84 4walter

Urban Pioneers: The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago, Chile, 1935-1946
Rick Walter
Hispanic American Historical Review, 84:4, November 2004, pp. 661-699 (Article) Published by Duke University Press
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Urban Pioneers: The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago, Chile, 19351946
Richard J. Walter
Introduction
When Socialist Ricardo Lagos assumed the presidency of Chile in January 2000, he named ve women to his 16-member cabinet. While these ve appointments were primarily to ministries that dealt with womens issues such as education and health care, he also named Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear to the prestigious post of minister of foreign affairs.1 Two months later, he also appointed lawyer Patricia Carrasco as a kind of super mayor (alcalde mayor) to oversee social development in the largely urban province of Santiago.2 Soon thereafter, former rst lady Marta Larraechea de Frei, the wife of ex-president Eduardo Frei Jr. (1994 2000), announced that she would run for the ofce of mayor of Santiago.3 At the same time, Gladys Marn Millie served as the head of the Communist Party and had been a rst-round presidential candidate herself in 1999.4 Countless other women occupied important positions throughI would like to thank my colleagues at Washington University, Lisa Baldez and Andrea Friedman, along with the anonymous reviewers of the HAHR and editor Mary Kay Vaughn for their very helpful comments in the preparation of this article. 1. El Mercurio (Santiago), 29 Jan. 2000, pp. A1 and C2. 2. El Mercurio, 14 Mar. 2000, p. 1. 3. The principal concern among the coalition that supported Larracheas candidacy when it was announced was that she would be defeated by her most likely main opponent, Conservative Joaqun Lavn, who had narrowly lost to Lagos in the national election. This would leave the president in the awkward position of having to collaborate with his leading rival in the governance of the nations capital which, indeed, is exactly what happened. 4. Marn received only a little more than 3% of the vote in the rst round of balloting in 1999. While there is some debate over the matter, that 3% appeared to go primarily to Lagos in the second round, giving him his narrow margin of victory over Lavn. El Mercurio, 10 Feb. 2000, p. C2.
Hispanic American Historical Review 84:4 Copyright 2004 by Duke University Press
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HAHR / November / Walter
out the nations local and national administrations. In January 2002, Lagos named Michelle Bachelet as his minister of defensethe rst woman to assume that post in Latin America making her, along with Alvear, a potential presidential candidate for 2006.5 The prominence of women in Chilean political life reects, in large part, their electoral inuence. In 1949 Chilean women achieved the right to vote in national elections, and they have been crucial in both right- and left-wing campaigns (although more the former than the latter) ever since. Half a million more women than men voted in the 2000 presidential election, and it was incumbent upon both major candidates to make special appeals to their female constituencies.6 In the democratic transition following the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973 1990), all political parties have paid increasing attention to womens issues and to womens participation in the political arena.7 Chilean women have been important actors at the local level as well. Legislation enacted in 1934 granted them the right to vote in municipal elections, and they were also allowed to run for local administrative positions starting in 1935. From that time forward, women made their presence felt in various municipal governments, serving most commonly as elected members of city councils or, on occasion, appointed or elected as mayors of several major Chilean cities.8 There is a recent and growing literature on the role of women in Chilean national life in general, and in the political sphere in particular.9 While much
5. New York Times, 4 Jan. 2003, p. 7. 6. In the second round of the presidential election, there were 3,871,181 female voters and 3,390,770 male voters. The gender gap was not particularly signicant, with Lavn receiving a little better than 51% of the womens vote and Lagos, running in coalition with the Christian Democrats (who historically, along with the Conservatives, had done well with women voters, while the Socialists generally had not) receiving 49%. El Mercurio, 17 Jan. 2000, p. A11. 7. Lisa Baldez, Coalition Politics and the Limits of State Feminism in Chile, Women and Politics 22, no. 4 (2001): 1 28. 8. For more on the granting of suffrage to women in the Southern Cone, see Asuncin Lavrn, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890 1940 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1995), esp. chaps. 8 10; and Lavrn, Suffrage in South America: Arguing a Difcult Case, in Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, ed. Caroline Daley and Melanie Nolan ( New York: New York Univ. Press, 1994), 184 209. 9. See, for example, Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest: Womens Movements in Chile (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002); Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Labors Appropriate to Their Sex: Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900 1930 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2001); Thomas Miller Klubock, Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in
The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago
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of this literature examines womens suffrage and political role at the local and national levels, no one has yet studied female elected ofcials actual performance in ofce.10 I aim to ll this gap by examining womens initial participation both as voters and as city council members and administrators in Santiago, the nations capital and largest city. In the process, I will address particular questions with larger implications. What were the constraints and challenges that women faced in this form of political participation not just as voters, but as elected ofcials? On the one hand, as the rst women to participate in municipal government in a sense, as urban pioneers for their genderthey faced a more intense scrutiny than did their male colleagues in order to prove their ability to function effectively in a highly competitive and partisan arena. While it was rarely stated openly, undoubtedly many skeptics believed that women would not be up to the task. On the other hand, some argued that the presence of women in municipal government would mean sweeping change. Repeating a familiar trope of Southern Cone feminism, this camp alleged that womens innate virtue (especially as wives and mothers) would bring a badly needed morality to city governments notably lacking in this regard.11 Moreover, as Margaret
Chiles El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904 1951 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1998); Julieta Kirkwood, Ser poltica en Chile: Los nudos de la sabidura feminista, 2nd ed. (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 1990); Margaret Power, Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964 1973 (State College: Penn State Univ. Press, 2002); Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920 1950 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000); and the articles on women in Chile in the August-November 2001 issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review 81, nos. 3 4: 493 619. 10. A study that provides considerable information on how women received the vote in Chile and that examines in some detail the impact of the female vote in municipal elections from 1935 to 1947 is Erika Maza Valenzuela, Catholicism, Anticlericalism, and the Quest for Womens Suffrage in Chile, Working Paper no. 214 (University of Notre Dame: The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Dec. 1995). However, this work does not discuss how women performed in municipal ofce during this period. 11. As Lavrn has observed, Southern Cone feminists extended womens role at home to society at large and used motherhood as the path to active participation in public life throughout the late 1930s. . . . The innate female qualities . . . were called forward to serve the general cause of social reform and to validate womens presence in politics. Their presumed higher sensitivity to other feelings and their higher sense of moral duty were the bases for the claim to a place in the sun. Women would be the ones to eradicate vice, rectify injustice, and create a more equitable society in the Southern Cone. Lavrn, Women, 48. Elsa M. Chaney noted that in the 1960s in Chile and Peru, The female ofcial often sees herself as a kind of supermadre in the large casa of the municipality and even the
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Power has argued, Chiles male-dominated political parties allowed the extension of voting and ofce-holding rights to women at the local level with the understanding that the municipality was an extension of the female domestic sphere [that] . . . primarily dealt with local neighborhood issues . . . [and] did not violate a womans primary role as wife and mother.12 To what extent were Santiagos rst female ofceholders able to transcend these expectations and implied limitations in order to address issues of broader concern? Second, how did their male colleagues react to the presence of women in ofces and institutions that previously had been their exclusive preserve? Moreover, what was the relationship between the changing role of women at the local level and Chiles increasingly polarized, complex, and male-dominated political party system in the late 1930s and early 1940s? Third, what does this experience reveal about the general workings of municipal government in Santiago at this time (a subject that has received little attention to date)? Were women able to effect any signicant changes in a local administration that was often seen as inefcient, inept, and ineffectual? Finally, while Chile was not among the rst nations in Latin America to grant suffrage to women in national elections, it was among the rst to open up educational opportunities for women and to produce a substantial group of middle-class professional women who pushed for equal rights and improved conditions for their gender from the late nineteenth century on.13 Chilean women were the rst in the Southern Cone to win the right to vote and to serve in municipal ofce, and in 1939 (as will be seen) Santiago had the rst female mayor of any Latin American capital. Therefore, examining womens role in Santiagos municipal administration during the rst decade of local electoral participation provides a point of comparison for others studying similar phenomena in Latin America and elsewhere where, by the latter decades of the twentieth century, women were found in increasing numbers on municipal councils and in the mayoral ofces of major cities.
nation, where she views her work as differing only in magnitude from the nurturing and emotional tasks women perform for husband and family. Elsa M. Chaney, Women in Latin American Politics: The Case of Peru and Chile, in Female and Male in Latin America: Essays, ed. Ann Pescatello (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1973), 104. 12. Power, Right-Wing Women, 51. 13. See Chaney, Women in Latin American Politics, 107 9.
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Background
The struggle to achieve rights for women in Chile was, as in most countries, a long and difcult one. It began in earnest in the second half of the nineteenth century with the establishment of organizations and periodicals that advocated equal access to education for women, equal legal footing with men, and the extension of suffrage. The movement gathered steam in the early twentieth century, with much of the impetus coming from upper-class womens groups associated with the charitable efforts of the Catholic Church and particularly concerned with social ills such as prostitution, alcoholism, child abandonment, and infant mortality. In 1919 Amanda Labarca, a member of the anticlerical Radical Party, created the National Council of Women (Consejo Nacional de Mujeres) as a platform to push for womens rights independent of conservative and church inuence. She also was married to party leader Guillermo Labarca Hubertson, who would serve as Santiagos alcalde from 1932 to 1935.14 When Arturo Alessandri was elected president as the candidate of a Liberal Alliance (Liberals, Democrats, and Radicals) in 1920, Amanda Labarca and others pushed him to extend the suffrage to women, but to no avail. After four frustrating years, a military coup in September 1924 removed Alessandri from ofce, at least temporarily. One of the results of that coup was to replace the elected government of Santiago with a junta de vecinos (citizens committee) appointed by the national government. The junta de vecinos varied in number from as few as two to as many as ten members and governed the nations capital from 1924 to 1935. The elected city council (municipalidad ) had been established as part of a national reform in 1891. In the years prior to 1924, the capital had been governed by a 13-member city council made up of regidores (councilmen) elected on a citywide basis every three years. They, in turn, elected three alcaldes, the rst of which served, in essence, as the chief execu-
14. Both of the Labarcas, who were educators by profession, had studied at Columbia University in New York, and Amanda was apparently much inuenced by her exposure to and contact with feminist movements in the United States and Europe. In 1931 and 1932, Amanda served as director of secondary education in the Chilean Ministry of Education. For biographical information on both, see Empresa Periodstica de Chile, eds., Diccionario biogrco de Chile, 1946 1947, 6th ed. (Santiago, 1947), 582 83. For more on the role of Amanda Labarca and others in pushing for womens suffrage, see Edda Gaviola Artigas et al., Queremos votar en las prximas elecciones: Historia del movimiento femenino chileno, 1913 1952 (Santiago: Centro de Anlisis y Difusin de Condicin de la Mujer, 1986), 21 49; Kirkwood, Ser poltica, 113 25; Lavrn, Women, 291 312; and Maza Valenzuela, Catholicism, 1 27.
