7
Peace in the World and Democracy at Home
The Chilean Women's Movement in the 1940s

Corinne Antezana-Pernet

The 1940 s were a crucial decade in the history of the Chilean women's movement. The middle years of the decade marked the high point of women's mobilization in the struggle for female suffrage and social reforms. During these years a national federation of women's groups was active that held street demonstrations and congresses and drafted petitions to improve the status of women. But this activism lasted for only about three years, and it was followed by the movement's division and decline. Soon after national female suffrage was introduced in 1949, the women's movement lapsed into a passivity that was to last for almost twenty years.

The development of this movement was shaped by a national political culture that strongly emphasized political parties as well as by specific political events. In Chile, always a highly politicized nation, the influence of this culture became much more pronounced than elsewhere, in that most leading feminists, despite their claims to the contrary, were strongly involved in and affected by party politics.

Women's political activism and organizations reached an apogee in 1938–1946 during the administrations of the reformist Radical presidents that were supported by center-left coalitions. This period of class collaboration created a propitious climate for the articulation of women's demands and for the formation of a broad front of women's organizations to pursue them. From 1942 on, however, the Chilean government, although resting on the same coalition as immediately before, abandoned its programs for far-reaching social reform and replaced them by policies emphasizing economic

growth. In this atmosphere, in which domestic conditions tended to discourage political activism, World War II acted as a necessary catalyst in the formation of a broad, ambitious women's movement committed to the defense of democracy and its extension to women. Similarly, the demise of the women's movement can be related to international trends. With the beginning of the Cold War and the sharp turn to the right of the Chilean government in 1947, the progressive wing of the women's movement came to be viewed as a political liability by the centrist and right-wing women's groups. They now began to exclude the leftist feminists. These internal conflicts eventually led to the dissolution of the women's movement.

Early Organization

The first women's organizations appeared in Chile after 1915 during a period of rapid social change. The rise of the middle and working classes, and their increasing political assertiveness, brought to an end the era of oligarchic rule by the landowning and mining aristocracy by the early 1920s.^[1] The following decade was a period of considerable political instability characterized by several military interventions. Despite the frequent changes in government the new leaders attempted to solve the social and economic problems besetting Chile through social welfare programs and increased state intervention in the economy to speed up industrialization. These efforts persisted after "Chile [returned] to the security of traditional modes and formal democracy" in 1932, since the working- and middle-class parties most strongly advocating state intervention were now important participants in electoral politics.

Part and parcel of this transformation of Chilean society was the increased participation of women in the Chilean labor force, especially in the developing industries, the national bureaucracy, and education. In 1907, 22 percent of Chilean women were economically active, of whom more than 70 percent were engaged in service occupations, working as domestics, laundresses, or seamstresses.^[2] The rest of the women workers were mainly classified as artisans or as agricultural workers. The number of professional women barely went above 1 percent of women employed.^[3] In the next decade the number of seamstresses and laundresses declined markedly. By 1920, 43 percent of all working women worked in manufacturing, while the number of teachers and other professionals more than doubled.^[4]

A decade later, women accounted for 20 percent of the Chilean labor

force, and their share grew to more than 24 percent in 1940, remaining at that level until the 1960s.^[5] Women's distribution in the work force, however, had changed quite dramatically. In 1940 only 33 percent of women were employed in personal services, while more than 40 percent worked in manufacturing. More than 6 percent of working women were now classified as professionals or technicians, 5 percent as office workers, and another 7 percent as salespersons. Women thus accounted for 45 percent of Chile's professionals (reflecting their predominance in education and nursing), 21 percent of office workers, and 26 percent of salespersons.^[6] Particularly in the urban society, women had become a highly visible component of modernizing Chile's work force.

Despite these trends women remained legally subordinate to men, and traditional gender roles designating a woman's place as the home remained strongly ingrained. Married women, for instance, had no power over their own property. There were some practicing women lawyers in Chile from 1892 on, but it was only in 1925, when some of the legal restrictions against women were abolished, that women were allowed to testify in court.^[7]

The early women's organizations represented a reaction against these conditions, and they placed particular emphasis on the education of women in preparation for a fuller and more active participation in politics. In the 1920s the early women's groups issued the first tentative petitions for women's enfranchisement, but they were all ignored. During the late 1920s the women's groups found themselves hindered by the curtailment of civil liberties under the military dictatorship of Gen. Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who ruled until 1931.

