Anti-colonial Feminist Ramblings About Everything and Anything

Franco, Jean. “Death camp confessions and resistance to violence in Latin America.” Socialism and Democracy, Volume 2, Issue 1 January 1988 , pages 5 – 17. Franco's argument is that there is a continuity in the use of violence in Latin America to bring on economic exploitative systems and label them as "modern", but there is a qualitative change in the effectiveness of the methods that the military regimes used in the 70's. As proof of the first, the building of commercial centers (malls) after the coup to proclaim a modern country in Chile and erase the past. As a proof of the latter, the new methods involved more systematic, calculated and regular practices of terror that combined bureaucracy and high-tech techniques with savagery. However, the excess of these practices cannot be explained by the economic factors alone, but we need to look at regimes of racism and misogyny and religious metaphors that enabled the specific practice of torture. For instance, torturers...

Nelson, Diane. “Introduction: Body Politics and Quincentennial Guatemala”. A Finger in the Wound. Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala. . Pp. 1-40. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. In her study of race relations between Mayans and "ladinos" in Guatemala, Nelson makes some very key observations that can be used to analyze the situation of Chileans dealing with political violence at the aftermath of Pinochet's dictatorship. For instance, the fact that racial differences are portraited by the state as dangerous for national unity. Also, that individual bodies are disciplined so as to produce the "body politic", because efforts to form a national "whole" require material proof on material bodies by racial, sexual and gender marking. In the attempt to "fix" conflictive racial relations, the state circulates the metaphor of the family and of conviviality at home: we all have to live in the same house. This metapho...

Matear, A. (2002) “”Desde la Protesta a la Propuesta”: The Institutionalization of the Women's Movement in Chile”. Development and Change 33(3). Pp. 439-466. Institute of Social Studies. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK and Malden, MA, USA. Oxford, 2002. Matear supports the idea that the strong base of the Chilean women's movement of the 80's was given by interclass solidarity and alliances between women in political parties with grassroots groups, and that this was key for the creation of state-level institution like SERNAM to deal with gender specific issues once democracy was achieved. But she also adds that these alliances broke down when grassroots and working-class women were excluded during the actual moment of institutionalization, and as professional women and women from political parties took positions of power. Thus, the women's and feminist movement of the 80's was altogether ineffective in articulating feminist demands. This is in part explained by the ...