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Politics of Gender and Consumption in Authoritarian Chile, 1973–1990: Women Agricultural Workers in the Fruit-Export Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Heidi Tinsman
Heidi Tinsman*
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Abstract

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This essay explores the impact of new consumer cultures on rural women in Chile's fruit-export sector during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet, 1973–1990. It challenges the longstanding assumption that the “consumerism” associated with Chile's neoliberal makeover was overwhelmingly reactionary in its political consequences and debilitating for working-class communities in particular. It argues that while new consumer cultures emerged within, and sometimes exacerbated, conditions of extraordinary exploitation and want, consumption was also a site through which women fruit workers challenged family patriarchy and created new forms of community with each other. Taking the central valley province of the Aconcagua Valley as its focus, the essay examines women's enthusiasm for the proliferation of imported commodities such as ready-made clothes, makeup, televisions, refrigerators, and electronic music devices, whose availability resulted from employment in the fruit-export sector as well as new sources of consumer debt. It concludes that while such new consumer desires and practices positioned rural women as validating certain aspects of the military's modernization project, it simultaneously encouraged women to resist necessarily linkages between “authoritarian” and “modernity” and to embrace gender ideals that were quite oppositional to those the regime promoted.

Resumen

Resumen

Este ensayo explora el impacto de nuevas culturas de consumo en trabajadoras rurales del sector exportador de frutas en Chile durante el régimen militar de Augusto Pinochet, 1973–1990. Desafía la suposición tradicional sobre la cultura consumista asociada a las reformas neoliberales chilenas que argumenta haber tenido consecuencias políticas reaccionarias y en particular, perjudiciales para las comunidades de clase trabajadora. Este trabajo sostiene que mientras que la nueva cultura consumista surgió, y en algunos casos, se potenció, dentro de condiciones de explotación extraordinaria y necesidad, el consumo también conformó un sitio a través del cual las trabajadoras de la fruta desafiaron familias patriarcales y crearon formas alternativas de comunidad entre ellas mismas. Enfocándose en el valle central de la provincia de Aconcagua, este ensayo examina el entusiasmo de las mujeres frente a la proliferación de productos importados, como vestimentas manufacturadas, cosméticos, televisiones, refrigeradoras y equipos de música, a los cuales ellas tuvieron la oportunidad de acceder por su empleo en el sector exportador de frutas y por la disponibilidad de nuevas formas de financiamento de consumo. Este ensayo concluye que mientras que nuevos deseos y prácticas de consumo ubicaron a las trabajadoras rurales de la fruta en una posición de revalidación de ciertos aspectos del proyecto militar de modernización, éstos motivaron a las mujeres a resistir conexiones entre “autoritarismo” y “modernidad”, y promover ideales de género contrarios a los aceptados por el régimen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , October 2006 , pp. 7 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by the University of Texas Press

References

1. The most representative of this scholarship includes Tomás Moulian, Chile actual: Anatomía de un mito, (Santiago de Chile: Arcis, 1997) and Patricio Silva, “Modernization, Consumerism, and Politics in Chile,” in David E. Hojman, ed., Neoliberalism With a Human Face? The Politics and Economics of the Chilean Model (Liverpool: Institute for Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool, 1995), 118–32.

2. An important exception to the tendency to interpret consumerism as largely negative is Joel Stillerman, “Gender, Class, and Generational Contexts for Consumption in Contemporary Chile,” Journal of Consumer Culture 4, no. 1 (2004): 51–78.

3. The Aconcagua Valley is located sixty miles north of Santiago and includes the administrative departments of San Felipe and Los Andes. It forms part of Chile's agricultural heartland, the larger central valley, which stretches several hundred miles north and south of Santiago.

4. Recent work on consumption in Latin America includes Benjamin Orlove, ed., The Allure of the Foreign: Imported Goods in Postcolonial Latin America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Néstor García Canclini, Consumidores y ciudadanos. Conflictos multiculturales de la globalization (Mexico City: Editorial Grijalbo, 1995); Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America's Material Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, Eric Zolov, eds., The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).

5. Important works include June Nash and María Patricia Femández-Kelley, eds., Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983); María Patricia Fernández-Kelly, For We Are Sold, I and My People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985); Eleanor Leacock and Helen Safa, eds., Women's Work: Development and the Division of Labor by Gender (South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey, 1986); Susan Tiano, Patriarchy on the Line: Labor, Gender, and Ideology in the Mexican Maquila Industry (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).

6. See, for example, Aihwa Ong, Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia (Albany: SUNY, 1987); Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Thomas Miller Klubock, Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).