The fall of Ibáñez in 1931, however, led to the reinstatement of civil liberties and the return of a democratic system. The women's groups, although still small, began to make swift progress in their quest for civil and political rights. In 1933 a group of leading women, representing a broad spectrum of allegiances, established the Committee for Women's Rights (Comité Pro Derecho de las Mujeres). Among its members were Felisa Vergara, a Socialist leader, Amanda Labarca, an educator and member of the Radical party, and Elisa Doll de Díaz, an aristocratic member of the Conservative party.^[8] In 1934 the committee persuaded Congress to grant women the vote in municipal elections.

Following this victory, differentiation and competition among the

women's groups became more pronounced, and they began to mirror the divisions and rivalries of the traditional political parties. After the reinstatement of democracy in 1932 the political forces as a whole realigned themselves "on an explicitly Left-Right ideological continuum."^[9] The result was the extreme fragmentation of the party system and highly competitive party politics, and by 1936 Chile had thirty-six political parties.^[10] Henceforward it became essential for the various parties to form electoral alliances, but such alliances remained extremely unstable. During the 1930s and 1940s five parties commanded prominence: on the right were the two parties of the old elite—the Conservative party and the slightly more progressive Liberal party; the center was held by the middle-class, reformist Radical party; on the left the Socialists and the Communists competed for the support of the lower-middle and especially the working classes.

When the administration of Arturo Alessandri (1932–1938) became increasingly conservative and repressive, the reformist Radicals were driven closer to the Socialists and Communists, whose populist platforms enabled them to expand their popular support. In 1936 the center-left parties, along with a several small splinter parties, formed the Popular Front (Frente Popular), a coalition modeled on those in Spain and France that emerged as a result of the decision of the Comintern in 1935 to recommend that Communists form alliances with "bourgeois" parties to fight against fascism. In Chile, however, the chief objective of the Front was to combat the conservative elite.^[11]

The Popular Front rapidly gained strong popular support through its slogan of "bread, roof, and overcoat." It elicited an "almost mystical" devotion among the common people and quickly became the "symbol of union. . .against oppression, union for achievements of all those things ...[the masses] had always desired but were somehow always denied."^[12] In 1938 the Popular Front achieved a narrow victory when the Radical Pedro Aguirre Cerda defeated the candidate of the conservative alliance in the presidential elections.

But the unity of the Popular Front was mostly a fiction, and there was heated competition among its various component parties. Rivalries between Socialists and Radicals were so intense that the two groups were continually sabotaging each others' activities; meanwhile, the Communists became increasingly critical of the Socialists.^[13] Following the death of the popular Aguirre Cerda in 1941, the Front was formally abandoned, although the

Communists and Socialists continued to collaborate with the Radicals to gain access to government and administrative posts.

These conflicts found reflection in the competition among the representatives of different parties for control over the women's movement. During this period, however, women of different party backgrounds employed a similar feminist discourse that tended to obscure the competition among the parties. Like their early counterparts in Britain or the United States, Chilean feminists drew on traditional assumptions concerning women to justify the increasing participation of women in public life. The participation of women was thus portrayed as an extension of the woman's role as a mother: "generous by nature, the woman will extend her giving and capable hands wherever there is pain, injustice, a wound to be cared for, toward any human being in need of help."^[14] On the assumption that women had special sensibilities and were morally superior to men, Chilean feminists claimed that the increased involvement of women in the public sphere would help the fight against political corruption and raise moral standards throughout the country in general.

A second strain of the Chilean women's movement emphasized that growing female civic participation was crucial to the creation of a modern and democratic state. Echoing John Stuart Mill, whose writings were well-known in progressive circles, Amanda Labarca, the first female tenured professor in Chile and a prominent member of the Radical party, argued for women's rights on the grounds that "the general progress of the country ...cannot advance without the collaboration of women."^[15] Extending the vote to women would "widen the foundations of democracy and the elected parliaments would represent the popular will much more effectively."^[16] At the same time, women needed to become more involved in working outside the home to further economic and particularly industrial development, but without, of course, neglecting their duties as housewives and mothers.^[17] These two lines of feminist argumentation were not mutually exclusive, and both were used by organizations with differing goals and political orientations.

