Charity, Rights, and Entitlement:Gender, Labor, and Welfare in Early-Twentieth-Century Chile

In 1939 the Caja de Seguro Obligatorio (CSO, Obligatory Insurance Fund), the Chilean agency that provided social security, disability, and health care insurance to blue-collar workers, published an advertisement in the Socialist party magazine Rumbo. "The social security system," read the advertisement, "tries to replace the denomination of 'indigent' with that of 'taxpayer' [imponente], a switch from 'charity' to 'insurance' and from 'alms' to 'rights.'" The CSO thus aligned itself with a modern notion of state welfare as a "right." According to the agency, the extension of CSO-administered benefits would suppress demeaning and retrograde forms of public and private welfare, which it termed "charity." ¹

This CSO advertisement appeared in Rumbo less than a year after the election to the presidency of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, the first of three Radical party members elected as standard bearers of Center-Left, popular-front coalitions. The first popular-front coalition was formed in 1936 and was formally composed of the Socialist, Communist, and Radical parties. This and successive Center-Left coalitions won presidential elections in 1938, 1942, and 1946. The alliances persisted in some form until around 1948, when cold war rivalries tore them apart. Programmatically, the popular fronts sought not simply to modernize the Chilean economy but also to mobilize and incorporate working-class Chileans into the polity. According to popular-front leaders, working-class Chileans were vital and therefore worthy members of the nation who deserved both to share in the economic benefits of development and to have a recognized political voice. Along with promoting industrial self- sufficiency and economic development, the coalitions championed the economic and social rights of the poor, fostered a rhetoric of citizen entitlement among popular sectors, and sought to democratize public services. ²

Yet as this essay argues, not all impoverished Chileans benefited equally from popular-front efforts to expand state services and democratize welfare. Workers employed in the formal sector, ³ most of them male, were the popular fronts' core constituency and received CSO and other benefits that were seen as rights. Characterized as temporary aid given in times of need, CSO-administered disability and health benefits did not imply worker dependence on the state. And since workers helped finance these benefits, worker organizations consistently demanded--and obtained--participation in the administration of social security and health programs. By contrast, nonworkers and workers outside the formal sector continued to receive forms of state aid that were more akin to charity. Women--who were for the most part housewives or nonindustrial workers--as well as unemployed and informally employed men had fewer rights and little, if any, say in the operation of the agencies that dispensed aid to them as indigent. State officials would continue to determine the need of these clients deemed "dependents" who had no legal right to state aid. ⁴

The popular fronts' extension of health and social security benefits thus simultaneously furthered and limited democratization. For workers, material entitlements and the right to help determine how those benefits would be administered became a palpable manifestation of broader citizen rights. Those inducements helped secure working-class support for the popular-front alliances. At the same time, the popular fronts circumscribed the claims of women, nonworkers, and workers outside the formal sector--all of whom received fewer benefits and had less say in how benefits would be dispensed. Nonworkers and informal sector workers became subordinate members of the popular-front alliances.

As this essay demonstrates, these distinctions were intrinsically gendered. Political elites justified political and economic entitlements by acknowledging (male) workers' productive contributions to the nation and by linking the rights and responsibilities of workers to their role as family heads. They also advanced worker rights by contrasting productive, reputable, manly men with both dependent family members and disreputable men. In so doing, the popular fronts not only failed to recognize the...