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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 May 2020
Economic crises during Chile's civic–military dictatorship (1973–90) forced a growing number of people onto the streets, including women who commuted from peripheral neighbourhoods to beg in downtown Santiago. Under military rule, impoverished women in public spaces became a police problem. Despite their constant presence on the streets throughout the twentieth century, Chile's begging laws were rarely applied to women, except for a brief period under Pinochet, when begging emerged as a female crime in Santiago. This paper examines female begging and the policing of female begging, revealing both to be framed as a defence of the family.
Las crisis económicas durante la dictadura cívico-militar en Chile (1973–90) forzaron a un creciente número de personas a trabajar en la calle, entre ellas mujeres que se trasladaban de barrios periféricos a pedir limosna en el centro de Santiago. Bajo el régimen militar, mujeres empobrecidas en espacios públicos se volvieron un problema policiaco. Pese a su constante presencia en las calles a lo largo del siglo XX, las leyes contra la mendicidad fueron raramente aplicadas a las mujeres, salvo durante un breve periodo de la era Pinochet cuando pedir limosna emergió como un delito femenino en Santiago. Este artículo examina la mendicidad femenina y su tratamiento policiaco, enmarcados ambos como una defensa a la familia.
A crise econômica causada pela ditadura civil–militar do Chile (1973–90) forçou um grande número de pessoas a trabalhar na rua, incluindo mulheres que vinham de bairros periféricos para mendigar no centro de Santiago. Durante o regime militar, a presença de mulheres pobres em espaços públicos se tornou um problema ‘de polícia’. Apesar de sua constante presença nas ruas ao longo de todo o século vinte, as leis de mendicância raramente foram aplicadas às mulheres, exceto por um curto período sob Pinochet, quando a mendicância começou a ser vista como um crime feminino em Santiago. Este artigo examina a mendicância feminina e o policiamento da mesma, demonstrando que ambos foram enquadrados dentro do argumento de defesa da família.
1 Case 91.865-1, 2nd Criminal Court of Santiago (2CCS), 16 July 1979, Archivo Judicial de Santiago (AJS). All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.
2 The term ‘dueña de casa’ refers to women who might have worked, and might still be working, but whose identity was defined by the role of mother, wife and homemaker.
3 Código Penal de la República de Chile (1874).
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23 Both sets of ledgers (cases and files) for all of Santiago's criminal courts are currently held in the 34th Criminal Court. The record is incomplete due to damage, poor management and loss. This study focuses on Courts nos. 1–5 because, according to a report compiled for the author by the Dirección de Estudios de la Corte Suprema, they received the most begging cases, and because the ledgers for these courts are the most complete.
24 The totals do not tally because some case files could not be found in the AJS.
25 There is little in the available case files to suggest that the women detained were inhibited by fear of abuse or reprisal when speaking before a judge. Police harassment was real, as was fear of it, but statements show a preparedness to admit to begging, denounce police harassment or insist police are lying.
26 Zapata and Moya, ‘La mendicidad y su mundo’, Anexo A: ‘Historias de vida’.
27 Consejo Nacional para la Superación de la Pobreza (CNSP), La pobreza en Chile: Un desafío de equidad e integración social (Aug. 1996), available at http://www2.superacionpobreza.cl/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/la_pobreza_en_chile_1996.pdf (last accessed 4 March 2020).
28 Ministerio de Justicia, Ley no. 19.567 (1 July 1998).
29 Acuña Montenegro, ‘El problema de la mendicidad’, pp. 7–10, 26–8; Valdovinos, ‘La vagancia’, pp. 11–12; Porteus, J. D., ‘Microspace Geography: Beggars in Santiago de Chile’, in Barr, Brenton M. (ed.), New Themes in Western Canadian Geography: The Langara Papers, no. 22 (Vancouver: Tantalus Research, 1976), pp. 89–95Google Scholar; Spooner, Mary Helen, Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 175–6Google Scholar.
30 Acuña Montenegro, ‘El problema de la mendicidad’, pp. 21 and 25; Valdovinos, ‘La vagancia’, p. 31.
31 Labbé, Marcos Fernández, ‘Police Imagination: The Construction of Drug Users and Drug Trafficking in Chile, 1900–1950’, in Huertas, Luz E., Lucero, Bonnie and Swedberg, Gregory J. (eds.), Voices of Crime: Constructing and Contesting Social Control in Modern Latin America (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2016), pp. 78–82Google Scholar.
32 Valdovinos, ‘La vagancia’, pp. 24; Labbé, Marcos Fernández, ‘Asociales: Raza, exclusión y anormalidad en la construcción estatal chilena, 1920–1960’, Revista de Historia Social y de las Mentalidades, 16: 2 (2012), pp. 184–5Google Scholar; Fernández Labbé, ‘Police Imagination’, p. 81.