7. Heidi Tinsman, “Reviving Feminist Materialism: Gender and Neoliberalism in Pinochet's Chile,” SIGNS: journal of Women in Culture and Society 26, no. 1 (Fall, 2000): 143–185.

8. For example, see Sonia Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women's Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Jane S. Jaquette, The Women's Movement in Latin America: Feminism and the Transition to Democracy (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Temma Kaplan, Crazy for Democracy: Women and Grassroots Movements (New York: Routledge, 1997) and Women, Youth, and Direct Democracy: Taking Back the Streets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Veronica Schild, “Recasting Popular Movements: Gender and Political Learning in Neighborhood Organizing in Chile,” Latin American Perspectives 21, no. 2 (1994): 59–76; Cathy Schneider, Shantytown Protests in Pinochet's Chile (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995); Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest: Women's Movements in Chile (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

9. Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd, eds., Politics and Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).

10. For statistics on land expropriations during the agrarian reform, see Solón Barraclough and José Antonio Fernández, Diagnóstico de la reforma agraria chilena (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1974). For land expropriation figures on Aconcagua and an analysis of the agrarian reform's gender politics, see Heidi Tinsman, Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950–1973 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 211. For rural union membership during the agrarian reform, see Luís Salinas, Trayectoria de la organización campesina (Santiago de Chile: AGRA, 1985).

11. The estimated number of fruit workers in the Aconcagua Valley in the mid-1980s was 7,500. Like the national figure, this number is an estimate, based on partial employment surveys (encuestas de trabajo), carried out by the National Statistics Institute. For Aconcagua figures, see “Análisis del Sector Rural,” unpublished survey by Raimundo García-Huidobro Villalón and Antonio Yaksic Soule, in “Documento final,” Departamento de Acción Social, San Felipe, 1984.

12. There is a substantial literature on Chilean fruit workers. Important works include, María Elena Cruz and Cecilia Leiva, “La fruticultura en Chile después de 1973: Un area privilegiada de expansión del capitalismo,” working paper, GIA, Santiago de Chile, 1987; Sergio Gómez and Jorge Echenique, La agricultura chilena: Dos caras de la modernización (Santiago: CIREN, 1988); Ximena Valdés, “Feminización del mercado de trabajo agrícola: Las temporeras,” in Mundo de mujer: Cambio y continuidad (Santiago: Centro de Estudios de la Mujer, 1988), 389–432 and Mujer, trabajo, y medio ambiente: Los nudos de la modernización agraria (Santiago: CEM, 1992); Daniel Rodríguez and Silvia Venegas, De praderas a parronales (Santiago: GEA, 1989); Gonzalo Falabella, “Trabajo temporal y desorganización social,” Proposiciones 4 (1988): 34–52; Stephanie Barrientos, Ann Bee, Ann Matear, and Isabel Vogel, Women and Agribusiness: Working Miracles in the Chilean Fruit Export Sector (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).

13. Most government and scholarly sources agree that real agricultural wages and rural livelihoods improved significantly during the agrarian reform. However, they disagree meaningfully on the exact amount by which wages rose, placing the figure between two- and six-fold. For low-end estimates see Solon Barraclough, Chile: Reforma agraria y gobierno popular (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Periferia, 1973); for high-end estimates, see Brian Loveman, Struggle in the Countryside: Politics and Rural Labor in Chile, 1919–1973 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1976). For official government figures that indicate that wages tripled, see Estadísticas Laborales (Santiago de Chile: Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas [INE], 1976), 41.

14. See Lovell S. Jarvis, Chilean Agriculture under Military Rule: From Reform to Reaction, 1973–1980 (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1985); Apolonia Ramírez, “Dispersión salarial en Chile, 1973–1988,” Documento de trabajo, no. 85. (Santiago de Chile: Programa del Economía Trabajo (PET), 1991). Ramírez argues that by 1988 real minimum wages were still 30 percent below what they had been under Allende and 11 percent what they had been under Frei.

15. For Aconcagua, see “Inscripciones de CORA,” Bienes Raíces, San Felipe and Los Andes. For national figures on agrarian reform small-holders alone, see Gómez and Echenique, La agricultura chilena.

16. For an overview of the military's economic policies and their impact on workers in various economic sectors see, Peter Winn, ed., Victims of the Chilean Miracle? Chilean Workers and the Neoliberal Model, 1973–1998 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).