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tive of the city. This system was the result of reforms initiated in 1908 by upper-class elements who were concerned, among other things, with what they perceived to be the excessive partisanship and resulting inefciency and ineptitude of the local administration.15 This poor administration, in turn, was seen as largely responsible for the citys uneven development, evidenced in stark contrasts between the neighborhoods and living conditions of the rich and poor, appalling public health problems, and insufcient and inadequate municipal services in all areas.16 The reforms, however, did not produce the changes that their proponents had desired. Prone to the same conicts that plagued the national congress and administration in these years as a result of the nations complex multiparty system, contention and stalemate continued to cripple Santiagos government after the reforms were enacted.17 Moreover, several administrations of the period became mired in criminal scandals that involved regidores and alcaldes of various parties. When the city councils were dissolved in 1924 and replaced by the juntas de vecinos, U.S. ambassador William Collier reported back to Washington: This drastic reform is generally commended by newspapers as terminating governments that were inefcient and corrupt.18 That was certainly the view of the nations leading newspaper, El Mercurio, an early proponent of the juntas de vecinos. The paper hoped they would end a municipal regime constantly preoccupied with partisan considerations and replace it with one directed by respectable and responsible citizens. The announced change,
15. For more on the movement for municipal reform, see Arturo Valenzuela, Political Brokers in Chile: Local Government in a Centralized Polity (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1977), 210 15. 16. Details on social conditions in Santiago in the rst decades of the twentieth century can be found in Simon Collier and William F. Sater, A History of Chile, 1808 1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 173 78. For the working and living conditions of women in particular, see Hutchison, Labors, esp. chap. 2. 17. For more on Chiles complex party system and political history, see Federico Gil, The Political System of Chile (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1966); Karen L. Remmer, Party Competition in Argentina and Chile: Political Recruitment and Public Policy, 1890 1930 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1984); and Timothy R. Scully, Rethinking the Center: Party Politics in Nineteenth and T wentieth Century Chile (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992). 18. Telegram from William Collier to the Secretary of State on the Actions of the Military Junta, 22 Sept. 1924, United States National Archives, Department of State Records Related to the Internal Affairs of Chile ( Washington, DC, 1910 1929), RG 59, 825.00/243.
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it said, had produced an excellent impression among the public at large, and the passing of the old system, it claimed, was welcomed by all.19 Both the juntas de vecinos and the elected systems they replaced excluded women from any form of direct participation. It was against this background that on December 20, 1924, a delegation of women from among Santiagos most distinguished families met with the leader of the national governing junta at the time, general Luis Altamirano Talavera.20 At that meeting, they presented to him a petition, signed by over a hundred women, urging a thoroughgoing change in the way the capital was governed. Without setting a denite timetable, they recommended a return to an elected city council, but under provisions that would assure that it would focus on administration and not on politics. Just how this would be achieved was not too clear, but they suggested that municipal elections be held every four years, that they be distinct from national elections, that voters be restricted to taxpayers, and that the position of rst alcalde (who would be elected directly) be endowed with greater authority than had been the case in the past. The most important aspect of their proposal, however, came at the end. While denying that the main purpose of their effort was to promote womens rights, they concluded that women, as taxpayers, had a right both to vote in future city elections and to present themselves as candidates.21 Such roles, they argued, would be particularly benecial to local administration, because [t]hey [women] would crack down on vice with much more tenacity than men. They would [for example] supply to the poor honest entertainments, while at the same time caring for the ornamentation and beautication of the city.22 As mentioned, the idea that women would add a dose of morality to what many considered a notoriously corrupt system of city government was repeated frequently. There was little action on this issue over the next several years. A major breakthrough occurred, however, in May 1931, when president Carlos Ibez
19. El Mercurio, 22 Sept. 1924, p. 3. 20. For more on Altamirano and the national political situation at the time, see Frederick M. Nunn, Chilean Politics, 1920 1931: The Honorable Mission of the Armed Forces (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1970), 47 66. 21. A few years earlier, Argentine feminist Alicia Moreau had argued that [s]uffrage . . . was a right that belonged to anybody paying taxes. Given the frequent interchanges between feminist groups across the Andes, this was an argument about which the Chilean advocates for womens rights might very well have been aware, although there is no direct evidence that this was the case. See Lavrn, Women, 43. 22. El Mercurio, 21 Dec. 1924, p. 7.
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(1927 31) issued a decree that paved the way for a return to elected city councils through the formation of new voter registries and the scheduling of local elections. The most dramatic features of this decree were provisions to extend the vote to literate women over the age of 25 who were either property owners or professionals, and to foreign males who were legal residents. The implications were substantial. While the number of foreign voters was small, the inclusion of women could potentially at least double the electorate, and it seemed logical that suffrage at the local level would be extended in the not-too-distant future at the national level as well. As it happened, Ibez was himself overthrown in July 1931, and the decree became moot. After a turbulent interlude, Arturo Alessandri was again elected president in late 1932, and a certain stability was restored.23 Municipal elections had been scheduled on various occasions in 1931 and 1932 but, due to the turmoil of the period, never took place. Soon after his presidential election, Alessandri made clear his desire to hold these elections as soon as possible. Once the new congress was assembled, he sent it a message urging the early consideration and passage of the legislation necessary to give the vote to women. The national Chamber of Deputies began consideration of such a measure on February 13, 1933. During the debate, which lasted several weeks, representatives of various womens organizations lled the galleries and lobbied hard for inclusion of womens suffrage in the nal provisions. That issue dominated the discussion with most speakers, especially representatives of Chiles proclerical Conservative Party, strongly supporting the cause. A prominent line of argument was that suffrage had been granted to females in Europe, the United States, and other Latin American countries, and that Chile should not lag behind in this regard.24 The strongest objections came from Rolando Merino Reyes of the newly formed Socialist Party, who argued that extending the vote to women was not a pressing social necessity, that the campaign for its passage was being promoted by a well-intentioned but self-interested minority, and that it only dealt supercially with the real problems of women. The entire
23. For an overview of these developments, see Collier and Sater, A History, 205 26. 24. Chaney argues, Evidence suggests that in giving the vote to women, male politicians in many Latin American countries probably were more persuaded by the desire to appear modern in the eyes of the world than by any illusion that the step would be progressive. Chaney, Women in Latin American Politics, 111. This interpretation might well have applied to Chile in this case. Another author suggests that conservative support for womens suffrage at the municipal level was seen as a kind of experiment to determine the partisan afliation of their vote and the implications for national elections. Gaviola Artigas et al., Queremos votar, 59.
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electoral process, he charged, was corrupt and venal, and, until it was cleansed, the stain of such venality should not be spread to include females.25 These and other arguments from the Left had little effect in a congress where Conservatives and Liberals, both of whom strongly favored the municipal suffrage law, held large majorities. On March 9, the chamber, by ample margins and with little real disagreement, approved the new law concerning municipal elections and governments, with provisions for extending the vote to literate females and foreigners (male and female) over the age of 21 who had lived in the comuna (voting district) where they were to vote for at least ve years. The property-owning provisions included in the rst proposals were dropped.26 After several months of debate and some compromise, in October the senate also approved the legislation by a wide margin.27 President Alessandri signed Law no. 5357 into effect on January 15, 1934. The registries were opened on May 15, and the rst election was scheduled for April 7, 1935.28 In Santiago, the law called for the election now of 15 regidores (two more than previously) to serve three-year terms and to be elected, as in the past, citywide. There had been some sentiment in congress for an elected alcalde, but the capitals chief executive would remain (as had been the case under the juntas de vecinos) appointed by the president of the republic. Clearly, the most important innovation was the provisions allowing women to vote, to run for ofce as regidores, and even to be named mayors. While many continuities prevailed, local politics and government in Santiago would never be quite the same as a result.
25. Repblica de Chile, Cmara de Diputados, Boletn de las sesiones ordinarias (Santiago: 14 Feb. 1933), 735 40. Sectors of the Chilean Left, beginning with Luis Emilio Recabarren, founder of the Partido Obrero Socialista, which evolved into the Chilean Communist Party, had long championed equal rights for women (Kirkwood, Ser poltica, 112 17). But some on the Left, as revealed in the congressional debate, also appeared to fear (with some reason) that the womens vote would be unduly inuenced by the church, and the Conservative Party with which it was associated. 26. Boletn de las sesiones ordinarias, 9 Mar. 1933, 1372 86. 27. El Mercurio, 8 Oct. 1933, p. 13. The complete text of the law was also reprinted in Repblica de Chile, Boletn Municipal de la Repblica 4, no. 42 ( Jan. 1934): 26 37. For more on the pressure applied by womens groups to see this legislation enacted and their reaction to its passage, see Lavrn, Women, 300 301. 28. Erika Maza Valenzuela, Las mujeres chilenas y la ciudadania electoral: De la exclusin al voto municipal, 1884 1934 ( paper presented at the 20th International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, Mexico, April 17 19, 1997).