33 Ministerio de Justicia, Ley no. 11.625 (21 Sept. 1954); Ley no. 19.313 (21 July 1994).
34 Polomer, Azun Candina, ‘Seguridad ciudadana y sociedad en Chile contemporáneo. Los delincuentes, las políticas y los sentidos de una sociedad’, Revista de Estudios Históricos, 2: 1 (2005)Google Scholar; Fernández Labbé, ‘Asociales’, pp. 167–94; León León, Construyendo un sujeto criminal, pp. 133–68.
35 Planificación, Ministerio de, Habitando la calle. Catastro nacional de personas en situación de calle (Santiago: Ministerio de Planificación, 2005), p. 28Google Scholar.
36 From the end of the nineteenth century, women and children were targeted by charitable institutions, not police; see de León Atria, Macarena Ponce, Gobernar la pobreza: Prácticas de caridad y beneficencia en la ciudad de Santiago, 1830–1890 (Santiago: DIBAM, 2011), pp. 183–206Google Scholar. In subsequent decades police barely detained any women, and public concern about ‘female’ crime focused on abortion, abandoning the home, bigamy, adultery and ‘crimes of passion’: see Rivera Aravena, ‘Mujeres malas’, pp. 100–2.
37 A review of Ledgers 5, 6 and 7 of the 2CCS of files sent to the AJS identified 114 ‘beggars’ (65 women and 49 men) and 1,704 ‘vagrants’ (323 women and 1,381 men) by name and sex. Only nine women and 11 men were detained for both ‘crimes’. Common first and last name combinations and the use of initials may impact the accuracy of the numbers, but not to any significant degree.
38 Based on a review of 89 vagrancy cases in the AJS.
39 At the national level arrests of men outnumbered those of women; see Zapata and Moya, ‘La mendicidad y su mundo’, p. 20.
40 See, for example, Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land, pp. 175–6.
41 Zapata and Moya, ‘La mendicidad y su mundo’, Anexo A, pp. 34–43.
42 Schkolnik and Teitelboim, Pobreza y desempleo, pp. 13–14.
43 Han, Clara, Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012), pp. 75–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hardy, Hambre + dignidad, pp. 158–9 and 168.
44 Schkolnik and Teitelboim, Pobreza y desempleo, pp. 13–14.
45 Zapata and Moya, ‘La mendicidad y su mundo’, pp. 91–4, 146–51.
46 Rodó, Andrea and Saball, Paulina, ‘Mujer popular, familia y cesantía: Apuntes de terreno’, Proposiciones, 9 (1983), pp. 39–54Google Scholar; Rodó, ‘El cuerpo ausente’, pp. 86–7.
47 Rodó and Saball, ‘Mujer popular’, p. 49.
48 Ibid., p. 51; Rodó, ‘El cuerpo ausente’, pp. 86–7.
49 Rodó and Saball, ‘Mujer popular’, p. 49.
50 Sixty-seven identifiable women have an address in their file. More than half lived in Conchalí (13), La Granja (12) or La Cisterna (10).
51 Rojas, Sergio, ‘Políticas de erradicación y radicación de campamentos. 1982–1984, discursos, logros y problemas’, Documento de Trabajo FLACSO, 215 (1984), pp. 9–14Google Scholar; Ramón, Armando de, Santiago de Chile. Historia de una sociedad urbana (Santiago: Catalonia, 2007), p. 254Google Scholar. La Granja, Conchalí and La Cisterna ranked third, fifth and 19th respectively among the most overcrowded comunas: see Petit, Sergio Wilson, El drama de las familias sin casa y los allegados (Santiago: Fundación para la Acción Vecinal y Comunitaria, 1985), p. 89Google Scholar.
52 Mayr, Doris Cooper, Delincuencia común en Chile (Santiago: LOM, 1994), p. 88Google Scholar.
53 Gross, Patricio and Rodríguez, Alfredo, ‘Segregación ambiental en Santiago: 1952–1982’, Eure, 15: 44 (1988), pp. 55–77Google Scholar.
54 Raczynski, Dagmar and Serrano, Claudia, Vivir la pobreza. Testimonios de mujeres (Santiago: Pispal / CIEPLAN, 1985), pp. 19, 184Google Scholar.
55 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
56 Ibid., pp. 43–58. See also Ministro de Economía, Fomento y Reconstrucción (Ministry of the Economy, Development and Reconstruction, MEFR), XV censo nacional de población y IV de vivienda, 12 vols., Vol. 2 (Santiago, 1982), pp. 266–7; and Schkolnik and Teitelboim, Pobreza y desempleo, pp. 323–7.