In the 1930s there were numerous women's organizations in Chile, but multiplicity did not always help the cause since the various groups frequently worked independently and in direct competition with one another. Equally, many groups were short-lived, which again made concerted action difficult. Operating separately from each other, the women's groups failed to create a climate of opinion favoring their objectives.

One of the most important groups, which commanded a particularly prominent role during the 1940s, was the MEMCH (Movimiento Pro Emancipación de la Mujer Chilena). Founded in 1935 by members of the Association of University Women (Asociación de Mujeres Universitarias), MEMCH was designed as "an institution for struggle, one that would mobilize, be militant."^[18] Under the leadership of Elena Caffarena, a lawyer and Communist, the organization pursued the economic, legal, and even the biological emancipation of women by advocating the use of contraceptives and limited abortions.^[19] MEMCH called for an attack on poverty, prostitution, and the high rate of infant mortality and lobbied for equal wages and work opportunities for women. MEMCH was well organized and quickly established branches in many parts of the country. In the cities the organization led street demonstrations and workshops for women and petitioned the government for reform, sometimes successfully. An example of these activities was the requests by MEMCH to the foreign minister to include women in the delegations to international conferences. On one occasion, in response to a MEMCH petition, Aguirre Cerda vetoed legislation to allow only unmarried and widowed women to be employed in the state-owned post and telegraph company and to establish a 20 percent maximum for female employees.^[20]

At the other end of the ideological spectrum stood the National Action of Women (Acción Nacional de las Mujeres de Chile), a conservative organization under the leadership of Adela Salas de Edwards. The National Action supported female suffrage in the hope that women would use their political power as a stabilizing force and to introduce limited welfare measures for the poor to arrest what they perceived as the moral decay of the population. The National Action vehemently attacked the programs advanced by MEMCH as "aberrations of sick brains" and warned women to stay away from an organization that adhered to "Communist principles."^[21]

Between these two extremes there were many middle-of-the-road organizations, some oriented toward female suffrage, others toward social reform. For example, the Women's Civic party, founded in 1922, surfaced again in the late 1930s under the leadership of the prominent feminist Radical, Amanda Labarca, and published the magazine Acción Femenina . The magazine reported on the condition of women around the world, supported the campaigns of women candidates in municipal elections, and provided a forum for feminist ideas.

Wartime Growth of the Movement

Until around 1944 ideological and programmatic differences, and perhaps too inexperience, undermined efforts to achieve joint action, although before that date there was some collaboration among individuals. An example was the large exhibition "Women's Activities in Chile" held at the National Library in Santiago between December 1939 and January 1940. University women of all persuasions, such as the Radical Labarca and the Communist María Marchant, along with numerous artists and professionals, worked together in preparing the displays illustrating the history and the contributions of women in Chile.^[22] Aguirre Cerda and some of his ministers were present at the opening ceremony, and the exhibition generated great publicity for women's issues. Public lectures and performances by local celebrities kept the publicity alive until the exhibition closed.^[23]

Another event that helped to unite the members of different women's organizations occurred in August 1941 with the founding of a new Committee for Women's Rights under the leadership of María Correa de Irarrázaval, the president of the women's section of the Liberal party.^[24] The sole purpose of this organization was to achieve political rights for women, a goal that women from diverse political backgrounds could agree on. Even though leftist women such as MEMCH leaders Marta Vergara, Angelina Matte, Clara Williams de Yunge, and María Ramírez worked on the committee, the participation of aristocrats such as the respected writer Inés Echeverría de L.,^[25] Liberal Cleofas Torres, and Maria Correa de I. gave the committee a distinctive style of politics.^[26] The small group met regularly in the conference room of the newspaper El Mercurio and used the social connections of its upper-class participants to win the ear of leading politicians. The appearance of the committee was timely, since in January 1941 Aguirre Cerda introduced a bill in Congress to grant women full voting rights in national elections.

