” Joining groups caused them to become the main breadwinners in many cases, and their husbands and children became more involved than previously in domestic duties. Women became more independent of their husbands, and more assertive with them, enjoying the support of group members in the process, and they learned about “women’s rights.” With their groups, they gained a space of moral and material support, coming both from fellow group members and from NGOs, humanitarian organizations, and the Catholic Church.