57 Raczynski and Serrano, Vivir la pobreza, pp. 43–58, 88, 98.
58 Hardy, Hambre + dignidad, p. 70. Hardy's figure for the eastern ollas comunes aligns with the 1982 census: see MEFR, XV censo nacional de población y IV de vivienda, Vol. 3, pp. 124–5, and with Schkolnik and Teitelboim's figures for the poblaciones of José María Caro, Lo Sierra, Lo Hermida and a campamento in Lo Espejo: see Pobreza y desempleo, p. 296.
59 Children and other relatives living with the nuclear family contributed more to household income than did wives; see Hardy, Hambre + dignidad, p. 79.
60 Raczynski and Serrano, Vivir la pobreza, p. 44.
61 Rodó and Saball, ‘Mujer popular’, p. 42.
62 Ibid., p. 45; Hardy, Hambre + dignidad, pp. 158–9; Nunez, Lorena, ‘Women on the Streets: Vending and Public Space in Chile’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28: 44 (1993), pp. WS71 and WS75–WS76Google Scholar.
63 Raczynski and Serrano, Vivir la pobreza, pp. 240–1.
64 Rodó and Saball, ‘Mujer popular’, pp. 41–6 and 52; CNSP, La pobreza en Chile.
65 In the available case files between 1979 and 1990, 59 individual women can be identified. Around half of these women were detained at least once with their children, or alongside someone with children. They identify as mostly as dueñas de casa (22). The next highest category is street vendor (five).
66 Zapata and Moya, ‘La mendicidad y su mundo’, p. 148.
67 Ibid., p. 149.
68 Interview with Guadalupe in Zapata and Moya, ‘La mendicidad y su mundo’, Anexo A, pp. 14–32.
69 Ibid., pp. 148–9.
70 Ibid., Anexo A, p. 26.
71 Ibid., p. 77.
72 Ibid., Anexo A, pp. 11 and 69.
73 Ibid., pp. 34–43.
74 Case 113.573-11, 2CCS, 23 Nov. 1985, AJS; Case 112.161-6, 2CCS, 9 July 1985, AJS.
75 Case 112.421-3, 2CCS, 30 July 1985, AJS.
76 Case 111.092-11, 2CCS, 22 April 1985, AJS.
77 Bengoa, Javier Martínez and Palacios, Margarita, Informe sobre la decencia: La diferenciación estamental de la pobreza y los subsidios públicos (Santiago: Ediciones SUR, 1996), p. 14Google Scholar. The same year, the CNSP's report detailed the effects of male alcoholism in the poblaciones and the ‘strength of women in the everyday struggle against poverty’. These women were, the report says, willing to do anything – including begging – to provide for their families: see La pobreza en Chile.
78 See note 16.
79 Sánchez, Héctor Jacob, Análisis crítico sobre la policía uniformada chilena (Santiago: n.p., 1984), pp. 7–9 and 49–54Google Scholar.
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81 Begging is its own ‘crime’, rather than a sub-category of vagrancy or sospecha. In the 89 cases of vagrancy reviewed (see text at note 38), both women and men were typically detained because their names appeared in the PDI database, and although sospecha was an overwhelmingly male category, thousands of women (5,522 in 1979) were arrested for sospecha. In 1979, 315 women were detained for begging. Women such as Erna reported being arrested because they could not produce identification when asked to by the carabineros (Case 120.406-1, 2CCS, 22 June 1987, AJS); another (Case 122.203-1, 2CCS, 3 Nov. 1987, AJS) described being detained even after producing her papers.
82 Case 109.732-2, 2CCS, 31 Dec. 1984, AJS.
83 Case 111.603-6, 2CCS, 30 May 1985, AJS.
84 Case 113.537-11, 2CCS, 23 Nov. 1985, AJS.
85 Ministerio de Justicia, Ley no. 16.618 (1967).
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93 Rojas Flores, Historia de la infancia, pp. 685–6.
94 de Justicia, Ministerio, Plan Nacional para Menores 1978–1982 (Santiago, 1978), pp. 3, 11–15, 19–25, 37Google Scholar. See also ‘Clubes de menores: Rol preventivo, vacuna contra la irregularidad social’, Niño y Patria, 2 (1978), pp. 37–8Google Scholar.
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97 Rojas Flores, Historia de la infancia, pp. 690 and 695.
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100 Ministerio de Justicia, Plan Nacional para Menores, pp. 3, 11–15, 19–25, 37.