Months later, however, the bill was still pending.^[27] The political parties were reluctant to grant women the vote partly because they were uncertain which of them women's suffrage would favor and partly because they were unprepared for the task of recruiting women's support. At a rally in the Municipal Theater in Santiago in October 1941, Correa de I., who was seconded by Amanda Labarca and worker representative María Ramírez, appealed to the legislators to overcome their "selfish partisanship" and approve the legislation.^[28]

Their efforts proved fruitless. The sudden illness and death of Aguirre Cerda in November 1941 left the country in a state of shock and confusion and launched the political parties on a frantic campaign for the forthcoming presidential election in January 1942.^[29] The issue of the vote for women was quickly shelved, particularly as the new president, Juan Antonio Ríos Morales, a right-wing Radical, abandoned his predecessor's commitment to popular mobilization and social reform.

Following the failure of 1941, for the next few years the women's groups remained relatively inactive, and many women threw their energies into the work of the political parties. In an interview in 1943 Elena Caffarena complained that this focus on the parties had produced little progress on women's issues; strong independent women's organizations, she declared, were the "indispensable instrument" to advance the cause.^[30]

In 1944 the women's movement began to achieve a new momentum, and there seemed little doubt that World War II stood out as a leading activating factor. Indeed the war proved an even more powerful mobilizing agent than the issue of the vote. Among leftist women the war tended to subdue the strong anti-imperialist sentiments of the 1930s. Vergara, one of the leaders of MEMCH, later explained that toward the end of the war she had no objections to representatives from the United States taking part in the Inter-American Commission of Women because "they fought against the Nazis, and [she] was on their side with all [her] heart."^[31] In 1944 references to the war and the defense of democracy began to appear in great profusion in the speeches and writings of the leaders of the women's organizations.

The war supplied a set of new arguments to the supporters of women's rights and other social reforms. One common argument was that it was essential to enlist the support of the whole population, including that of women, in the struggle against fascism. Large numbers of women, declared the feminist leaders, were already gainfully employed, and they should now enter politics and broaden the base of democracy. "True democracy"—a democracy that included women—was portrayed as the panacea to deliver Chile and the world from fascism and to prevent future wars. Women, argued Amanda Labarca in 1944, must be active "in these bitter moments, at this bloody crossroads of Western culture," in the fight for "a world of peace, with democratic respect between big and small nations."^[32]

At this point the women's movement attracted growing attention from the

press and gained even greater impetus. Articles on the wartime contributions and activities of women both in Chile and in the outside world at least implicitly, and sometimes quite explicitly, questioned the rigidities of gender roles. The magazine Zig-Zag , for instance, featured an article in which "experts" asserted that women were as competent as men as workers in the war industries; Ercilla ran a piece lauding the efforts of Russian women, who it declared did all kinds of work and still remained sexually attractive.^[33] The Chilean feminists, even the most radical among them, often issued the same claim: women could take part in the work force and in politics and still keep their looks and their appeal. They published articles that focused on the visible contributions by women, stressing their role as active citizens who merited full political rights.^[34]

This publicity and propaganda had a galvanic impact. Even in the provincial rural areas women were organizing and following feminist leaders. In such far-off places as Coronel in the south and Tocopilla in the north, local MEMCH chapters organized celebrations for the 1944 International Women's Day.^[35] In the city of Valdivia women established a Fraternal Union of Southern Women (Unión Fraternal de Mujeres Sureñas). Despite its ambiguous title the union led campaigns for the women's vote, better pay for women workers, and improved women's education. The president of the union declared that the war proved that the democratic nations could join together to defeat the "fanatics," adding that "in this moment of painful events the women of Valdivia want a place in the fight for a better and more humane world."^[36]

The most important novelty of 1944, however, was the formation of a federation of women's organizations that quickly became the leading pressure group and instrument of mobilization. In early 1944 the veteran feminist Felisa Vergara, the Socialist who had been the president of the first Committee for Women's Rights in 1931, proposed a great celebration to mark International Women's Day.^[37] The celebration took place on 23 March at the University of Chile. During the festivities and talks feminist leaders decided to organize a national congress of women. Vergara, María Garafulic, a member of MEMCH, and Luisa Vicentini, another leftist, undertook to organize the congress, which was to take place in October 1944.^[38]