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Women and the Municipal Elections of 1935
Preparations for the April 7, 1935 elections were slow and deliberate. Soon after Alessandri signed the enabling legislation, the minister of the interior began the process of inscribing the newly eligible foreigners and women into the electoral registry. This was a registry separate from that for adult Chilean male voters. This effort was not completed until the end of 1934. Once the registration had been completed and a denitive date was set, various observers expressed hope that the inclusion of formerly excluded groups, especially women, would change the tone and improve the quality of local government. An editorial in El Mercurio, for example, expressed the belief that the excessive partisanship aficting previous elected municipalities would be neutralized with the intervention of women and foreigners, a political experiment that, fundamentally, is associated with the highest expectations.29 Another commentator stated optimistically, The new law of municipal elections provides the remedy to the ancient defect of politically formed city councils with the promise of the vote to women and foreigners. We can only hope that this measure will improve the quality of communal representation and will spare us the well-established corruption that has been a true affront to more than one city in Chile.30 The popular magazine Zig-Zag suggested that women would enter the city council disposed to manage the city as they have managed their homes. For most, a city well swept, well lighted, and with its hygienic services in order will have the same agreeable aspect as a well-appointed house at tea time when the daughter nervously awaits the visit of her anc.31 These remarks again underscored the special qualities that women were expected to bring to their roles in the public sphere. As the date for the elections approached, a dozen parties (most of which by this time had created, or were in the process of creating, feminine branches) selected a total of 93 candidates for Santiagos 15 regidor positions. Most attention focused on the female candidates. The rst to declare was writer Luisa Zanelli of the Partido Liberal Femenino. While concerned specically with womens issues, she promised to defend the interests of all the capitals citizens. She saw as top priorities the need to lower the cost of basic necessities, to eliminate a 2 percent sales tax, to create institutions to protect the family, and to encourage the construction of workers housing.32 The two candidates of the
29. El Mercurio, 11 Dec. 1934, p. 3. 30. Boletn Municipal de la Repblica, Oct. 1934, p. 20 21. 31. Zig-Zag (Santiago), 5 Apr. 1935. 32. Zig-Zag, 15 Jan. 1935.
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Accin Nacional de Mujeres, Adela Edwards de Salas and Elena Doll de Daz, promised much the same emphasis. For her part, Edwards de Salas, from one of Chiles wealthiest families and a prominent gure in the struggle for womens suffrage, argued that Chilean women should enjoy the same rights as women in various European countries and the United States, and she felt that the current feminist movement in Chile was motivated in part by the failure of male politicians and government ofcials to focus adequately on matters of particular concern to women. She pointed specically to what she called halfhearted efforts to control white slavery and to regulate prostitution as pertinent examples.33 Natalia Rubio Cuadra, representing the Accin Patritica de Mujeres de Chile, a splinter of the Accin Nacional and one of the main groups organized to mobilize women voters and support women candidates, made many of these same arguments.34 Seeking to ally with these candidates and to attract womens votes to his own party, Conservative president Horacio Walker Larran, in a lengthy radio address, argued that within the program of his party could be found the most solid defense of the stability of the family, of social peace, and of Christian morality.35 The election itself proceeded smoothly. Separate polling places were established for women to cast their ballots, apparently not only to reinforce the fact that they were restricted, at the time, to voting only in municipal elections but also to keep men and women from mingling in an unsupervised environment, a practice that continues to the present day. Women were in charge of these polling places, and by all accounts they handled their newfound responsibilities with skill and enthusiasm (see g. 1). In Santiago, the Accin Nacional de Mujeres had listed central locations in each of the capitals main voting dis33. Zig-Zag, 5 Apr. 1935. In 1918 Edwards (who would sign the 1924 petition asking the governing junta to grant women the right to vote in municipal elections) formed a charitable institution called the Cruz Blanca to shelter abused women, among other functions. She also had been an active gure in the Liga de Damas Chilenas, a Catholic womens organization formed in 1912, where she had been an early and outspoken proponent of the need to address the problem of prostitution in Chile. See Ericka Kim Verba, Catholicism, Feminism, and Accin Social Feminina [Womens Social Action]: The Early Years of the Liga de Damas Chilenas, 1912 1924 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California at Los Angeles, 1999), 332 33 and 339 42. 34. El Diario Ilustrado (Santiago), 6 Apr. 1925, p. 15. Rubio Cuadra had been the leader of a Catholic and anti-Socialist union of white-collar female employees, the Sindicato de Empleadas de Comercio y Ocinas, which had become an independent trade union in 1916. See Hutchison, Labors, 193 95. 35. As elsewhere, the radio was becoming an increasingly important tool in Chilean political life. El Mercurio, 6 Apr. 1935, p. 17.
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Figure 1. Female polling place.
tricts where female voters could go for information. It also urged them to vote early and to mark their ballots carefully. All reports indicated that the contest was remarkably free of the fraud and bribery that usually accompanied Chilean elections. A feminist interviewed by Zig-Zag attributed the tranquility of the electoral act to the presence of women, an assertion that would be difcult to prove, in that men voted separately in areas presumably removed from such inuences.36 Whatever the reasons for the tranquility of the contest, the results were clear a major triumph for the parties of the Right. Nationwide, Conservatives and Liberals took 47.2 percent of the total vote (see table 1) and candidates of the Right captured about two-thirds of the open seats. The big losers were the divided Radicals, who gained only 18.5 percent of the total. Turnout was high better than 86 percent but it should also be noted that, nationwide, only 35.6 percent of all eligible males and only 9 percent of all eligible females were actually registered to vote.37 The Conservatives beneted most directly from the womens vote, gaining almost half of it nationwide. Moreover, of the 25 female candidates elected to Chiles city councils in 1935, 16 were either from the Conservative Party or
36. Zig-Zag, 5 Apr. 1935. 37. Election information is from El Mercurio, 7 Apr. 1935, p. 25, 8 Apr. 1935, pp. 1 and 15, and Maza Valenzuela, Catholicism, 29 36, who provides further information on the relatively low proportions of males and females registered to vote.
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afliated with the Accin Nacional de Mujeres. In Santiago, Adela Edwards de Salas was the capitals leading vote getter, with 5,417 tallies. While trailing far behind in number of votes, Natalia Rubio Cuadra and Elena Doll de Daz were also elected as the rst women to serve as Santiago councilwomen. According to one careful analysis, while the candidates themselves were of the upper class, they drew most of their support from the middle and lower classes, especially from women who were associated as employees, clients, and/or members of the social benecence and union-like organizations that they led.38 In discussing these results, Margaret Power suggests that the greater energy and attention that the Conservative Party devoted to mobilizing the womens vote was an important factor in developing this broad appeal. Moreover, the Accin Nacional de Mujeres, tied to the church and the Conservatives and created by Edwards de Salas and others in 1934, had been particularly effective in crafting a program that promised specic benets for working-class women.39 Another analysis emphasizes the poor organizational efforts of the center and Left to attract womens votes and the failure of most women, voting for the rst time, to appreciate the importance of their ballot, implying a kind of false consciousness on the part of those from the lower classes who supported the Conservatives. This analysis also mentions bribery (cohecho) as a factor in the balloting, although contemporary accounts (as noted above) labeled this a relatively clean contest.40 Finally, literacy provisions and a complex voter registration process meant that many women of the lower classes were, in essence, disenfranchised and hence unavailable to vote for parties of the center and Left, presuming that those parties were interested at this time in attracting the womens vote.41 Whatever the reasons, the conservative press was predictably enthusiastic about these results. El Mercurio proclaimed, Taking her rst political steps, the Chilean woman has inclined toward the side of forces that desire progress within a climate of social peace.42 The Catholic and conservative El Diario Ilustrado saw things in virtually the same terms, claiming that the female voter has placed, in general, her vote at the service of order, social peace, and polit-
38. Ibid., 34 36. 39. Power, Right-Wing Women, 52 54. 40. Gaviola Artigas et al., Queremos votar, 60 62. 41. Corinne A. Antezana-Pernet, Mobilizing Women in the Popular Front Era: Feminism, Class, and Politics in the Movimiento Pro-Emancipacin de la Mujer Chilena (MEMCh), 1935 1950 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California at Irvine, 1996), 64 66. 42. El Mercurio, 8 Apr. 1935, p. 3.
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ical honesty and has shown respect for the conscience of the country and its democratic institutions.43 The Left, of course, was much less enthusiastic about the outcome and the role women had played in it. Socialist and Radical publications attacked the Catholic Church for what they alleged was undue inuence over female voters and claimed that a disproportionate number of nuns had been mobilized to account for the triumph of the Right. Interviewed soon after the election, Radical Party president Pedro Aguirre Cerda stated that while his party favored womens suffrage in general terms, at the moment it now advocated postponing its extension to national elections, while a group of Radical women went to the extreme of going on record as opposing such an extension altogether.44 The Left, however, recognized the importance of these results. Radicals, Socialists, and Communists all had created womens branches early on and were proponents of the kinds of social reforms aimed to appeal to them. Increasingly after 1935, they began to organize more carefully to push for womens rights and to enlist and prepare female candidates of their own to compete in upcoming contests. Cartoons in the irreverent humor magazine Topaze illustrate differing reactions to the presence of women in the capitals local administration. Figure 2 shows the president of the Conservative Party, Horacio Walker Larran, clinging to the skirt of Adela Edwards de Salas as she makes her way up the steps of city hall, underscoring the importance of the womens vote to the partys triumph. The relative size of the respective gures also suggests the predominant role women might be destined to play within the new municipality. Figure 3 displays Aguirre Cerda and the Radical Party decapitated (and perhaps even emasculated) by the feminine vote. Figure 4, showing alcalde Absaln Valencia Zavala sweeping up the city hall using a broom (There is no new broom that does not clean well) with Edwards de Salass head superimposed on it, reverses gender roles but also reinforces the idea that women would have a special vocation to put the municipal house in order.
Women in Santiagos City Council, 19351938
The ofcial installation of Santiagos newly elected city council took place on June 9, 1935. As was customary, spokespersons for each party made a brief speech outlining their program of action. Representing the three regidoras was
43. El Diario Ilustrado, 9 Apr. 1935, p. 3. 44. Maza Valenzuela, Catholicism, 35 36. For more on the reaction to the election, see Lavrn, Women, 313 14.
