Verónica Schild is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. Born in Chile, she studied in the United States and Canada, obtaining a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto. She is the author of articles on the Chilean women's movement in a time of political transition, and most recently on gendered citizenship formation in neoliberal Latin American contexts. Her book about the women's movement and neoliberal state formation in Chile entitled Contradictions of Emancipation: The Women's Movement, Culture, and the State in Contemporary Chile is coming out in 2009.
I first met Verónica Schild in May 2007 at the Women and Politics – Class Differences in Feminism seminar in Dubrovnik. This international seminar was organized by Women’s Infoteka from Zagreb and the participants were expected to “explore ways in which the existence of the differences – in employment and type of economic sector, economic power, social status, type and degree of education etc. – among feminists, influence the access to knowledge and social power to women as a group”. Participants from both Eastern and Western European countries were surprised to hear that in Slovenia, the growing class differences are rarely discussed and that it is not feminists who start the discussion. They were less surprised to hear that the young generation of Slovenian feminists (perhaps the same could be said for feminists from the Balkans in general) who studied feminist theory at Slovenian universities has an extensive knowledge of the founding works of American, British and French feminisms but hardly knows that there exists another, nontheoretical approach to women’s issues; that there are other traditions.
Verónica Schild was taken aback by this “colonialist” self-negation because it reminded her that “feminist knowledge production can act as a weapon of destruction of collective memory!” “I see this happening in Chile all the time,” she continued saying, “with the perpetuation of transnational elite connections that enable young, educated women to travel to the U.S. and to Europe to obtain postgraduate education. When they return, they write women’s activism in ways that inevitably marginalize and silence local, embodied, lived traditions and, thus, they contribute, however unwittingly, to the loss of their own roots.” She made a distinction between (what I called) feminist “traditions” and (what she calls) “feminist knowledge production”. She said: “To seriously speak about ‘traditions’ we would need to pay attention to actual histories of organizing, mobilizing, and theorizing. So, it isn’t what you are referring to the ‘colonialist situation’ which took me by surprise, but the reminder of the perverse form this takes. I asked myself throughout our meeting, must we continue to be so ideologically blinded as to want to deny any value to ways of living, the ideas and ideals, of those women who were active during the communist past? Surely, if women have never been dupes of oppressive capitalist regimes, as I strongly believe, but have been over and above agents – of collaboration, resistance, struggle, and so on -- they have also never been the sheep of communist enclosures? And, then, of course, thinking about the commonalities between your region and mine, both equally peripheral to the real centres of power (incantations to a pan-European identity in the case of Eastern Europe not withstanding), I could not avoid thinking about the political dangers of forgetting this real history, and the responsibilities that intellectuals, including feminist scholars, must of necessity bear for this price of forgetting.”
The following interview was made via e-mail in November 2007. It contextualizes poverty, the working poor and precarious conditions of work as inevitable consequences of a neoliberal global economy. Verónica Schild speaks about possible alliances between groups of people who fight for social justice and explains why there are so few feminist among them; why feminism has failed to reach Chile’s female workers. She speaks about other “contradictions of emancipation” as well – an issue she has dealt with extensively in her 2002 essay The Unravelling of Second Wave Feminism in Chile and the Challenges of Neo-liberal Modernity.
The Slovene translation of this interview and essay is going to be published in the next, triple issue of Borec magazine.
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While the political-military leaders of Cuba and Venezuela and the moderate left-wing presidents of Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina have made their opposition to economic interests of USA very clear, the European press does not say much about the practical consequences of these leaders’ promises to lessen poverty in their countries. Are there any consequences?