The National Congress of Women attracted more than five hundred delegates from all over the country. The agenda featured panels on such subjects as "The Constitution of the Family"; "Problems of Clothing, Nutri-

tion, and Housing."; "The Protection of the Woman Worker" and "The Work of Children and Juveniles"; "The Unity of American Women"; and "International Problems." The delegates were also to debate and discuss the issues of divorce and the civil rights of women.^[39]

The inauguration ceremonies and opening speeches at the congress proved a great success. But there were some difficult moments when it came to the election of a board of directors. The organizing committee had laid down the principle of "one woman, one vote," and the six women with the most votes were to become members of the board. This arrangement, the committee believed, was a democratic voting procedure that would allow minority groups some weight. When the congress was held, however, this procedure was overturned in favor of voting by lists. Subsequently, a list headed by Amanda Labarca that had been secretly assembled beforehand easily defeated by 194 to 78 votes a list headed by Felisa Vergara quickly improvised at the congress.^[40]

What had happened was a prearranged strike of the well-organized Radicals and Communists against the Socialists and the splinter groups. El Mercurio wrote of a "Trojan horse" arriving at the congress, with the Radical and Communist contingents in its belly; the Communist El Siglo vaguely celebrated a "triumph of democracy" but omitted mention of the details of the procedural maneuver.^[41] After the election around forty delegates walked out of the congress, including a workers' delegate who expressed her disappointment at the "unilateral, undemocratic current" in the assembly that failed to recognize the personal qualities of its organizers or the rights of minorities.^[42]

The workshops held during the congress were less turbulent. Members of the congress resolved to fight for female suffrage in national elections. The women agreed to "repudiate all fascist regimes and to fight for the defense and strengthening of democracy." They called on the Chilean government to establish relations with the Soviet Union, to support the formation of the United Nations, and to nominate women as delegates at the International Peace Conferences.^[43]

The Chilean press, with the exception of El Siglo, reported on the congress in superficial terms and dwelt patronizingly on the spectacles of women playing politics rather than on the substantive issues discussed and the resolutions taken. In the closing session of the congress the women agreed to "form an organization to propagate and publicize the resolutions of the

congress and to attempt to carry them out." Women from all groups and social classes were invited to participate in this effort.^[44] Following this agreement the FECHIF (Federación Chilena de las Instituciones Femeninas) was born, which incorporated 213 women's organizations from all over Chile.^[45] Labarca became president of the organization, and the women on the directive board included María Correa de I., María Marchant, Graciela Mandujano, María Arancibia, María Aguirre, and Julieta Campusano.^[46]

Despite the tensions surrounding its birth the creation of FECHIF provided a new impulse for the women's movement. The federation was particularly successful in organizing large demonstrations in the streets of Santiago, some of which attracted thousands of women. In another illustration of the central importance of World War II in the rise of the women's movement, by far the largest event organized by FECHIF was the great parade of early September 1945 to celebrate the return of peace. Zig-Zag reported that the speakers at this event (among them Labarca, Caffarena, and Correa de I.) "condemned the authoritarian regimes" ("regímenes de fuerza ") that brought armed conflict between the people.^[47] Labarca depicted the parade as a commitment by Chilean women to "work united and untiringly for the consolidation of a just and lasting peace" through the protection of democracy and the abolition of "inequalities and hateful privileges."^[48]

The concept of democracy that many activist women were advocating had a strong social content. Olga Poblete, a MEMCH member, argued that for Chile to be a true democracy its citizens needed not only political rights but also "opportunities for [individual] development" and "guarantees of a minimum of welfare." The famous journalist Lenka Franulic pointed out: "in Chile, there is no real democracy since the inequality of the classes is enormous."^[49] In this way women's suffrage presented itself as an integral component of a far-reaching program of social reform.

The argument that involvement in public life was the way for women to improve their situation became the central theme in the celebration of the International Women's Day by FECHIF in 1946. During this event Irma Salas, a member of the Association of University Women, reported on the International Congress of Women in Paris in November 1945. Women had participated actively in the war effort, she declared, and this experience gave them new consciousness and self-confidence. Women had learned to join forces "to convert the principles of democracy into reality for women" and to overcome their subordinate position in society.^[50]