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Figure 2. President of the Conservative Party, Horacio Walker Larran, clings to the skirt of Adela Edwards de Salas as she makes her way up the steps of city hall.
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Figure 3. Aquirre Cerde and the Radical Party decapitated (and perhaps even emasculated) by the feminine vote.
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Figure 4. There is no new broom that does not clean well.
Elena Doll de Daz. During her remarks, she assured her male colleagues, The feminist movement does not imply a struggle of the sexes or the supplanting of men by women. This movement consists of the union of all women who, feeling themselves sisters and understanding their mutual necessities, anxieties, or desires, work to achieve a greater well-being, a greater social justice, a worthy recognition of the rights, and of the participation that correspond to them in all the activities of collective life. And, she continued, our program deals with the interests that touch us most closely: to procure healthy and comfortable housing; to provide sufcient nourishment through farmers markets [ ferias libres] and abundant supplies of the items of basic necessity; to stimulate popular education with courses on domestic economy and family industries. An object of special attention for us will be all that which refers to the protection of minors; making
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sure that the laws concerning public performances, publications, and centers of entertainment be observed; trying at the same time to maintain public entertainments and moral performances [espectculos] in all neighborhoods. Nevertheless, we shall not forget problems of general interest and offer our most decided cooperation in their resolution.45 Doll de Dazs opening statement brought a rejoinder from Socialist Party regidor Ricardo Latcham, one of two members of that party elected to the new city council. In his own remarks, he pointed to what he considered a certain irony in the regidoras emphasis upon teaching domestic economy to a people who do not have enough to eat. He underscored the Socialists critique of the charitable efforts of the Catholic Church and of the womens organizations with which Doll de Daz and the other regidoras were associatedwhich viewed them as only papering over and ignoring the profound inequities in Chile created, as they saw it, by the capitalist system. Conservative Jorge Richard Barnard came to Doll de Dazs defense, saying that Latcham had twisted her meaning to score political points.46 The matter was not pursued, but the brief exchange foreshadowed future clashes and disagreements between the regidoras and the representatives of the Left that would continue as a signicant leitmotif of the new city council. Although women comprised only 3 of the 15 council members, their numbers remained signicant within a city council that was, as was common, divided among various parties, especially if they voted en bloc. Also elected in 1935 were four members of the Conservative Party. While the three regidoras had run separately from the Conservatives and promised to adhere to an independent and nonpartisan position within the council, their connections and sympathies with that party were well known. The four Conservatives, the three regidoras, and two members of President Alessandris Liberal Party gave the Right a solid majority in the council. On the Left were two Radicals, two Socialists, one Democrat, and one member of a minor party, the Unin Repblicana.47 Hopes that the restoration of an elected city council and the inclusion of women in the process would produce better results than in the past were soon
45. Municipalidad de Santiago, Boletn Municipal de la Ciudad de Santiago (Hereafter as BMCS), 25 June 1935, p. 6004. The BMCS provides the transcribed minutes of city council sessions. 46. BMCS, 25 June 1935, pp. 6004 5. 47. Biographies of the 15 newly elected regidores, along with their party afliations, were published in a special edition of the BMCS, 8 June 1935, pp. 5787 802.
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dashed. Despite having alcaldes (rst Absaln Valencia Zavala and then Augusto Vicua Subercaseaux, both Liberals) appointed by and enjoying the condence of President Alessandri, and with a solid majority on the Right, the council almost immediately became bogged down in partisan squabbling and in-ghting, which led to stalemate, inaction, and frustration. The two Socialists were prominent in this regard, raising objections to and resisting many measures emanating either from the alcalde or the regidores of the Right. Complicating matters at the local level were national developments that resulted in a growing polarization between the forces of the Right, grouped around President Alessandri and his conservative minister of nance and would-be successor, Gustavo Ross, and a leftist Popular Front composed of Radicals, Socialists, and Communists.48 Within this larger framework, the three regidoras played a relatively active role within the Santiago city council. From the beginning, they participated fully in debate and did not hesitate to make their positions known on various important matters. Edwards de Salas, initially the best-known of the three, made her rst major intervention on July 29, 1935, with a lengthy exposition on the subject of prostitution. She began by arguing that the current system, which sought primarily to regulate prostitution, was not working. That system had been established early in the century and was designed primarily to protect men from the effects of venereal disease. Edwards sought to shift the attention to the protection of prostitutes themselves. Drawing on numerous foreign examples, she highlighted the many failures of regulatory systems elsewhere and concluded that it was folly to think that they would operate any more effectively in Chile. She also discounted a common justication for regulated but legal prostitution that abstinence from such sexual encounters was somehow bad for a males health as a medieval superstition. None of us know, she said, of an illness or symptom of physical weakness that we can attribute to having lived a moral and self-disciplined life. The only solution to this most terrible of plagues that threatens the destruction of the strong Chilean race was rst to abolish totally the white slave trade that forced young women into a life of vice and then to eliminate prostitution altogether. She also recognized that the fundamental conditions that led young women, mostly of the lower classes, to enter prostitution low wages, the breakup of the family, alcoholism, and crowded living conditions must also be addressed in order to
48. For an overview, see Collier and Sater, A History, 226 34. The classic study of the center-Left coalition is John Reese Stevenson, The Chilean Popular Front (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Univ. Press, 1942).
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successfully resolve the problem. To this end, she moved for the creation of a special committee to study measures that would end prostitution altogether and combat and control social diseases. Finally, she argued that the problem of prostitution, the resolution of which she called crucial for the future progress of the nation, was of special interest to women and had been an important factor in her own decision to enter the political arena. But it was important to men, too, whose support she sought. Without men who are sound in body and soul, she concluded, there is no possibility of stability or national prosperity.49 In subsequent sessions, Edwards continued to push this issue and urge council action. In a discussion of the matter on August 16, Socialist Latcham again engaged, and perhaps enraged, the regidoras by agreeing with them on the evils of prostitution and white slavery but tying their existence and persistence to the inequities of the capitalist system and the inuence of the Catholic Church, clearly carrying the argument much further to the Left than Edwards had intended.50 At the following session, Doll de Daz took Latcham to task for what she called his obstructionist tactics (the length of his remarks had prevented a vote on Edwardss proposal), for taking the occasion to express his own doctrinal propaganda, and for employing phrases that wounded my own religious and moral sentiments.51 Finally, on September 16, the council agreed to name a committee to study Edwardss initiative, a committee that included the three regidoras.52 As happened to many initiatives from both males and females, once it went to committee nothing more was heard of Edwardss proposal, despite a fairly broad range of support for it. Edwards, due to poor health, had to absent herself from the council for several months in 1936, and when she did return she seemed to have diminished enthusiasm for her duties. During her absence, she sent an open letter to El Mercurio in which she lamented the politiquera ( petty politics) that seemed to dominate the city council, making effective action to resolve the citys problems virtually impossible.53 For her part, Natalia Rubio Cuadra from the beginning rarely intervened in council debates, although she did attend sessions with some regularity and cast her vote on
49. El Mercurio, 31 July 1935, p. 17. For more on the general issue of prostitution in Chile and attempts to regulate it, see Alvaro Gngora Escobedo, La prostitucin en Santiago, 1813 1931: Visin de las lites (Santiago: Direccin de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos, 1994). 50. BMCS, 26 Sept. 1935, pp. 6588 594. 51. BMCS, 17 Sept. 1935, p. 6627. 52. BMCS, 15 Nov. 1935, pp. 7191 93. 53. El Mercurio, 6 Sept. 1936, p. 3.
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those items that came up for roll call, sometimes in opposition to her two female colleagues.54 Of the regidoras, Doll de Daz emerged, over the course of her rst term on the council, as the most active and inuential. Like Edwards, she had been prominent in Catholic social welfare activities, had served as a director of the charitable organization, the Cruz Blanca, that her colleague had created to care for indigent young women, and had participated in the Accin Nacional de Mujeres prior to her election in 1935.55 Like the other regidoras, she focused on issues of particular importance to women but also did not restrict herself to these; she was active and outspoken in debate on a wide range of matters that came to the councils attention. She was also perhaps the councils most consistent critic of what she often saw as unnecessary expenditures for partisan political purposes, especially the common practice of raising salaries and providing bonuses for municipal employees and workers prior to elections as a means to curry favor and gain votes. She was also the principal spokesperson for the regidoras when it came to the shifting political alliances and coalitions within the council. In mid-1937, for example, she led the regidoras in helping to form a new majority in support of then-alcalde Augusto Vicua Subercaseaux.56 On the other hand, she did not hesitate to criticize that same alcalde for what she considered his lack of attention to his duties in subsequent months. To prod him to greater action, she and the other regidoras, in early July 1937, joined with the rest of the council to recommend the naming of one of their number as a special advisor to the alcalde to assist him in governing the capital. When the city attorney declared such an appointment illegal, Doll de Daz responded that such objections could be overcome and, speaking for her colleagues, noted that in our desperation . . . we believe that there remains no alternative but to advise the alcalde with one of our own, who will represent the council and make the alcalde do what he does not want to do.57
54. Rubio Cuadras occasional dissent from the other two regidoras may have been due to the fact that she belonged to a different feminist organization from them, but she never said enough in debate to reveal the roots of her disagreements. 55. Doll de Daz was educated at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazn in Santiago and nished her studies in England. She was married to Ral Daz Riesco, a successful businessman, and was the mother of three. Empresa Periodstica, Diccionario biogrco de Chile, 309 10, 316. 56. El Mercurio, 25 May 1937, p. 3. 57. BMCS, 2 Mar. 1938, Session of 5 July 1937, pp. 540 42. Beginning about this time, the publication of the council minutes often ran several months behind the date of the sessions themselves.
