Javiera Carrera was not only the sister of the heroes of the Independence or the maker of the first Chilean flag; the life of Carmen Arriagada meant much more for the national culture than her relationship with the painter Mauricio Rugendas; the importance of Eloísa Díaz exceeds the fact that she was the first woman to graduate as a doctor in Chile. Although one could remain in a somewhat sterile lament about the scant symbolic weight that women have had in our history, María Gabriela Huidobro avoids that risk and gives us in Women in the history of Chile (Taurus, 2024) a valuable, entertaining and well-documented book. In it, the academic from the Andrés Bello University tries to do justice to so many female figures that historiography has relegated to a secondary place or, at best, has reduced to a handful of anecdotes that fail to show their relationships or the struggles they fought for.
The task of Huidobro, a historian, is ambitious, and the author executes it with rigor: to recount five centuries of national history, emphasizing the trajectories of the women who participated in it. The starting point, however, forces her to explain the terms from which she will approach her task: because official accounts tend to emphasize political and military history, it is natural that women have played a secondary role in them. After all, they have carried on their shoulders a large part of the weight of domestic affairs, while men have concentrated participation in politics, and the great masses of the armies have been made up of men. However, the fact that historiography does not pay much attention to the role of female figures in the construction of the nation does not prevent them from having a very important place in the history of women. historythat is, in the facts that underlie what has been written about them. As the author says, “women have always intervened in history, although they have not always remained in the record and narrative of it. And they have not been there passively or only as companions: they have been active agents in each process.”
Huidobro goes back to the arrival of the Spanish and focuses on nine major chapters of our colonial and republican history, from Inés Suárez (and not “of Suárez,” as she explains), to Gabriela Mistral. Each of the periods portrayed addresses, in turn, different facets and female characters: women during multiple armed conflicts; the experiences of nuns during the colonial period; collaborative networks in the cultural, political or intellectual sphere; the search for a place in university life; and the growing search for greater rights and possibilities for emancipation. In all these cases, Huidobro relies on the experiences of specific women, who serve to illustrate how women have always been present.
Although the length and breadth of references make it impossible to summarize a book of this nature, I would like to highlight three elements that seemed particularly interesting to me in light of today’s Chile, where feminist debates and demands have become so prominent. Firstly, it is worth highlighting the genius with which the author recounts female participation during the conquest and the Arauco war. Based on chronicles, judicial archives and literary texts such as The AraucanaHuidobro unravels the stories of those conflicts to highlight the role that Spanish, Creole and Mapuche women played in them. Cases such as those of Tegualda or Janequeo, Catalina de Erauso or Mencía de los Nidos allow her to highlight the courage and character with which so many women contributed to the defense of their political communities. There is little reliable data on women in the Colony, but all these references and mentions – many of which use the models of epic poetry that their authors, of European origin, knew well – serve Huidobro to offer the reader a story that goes far beyond the mere military or political events.
The author touches on the subject of courage, family or sentimental ties, and a sense of duty, which are embodied in female figures that are usually relegated to secondary roles. Although she carries out an equivalent exercise with the Republican wars—against the Confederacy and the War of the Pacific—the way in which the literary materials illuminate this lesser-known moment in our national history makes these chapters of her book especially attractive.
A second noteworthy element is the tone with which Huidobro describes the progressive participation of women in the political sphere. From the early account of Ines Suarez accompanying Peter of Valdivia at the dawn of the Colony until the active participation of Elena Caffarena and her articulation of women’s groups during a significant part of the 20th century, Women in the history of Chile She accurately draws the growing space in which women displayed their public concerns. As the author points out when speaking of the dawn of republican Chile: “Even though they did not have the same rights to political participation as men, it was indisputable that they participated, in any case, in civic and daily life.” If in the case of Suárez or Javiera Carrera, at the beginning of our independent history, female participation had much of a heroic feat, this exceptionality became more and more frequent when spaces for female education oriented towards intellectual and professional training were founded and maintained. In her account, she also highlights the link between certain meeting spaces, such as salons, with an ever-increasing activity in the public sphere. The organization, therefore, around aristocratic women such as Mercedes Marín or Carmen Arriagada, or later around the Ladies’ Club, was much more than an attempt to provide spaces for social life; They became true seedbeds of intellectual development and a possibility to channel their concern for the affairs of the country.
This is linked to the third element that I highlight, which has to do with the relationship between the opening of educational spaces
that were increasingly relevant for women and the increase in their public and political participation. If during the colonial period educational institutions for women were few and restricted to a few convents—spaces that were less rigid or silent than one might think, where many people circulated and social life came into tension with religious discipline—this changed after independence. The new political scenario meant an ideological and educational opening, together with a willingness to import the ideas of the Old World Enlightenment. Thus, with the help of European immigrants such as Fanny du Rosier or Mme. Whitelocke, nuns such as Anna du Rousier, and other cases such as that of the Cabezón sisters, in the 19th century there were multiple projects that sought to compensate for the educational disadvantages of women. In search of a solid and profound intellectual education, they had to face the resistance of certain groups reluctant to change and who saw in this search incipient risks for family stability.
In conclusion, the author takes a risk with a brave interpretation of Gabriela Mistral, the “woman without a scarf.” Unlike certain recent interpretations that seek to portray her as an ally of a certain autonomist feminism and advocate of abortion, Huidobro shows the Nobel Prize winner from the fierce independence that always characterized her, and highlights how she had no problem separating herself from the Chilean feminist movement. Examining the texts that the poet published in newspapers and magazines over time, Huidobro sees in Mistral an intellectual, artist and teacher who always sought to dignify the professions and reality of women without losing sight of their unique and distinctive features. In her words, “her work did not claim to be feminism in the full sense, because Gabriela was concerned that the tendency toward equality would nullify what was proper to the nature of women.”
Women in the history of Chile She does not get bogged down in theoretical disquisitions or academic discussions, as she prioritizes the account of the facts in a clear and fluid prose, limiting herself to recording in notes at the end of each chapter the sources used in her research. From the colonial midwives of the popular world to the cloistered nuns, the water carriers of the Pacific War, the salon hostesses or the university students accompanied by chaperones, María Gabriela Huidobro finely intertwines these threads to weave a history of women where there is no doubt about the crucial role that they have played and will continue to play in the national path.
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