As statements like these suggest, during the war feminist discourse underwent a sharp shift in emphasis. The earlier stress on traditional gender roles, and particularly motherhood, was now much less marked: women were now claiming to be full, equal citizens in possession of full rights and responsibilities in a democratic society. Labarca downplayed the role of the mother in the socialization of children, declaring unambiguously that "the predominant influence of the mother [on the child] is a poetic myth. Children are descendants of a couple....we women are not the educators [formadoras ] of humankind."^[51]

Even so, some of the older rhetoric that portrayed women as morally superior and as purifying agents in politics still persisted. In one particularly emotional speech Labarca warned her audience that "Western civilization [was] playing its last card" and besought the women of Chile to "unite to help save it."^[52] This more traditional approach that stressed the moral superiority of women was particularly marked in the Partido Femenino Chileno, the only women's political party to emerge during this period, which joined FECHIF in 1946. The founder of the Partido Femenino was María de la Cruz, a woman entering politics for the first time. De la Cruz, who was strongly influenced by Juan and Eva Perón in Argentina, put forward an idealistic platform stressing "justice and social harmony."^[53] De la Cruz did not attempt to base the appeal of her party on the contributions of women to society and the economy but instead staunchly defended traditional gender roles and female attributes. She stressed and legitimated the "emotionality" of women, presenting it as a necessary counterpart to the "rationality" of men. Her party appealed strongly to the sense of solidarity among women that in her view was based on shared feelings. One of her slogans proclaimed: "men disagree because of ideas; women unite because of their feelings."^[54] An outstanding orator, de la Cruz spoke at numerous rallies organized by FECHIF.

In addition to the moralizing rhetoric the women's organizations of this period employed other, more mundane techniques in the struggle for full political rights. In 1945 FECHIF led an energetic campaign to persuade leading senators to support a new bill to extend the vote to women. At a meeting held at the University of Chile, María Correa de I. insisted that all the party leaders, from right to left, supported women's right to vote.^[55] On 21 June 1945 the bill was finally presented to the Senate. The measure won the support of numerous senators and was officially endorsed by five leaders

in the Senate: Arturo Alessandri, the president of the Senate; Horacio Walker, a Conservative; Alfredo Rosendes, a Radical; Marmaduque Grove, a Socialist; and Elias Lafertte, a Communist.^[56]

Some of the leaders of the movement were now convinced that the women's vote was close at hand, and they were already speculating on its likely impact on the next congressional elections in 1949. Elena Caffarena, however, warned against premature celebrations, arguing that although "no party want[ed] to stigmatize itself as anti-democratic" by openly rejecting the measure, the parties would nevertheless still try to obstruct it behind the scenes.^[57] MEMCH now attempted to bring pressure on the government by rallying women behind the slogan "We women demand that the bill for female suffrage be approved in this legislative period."^[58]

Caffarena's perceptions again proved accurate since it took the Senate until December 1946 to approve the bill, and two more years passed before the Chamber even began to discuss it. By this point the delaying tactics of the political parties were not the only problem facing the women's movement. Renewed ideological conflict and polarization in Chile that erupted in 1947 had severe adverse effects on FECHIF and the women's movement as a whole.

Conflict and Decline

Following the demise of the Popular Front in 1941, the rivalries between the parties of the left became intense. The Socialists and Communists, who were electorally weak on their own, continually competed to fashion alliances with the Radicals. During the 1940s, however, the Communists achieved some major electoral gains, and by 1947 they had increased their share of the national vote to 17 percent. In 1946 Gabriel González Videla, a right-wing Radical, was elected president with Communist support. He reciprocated by rewarding the Communists with cabinet posts, but the alliance did not last long. In August 1947 growing apprehensions among the Radicals at the recent electoral successes of the Communists, alongside new Cold War pressures from the United States, led to the expulsion of the Communists from the cabinet. Several Communist leaders were arrested, and the party newspaper, El Siglo , closed down.^[59] These events coincided with the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security in Rio de Janeiro. Chile was a signatory to this hemispheric defense pact and thereby became eligible for future military assistance from the United States.