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These actions produced some tense exchanges between the alcalde and Doll de Daz, both in the council and in the press. At one point, Vicua Subercaseaux rather condescendingly excused Doll de Daz not only for backing the special adviser plan but also for calling for an investigation into his administration of the city due primarily, he said, to her relative lack of experience in public affairs.58 At the council meeting following the alcaldes remarks, Doll de Daz took exception to their tone and substance. She claimed that she had a perfect right and, indeed, a responsibility to request of the executive the information she had, and she objected to his interpretation that somehow she was endangering the structure and legitimacy of his administration. She suggested, instead, that the mayor was trying to turn the council into a mere consultative body. The regidoras, she continued, had come to the council with the best intentions of acting responsibly and, unencumbered by party ties, to introduce a new way of doing things within the administration. But after two years of such effort, our motives are twisted [by others]. In a concluding exchange with the alcalde, she pledged to continue to bring to the attention of the council matters she believed to be of importance. In her words, I am not going to accept, unconditionally, the alcaldes impositions . . . nor am I going to arbitrarily reject any of his actions; but when it deals with something that I consider worthy of concern, I shall consider myself totally free to bring it to the attention of others.59 Vicua Subercaseaux, for his part, must have been a bit perplexed to hear such comments from someone who was, at least in theory, part of the majority on the council committed to supporting him. While tensions soon cooled over this particular issue, throughout the next several months Doll de Daz continued to be active, prominent, and undoubtedly in the eyes of some, contrary. In the session of January 5, 1938, for example, she strongly pushed Vicua Subercaseaux, much against his will, to name three female gynecologists to serve as city-appointed doctors in the newly established sanitary zones into which the capital had been divided, largely on her initiative.60 At a following session, on February 1, she was the sole dissenter to a resolution approving the hiring of 55 additional city workers at a total cost of $289,445 pesos (the peso was at about 25 to the dollar at the time), arguing that they had been hired by department heads without the proper prior authorization.61 On February 8, she abstained from voting on a resolution that pro58. BMCS, 12 Apr. 1938, Session of 26 July 1937, pp. 1085 88. 59. BMCS, 18 Apr. 1938, Session of 2 Aug. 1937, pp. 1199 202. 60. BMCS, 10 May 1938, Session of 5 Jan. 1938, p. 1496. 61. BMCS, 13 May 1938, Session of 25 Jan. 1938, pp. 1581 83.
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vided $50,000 pesos for improvements in one of the citys main parks, because she objected to the form in which the expenditure would be made.62 On March 8, she joined Rubio Cuadra and the center-Left Democratic regidor to vote against the sale of municipal property on the capitals principal avenue, arguing that there were unspecied political reasons behind this step, which was favored by the regidores of the Right.63 Not all of Doll de Dazs actions were in opposition to the majority, however. She was important, as mentioned, in the formulation and passage of a measure to create new sanitary zones and, with some reservations, supported arrangements to fund a new municipal slaughterhouse. She also received plaudits from the union of municipal workers and her own colleagues for being the principal author of a measure that created a new registry to certify more clearly the rank, merit, and salary of city laborers. The workers main publication called her one of the most seless defenders of their interests, despite her reluctance to increase their salaries or provide bonuses for what she saw as purely political reasons.64 In sum, by 1938 she clearly had established her credentials as an independent and aggressive council member, unafraid to stand alone on principles to which she held dear but also accommodating enough to achieve certain measures she considered important. She also had participated actively in most of the debates within the council and had shown no reluctance to address issues well beyond the feminist agenda.
Women in the Municipal Elections of 1938
With the experience of three years on the Santiago city council behind them, women candidates participated again in the next set of local elections held in April 1938. These elections were seen as particularly important as a harbinger for the presidential contest later in the year that would pit Conservative Gustavo Ross against Pedro Aguirre Cerda of the Popular Front. Once again, females were prominent. Generally, the assessment of their participation in local government up to that time was favorable, though still described by some in rather traditional gendered terms. Writing in the Boletn Municipal de la Repblica in April, for example, one male commentator argued that women, by nature, were without doubt incompatible with politics. It was this very characteristic, however, that made them most suitable to serve on city councils,
62. BMCS, 8 Feb. 1938, p. 1604. 63. BMCS, 8 Mar. 1938, p. 1643 47. 64. El Obrero Municipal (Santiago), 1 Feb. 1938, p. 1.
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which, in theory, should have nothing to do with politics. Referring favorably to their activity on the Santiago city council, he saw them as representatives who took their seats not out of vanity or exhibitionism but rather to develop a program and to give life to ideas full of humanism and well-being.65 All told, in 1938 the various parties competing for council positions in Santiago put up a total of 44 aspirants for the 15 positions. This was about half the total of 1935 but included 16 women, 7 more than previously. Among the most notable candidates was Elvira Santa Cruz, better known by the pen name Roxane. As a journalist for El Mercurio, Zig-Zag, and other publications, she had written extensively about the city and its problems. And as a private citizen, she had been active in establishing summer vacation camps for underprivileged children along the Pacic Coast. She also had served as an inspector of factory conditions for women on behalf of the national Labor Department in the mid1920s and was known as perhaps the most prominent exponent of middleclass feminism and its positive assessment of womens work.66 She received the enthusiastic endorsement of Alberto Mackenna Subercaseaux, the former head of the group that had pushed for the original municipal reforms in 1908. He observed, Women, by nature, have attributes superior to men in their approach to certain aspects of urban life, and that Roxane (who, he claimed, had these attributes in abundance) was born to be a regidor.67 The best known and now most seasoned of the female candidates was Elena Doll de Daz. Like most candidates, she went to the radio airwaves to make her case, broadcasting appeals to the women of Chile to support her and other females in the upcoming election. These women running for ofce, she proclaimed, were prepared to offer solutions to problems of particular concern to the working classes, such as alcoholism and poor housing.68 Her candidacy received the strong backing of her colleague Adela Edwards de Salas, who for health reasons was not running in this contest. In an open letter of support, Edwards recalled how she had embarked on her duties in 1935 with the belief that goodwill and a good spirit would be sufcient to carry the day but quickly had recognized that the realities of politics presented substantial obstacles to getting things done. Despite these obstacles, she argued, Doll de Daz was disposed to realize feminine ideals at the cost of whatever sacrice
65. Roberto Lpez Meneses, La mujer en las funciones edilicias, Boletn Municipal de la Repblica (Apr. 1938): 7 8. 66. Hutchison, Labors, 234. 67. El Mercurio, 1 Apr. 1938, p. 20. 68. El Mercurio, 25 Mar. 1938, p. 13.
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and in part, at least, had realized some of these. She called on her readers to review the records of the council meetings and to see for themselves the enormous inuence she [Doll de Daz] had exercised in these debates. She then enumerated a rather impressive list of measures that bore her colleagues stamp and called on all women voters to cast their ballots for her.69 Running as a candidate for the Accin Patritica de Mujeres de Chile was Amelia Daz de Daz, the vice-president of that organization. Active in charity work, she claimed to be intimately familiar with the poor neighborhoods of Santiago and pledged to work for their improvement, as well as to seek better public transportation, better housing, and better food distribution.70 In addition, womens groups (judging by the names of participants, primarily of the upper class) organized to promote and endorse the candidacies of Conservatives Germn Domnguez Echenique and Rafael Agustn Gumucio Vives. Domnguezs female backers claimed that, due to his intelligence and honesty, he would guarantee the strict fulllment of the patriotic desires of the women of Chile, and they lauded his previous efforts on behalf of the capitals neediest classes.71 The Left, through the Popular Front, also offered two female candidates: Enriqueta Silva de Vargas and Mara Aguirre Aguilar. They, like the Front, enjoyed the support of the Movimiento pro Emancipacin de Mujeres de Chile (MEMCh), created in 1935 by a combination of independent women and those associated with parties of the Left, with the understanding that womens emancipation was not possible without radical changes in all the structures of society.72 MEMChs program included efforts to lower the cost of living, to address the problem of malnutrition among the working classes, to encourage state intervention on behalf of the health of women and children, to equalize minimum salaries for men and women, to ensure full political and legal rights for women, to legalize divorce and birth control measures, and to forge greater international solidarity in the face of the growing threat of fascism.73 The election itself again went smoothly, generally repeating the pattern of three years earlier. Nationwide, while there was some decline in turnout from
69. El Mercurio, 29 Mar. 1938, p. 3. 70. El Mercurio, 22 Mar. 1938, p. 16. 71. El Mercurio, 25 Mar. 1938, p. 15. 72. Gaviola Artigas et al., Queremos votar, 43. 73. Corinne Antezana-Pernet, El MEMCh en provincia: Movilizacin femenina y sus obstculos, 1935 1942, in Disciplina y desacato: Constitucin de identidad en Chile, Siglos XIX y XX, ed. Lorena Godoy et al. (Santiago: SUR / CEDEM, 1995), 288 89.
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Table 1. Municipal Elections in Chile, 193544
1935 Party Conservative Liberal Democratic Radical Socialist Other Total Registered Turnout Male 57,304 55,835 18,193 52,720 448 80,098 264,598 302,541 87% Female 29,970 11,736 1,560 7,912 69 11,966 63,113 76,049 83% Male 77,926 77,937 10,898 88,070 45,729 109,687 410,247 512,042 80% 1938 Female
1941 Male Female
1944 Male Female 26,808 14,227 5,793 18,137 5,448 17,648 88,061 145,780 60%
29,163 58,956 20,950 77,570 12,899 74,931 18,437 57,578 818 23,695 2,543 39,942 10,348 126,765 19,642 105,001 3,777 61,680 8,572 36,802 17,754 61,953 10,600 93,480 74,759 408,160 80,744 410,373 100,707 575,625 124,518 619,312 74% 71% 65% 66%
Source: Compiled from Erika Maza Valenzuela, Catholicism, Anticlericalism, and the Quest for Womens Suffrage in Chile, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies Working Paper no. 214, 1995, pp. 30 40. Note: Most of the Other vote was for independent parties and candidates.
the previous municipal elections, there was a substantial increase in the total vote: from 327,711 in 1935 to 485,006 in 1938, with most of that increase coming from men (from 264,598 to 410,247) as opposed to women (from 63,113 to 74,759) (see table 1). The overall increase in voter interest was undoubtedly related to the growing politicization and polarization as a prelude to national elections later in the year. Turnout in Santiago was respectable, with about 70,000 out of 90,000 registered voters participating.74 Nationwide, the Right (especially the Conservative Party) increased its strength, building on a good showing in the 1937 congressional elections. Overall, the Conservatives and the Liberals continued to get the lions share of the womens vote (39 percent and 18 percent of the total respectively), with the Radicals gaining slightly (about 14 percent of the total).75
An Alcaldesa of the Popular Front
In Santiago, the only two women elected to the city council were Elena Doll de Daz and Amelia Daz de Daz. They served on a council almost evenly divided between representatives of the Right and of those of the Popular Front. These divisions were exacerbated by a standoff between the new alcalde, Onofre Lillo
74. El Mercurio, 4 Apr. 1938, p. 21. 75. For more on the election and its results, see Gaviola Artigas et al., Queremos votar, 62 63; and Lavrn, Women, 316 17.
