From “La Mujer Esclava” to “La Mujer Limón”: Anarchism and the Politics of Sexuality in Early-Twentieth-Century Chile

The paradox of the Chilean labor movement under the Parliamentary Republic is not that so little attention was given to women, but rather that there was so much. As foreign labor ideology and modes of organization reached Southern Cone countries via tides of working-class immigrants—and, in the case of Chile, through translated foreign pamphlets that circulated among workers— the question of what to do about “the woman question” provoked considerable concern among working-class activists. Amidst the growing influence of anarchist ideology and the proliferation of the “resistance societies” (sociedades de resistencia) that they promoted, anarchists were among the first working-class organizers to draw attention to the topic of female subordination. When Clara Rosa González read her poem Into Battle to a large audience of men and women gathered at a union hall in downtown Santiago in April 1901, she joined prominent male anarchists in a program dedicated to...