17. Minutes from the first meeting of the Comisión Nacional Campesina in August 1982, “Simposio nacional sobre sindicalismo campesino: Acción solidaria por la justicia social,” Punta de Tralca, 8 al 12 de octubre (Santiago de Chile: Departamento Campesino, Vicaría de la Solidaridad, 1982).

18. “Prioridad FAMILIA: Situación de la familia en nuestra sociedad,” undated memo, mid-1980s, Departamento de Acción Social, Opispado de San Felipe, San Felipe, Chile (hereafter, DAS); Patricia González, “Situación de la Familia Campesina en la diócesis de Aconcagua,” in “Documento final del seminario de diagnóstico de la zona rural de la diócesis de San Felipe, realizado entre el 28 y 30 de noviembre de 1984,” DAS; Ana María Campos, “Opiniones sobre la situación actual de la juventud campesina: Apuntes discusión de grupo,” in “Documento final,” DAS.

19. Monseñor Camilo Vial, Eduardo Olmos, Patricio Asejo, Raimundo García-Huidobro, and Antonio Yaksic, Obispado San Felipe, Internal memo of Obispado de San Felipe, 1984, DAS. Similar concerns about women's relationship to television were voiced by the left. For example, see the discussion of women and mass media by the Marxist rural labor confederation, Unidad Obrero Campesino, “5° Congreso Nacional de la Confederación Unidad Obrero Campesino de Chile, 26, 27, 28 de agosto, 1986,” (Santiago, UOC, 1986).

20. Instituto Nacional de Pastoral Rural (INPRU),“Informe Familia Campesina,” internal document, (Santiago de Chile, 1984).

21. Pancha Rodríguez, Departamento Feminino, Confederación El Surco, quoted from author's notes on El Primer Encuentro de la Mujer Temporera, Canelo de Nos, Santiago de Chile, 5,6,7 de junio, 1993.

22. The Chilean government agency MIDEPLAN reported that 20 percent of rural households were headed by women in 1990 (La Impresión de las cifras. Niños, mujeres, jovenes y adultos mayores [Santiago de Chile: Ministerio de Planificación y Cooperación, 1993], cited in Barrientos, et al., Women and Agribusiness, 206). Researchers in the major fruit-export sector of Aconcagua province reported 19 percent of rural families as headed by women in the early 1980s (Rodríguez y Venegas, De praderas a parronales). In 1960, the percentage of rural households headed by women was 8 percent, Censo de población: Chile, 1960 (Santiago: INE, 1961).

23. Rodríguez y Venegas, De praderas a parronales.

24. Sergio Gómez y Jorge Echenique, “Trabajadoras temporeras de la agricultura moderna en chile,” Documento de trabajo no. 324 (Santiago de Chile: FLACSO, 1986), 22; Xímena Aranda, Mujer rural: Diagnóstico para orientar políticas en el agro (Santiago de Chile: SERNAM, 1992), 20.

25. Margarita Fernández y Mauricio Rosenbluth, “Transformaciones de las pautas de consumo en Chile en una década,” Revista de Economía y Trabajo 11 (2001): 159–205.

26. Silva, “Modernization, Consumerism, and Politics in Chile,” 124.

27. Raul Pablo Dastres Abarca, “El uso de la mano de obra y su manejo en algunas centrales frutícolas de Chile,” memoria de título, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestales, Universidad de Chile, 1992, 100–101.

28. Between 1990 and 1993, I recorded fifty oral histories and interviews with fruit workers in the Aconcagua Valley departments of San Felipe and Los Andes. In 2003, I conducted another 20 interviews with fruit workers. Oral opinions were also offered in the many union meetings and worker-education seminars I attended during my field-work. Likewise, I have drawn on the interviews other researchers conducted and published, especially Ximena Valdés, Sonia Montecino, Kirai de León, eds., Historias testimoniales de mujeres del campo (Santiago de Chile: CEDEM, 1983); Ximena Valdés, Sinopsis de una realidad oculta: Las trabajadoras del campo (Santiago de Chile: CEM, 1987); Francisca Browne, Dalal Garib, and Marcela Loyola, Tradición y modernidad en Chañaral Alto: El trabajo temporal en la agricultura como agente de transformaciones culturales (Santiago: CEDEM y Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, 1995), Barrientos et al., Women and Agribusiness.

29. Various oral histories by author. Also see Barrientos, et al., Women and Agribusiness, 148–154.

30. Barrientos et al., Women and Agribusiness, 154.

31. Oral histories of Pati Muñoz, Santa María, recorded by author, May 15, 1993, and of Erika Muñoz, Santa María, April 26, 1993. Also see Browne, et al., Tradición y modernidad, 57.