As Francesca Miller has recently put it, following the Rio conference "the attention of the Inter-American diplomatic community shifted from social and economic reform to a focus on opposition to communism, a position embraced by governments throughout the hemisphere."^[60] A year later, in September 1948, González Videla promulgated the "Law for the Defense of Democracy" known more popularly as the ley maldita (the law of damnation). It not only banned the Communist party and deleted its members from the electoral rolls but also led to increased levels of repression in general.^[61]

The sharp turn to the right, and the heightened tensions among the political parties, had a decisive impact on the women's movement. Suddenly MEMCH and even many women activists in the Radical party found themselves on the far left of the political spectrum. In the climate that prevailed after late 1947 their slogans of "true democracy" and "social justice," although often merely echoes of the Perón regime in Argentina, appeared dangerously close to being denounced as subversive by the government.

MEMCH nevertheless maintained its leftist profile. In a treatise it submitted to the First Inter-American Congress of Women held in Guatemala City in August 1947, MEMCH criticized the plans for continental rearmament proposed in Rio and argued that the money would be better spent on the "rehabilitation of the people" in the form of schools, public works, and research centers for peace. The participants of the congress in Guatemala should "firmly repudiate the plans for the military collaboration of American countries. They [were] contrary to peace and to the sovereignty of the American peoples, and totally ignore[d] the economic, social, and cultural reality that these countries now confront."^[62] Now that the war was over, anti-imperialism reemerged on the agenda as MEMCH deliberately distanced itself from the position of the Chilean government.

The resolutions of the women's congress followed closely the line of argument put forward by MEMCH. The first press release declared: "[the congress] has resolved in plenary session to denounce the hemispheric armament plan...and to insist that the costs of the arms program be used to support industry, agriculture, health, and education for our people."^[63] In the Chilean press, however, the congress in Guatemala was largely ignored. El Mercurio, for instance, commented only on the declared opposition of the congress to atomic weapons. It then published a "letter of resignation" from the Costa Rican delegate, who complained the congress was "pro-Soviet" and ignored the threat that communism posed to the world.^[64]

In contrast with MEMCH, FECHIF tried to adapt to the new environment

in Chile by moving to the right. Conservative groups grew prominent in the organization, and the leftists were pushed into the background. Social reform and progressive politics were no longer on FECHIF's agenda. Hilda Mueller, a liberal who some years before had published traditionalist articles on women in El Mercurio , became editor of La Orientación, the magazine published by FECHIF.^[65]

The tensions provoked by this shift to the right by FECHIF became visible in the Second National Congress of Women held in September 1947. At this point "true" democracy—the code expression for the alignment of the women's movement with social and educational reform—remained a prominent topic of discussion. But conflict arose concerning an invitation by a faction of FECHIF to González Videla to speak at the congress. According to Caffarena the invitation was issued without consultation with any of the member organizations.^[66] During his speech the president caused more discontent when he accused the Communist press of seeking advantages for the Communist party by criticizing the extraordinary powers that González Videla had recently given himself.^[67]

There were contrasting reports as to what exactly happened at this point. In one account these comments provoked "a temporary interruption" to the president's speech led by Communist sympathizers in the audience.^[68] According to Olga Poblete, a member of MEMCH, González Videla was responding to a speech that expressed disillusionment with his government and hinted at the potential danger of popular discontent, with the remark that he would not hesitate to use the army to reestablish order should this become necessary. At this point, recalled Poblete, Elena Caffarena issued a loud vocal protest and then walked out of the hall with some forty other women in the midst of a general tumult.^[69]

According to Caffarena and Poblete the resolutions adopted during the congress at first went unpublished and were then falsified to omit a resolution expressing opposition to Chile joining the Pact of Rio.^[70] Shortly after the congress FECHIF expelled all the Communists from its ranks. MEMCH replied by withdrawing from FECHIF, thus leaving the umbrella organization without its mass base.^[71] The expulsion of the Communists left the Radicals in control but deprived the FECHIF of experienced and prominent organizers such as Caffarena, Marchant, and Campusano. Subsequently, FECHIF dropped all its earlier demands with the exception of female national suffrage.