One thing is to make one’s opposition to the economic interests of the USA clear and another is to restructure the exclusionary model of development premised on global economic integration, and based on what the late Pierre Bourdieu called “the new global vulgate”, or neoliberalism. As the saying goes, “talk is cheap.” So far, the only government with the means – i.e., possession of oil, a critical, “high end” natural resource – and a strategy for meaningfully tackling the country’s massive social problems, is Venezuela’s government. Chavez is incidentally a political leader, not a “political-military” one. He was duly elected president in a process that was deemed democratic by international observers, despite U.S.-backed efforts to the contrary. We may not like him, and we may want to complain about “corruption”, but we should not jump to conclusions too quickly.
Venezuela’s history, for those who care to know about it, is a tragic one. This country has had the distinct reputation throughout the modern period of being at once one of the wealthiest and one of the most corrupt of all Latin America. Scores of scholars have spilled ink over the years trying to figure out how in a country that generated so much wealth from oil, so much of it simply disappeared leaving generations of poor Venezuelans to eke out a living in grinding poverty. Chavez’s government is investing some of the wealth generated by oil in social programs aimed at the poor majority. What the political motives of Chavez may be for these social investments which, incidentally, do not depend on loans from the World Bank, is frankly not the point. Every leader and party in power anywhere will be driven by political interests. That is the nature of politics. Critics remarkably called the Venezuelan government’s investment in social infrastructures, e.g., health, education, poverty alleviation, a “diverting” of money from the oil industry. There are, however, two options, either the money remains, as it has historically been the case, in the private accounts of the wealthy minority – in offshore accounts for sure – or it is put to use for the sake of meaningful development. It is too early to tell what the impact of these investments is for the future of the country, but what is taking place is promising. Brazil is a very different story.
Brazil is a different story altogether. Lula’s government promised much in the area of poverty alleviation and has delivered little as social indicators in that country suggest. Under this government’s watch, the global integration of the Brazilian economy has been intensified. This has meant the continuing loss of salaried jobs – 3.2 million between 1989-1999, 2 million of those in the industrial sector. 4 out of 5 jobs created in the 1990s are extremely precarious and poorly remunerated. According to official estimates, at least 10 percent of the population is openly unemployed, a figure that is at least doubled when hidden unemployment, and those who have given up looking for work, are included. Many more do not earn a living wage in Brazil’s new economy, as the manufacturing sector is dismantled and good jobs are replaced with precarious and poorly paid ones. 4 out of 5 jobs created in the 1990s are extremely precarious and poorly remunerated. Poverty alleviation programs (Bolsa Familia is the main one today) offer USD 40 to an estimated 11 million families As Brazilian social scientist put it, reflecting on the fate of the country’s strong working class, with all these figures “what social class could withstand such a hurricane?”
The case of Bolivia is different yet again, and a very difficult one at that. The country is held as a successful (late-comer) example of global economic integration and neoliberal restructuring. Bolivia’s elites have been the net beneficiary of these transformations. The poor majority has lost the little ground it had achieved under the previous economic development scheme. What we need to remember about Bolivia is that its population is predominantly indigenous, and the tiny elite that has benefited from the time of the creation of the country, is exclusively white. Evo Morales is the first indigenous person ever to have reached the presidency, and his victory is an indication of the relative strength that the indigenous social movements have gained in this country marked by historical forms of exclusion based on ethnic and cultural background. Addressing the question of poverty and inequality in that country, then, poses distinctive challenges, and judging by the fierce opposition of the white elite, also incidentally regionally segregated, implementing long-overdue changes in the country will not be easy. What Morales has called his “two conquests of equality” – first guaranteeing political rights for Bolivia’s indigenous peoples (the majority of the population, we need to remember), and second pursuing economic equality through the redistribution of national wealth – have been met with serious opposition. A case in point is his most recent approval of a tax increase on oil production to finance the proposed universal pension plan for all Bolivians over the age of 60. This has been met with a call to civil disobedience by regional governments in those areas where oil is produced, and by renewed calls for an end to his “communist” government. As the Vice-President of Bolivia recently stated, what these events have done is expose “the real, inner workings of society.” Bolivia, the country in Latin America where indigenous people – kept in conditions of grinding poverty and social and political exclusion -- constitute the majority, has been ruled from the start by a tiny, racist, white majority. Powerful groups are not about to give up power so easily. What the outcome of Morales’s promises for the majority of the country are, remains to be seen. The more pressing question right now is will the elite risk it all, the destruction of the fragile political democracy in place, and even civil war, in its hysterical attempts to cling to power? Will Bolivia, in other words, usher in a new round of military rule to contain the demands of the country’s majority? Despite my enthusiasm for the massive social mobilizations in Bolivia, I am not discounting this all-too-familiar political outcome. A comparison between Castro and Chavez, or Venezuela and Cuba would necessarily be superficial and misguided. Venezuela’s is not a socialist economy and, as I said before, Chavez is not a dictator.
