The resignification of the Chilean dictatorship's international discourse: Decolonisation, religious tolerance and women's rights

Abstract

The Chilean dictatorship reacted to the international condemnation with a resignification of its international discourse in areas of Human Rights that it considered innocuous, such as decolonisation, apartheid, religious tolerance and -as we suggest- women's rights. The article seeks to determine the key representations elaborated by the dictatorship, through a discourse analysis, and a post-structuralist approach in International Relations. Its findings show that in the area of women's rights there existed a clear contradiction between the internal and international narrative on the part of the dictatorship, with a support for feminist ideas in the international sphere and a hostile opposition against them in the domestic one. For the evaluation of the consequences of this practice, the analysis uses the boomerang model, looking at the impact of the contradiction on the strength not only of the human's rights movement, but also the women's rights one. In turn, it evaluates the effect that the latter had on the dictatorship policies and discourse.

Introduction

The election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile in September 1970 aroused great expectations: he was the first openly Marxist socialist in Latin America, who- in the middle of Cold War- came to power through the ballot boxes in a small country located in an area of American influence. Particularly in Western Europe, Chile attracted international attention during the Popular Unity Government, disproportionate to its size, which nonetheless reflected the attraction that Chilean politics caused at least since the early 1960s (Angell, 2001, p. 176). The great similarity between Chilean politics and its parties with those of some European countries produced sympathy and understanding, a situation dissimilar to that of other Latin American nations (Angell, 2001). In this regard, the way in which Allende came to power at a time when in Europe, precisely, socialism was being revised, was key. As such, it was an experiment that developed before the eyes of the world, and its tragic end turned it into an international event (Giner, 1984; Judt, 2006, pp. 807–841). Consequently, international condemnation was articulated and extended firstly against the coup d'état, and then against the serious and systematic violations of human rights that followed it.

The dictatorship was forced to react and did so by preparing a discourse in which, in the first place, it justified its action. However, this article argues that dictatorship sought to give another meaning to the idea of human rights, especially within the framework of the United Nations. This resignification of the international discourse was developed on those human rights issues that were considered “innocuous” for the dictatorship, such as supporting the advance of decolonisation, the struggle against apartheid, the promotion of religious tolerance and the defence of women's rights. This final point would materialise itself in the World Conference on Women, held in 1975 and organised, precisely, by the United Nations, in which the representatives of the Chilean dictatorship took part.

The present article is a historiographical study using unpublished archival documents obtained mainly in the Historical General Archive of the Chilean Chancellery, but also from the Historical Archives of the Argentine Chancellery and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of the United States, as well as interviews with key actors. It addresses the topic from the perspective of discourse analysis, associated with the post-structuralist theoretical approach in International Relations (analysis inspired by the work of Hansen, 2006). The specific framework helps to identify how the dictatorship's foreign policy was connected, through its discourse, with the reasoning underlying its political actions. In other words, it finds the key representations that, through the legitimisation of foreign policy decisions in issues of human rights and in particular women's human rights (Hansen, 2012), achieve a justification of its policies at large. It engages with the relevant literature about women in the Chilean dictatorship, with women's human rights, and uses the concept of boomerang model and its idea that the “diffusion of international norms in the human rights area depends on the establishment and the sustainability of networks among domestic and transnational actors” (Risse et al., 1999). The essential notion that governments that use repression react to the internal and international pressure that these networks put on them through their discourse, which eventually forces them into a path towards respecting human rights (Risse et al., 1999) has been applied in the area of human rights in the case of Chile. In the present work, we will use it in order to determine whether the discourse that the dictatorship employed internationally, strengthened the women's movement against the dictatorship.

The remainder of the article is divided into three parts. The first section refers to the international condemnation of Pinochet's Chile and the adjustments that the dictatorship made to its narrative. The second section analyses what we have termed the “resignification of the discourse” related to human rights and the activism that, to that end, the dictatorship developed, especially in the United Nations. Finally, in the third section, the discourse about the role of women's rights is examined. Conclusive remarks follow.