Life in Debt. Clara Han
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regime sought to potentiate through the market and by establishing a subsidiary state.
For example, with respect to private property, the military regime stated, “Chile must become a land of property owners and not a country of proletariats.” Regarding morality, the regime stated, “National politics, lately characterized by low standards and mediocrity, has developed an outlook where personal success has frequently been considered as something negative, to be hidden, something for which an individual must ‘apologize.’ To lead the country towards national greatness, we must conceive a new outlook which will recognize the merit of public distinction and reward those who deserve it, be it for labor output, production, study, or intellectual creation” (Junta Militar 1974, 34). Women's duty was reproduction: “Finally, the present government feels the whole task it has outlined must rest solidly on the family as a school for moral upbringing, of self-sacrifice and generosity to others, and of untarnished love of country. Within the family, womanhood finds fulfillment in the greatness of her mission, and thus becomes the spiritual rock of the nation. It is from her that youth is born who, today more than ever, must contribute its generosity and idealism to Chile's task” (p. 43). In other words, these “healthy civic habits” drew from and magnified a genealogy of the liberal Chilean state that articulated sexuality with political community.
With the democratic transition, governments sought to maintain Chile's macroeconomic success in a global economy while trying to distance themselves from the Pinochet regime's use of state violence. Anthropologist Julia Paley documented the complex political processes in the early 1990s that established conditions for institutional politics as well as possibilities for grassroots mobilization today. Social mobilizations that had taken place during the dictatorship were in the process of being absorbed by the state itself in advancing a “participatory” democracy. Political mobilization in the poblaciones had to contend with the state's valorization of technical knowledge production in concert with its contracting out of public services to the community, in which community members were called on to “actively participate” in resolving their own local needs.
Simultaneously, in the early postdictatorship years, governments strategically advanced a discourse of “democracy” through opinion polls and community participation in order to politically legitimate the continuation and deepening of the economic model (Paley 2001). Indeed, entering into bilateral trade agreements with the United States, China, and South Korea, Chile has consolidated an international reputation of economic stability and fiscal responsibility, making it an attractive country for transnational capital and the possibility of future wealth creation. In this context, a growing private-sector credit industry, both national and transnational, has generated extreme wealth for an elite class, while economic indebtedness from consumer debts accounts for one-third of monthly expenditures in low-income households.
Chile now is registered as one of the ten most liberalized economies in the world, according to the Heritage Foundation. And according to the United Nations Development Program, it has the second-highest level of income inequality—after Brazil—in Latin America. The wealthiest 10 percent of the population earns thirty-four times more than the poorest 10 percent. The three largest private fortunes in Chile are equivalent to 10 percent of the nation's GDP (Fazio 2005, 44).
How these cultural and political adjustments manifest in everyday life, however, is not a straightforward or simple question. Yes, social policies to address poverty have posed citizens as “clients” or “consumers” of public goods, and women as mothers to be “civilized,” and the consumer credit system indeed provides possibilities for advancement in perceived class status. Yet social diagnoses that proclaim the breakdown of “the family” and the generation of a consumer society seem inadequate when one is drawn into lives, when one is invited into homes and takes part in chitchat in the street, cooks, cleans, helps do chores, and runs errands. How to attend to aspirations, disappointments, and bitter compromises became my struggle in writing. The struggle lies not in grasping a world but in being receptive to it.
LA PINCOYA AND RELATEDNESS
Within the boundaries of the municipality of Huechuraba, La Pincoya is bordered on the west by new upper-middle-class condominiums. The Ciudad Empresarial, or Business City, constructed in the late 1990s, also part of the municipality of Huechuraba, forms La Pincoya's eastern border. It is populated by high-rises that contain international advertising firms, global news outlets such as CNN, and offices for international banks and software engineering companies. Green hills on its northwestern and eastern sides separate La Pincoya from these wealthier areas but also provide the backdrop for children playing in the narrow streets, as well as exceptional locations for those children to fly kites on windy spring days.
Taking a bus from Santiago center to the población, one goes up one main street, Recoleta, passing the highway that rings the city, Américo Vespucio. One gets off as the street ends at the base of the hills. Smaller passageways branch off the main street, and walking up those streets, one greets neighbors who sit on the front steps of their patios, gossiping and taking in the sun. Dogs of various mixes and sizes sniff the sidewalks and laze on the patios. One might be called Perla (Pearl) and another called Pelusa (Fluffy), while another might be called Monster (in English) or Bruce (after Bruce Springsteen). Wrought iron fencing separates the street from the patios, which are enclosed on the sides by walls made of bricks, wood planks, or corrugated iron. Plants line many of the patios; some are shaded by grapevines growing on trellises or by large avocado trees. Folklore music streams from the open door of one house. A few houses up, reggaetón. Another one, Rammstein (a German heavy metal band) blares. Shop fronts (almacenes) appear every few houses, interspersed every so often with Pentecostal meeting places. Shops, like Pentecostal meeting places, are part of houses, built within the patio in front of the house and closed off with a large iron gate late at night.
Shops are called by the owners' nicknames or first names, such as La Viuda (the widow), selling fruits and vegetables; Sra. Cecy, selling cheese, cold cuts, powdered milk, bread, spaghetti noodles, Coca-Cola, Fanta, and pharmaceuticals; don Rodrigo, selling scissors, crayons, different papers, toner cartridges, and pens. Shop owners have, among their neighbors, loyal customers to whom they sell goods al fiado, or on trust, payable at the end of the month, although neighbors also tend to occasionally buy from different shops just to support the businesses of others. Continuing up the narrow streets, one is greeted by “Hola vecino/a” (Hi, neighbor), or with a wink and “Hola muñecos” (Hi, dolls). Nicknames are constantly used with endearment or cheeky irony: flaca (skinny girl), flaco (skinny guy), guatón (fat guy), negra (black), rusa (russian or blonde), huacha (“orphan,” or “illegitimate child”), volao (someone high on drugs). Or they relate to one's skills or profession: zapatero (shoe repair), joyero (jewelry maker), carpintero (carpenter), semanero (one who sells goods on credit and asks for weekly payments). I was called various names: negra, flaca, chinita, huacha, but also Clarita by friends and tía Clara (Auntie Clara) by their children.
Between 1968 and 1971, the confluence of state housing policy under President Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–1970), and popular movements for housing (tomas de terreno), established La Pincoya as a población on the northern periphery of Santiago. The presidential election of Frei Montalva in 1964 set the conditions for La Pincoya's emergence. The Christian Democrat party advanced the slogan “Revolution in Liberty,” based on combining technical expertise, liberal political doctrine, and Christian humanistic values (Smith 1982, 110). This position coincided with the Catholic clergy's growing concern for the poor, voiced in two landmark 1962 pastoral letters, and the state's desire to stem communism. Consistent with this evolving Christian doctrine, the Christian Democrats argued that instead of viewing social reality as a struggle between workers and employers, Chilean society should be understood in terms of a tension between “marginality” and “integration” (Salazar Vergara and Pinto 1999; Scully 1992; Smith 1982).
This theory of marginality was advanced by the Belgian Jesuit Roger Vekemans and the Chilean group DESAL (Centro para el Desarrollo Económica y Social de América Latina) under Vekemans's leadership between 1964 and 1970.4 The theory drew in a selective fashion from Oscar Lewis's “culture of poverty” school, emphasizing the traits of self-perpetuating poverty