Cuba has had a socialist economy for nearly 50 years and a political system that is not really a dictatorship. Furthermore, Cuba is a small island economy, dependent until recently almost exclusively on sugar production, with an economic history shared by other Caribbean islands. I believe that few in Latin America would deny the fact that the island’s socialist regime – in place for nearly 5 decades -- has brought remarkable gains in the areas of health and education. Even with the U.S. economic embargo – almost as old as Fidel Castro’s regime -- and ongoing hostilities, not to mention the generalized impoverishment that followed the end of dependence on the Soviet Union, the country puts the rest of the region to shame as far as rates of literacy, levels of education, health coverage, protection of the elderly and other social indicators are concerned. This is something that is yearly corroborated by UN reports of one kind or another. The opening up of special economic zones for foreign investment (e.g., in the tourist industry) since the early 1990s has generated other kinds of social problems and tensions. The problems of the island are different I would say and I would single out the following: A new generation of Cubans, many of whom grew up with opportunities their parents could never have dreamt of, now want political freedom, and a greater say in the shaping of the country’s, and their own, future. This is different issue from what millions of Latin Americans face today. In the continent child labour has made a massive come back, as have slave-like working conditions. Because of chronic malnutrition, lack of access to education and basic health, and lack of a decent, living wage (or loss of it as is the case with the largest growing category of poor people throughout the region: the working poor) millions of Latin Americans are in effect excluded from meaningful participation in the continent’s new-fangled democracies. I would say, then, that in this new millennium Latin Americans – and not just them -- face some very old choices.
How does the current Chilean government deal with the social impact of neo-liberal economy? Has any Chilean centre-left government considered the criticism and reform suggestions of the 1999 Grupo Iniciativa Mujeres document Nueva Agenda, Nuestra Agenda? The main demands of this umbrella group of twelve Chilean womens’ NGOs were: deeper institutional reforms and greater state intervention to tame the market in light of the impacts on women’s rights.
Even if Michelle Bachelet the person – elected by women, with an enormous support and effort on the part of feminists, self-defined socialist, etc. – wanted to take the recommendations of Grupo Iniciativa to heart, she cannot. Her choice of finance and economic ministers at the beginning of her mandate sent a loud signal. Her government would continue to support the exclusionary model of development in place. The area of women’s economic rights, in particular the rights of women – and of all Chileans for that matter – to decent, stable, regulated jobs has not been addressed. Thus women continue to occupy the lowest rungs, most precarious, poorly paid and downright exploitative forms of work. There has been some tinkering at the margins, so to speak, in terms of labour and other reforms. Meaningfully “taming” the market, however, is off limits.
Still, Michelle Bachelet has promised a women and worker-friendly government. Did that promise have any consequences?