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Astorquiza, who was close to Conservative candidate Gustavo Ross, and the regidores of the Left. Within this context, Elena Doll de Daz continued to play a prominent role, speaking out on a wide range of issues. While she usually voted with the Right, on at least one occasion she, too, clashed with the alcalde in a session when he arbitrarily denied her the right to speak. In response, she abandoned the council chamber, joined by the regidores of the Popular Front, who were more than happy to embarrass the mayor by accompanying her out of city hall.76 This particular episode did not result in any lasting alliance between Doll de Daz and the Left. In subsequent sessions, she sometimes voted with them and sometimes did not, depending on the issue. It did, however, underscore her continuing independent stance. Her fellow regidora, Daz de Daz, usually sided with her but was much less active and much less of a presence on the council, probably due to poor health that would lead to her withdrawal from the city council the following year. While the confrontations between regidores and the alcade in these months were often spectacular, they were only sideshows to the main event. In October 1938, after a lively, impassioned, and sometimes violent campaign, the Popular Front candidate, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, narrowly defeated Conservative Gustavo Ross to capture the presidency of Chile.77 So far as Santiago was concerned, one of the most important decisions the new president would make would be to name a new alcalde to govern the capital. (It was a foregone conclusion that Lillo would be removed.) Speculation centered on Rogelio Ugarte, a regidor off and on since 1900, a former alcalde, and a member of Aguirre Cerdas own party. On January 4, 1939, however, the new president named a woman, Graciela Contreras de Schnake, as the rst Socialist and the rst female alcalde of Santiago or any other Latin American capital city. Political calculations were undoubtedly paramount in this unprecedented decision. Contreras de Schnake was the wife of Oscar Schnake Vergara, the president of the Socialist Party, which was, after the Radicals, the most important component of the Popular Front.78 This appointment, then, was clearly part of Aguirre Cerdas strategy of rewarding the leftist partners of his coalition with important governmental positions.79 It may also have been calculated to appeal
76. BMCS, 29 Oct. 1938, Session of 5 Aug. 1938, pp. 3961 63. 77. For more, see Stevenson, The Chilean Popular Front, 73 93. 78. More on Oscar Schnakes role within the Socialist Party can be found in Julio Csar Jobet, El partido socialista de Chile, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Santiago: Prensa Latinoamericana, 1971), 104 12. 79. For more on this strategy, see Paul W. Drake, Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932 1952 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1978), 210 11.
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to female voters, following through on the presidents campaign commitment to support the rights of women and to elevate their social, economic, and political position.80 As it happened, the Radical Party did signicantly increase its share of the womens vote over the course of his administration.81 Although Contreras de Schnake appeared to enjoy the full support of Aguirre Cerda, it was clear from the beginning that her task and her position would not be easy. The appointment received widespread press coverage, including a New York Times article that emphasized the uniqueness of her appointment and underscored the many challenges she faced. Among these were an insufcient revenue base for a city that had grown dramatically from half a million inhabitants in 1920 to over a million by 1940 inadequate housing and drinking water, the high price of foodstuffs, and increasing trafc congestion.82 Chilean publications, for their part, were generally circumspect in their judgments on the appointment itself but also underscored the many pressing urban problems the new alcaldesa confronted. The most openly skeptical was El Diario Ilustrado. An editorial on January 8 began by noting that while the paper had not endorsed Rogelio Ugarte for the position (as had some conservatives), it had hoped for an appointment free of political considerations and with experience in municipal affairs. Instead, the president had chosen a neophyte for a post that is most delicate and full of responsibilities. Moreover, the partisan nature of the appointment could not be clearer, meaning that the alcaldesas actions are going to be viewed with fear and mistrust.83 This editorial, along with commentary in other publications, did not suggest that Contreras de Schnake was inappropriate for the position because she was a woman, but many of the skeptics surely held that view. Contreras de Schnake did her best to allay these doubts. She granted an unusually large number of press interviews and sought to emphasize her commitment to address the social needs of Santiago, especially those of workingclass women and children, with seriousness, dedication, and hard work. Whenever possible, she promised to call upon nonpartisan technical experts to aid in planning and implementing programs.84 On the issue of inexperience, she pointed out that she had been an active partner of her husband through his many political trials and tribulations and had learned a great deal from him and
80. This point was made in the magazine Ercilla (Santiago), 6 Jan. 1939, p. 6. 81. Maza Valenzuela, Catholicism, 38 39. 82. New York Times, 12 Jan. 1939, sec. 8, p. 3. 83. El Diario Ilustrado, 8 Jan. 1939, p. 7. 84. Zig-Zag, 1 Jan. 1939.
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their life together. In addition, she had been secretary of the Accin de Mujeres Socialistas, recognized in 1937 as the female confederation of the Socialist Party, and active in the MEMCh.85 In other words, while she lacked a background in elected ofce and municipal affairs per se, she was not without political and organizational experience, both in collaboration with and independently from her husband.86 Whatever the effect of these reassurances, Contreras de Schnake faced a series of daunting obstacles and challenges as she assumed ofce. First, of course, was the pressure to perform in the face of skeptics who questioned the tness of a woman for the position. Second, stung by their electoral defeat in the presidential election, the Right ercely resisted Aguirre Cerdas attempts at progressive reform and mounted a consistent and concerted opposition to him in the national congress and elsewhere. This translated into an often obdurate conservative opposition to Contreras de Schnake at the local level. Third, while the position of mayor of Santiago had certain strengths and advantages so long as the ofce-holder enjoyed the support and condence of the national authorities (which seemed to be the case for Contreras de Schnake), it also suffered from certain constraints and disadvantagesespecially a chronic revenue shortage. Success in the position required at least a modicum of support from the city council. Given the divided and often fractious nature of Chiles complex multiparty system, consensus and majority support was often difcult, if not impossible, to obtain. As a result, few alcaldes served their full three-year terms, and most were forced to resign in frustration (sometimes after only a few months in ofce), with relatively little to show for their efforts.87 Contreras de Schnake did have the apparent advantage of a slim Popular Front majority on the council at the time she took ofce. This majority was generally sympathetic with and supportive of her various initiatives. However, it was a shaky coalition of support at best. At rst, elements within her own Socialist Party objected to her appointment, some resenting the fact that Aguirre Cerda had not consulted them prior to his decision. Subsequent divisions within the party further weakened her position. To some extent, these were related to
85. Relations between the MEMCh and Contreras de Schnakes Socialist Party had become strained by the time she assumed the mayors ofce. See Antezana-Pernet, Mobilizing Women, 318 21. 86. BMCS, 5 Jan. 1939, p. 25 26; and Ercilla, 30 Dec. 1938, p. 11. 87. There is relatively little information on the history of local government in Santiago for this period. A brief overview is provided in Ren Len Echaz, Historia de Santiago, vol. 2, La Repblica (Santiago: Imprenta Ricardo Neupert, 1975), 194 98.
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attacks on her husband, who in September 1939 became Aguirre Cerdas minister of development and was one of the main gures in the partys accommodationist wing that drew the ire of more radical members.88 For their part, certain Radicals had wanted a female of their own, Cora Cid Quiroz, a leader of the partys feminist wing, named as alcaldesa.89 At the end of 1939 and the beginning of 1940, the Radical Assembly of Santiago in essence voted no condence in Contreras de Schnake and urged Aguirre Cerda to replace her, something the president, at least at the time, refused to do.90 It should be noted, however, that many mayors faced these sorts of problems, regardless of gender. Contreras de Schnake proved, in sum, to be a competent, honest, and outspoken alcaldesa, and she appeared to grow comfortable with the job over time. Her most signicant accomplishment was to establish a series of farmers markets throughout the city, where small farmers could sell their products directly to the public at lower prices than in larger markets, where middlemen and speculators were often accused of extortionate practices.91 An editorial in the semiofcial La Nacin reviewed her rst year in ofce and observed that she had overcome hostile indifference from some and ironic skepticism from many others to deal a rude blow to criollo prejudices against the idea of a female mayor. It reported that after the rst few months of sterile political maneuvering, even her adversaries have had to recognize the productive labor realized by the rst alcaldesa of Santiago.92 But, in reality, aside from the farmers markets, her concrete accomplishments were scant. Hamstrung by a recalcitrant council and an uncertain coalition of support, she made little progress on the major problems of housing, sanitation, and trafc congestion that had confronted her when she assumed ofce. Ultimately, after sustaining some heavy criticism for her handling (or mishandling) of a violent incident in the city paving ofce that pitted Radicals against Socialists in early 1940, she followed the path of many of her male predecessors and submitted her resignation to the president who, after some delay, nally accepted it.93
88. For more on these developments, see Drake, Socialism, 226 43. 89. More on Cid Quiroz can be found in Empresa Periodstica, Diccionario biogrco, 233. 90. El Mercurio, 6 Jan. 1940, p. 9. 91. The high cost of food was a persistent problem that almost all local administrations tried to confront and resolve, mostly with little success. For the role of food costs in the lives of Chiles urban working classes in the rst decades of the twentieth century, see Peter DeShazo, Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile, 1902 1927 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 64 67. 92. Reprinted in BMCS, 22 Dec. 1939, p. 2795. 93. El Mercurio, 22 Mar. 1940, p. 3.