In late August 1947 Rosa Markmann, the wife of President González Videla, announced the creation of the National Association of Housewives (Asociación de las Dueñas de Casa), whose chief purpose was to prevent speculation in basic subsistence goods among producers, distributors, and retailers.^[72] In addition, the government organized so-called Mothers' Centers (Centros de Madres) in different parts of the country that offered assistance and various services to working-class women.^[73] Markmann then began to patronize a number of women's organizations and to express her support for female suffrage. In September 1948 she appeared at one of the events of FECHIF's "Pro-Women's Suffrage Week," assuring its participants that the president too favored women's suffrage.^[74]

The activities of FECHIF during this "Pro-Women's Suffrage Week" illustrated the changing concerns and leadership of the organization. The women who were now prominent were far more conservative than the activists of earlier years. Among them were the new president of FECHIF, Ana Figueroa, a Radical who was closely connected to Gonzáez Videla; María de la Cruz and Mimi Brieba de A. from the Feminine party; and Clara Williams de Yunge, who was secretary of Markmann's Association of Housewives. According to Caffarena there was a contest for the presidency of FECHIF between Labarca and Figueroa, but Figueroa had the decisive support of González Videla.^[75] Instead of holding mass street rallies, FECHIF now invited participants to tour the graves of prominent Chilean women, visit maternity wards with gifts for newborn babies, and attend tea parties in big Santiago hotels.^[76]

In a festive public event in January 1949 González Videla signed the law that gave Chilean women the right to vote in national elections. But for some the celebration left a bitter taste: Caffarena, who had actually written the legislation, along with other leftist leaders, were conspicuously absent from the banquets and receptions.^[77] A few days after signing the law González Videla attempted to ensure that this "extension of democracy" would remain politically safe by purging Communists and other "subversive" women from the electoral registers. The authorities then began making life difficult for MEMCH by issuing a last minute ban on the workshops organized for the International Women's Day in 1949.^[78] FECHIF was now plagued by new internal conflicts, and within less than a year of the enfranchisement of women both organizations had disappeared from the public arena.

The eventual collapse of this formerly strong women's movement was due

to several factors. From 1947 on the women of leftist inclination, who had pushed for social reform and continuing militant action, found themselves increasingly marginalized. Women from the center and the right, who led the women's movement from late 1947, by this point had only one objective: the vote. When this objective was achieved, the movement quickly faded.

By the early 1950s the only sizable women's organization that remained was de la Cruz's Women's party with twenty-thousand members, and in 1952 María de la Cruz became the first female senator in Chile.^[79] But this attempt to create an independent women's movement also failed eventually. Under fire for her sympathies toward Peronism, and tainted by accusations of smuggling watches into Chile, de la Cruz was expelled from the Senate in 1953 even though an investigating commission found her innocent of the charges. De la Cruz retired disillusioned, and her party immediately disintegrated.^[80] The long silence that would last until the late 1960s had begun.

Conclusion

The development of the women's movement ran in striking parallel with that of Chilean politics in general. In the 1930s the broader struggle between the old elite and the center-left groups found reflection in the emergence of the National Action and MEMCH. In the early 1940s the center left emerged dominant in both national politics and in the women's movement. Equally, the shift to the right after 1947 manifested itself in the women's groups, culminating in the expulsion of the Communists from FECHIF and the taming of the organization.

The Chilean women's movement failed to achieve its high-sounding goals of peace in the world and democracy at home. Nevertheless, during the 1940s Chilean women achieved some substantial gains. The propaganda of the feminists made it virtually impossible for the politicians to oppose women's suffrage openly. Women drafted the legislation to change the electoral laws and persuaded key senators to support it. The enfranchisement of women was not the accomplishment of González Videla, since the measure had been pending in congress for some time before he became president. The president accepted the inevitable and tried to exploit it for his own purposes.

Conditions in Chile had a major part in shaping the political history of women in this period. Rivalries between different parties weakened the women's movement and eventually contributed to its rapid decline. The fear of what women's voting rights would bring proved the main factor in

delaying the measure until 1949. At the same time, however, the development of the women's movement was closely related to the current of events outside Chile. First, the formation of a broad front of women's organizations coincided with Chile joining the Allies. The political atmosphere engendered by the war enabled the women's organizations to push their demands when the reformist currents represented by the Popular Front had largely disappeared. Indeed World War II served to mobilize women to a far greater extent than anything before it, including the Great Depression. Second, the beginning of the Cold War and the ban on Communists it provoked in Chile had devastating effects on women's activism. In sum, international conditions strongly influenced the formation and the dynamics of the Chilean women's movement in the 1940s, shaped its ideological directions, and initiated the process that led to its rapid dissolution at the end of the decade.