The key to Michelle Bachelet’s promise was that hers would be a government that would “listen to the people” and foster “participation.” Her biggest gesture toward a woman-friendly government was the introduction of absolute gender parity in the distribution of ministerial and other administrative positions in the government. After a year in power, this initiative had unravelled and the reasons for this are complex, partly to do with the pervading sexism of Chilean politics and party politics, and with the need to ensure good rapport with the Church and with powerful business interests. Moreover, we need to consider the broader context here. We should not assume, for example, that Michelle Bachelet’s election as president – or that of other women in Latin America and beyond – is an unadulterated feminist victory and a sign that the sexism entrenched in politics is a thing of the past. Rather, such elections are an indication of the degree to which politics and politicians have become devalued in the eyes of voters. For the past twenty years, economic and political restructuring and the global reorganization of capitalism (the only game in town now) have resulted in a combination of significant income redistribution toward the wealthy, massive forms of income concentration (in North America we are dusting off the metaphors found in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby about the roaring, filthy rich twenties to speak about the kind of life conspicuous consumption made possible for the minority of the wealthy by this remarkable accumulation of wealth). The flip side of this process is extreme forms of insecurity, precariousness, and impoverishment of the majority, and the rise, the world over. of that ubiquitous new category of people: the working poor. The working poor are those people who labour long and hard but whose wages are no longer “living wages.” At the bottom of this rapidly increasing category of people are women, with the most precarious, unprotected, flexible, and poorly paid jobs.
One needs to ask, when women in power prove that even they do not hold the key to undo the damages to social life and human life exacted by neoliberal projects, who will we elect then? What, in other words, will be the alternatives? Depending on where one is located, the alternatives look bleak, with some forms reminiscent of fascism for their xenophobic populism or dictatorships. The more optimistic alternative, provoked by increasing forms of organized pressure from below (e.g., “another world is possible”) may be a return to regulated capitalism and some version of social democracy that does more than ameliorate and contain discontent. It will have to be endorsed by the multilateral regulatory regime – e.g., IMF, World Bank, OECD – as the new global vulgate and for that to happen, the threat posed by China’s economic will have to be addressed. A real alternative, one that embraces the values of social (and differentiated) collective justice – what I still want to call a socialist alternative, but divested of the trappings of failed experiences, and shaped by fresh thinking and practice, is long way off in my view, but, following Gramsci’s dictum, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”, we need to embrace it and contribute to realizing it both as an imaginary and a practice.
But, let me return to your question about Michelle Bachelet. Above all, this promise has resulted in enormous expectations of greater participation by large sectors of Chilean society, including mining workers, indigenous people, students, pensioners, and of demands for real changes in critical areas, from decent wages and post-retirement support, to good quality and inclusionary education, among others. Demands have become increasingly organized and loud, as a new generation of Chileans learns to mobilize for change, and the older ones shake off the fear that has kept them immobilized. For instance, Bachelet was forced to tackle early on one of her own campaign promises, addressing the crisis of the privatized pension system (it is estimated that only 50 percent of Chileans will receive any form of support upon retirement in a system that makes the employed fully responsible for contributions to a retirement fund – expecting them to make contributions of 10 percent of their monthly income – and requires no contributions from employers). Then, last year, after a country-wide secondary school student mobilization (aka the strike of the penguins), following demands for drastic changes to Chile’s exclusionary and much deteriorated privatized education system gathered momentum and the increasing support of other sectors, like teachers and university students, paralyzing the school system, Bachelet was forced to form a commission to discuss this urgent problem. The unequal quality of education (the system of privatized education has resulted in a drastic erosion of Chile’s public education, something that is shown yearly when university entrance examination results are published: those scoring below standard are overwhelmingly students from poorer areas. Schooling has ceased to be a means of social mobility for Chileans and has instead become a mechanism for reproducing class-based privilege and exclusions). The answers Bachelet and her carefully appointed commissions have offered have amounted to “tinkering at the edges”, without significant changes. People know this and their demands are increasingly shaping up into an explicit rejection of the neoliberal project. This inability to make more than minimal gestures toward significant reform in areas that contribute to making Chile an exclusionary society and one of the most unequal in the world, may be the reason why Bachelet enjoys today one of the lowest levels of voter support in a long time.
Is the Catholic Church in Chile still a very strong opinion-maker when it comes to women's rights, especially the right to have control over your own body?