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Three years after leaving ofce, Contreras de Schnake visited the United States in the company of her husband and gave an interview in the New York Times. She expressed her pride in the farmers markets, which had become established institutions in Santiago and even spread to other parts of Chile. She also observed that, while she had not been able to do as much to improve the lot of women in Santiago as she had hoped, she did believe that her time in ofce gave them [women] a lot of condence that a female could handle the duties of alcalde effectively and responsibly. She went on to recall how male regidores has refused to accept her at rst but that she ultimately had won them to her side. Throughout her time in ofce, however, the interviewer reported her saying, She had the complete cooperation of two women Council members who, like the men, had been elected by popular vote.94 This recollection, however ( perhaps because it was part of an interview in a foreign publication), was something of a distortion. One of the two elected women, Amelia Daz de Daz, died in May 1939 and had attended very few council sessions; the other, Elena Doll de Daz, had been in Europe until the end of the year. In an interview of her own, soon after her return, Doll de Daz stated that although she was still unafliated with any party, she sympathized with certain socialist principles and found the Scandinavian brand of social democracy appealing. When asked what she thought of Contreras de Schnake, she claimed to have heard many good things about her. But, she added, Personally I can only criticize one thing about her: she is too political meaning, perhaps, that she seemed too tied to the interests of the Socialist Party and its agenda, as opposed to Doll de Dazs own attempts to remain independent. While she had supported Ross in the 1938 presidential election, she had hoped that the Popular Front government would change some of the things that she had found deplorable about the second Alessandri administration; so far, she concluded, not much had changed.95 Returning full-time to the council in the last months of Contreras de Schnakes tenure in ofce, Doll de Daz continued to follow her by-now well-dened independent path. However, on most matters, she sided with the Conservatives, and there was little evidence of the complete cooperation that Contreras de Schnake later recalled.96
94. New York Times, 30 Jan. 1939, sec. 12, p. 5. 95. Ercilla, 22 Nov. 1939, p. 11. 96. In her rst signicant council intervention following her return, for example, Doll de Daz expressed her serious reservations about a proposal from the alcaldesa to sell off the capitals venerable Mercado Central to pay for a new city hall. BMCS, 2 Jan. 1940, 6 13.
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With the resignation of Contreras de Schnake and the death of Daz de Daz, Doll de Daz remained the only female voice on the city council for the remainder of the 1938 41 term. As such, she stood out again as the most outspoken, persistent, and often sole critic of what she considered unnecessary budgetary allotments intended more for political than for practical purposes. This was the case, for example, on several votes on supplemental appropriations approved by substantial majorities at the council session of November 19, 1940, on which Doll de Daz either voted no or abstained. When discussion of special appropriations to pay for houses for city workers came up and produced some hostile comments from some of those same workers in attendance, Doll de Daz called on the presiding ofcer to restore order. She added, We are tired . . . of those situations that nd us making piecemeal supplements that produce a sensation of deception, poor administration, and wastefulness. I would like the city treasurer, once and for all, as I have requested, to tell us how much we owe, how much we have to supplement, and where the funds are going to come from. The treasurer, who was present, provided some of those requested details, but apparently not to Doll de Dazs satisfaction; she and a Conservative regidor abstained in the vote on the supplement, which was nonetheless approved overwhelmingly.97 Again, Doll de Dazs votes were not always isolated and in the opposition minority. She joined in a unanimous initial recommendation on a proposal to create a so-called Corporacin de Carnes (Meat Corporation) to build a new city slaughterhouse. She was also part of a unanimous vote in favor of setting aside some 25,000 pesos to construct a museum of popular art in the citys famous Santa Luca park, an idea rst introduced by Contreras de Schnake.98 At the end of the year, the council began to consider the possibility of purchasing the Cousio family mansion, one of the citys best-known and most elaborate nineteenth-century elite residences, with the understanding that the furnishings would be sold to cover the costs and then the residence would be demolished. Doll de Daz approved of the purchase (at about 3.5 million pesos) but disapproved of the demolition. She suggested instead that the structure should remain, as it still does, as a reminder of the social life of Santiago in another epoch.99
97. BMCS, 24 Dec. 1940, Session of 19 Nov. 1940, pp. 2413 426. 98. BMCS, 4 Oct. 1940, Session of 24 Sept. 1940, p. 1898. 99. BMCS, 5 Feb. 1941, Session of 30 Dec. 1940, pp. 262 64.
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Women and the Municipal Elections of 1941
Women again actively participated in the municipal elections of April 1941. Among the best-known candidates was Doll de Daz, running once more as a representative of the Accin Nacional de Mujeres. By this time, Doll de Daz was known simultaneously as the Conservative Partys best critic and as a woman who made her mark in politics without losing femininity.100 She also campaigned on a platform that sought to appeal to workers of both sexes. Two other prominent female candidates were former alcaldesa Contreras de Schnake, now running for regidora on the Socialist Party ticket, and Graciela Mandujano Castillo, the only female candidate put forth by the reconstituted Popular Front (the mainline Socialists having split from the original coalition).101 As in the past, women voters were also encouraged to support male candidates who were presumably sympathetic to the issues of special concern to them. Also as in the past, Conservatives in particular made a pitch for the female vote, which was once again signicant in this election. Nationwide, 80,744 females cast their ballots about 6,000 more than in 1938. While almost half went to Conservatives and Liberals, the parties of the original Popular Front tallied notable gains: especially the Radicals, who took only about 14 percent of the womens vote in 1938 but captured better than 24 percent three years later (see table 1). Aguirre Cerdas efforts to reach out to women undoubtedly played a role in this shift. In addition to naming and supporting Contreras de Schnake as mayor of Santiago, in January 1941 he introduced a measure to extend suffrage to women in all elections, and in March he named Seorita Olga Boettcher, a Radical of German descent, as the governor of La Unin province, the rst female appointed to such a position.102
100. Lavrn, Women, 319. 101. Mandujano Castillo was an educator who had spent time in the United States, where, as was the case with Amanda Labarca, she had come into contact with and been inuenced by various feminist organizations. In 1929, during the Ibez regime, she had been appointed head of the Direccin General de Educacin Sanitaria and a professor of the Escuela Nacional de Higiene. In October 1941, when many non-Communist women left the MEMCh in protest of that partys growing inuence in the organization, she was named as its secretary general and was described as an apolitical liberal with a certain interest in the working class. Also a sincere feminist. As quoted in Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises, 113. See also Empresa Periodstica, Diccionario biogrco, 662. 102. In its interview with Boettcher upon her appointment, the magazine Ercilla described her as the beautiful Radical lady (la hermosa dama Radical) but said little about her qualications for the post to which she had been named. Ercilla, 26 Mar. 1941, p. 4.
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Despite these developments, for the rst time since 1935 not a single woman (out of the seven who entered) was voted onto Santiagos city council. Doll de Daz ran at the top of the list put forth by the Accin Nacional de Mujeres, which also backed some Conservative male candidates, but failed to win reelection. Contreras de Schnake received almost the same total as did Doll de Daz but also failed in her election bid, as did Mandujano Castillo, who may have been hurt by divisions within the MEMCh.103 No one seemed to interpret these results as a broader rejection of womens participation in local administration. Rather, they seemed to reect the consequences of rather fewer female candidates this time around and the more complicated and shifting dynamics of coalition building and party realignments.
Women and the Santiago Municipality, 194446
As a result, no women served on Santiagos city council during the next threeyear term. Moreover, no women were named alcaldesa until Carlos Ibez, elected president in 1952, appointed Mara Teresa del Canto, his minister of education, to that post in 1953.104 The municipal election of April 1944, however, provided another opportunity for female representation on the council. Running as an independent but on the Conservative Partys list, Doll de Daz was elected to her third term as regidora. The other female candidate to emerge triumphant was Carmen Lazo de Vidal, one of two representatives of the Socialist Party. That party, in turn, was included in a bloc of Radicals, Communists, and the Socialist Workers Party labeled the Democratic Alliance. The Alliance bested a Conservative-Liberal slate by a margin of some two thousand votes in Santiago, but nationwide the Conservatives continued to enjoy the edge in number of seats won and in their share of the womens vote.105 While the number of registered voters almost doubled between 1935 and 1944,
103. El Mercurio, 15 Apr. 1941, p. 16 and Lavrn, Women, 318. In her analysis of the election results in Santiago in 1941, Antezana-Pernet argues that the candidates of the center-Left attracted a substantial portion of the female vote in the working-class districts of the city, belying the impression that women only voted for the Right. Antezana-Pernet, Mobilizing Women, 116 19. 104. Del Canto was alcaldesa until 1958, making her one of the longest-serving mayors of the capital up to that time. Jorde Fuentes y Lia Corts, Diccionario poltico de Chile (1810 1966) (Santiago: Orbe, 1967), 83. 105. Santiago results from El Mercurio, 11 Apr. 1944, p. 9, and La Hora (Santiago), 4 Apr. 1944, p. 4. Nationwide, the Conservatives and Liberals combined got almost 47% of the womens vote (which was about 18% of the total vote), about the same percentage as in 1941, while the Radical percentage declined from 24% in 1941 to 21% in 1944 and the
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voter turnout declined and the number of actual voters grew only gradually (see table 1).106 Lazo de Vidal was the rst leftist female elected to Santiagos city council. From a northern working-class family, she had joined the Socialists at the tender age of 13. Working by day and studying by night, she had traveled throughout Chile on the partys behalf. Her abilities and efforts allowed her to become a leading gure in the party, assuming a position as head of the womens branch and as the only female on the directive committee. At the time of her election, she was married to fellow Socialist and journalist Gustavo Vidal Gmez.107 The new council began its business of May 22, 1944. Speaking for the two Socialists, Lazo (the youngest of the regidores) promised, as she had in the past, to defend the interests of the workers, of the woman who struggles, of the abandoned child, of the middle classes, of all those who labor, who form the base of our society and who in our large cities suffer the consequences of poverty and exploitation.108 In subsequent sessions, like her Conservative fellow regidora, she showed no hesitation in participating actively in debate and promoting her partys agenda. In her rst major intervention, for example, she forcefully advocated a measure that would provide higher salaries for city workers, and at the next weeks session she highlighted what she and others saw as major deciencies in the operation of one of the citys main food distribution centers (the Vega Municipal) and (reecting a concern shared by both rightand left-wing women) violations there of municipal regulations prohibiting the sale of alcohol.109
Socialists from 11% to 6% for the same period. Maza Valenzuela, Catholicism, 38 40 and table 1. 106. Elsa M. Chaney observes that it was only when Chilean women got the vote in national elections that they began to participate in signicant numbers in local contests. Chaney, Women in Latin American Politics, 109 11. 107. While Lazo claimed to have enjoyed a good relationship with her male colleagues in the Socialist Party, she also admitted in an interview that one of them had once tried to rape her. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises, 199 200. Biographical information from Ercilla, 15 Mar. 1944, p. 6. Elsa M. Chaney states that in the 1960s, Lazo was one of the few exceptions to the supermadre female ofcial in Chile. By 1967, she had switched her afliation from the Socialist to the Communist Party and, along with Conservative Mara de la Cruz, was described as spectacular and combative as the men [politicians]. Chaney, Women in Latin American Politics, 104. 108. BMCS, 6 July 1944, Session of 22 May 1944, pp. 7439 40. 109. BMCS, 13 July 1944, Session of 2 June 1944, p. 7502, and 17 July 1944, Session of 9 June 1944, p. 7540. For more on the problem of alcoholism, see Collier and Sater, A History, 176 77; and DeShazo, Urban Workers, 78 79.