32. Oral history of Erika Ibacache, recorded by author, Santa María, November 14, 1992.

33. Silvia Venegas, Una gota al día … un chorro al año: El impacto social de la expansión frutícola (Santiago de Chile: GEA, 1992).

34. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, Hannah Arendt, ed., (Harcourt, Brace & World: New York, 1969), 217–252.

35. García Canclini, Consumidores y ciudadanos.

36. Olivia Herrera, oral history, recorded by author, Santa María, October 13, 1993.

37. Gómez y Echenique, Trabajadoras temporeras; M. Cabezas. “Transformaciones en las pautas de consumo en las últimas dos décadas,” Documento de Trabajo, PET No. 88, Santiago, 1992). For nutrition and consumption during the agrarian reform, see Flavio Machicado, “La redistribución del ingreso en Chile y su impacto en la estructura de consumo de alimentos esenciales, 1970–1971” (Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin Madison, 1974).

38. Fernandez y Rosenbluth, “Transformaciones de la pautas de consumo,” 184.

39. INPRU, “Planteamientos hechos por la comisión de mujeres en la jornada de carta pastoral de Ovalle el dia 3 de abril de 1984” (INPRU: Santiago de Chile, 1984).

40. “Prioridad FAMILIA,” Undated memo, mid-1980s, Opispado de San Felipe, San Felipe, DAS.

41. “Jornadas de mujeres campesinas efectuada en Padre Hurtado el jueves 31 de junio de 1984” (INPRU, 1984).

42. Ibid.

43. Oral history, Selfa Antimán, recorded by author, Santa María, May 15, 1993.

44. For example, see “Mensaje a la mujer chilena: Texto del discurso pronunciado por el Presidente de la Junta de Gobierno, General Augusto Pinochet, en el acto organizado por la Secretaría Nacional de la Mujer” (24 de abril, 1974). Also see various speeches quoted in AMIGA, the monthly publication of Centros de Madres de Chile, the regime-sponsored homemakers' societies headed by Pinochet's wife.

45. Baldez, Why Women Protest.

46. Teresa Valdés, Marisa Weinstein, María Isabel Toledo y Lilian Letelier, “Centros de Madre 1973–1989: Solo disciplinamiento?” Documento de Trabajo No. 416. FLACSO, Santiago, 1989.

47. There was an avarege of eleven domestic violence cases per year in the 1960s, an average of thirty-eight cases during the UP, and an average of sixty during the 1980s. “Regístro de Crímenes,” San Felipe Juzgado de Crimen, San Felipe.

48. For a more extensive discussion of domestic violence see Heidi Tinsman, “Household Patrones: Wife Beating and Sexual Control in Rural Chile, 1958–1988,” in The Gendered Worls of Latin American Women Workers, John D. French and Daniel James, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 264–296.

49. Erika Muñoz, oral history.

50. Ibid.

51. Isabel Ordenas Vera, oral history, recorded by author, Putaendo, June 4, 1993.

52. Selfa Antimán, oral history

53. Mari Herrera, oral history, recorded by author, Santa María, May 10, 1993.

54. Erika Muñoz, oral history.

55. Various oral histories, including María Trujillo, recorded by author, Santa María, October, 26, 1992.

56. Norma Cárdenas, oral history, recorded by author, Santa María, March 10, 1993.

57. Sonia Gutiérrez, oral history, recorded by author, Santa María, June 14, 1993.

58. Rita Galdámez, oral history, recorded by author, Santa María, April 20, 1993.

59. María Elena Galdámez, oral history, recorded by author, Santa María, November 4, 1992.

60. Ibid.

61. Erika Muñoz, oral history; Olga Gutierrez, oral history, Santa Maria, April, 1993.

62. Author's notes from El Primer Encuentro de la Mujer Temporera, Canelo de Nos, 5–7 de junio, 1993.

63. Olga Gutiérrez and Erika Muñoz, oral histories.

64. Author's notes from El Primer Encuentro de la Mujer Temporera, Canelo de Nos, 5–7 de junio, 1993.

65. In the nineteenth century, rural Chile was most characterized by informal and highly fluid relations of sexuality and cohabitation. See Gabriel Salazar, Laboradores, peones, y proletarios: Formación y crisis de la sociedad popular chilena del siglo XIX, (Santiago de Chile: SUR, 1986); Nara Milanich, “Children of Fate: Families, Class, and the State in Chile, 1857–1930” (PhD diss, Yale University, 2002).

66. See Tinsman, Partners in Conflict, chapters four and six.