The Catholic Church is a very strong presence in Chile as an institution with the self-proclaimed task of being the “moral conscience” of an ostensibly secular nation, and with the very earthly inclination to support the moral agenda of the conservative elites (dominated today by Opus Dei, we may add, and emboldened by the right wing politics of the Vatican, beginning with John Paul II who, among other legacies, saddled us with Opus Dei by beatifying the founder of this arch-conservative sect and legitimizing its role). The Chilean church is an institution that all Concertacion governments, including the present one headed by Michele Bachelet – self-defined as socialist, single mother, and professional – have chosen not to alienate. Some call it the debt owed to the Church for its role in defending human rights during the dictatorship. So, according to polls, the majority of the population supports sex education in the schools, birth control, and abortion in some form, non-traditional families, and homosexuality. Still, as of 2005 the country finally has a divorce law. Abortion, however, remains untouched, though the topic is increasingly making it into public debate. Lest we assume that there has never been any form of abortion legislation in Chile, it is worthwhile remembering that under the short-lived government of Salvador Allende therapeutic abortions in extreme cases (e.g., in cases of rape or of physical danger to the mother) were allowed. This law was overturned by the military dictatorship which outlawed abortion under any circumstances.
In your essay, you mention the socialist politics of the church in the 70s. Could you outline the relationship between popular feminist educators and the church in the era of Chilean 'second-wave' feminism, especially in comparison to Europe where such cooperation is unimaginable?
First, I would like to distinguish between the official Church and the local Church. During the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, a group of 70 or so Catholic priests made public their support for the socialist project and called themselves Christians for Socialism. They were promptly and harshly dealt with by the Church hierarchy. The official Church, we must not forget, initially welcomed the military coup and turned against the new regime only when the brutal repression against the civilian population became evident – something which, incidentally, happened within a month of the coup. The support for a political project that promised a more just society was much more widespread, however, and reached into the local churches, in particular those in Chile’s poor and working-class neighbourhoods. The theoretical underpinning for this position was provided by Theology of Liberation, the distinct and influential contribution of Latin American Catholic theology that left an indelible mark on a generation of religious personnel (nuns and priests), and lay people. This, then, is the background for understanding the context of the relationship between the local church and popular women’s activism in the aftermath of the military coup on September 11th 1973.
The actual terms of the relationship varied according to the particular place and individuals involved. The commitment many shared was to social justice and the protection of human rights. How narrowly or broadly these commitments were interpreted varied from area to area. Some religious personnel were more tolerant of the kinds of topics popular educators wanted to cover, others were willing to turn a blind eye or chose not to know too much, and still others were not tolerant at all. In the end, however, this relationship also evolved. As popular educators developed a more explicit feminist agenda for work with organized women in poor neighbourhoods, the local churches became less willing to turn a blind eye to their activities. It was, however, the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1987 that set the tone for a decidedly intolerant Church. This, then, is the background for understanding the relation between the local church and feminist popular educators, and its eventual unravelling.
How unthinkable such a relationship is in Europe depends on what region of Europe you have in mind, what period in time, and what level of the Catholic church. Theology of liberation became fairly influential in parts of north-western Europe during this period in time and there was a strong commitment to social justice efforts and solidarity with the Third World, which in some cases extended to the funding of the feminist popular education activities I have just discussed. Thus, although the dividing line has always been the issue of the right to sovereignty over one’s own body, critically the question of abortion, the Church’s own explicit commitment to stand on the side of the poor, the widespread influence of Theology of liberation, and the political climate of the 1960s and 1970s in the capitalist world, North and South, seem to have resulted in some “unintended” consequences – certainly unthinkable ones in today’s context!