101 Ministerio de Justicia, Decreto Ley no. 2.465 (1979); Rojas Flores, Historia de la infancia, p. 708.
102 Actas de Sesiones de la honorable Junta de Gobierno, Acta no. 112-a.
103 Pieper Mooney, The Politics of Motherhood, p. 138; Thomas, Contesting Legitimacy in Chile, p. 141.
104 Oficina de Planificación Nacional (ODEPLAN), Política de población: Política poblacional aprobada por su excelencia el Presidente de la República y publicada en el Plan Nacional Indicativo de Desarrollo (1978–1983), en noviembre de 1978 (Santiago: ODEPLAN, 1979)Google Scholar, translated in ‘Chile Adopts Pronatalist Policy’, Population and Development Review, 5: 3 (1979), pp. 563–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
105 Ibid., p. 569.
106 Ibid., p. 570.
107 Ibid., p. 569.
108 Thomas, Contesting Legitimacy in Chile, p. 148.
109 Bruey, Bread, Justice, and Liberty, pp. 84 and 89–94.
110 Becerra, María Teresa Miranda, ‘Departamento de Menores: Medidas adoptadas y proyección futura’, Niño y Patria, 1: 2 (1978), pp. 13–14Google Scholar. Articles in the magazine also point to inadequate housing, parental alcoholism, underdevelopment and ‘irresponsible’ family planning, and they make clear a preference to keep families together: Georgina Rivera Lechat (Capitán [Captain]), ‘Consecuencias desfavorables del medio que conducen a la condición de irregularidad’, Niño y Patria, 2 (1978), p. 11Google Scholar; ‘La familia popular y todos sus problemas’, Niño y Patria, 5 (1985), pp. 41–3Google Scholar.
111 Colonel Mario López, chief of the Department of Minors and executive vice-president of Niño y Patria, explained this dynamic in 1987, saying that child beggars were detained only if they should have otherwise been at school: see de la Solidaridad, Vicaría, ‘Mendicidad infantil. La pobreza obliga’, Solidaridad, 251 (1987), p. 20Google Scholar.
112 Chilean police prefectures have a larger brief than do individual commissaries. The Anuarios de estadísticas policiales published by the carabineros and the INE (see source to Figure 1) break down arrests by prefecture from 1982.
113 In the sample of cases, the 2nd Women's Commissary and the 34th and 35th Minors’ Commissaries were responsible for 13 arrests of women for begging between 1979 and 1987, and for none after 1987.
114 de Chile, Carabineros, de Instrucción, Dirección, Manual básico de procedimientos policiales para Carabineros (Chile: Carabineros de Chile, Dirección de Instrucción, 1982), p. 43Google Scholar.
115 Case 120.406-1, 2CCS, 22 June 1987, AJS.
116 Interview with Sister María de la Paz Venegas (7 Nov. 2019, Congregación Buen Pastor [Congregation of the Good Shepherd], Santiago). Sister María de la Paz was warden of the COF from 1978 to 1982 and again between 1991 and 1994. The COF also had a section for ‘minors’, that is prisoners under the age of 21. Sister María de la Paz recalled the youngest during her time as being around 18.
117 The archive of the Good Shepherd Congregation contains a 1984 update to the 1983 agreement, raising the number of ‘minors in irregular situations’ whom the sisters agreed to house from 40 to 45 (Archivo Histórico de la Fundación Buen Pastor, Document 200-8-1).
118 CNSP, La pobreza en Chile, p. 22.
119 Ibid.
120 Case 91.865-1, 2CCS, 16 July 1979, AJS.
121 Case 99.329, 2CCS, 26 Feb. 1982, AJS; Case 103.934-9, 2CCS, 24 June 1983, AJS; Case 109.815-9, 2CCS, 8 Dec. 1985, AJS; Case 118.873-1, 2CCS, 2 March 1987, AJS.
122 Case 113.133-6, 2CCS, 15 Oct. 1985, AJS.
123 Zapata and Moya, ‘La mendicidad y su mundo’, pp. 92–4, 97 and 149.
124 Contreras, Victoria and Weihert, Uwe, Sobrevivir en la calle: El comercio ambulante en Santiago (Santiago: PREALC, 1988), pp. 39–40, 91, 93, 99, 103Google Scholar. Murphy too writes of the ambivalent relationship between pobladores and the police within the poblaciones: see For a Proper Home, pp. 143–4.
125 Begging arrests followed a different rhythm from repression in the poblaciones. Massive raids of poor comunas showed a lull in the late 1970s, spiked in the mid 1980s and remained relatively high in the late 1980s: see Moya, Laura, Videla, Claudia and Balladares, Ricardo (eds.), Tortura en poblaciones del Gran Santiago (1973–1990) (Santiago: Corporación José Domingo Cañas, 2005), p. 75Google Scholar.
126 Contreras and Weihert, Sobrevivir en la calle, pp. 20 and 37.
127 Ibid., p. 38.
128 As translated in Nunez, ‘Women on the Streets’, p. WS79.
129 Contreras and Weihert, Sobrevivir en la calle, pp. 5 and 23.
130 Ibid., p. 16.
131 Carabineros de Chile, INE, Anuarios de estadísticas policiales (1989–98).
132 Cámara de Diputados, Sesión no. 29(a) (15 Jan. 1991).