El Ciudadano
Original article: Enfrentando la dictadura: Mujeres que utilizaron la lectura como acto de resistencia
Various strategies and actions, both individual and collective, were employed by women facing the repression and censorship imposed by Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.
These experiences were documented in the research titled «Reading in Dictatorship: Women’s Experiences Resisting Book Censorship in Chile (1973-1990),” funded by the National Book and Reading Fund from the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, call for 2024.
According to the study, the tactics these women adopted to preserve their reading habits and preferences occurred in various contexts of their lives, such as domestic spaces, educational settings, political prisons, clandestine gatherings, and collective resistance environments.
Anthropologist Bernarda Aucapan, who leads the project, explained that for these women, books and reading were tools for social emancipation used during the socio-political movements, clandestine work, and community engagement, where they created diverse strategies.
«They would hide books or fragment them; for instance, they read bits at a time, distributing pages among different items,» said the researcher.
«They also created, compiled, and reproduced newspapers, press notes, and specific information related to political violence, which they then shared with the community to raise awareness of what was happening and to create a form of propaganda that enabled them to participate in marches or call for strikes during the dictatorship. They did all this clandestinely as their lives were at risk,» Aucapan emphasized.
Among the testimonies from the 12 interviewed women, who preferred to remain anonymous, there are various accounts that illustrate the connection between resistance to the dictatorship and books and reading. One narrative describes how these women sought to preserve books banned by the regime.
«On the 11th, we took all the compromising books from our house, put them in bags, dug a hole, and buried them. Later, we tried to dig them up, but we couldn’t find them. I don’t know if it was because they built something on top or what happened. But those were the Quimantú books, which at that time came in collections we all had because we were readers at home, and still are,» recounted one of the interviewees.
«I believe that hiding those books behind the wall, concealing posters in the staircase was like small acts of resistance,» said another testimony.
In addition to hiding books that had turned into dangerous objects post-dictatorship, some women recount having to incinerate various texts and magazines that could be used against them if raided by repressive agents. One woman narrated how, on the day of the Coup, her mother insisted she burn her magazines.
«My mom said: You stay home and watch your sister. We are going to the market to buy whatever we can, because who knows how long this will last. Meanwhile, burn all that junk you have in your room. All those Cuban newspapers and those books, everything. I kept a fire going in the boiler, just keep burning. A stack of Cuban newspapers. I don’t know what kind of paper they used, but I kept throwing them in the fire and saw Che Guevara staring at me and still looking. He never left, it was horrible,» one testimony recounted.
Thus, after the censorship imposed especially from 1974 by the National Social Communication Directorate (Dinacos), under the Deputy General Secretariat of Government, many authors and writers associated with the Latin American boom continued to circulate secretly.
«Well, the most revolutionary thing read during that time was García Márquez; everyone read ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude.’ But among us, the Uruguayan poet was the most popular—everyone carried Benedetti’s work. Galeano also made his way into circulation; for example, ‘The Open Veins of Latin America’ was available on cassette,» noted another testimony.
Books and Reading in Clandestinity
Due to their political activism, many individuals linked to parties opposed to the dictatorship or social organizations resisting the regime had to go underground to protect their identities, their families, and to avoid arrest.
In this context, books and reading allowed them to stay informed through the clandestine circulation of banned texts and magazines. Notably, some women interviewed for the research shared episodes where they became information distributors.
«Political reports reached us from various sources. For instance, one time I traveled to Santiago and brought something concealed in the hem of my pants because it was dangerous at the time,» one interviewee detailed.
In sum, these actions positioned books as instruments of social reconstruction and made reading an act of resistance, driven by women who defended not only a political and cultural project but also preserved their ideals and collective memory, solidifying forbidden literature and underground media as symbols of identity.
The results of the investigation can be reviewed online, thanks to the publication of the book «We Are the Resistance» by the Nutram Lawen publishing house.
El Ciudadano
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