This is an interesting question. I would not say that there is cooperation and continuity of women’s struggle across class in today’s Chile. In fact, middle-class women, especially professionals, have been the net beneficiaries of many of the advances in gender equity efforts at the institutional level. The dramatic economic disparities between this group and the vast majority of Chilean women have made the kind of cooperation that existed during the dictatorship very difficult. So, one has to wonder, for example, when the commitment to women’s equality is invoked but has virtually no impact on the precarious economic situation of many, if there really is a sense of continuity and common “struggle.” My sense, from the latest massive mobilizations earlier this year against neoliberalism, in which only one women’s organization apparently took part, or ANAMURI, the organization of women rural workers, is that the basis for a common “struggle” are gone. Your question is interesting because it makes us wonder if the lessons of formación are being used among women from the poor majority to strike alliances with other people who are also at the losing end in the brave new world of neoliberal Chile. I do not have the answer to this question at the moment.
In Slovenia, many women with feminist beliefs refuse to publicly declare themselves as feminists. There are some others who believe that shouting ‘the F word’ loudly is the only way to overcome the stigmatization and ‘otherness’ which is in any case attached to women. Isn’t this debate in itself a sign of Slovenia’s great need for a popular feminist curriculum?
I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily a sign of the need for a popular feminist curriculum. It is a sign, rather, for the work ahead in placing women’s concerns, and the challenges women face in the brave new world of post-communist Slovenia, on the arena of public debate. This is of necessity a multi-pronged effort. Whether women use the F word or not – and what you describe is not unique to Slovenia but is widespread throughout although in your part of the world the historical origins of the rejection of feminism are rather different, and intimately linked I suspect with the strategy of equality by default embraced, and not in words only, by communist regimes – what matters is whether or not issues affecting the lives of women, from abortion, to sexual violence of one form or another, to economic marginalization and exploitation, can be openly discussed in the public arena, and acted upon. What will work as strategies for mobilizing women for real change in present-day Slovenia? Educating poor women through a “feminist curriculum” may be part of the strategy, but more is needed.
The majority of poor and working-class women in Chile take no part in the current feminist debates which seem to be reserved for educated and middle-class women. In your essay, you present the view of older activists who say that it is difficult to bring young working-class women together in women’s groups. They suggest that the best way to reach them would be through women’s labour organizations. Do they exist and have such attempts been made?
This is the most challenging issue for organizers today. How do you organize women who overwhelmingly occupy the most precarious, unregulated, in effect most flexibilized forms of work? These are women who are either working out of their own home, subcontracted to companies or middlemen, or are engaged as part time cleaners in office cleaning services, or in other equally low skilled, low paid and unregulated activities in the retail, food, health, and other service sectors. These women are not physically grouped in a factory but are instead dispersed and isolated. Attempts to organize these women are being made but it is not easy. The toughest challenge for organizers is posed by those thousands of women engaged in home-based work (piecework). Although they toil in conditions reminiscent of the nineteenth century, and are largely invisible to the rest of society, they do not consider themselves workers.
You also explain why flexibilisation of workforce and feminisation of labour go hand in hand and mention the microempresas or micro-enterprises as the most exploitative form of employment for women. Can you describe what microempresas are? Why are they, as we'd like to believe, not a sign of economic backwardness but are, instead, functionally linked to formal economy?
Microempresas are the form that self-employment took from the 1980s, and on which both national governments in Chile, Latin America, and the Third World more generally, and the World Bank and many bilateral (country-to-country) and private aid organizations placed their hopes for addressing the perennial question of shortage of employment throughout the 1990s. These are usually economic units organized along family or friendship ties, and a very small – with usually fewer than 10 individuals working in them – which produce some article, e.g., shoes, or bags, or kitchen towels, or offer some service locally. In some cases, they are connected through subcontraction with other productive units and are part of the strategy of cheapening labour costs that companies pursue to remain competitive in this age of open borders and global competition. So, these micro-enterprises are one mechanism whereby manufacturing of shoes, clothes, and other products, has been cheapened. Typically, the way it works is that national companies and local branch of the well-known multinationals “flexibilized” their workforce by keeping only a few workers on the factory floor, and letting go of the rest. However, many of those who are “downsized” set themselves up with some equipment, e.g., a sewing machine (either obtained through credit from institutions encouraged to offer “microcredit” or from the employers who offer the sewing machine to the worker as part of the settlement package), and are then recruited to work from their home to make what they used to make in the factory. So, their work, say, making buttonholes on men’s shirts, or sewing soles to shoes, is critical for the production of the final product, e.g., the shirt or the shoe, but women now do it from their own home and are paid per piece of work completed.