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On most issues, Lazo on the Left and Doll de Daz on the Right were on opposite sides of the political fence. On one major issue, however, they (as well as most of the male regidores) were in agreement: namely, in their growing opposition to the current alcalde, Radical Galvarino Gallardo Nieto.110 On September 26, 1944, for example, Doll de Daz resigned from the councils nance committee because of what she considered the scal irresponsibility of the mayors ofce, blaming Gallardo Nieto for failing to provide satisfactory leadership and for acting in a high-handed manner by approving, without council sanction, supplementary budgetary expenditures something she had consistently opposed throughout her years in the council.111 Two weeks later, in somewhat milder terms, Lazo echoed these concerns. In discussion of repairs at the city slaughterhouse, she asked why the council was spending its time and energy on such relatively minor matters, when more pressing issues such as poor housing, inadequate sanitation, and general malnutrition were going unaddressed. Now was the time, she argued, for Gallardo Nieto to trace out a program to achieve some concrete good for the city and to end the distrust, the lack of authority, and the lack of responsibility that is visible everywhere. She concluded, I request, with all respect, that once and for all you [Gallardo Nieto] assume the responsibility that is yours and be the alcalde of Santiago.112 By the end of 1944, the majority of regidores had made it clear that they could not work with Gallardo Nieto, and they urged president Juan Antonio Ros (1941 46) to replace him. This was something that Ros, for reasons of his own, refused to do. The alcalde, for his part, took the unprecedented step of refusing to preside over council meetings from the end of 1944 on, and he distanced himself as much as possible from the actions of the regidores. During this seemingly intractable standoff, the council elected its own acting alcalde and proceeded, as much as possible, with business as usual. Within the council itself, the regidores remained sharply divided between Right and Left, but the tone and passion of their confrontations were somewhat muted by their common opposition to Gallardo Nieto. Finally, in April 1946, the stalemate was
110. Gallardo Nieto, a lawyer and a journalist, had served previously in the cabinet of the rst Alessandri administration and on the junta de vecinos in the early 1930s prior to his appointment as alcalde by fellow Radical, president Juan Antonio Ros, in 1943. On the junta, he had often taken an obstinate and contrary stand on many issues, characteristics he carried with him to the mayors ofce. Empresa Periodstica, Diccionario biogrco, 421. 111. BMCS, 30 Oct. 1944, Session of 26 Sept. 1944, pp. 8462 70. 112. BMCS, 10 Nov. 1944, Session of 10 Oct. 1944, pp. 8568 47, emphasis added.
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resolved when Gallardo Nieto submitted his resignation to President Ros who, nearing the end of his own administration, accepted it. Throughout this difcult period, both Lazo and Doll de Daz continued to perform their regular duties on the council as active and frequently prominent participants in its deliberations, following the general lines of the respective coalitions of Left and Right with which they were associated. It should be noted that Lazo, afliated directly with the Socialist Party, was less prone to taking the independent stance that Doll de Daz often did, and she usually worked in close collaboration and voted with her fellow Socialist on the council, Israel Friedman.113
Conclusion
At the time of Gallardo Nietos resignation, the expectations of those who thought the participation of women as voters and ofcials would substantially change the tenor and substance of Santiagos local government remained unfullled. The city council was still far from the well-ordered and well-managed household that some had envisioned in 1935. Partisanship remained as sharp as ever, and confrontations between regidores and alcaldes produced frequent periods of stalemate during which little was accomplished. Fundamental problems of inadequate revenues and resources remained unresolved, and there had been little progress on issues of particular concern to women such as housing, health care, or the control and regulation of social ills such as alcoholism and prostitution. Public complaints about the deciencies of municipal services and the poor overall state of the city were as pronounced in 1945 as they had been in 1935. There were comparatively fewer scandals directly involving alcaldes and regidores in this period than in some previous periods, but this was probably due as much to happenstance as to any effect of an increased role for women in municipal affairs. The expectation that women could produce a dramatic change in Santiagos governance was probably unrealistic from the start. While the regidoras could tip the balance in closely divided councils, they still were only a minority throughout these years and were not represented at all between 1941 and 1944. Even if a majority had been elected, presuming that they represented the various parties of the Right and Left that vied for votes in Chiles multiparty system, there was no guarantee that they would be any less partisan or more
113. Information on the Gallardo Nieto imbroglio comes primarily from a review of the BMCS between 1944 and 1946, as well as general press coverage for the period, especially in El Mercurio.
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prone to compromise than their male colleagues. The appointment of Contreras de Schnake as mayor provided the greatest opportunity for a woman to make a difference in the way Santiago was governed. But, as we have seen, her efforts were largely hobbled by the same kinds of constraints that hindered many a male alcalde. Most important among these were structural impediments to raising the revenues and providing the resources to accommodate the demands of the fast-growing capital. While womens participation in Santiagos government did not produce spectacular results in these years, it was, nonetheless, signicant. The mere fact that they could begin to vote and to stand for ofce in 1935 served to expand the electorate and contributed to greater democratic development overall. Groups like the Accin Nacional de Mujeres, for example, became full participants in the political process, and the established parties of both the Left and Right were forced to incorporate women into their deliberative processes, select them as candidates, and appeal to them as voters. Moreover, those women who did win ofce established precedents and patterns in this period that made them role models for others to follow. As regidoras, they proved as capable and competent as their male colleagues (in some instances clearly more so) and, notably in the case of Doll de Daz, able to initiate and to see enacted some legislative measures of particular importance to women. They also introduced womens voices to speak for womens issues. On the other hand, they were not constrained or limited in their municipal activities from addressing a wide range of matters beyond those of particular interest to women. In these and other ways, they made important contributions to the development of democracy and social justice, which Asuncin Lavrn has identied as one of the most important legacies of 1930s feminism in the Southern Cone.114 It is difcult to generalize about how their male colleagues responded to the presence of women in Santiagos local administration. From 1935 on, Conservative regidores appeared to welcome the women sympathetic to their cause with open arms and encouragement. Regidores of the Left, especially the Socialists, were, of course, much more critical and antagonistic. But, at least on the surface, they grounded their disagreements in doctrinal and not gender differences. By the early 1940s, the parties on the Left, especially the Socialists, were putting forth their own female candidates. On occasion, the regidores of the Right seemed to display a somewhat overly protective attitude toward their regidoras, something that Doll de Daz in particular tried to deect. Her efforts in this regard appeared to be part of a larger attempt by politically
114. Lavrn, Women, 360 61.
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active women to establish their own movement and identity free from maledominated parties.115 There were some, too, who argued that Contreras de Schnake got something of a free pass as the rst alcaldesa, because male regidores were reluctant to criticize her and showed unusual gentlemanly deference to her because she was a woman. While this may have been the case initially, it certainly was much less evident by the end of her term, when she came in for some erce attacks from her political opponents on the Right, dissidents within her own party, and important components of the Popular Front coalition. Again, these attacks seemed to have been based primarily on her particular actions and not on her gender per se, although this is not always easy to disentangle. It seems likely, too, that throughout this period of initial female involvement in local politics and administration, male politicians were very careful not to exhibit behaviors or express opinions that could alienate a growing and important portion of the electorate. Refraining from criticism of women in Santiagos government, therefore, was not only gentlemanly but also the practical political thing to do. Whatever the reservations, by the mid-1940s the women who had served in Santiagos city council had clearly made their mark. Entering into a realm from which they previously had been excluded, they proved themselves to be serious, competent, hard-working, and often effective legislators and administrators. As women generally moved from the private to the public sphere in these years, the regidoras of the Santiago city council and the alcaldesa were prominent and highly visible representatives of this process. While the changes they brought and represented may not have been as dramatic as they and others might have hoped, their record of achievement was not insubstantial. As time progressed, their presence as voters and as members of local government seemed less a case of urban pioneers blazing new paths and more the natural state of affairs. Given the circumstances, this was no small accomplishment.
115. See ibid., especially 164 73.

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

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

Figure 4. There is no new broom that does not clean well.

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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1941 Male Female

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

HAHR / November / Walter

The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

Women and the Municipal Elections of 1941

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

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The Role of Women in the Local Government of Santiago

115. See ibid., especially 164 73.

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