Studies conducted by the NGO Homenet, which is both keeping track of, and making visible the rising incidence of this kind of work (about which Karl Marx wrote in the 19th Century and we thought the 20th Century regulation of industrial work had done away with), show that this is a rapidly expanding type of work, and that women are the overwhelming majority of people involved in it. Why is it so exploitative? Well, women are not protected by legislation, they are not entitled to minimum wage, benefits, compensation, or protection in case of job related injuries. Furthermore, they must cover out of their own pockets the costs of electricity, needles, and machine upkeep and repair. Also, because their pay is based on the price per button hole, straight seam on the side of a shirt, and so on, women will take on as much work as possible in order to make something of a wage. This often means working long hours, upwards of 14 or 15 hours per day, recruiting family members to help, and, what worries organizers the most, this includes young children whose education is, therefore, jeopardized. Clearly, in the modern conditions that make it possible for corporations to compete with their products across the globe, this very old, highly exploitative form of labour which has always been associated with women, has made a comeback. It is now an important component of the competition strategy of corporations, and is in that sense functional to the modern economy.
How do feminists in Chile – both the políticas and the autónomas – nowadays intervene in issues that affect women as workers, as retired women, as coloured citizens, as lesbians, as dispossessed people? Are their actions defending the already existing rights or have they made more radical demands?
What the last few years have shown is that institutional means for addressing some of the issues you have mentioned, though not all the distinctions you make here are observed, has been the preferred route for so-called politicas. By definition, as I have indicated before, this means attempting reforms within the parameters of what is politically possible in neoliberal Chile. Key issues that involve demands for redistribution, such as secure jobs and living wages, universal, affordable child care, an old age with dignity, or support for care work done in the home, are off the table. These are premised on the recognition that investing in society is paramount for the health of the national community, for the success of the economy, and that the state, not the market, has an important role to play in the redistribution of wealth that this entails. But, this is not the present game in town. Today, markets for goods locally produced, at whatever human, social and environmental costs, lie elsewhere, and what matters is the competitive edge of national corporations, and local branches of transnational ones. In this scenario, few meaningful gains can be had with demands for economically marginalized groups. The more radical demands of the autonomas are, by definition, made outside of the normal political game that perpetuates the present order. They are, from that perspective, irrelevant. Where they are being heard is in the local and regional mobilizations demanding a radical change to neoliberalism which they, correctly, identify as the problem.
Do you think that poverty today, as much as it brings up insecurity and hatred, can also function as a common basis for solidarity between women – and between all impoverished groups of people?
Poverty as a brute fact of life, unmediated by languages of solidarity is not by itself a basis for solidarity. A condition of poverty interpreted through such a language has always been a powerful basis for solidarity, however. Languages of solidarity may fall into disuse, but they live on in the memory of people and are passed on to new generations. Thus, they are not forgotten. I highlight this because I have am firmly convinced that the renewed massive mobilizations in different parts of Latin America, including in my own country Chile – which until recently struck one precisely for the widespread political apathy – demanding an end to the exclusionary economic model and neo-liberalism, have to do with a recovery of cultures of solidarity. So, the short answer to your question is that not only is poverty a basis for solidarity (in the terms I have suggested) but given the accelerated pace at which global capitalism is generating economic and social exclusions, the struggle for economic justice across the globe will be the central struggle of this millennium.
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